breath she vanished, and to me her body looked more like a thick cloud
than substance. I was so much frightened, that my hair stood on end,
and my night clothes fell off. I pulled and pinched your father, who
never woke during the disorder I was in; but at last was much
surprised to see me in this fright, and more so when I related the
story and showed him the window opened. Neither of us slept any more
that night, but he entertained me with telling me how much more these
apparitions were usual in this country than in England; and we
concluded the cause to be the great superstition of the Irish, and the
want of that knowing faith, which should defend them from the power of
the Devil, which he exercises among them very much. About five o'clock
the lady of the house came to see us, saying she had not been in bed
all night, because a cousin O'Brien of her's, whose ancestors had
owned that house, had desired her to stay with him in his chamber, and
that he died at two o'clock, and she said, 'I wish you to have had no
disturbance, for 'tis the custom of the place, that, when any of the
family are dying, the shape of a woman appears in the window every
night till they be dead. This woman was many ages ago got with child
by the owner of this place, who murdered her in his garden and flung
her into the river under the window, but truly I thought not of it
when I lodged you here, it being the best room in the house.' We made
little reply to her speech, but disposed ourselves to be gone
suddenly.

By this time my husband had received orders from the King to give the
Lord Inchiquin the seals to keep until farther orders from his
Majesty. When that business was settled, we went, accompanied by my
Lord Inchiquin and his family, four or five miles towards Galway,
which he did not by choice, but the plague had been so hot in that
city the summer before, that it was almost depopulated, and the haven