human
Death! The speaker was a tall, sinewy, athletic man, from twenty-eight to thirty years of age. The single word came from his lips short and sharp as a pistol shot. He looked around upon his auditors, who watched his hard-set features in silence. A group of a dozen peasants stood before him, the youngest not more than twenty, the oldest a man of sixty years, above the average height, thin, cadaverous looking, with hollow, sunken eyes, black as night, that contrasted strangely with the prominent, grey, bushy eyebrows. Deep lines, traced by suffering and bitter thought, furrowed his ample brow, and long, lank, white hair came down almost to his shoulders. His eyes rested upon the speaker, whose face became blanched under the terrible and earnest gaze that was fastened upon him. Though dressed in peasant garb, it was easy to see that the young man's life was not always spent in the peaceful occupation of the peasantry; a scar on his right cheek told a story of conflict, while the deep bronze that stained his face was suggestive of travel in other lands. Born on the southern coast, his earlier years were spent in the precarious pursuit of fishing, and just as he crossed the threshold of manhood, an adventurous spirit prompted him to join some of his comrades who sailed with a French captain bound from the Shannon for Brest. He pursued the sea-faring life for a year or two, when, falling in at one of the French ports with a detachment of the Irish Brigade, then battling under the _Fleur-de-lis_, he took service in it, and fought in several engagements, until a bullet in the breast incapacitated him for the duties of a soldier's life. Returning to Ireland, he found the peasantry engaged in the great agrarian struggle which produced the
gpt
Whiteboys.