"Oh! I know it; it can be no other. The friend that she speaks of is the girl--the blessed girl--whose goodness is in every one's mouth--_Gra Gal_ Sullivan. I know it, I feel it."

"Now," said the woman, "I must go; but before I go, I wish to look on the face of Condy Dalton."

"There's a bit of rush on the shelf there," said Mrs. Dalton to one of her daughters; "bring it over and light it."

The girl did so, and the strange woman, taking the little taper in her hand, approached Dalton, and looking with a gaze almost fearfully solemn and searching into his face.

"You are Condy Dalton?" she asked.

"I am," said he.

"Answer me now," she proceeded, "as if you were in the presence of G.o.d at judgment, are you happy?"

Mrs. Dalton, who felt anxious for many reasons, to relieve her unfortunate husband from this unexpected and extraordinary catechist, hastened to reply for him.

"How, honest woman, could a man be happy who is in a state of such dest.i.tution, or who has had such misfortunes as he has had;" and as she spoke her eyes filled with tears of compa.s.sion for her husband.

"Don't break it upon me," said the woman, solemnly, "but let me ax my question, an' let him give his answer. In G.o.d's name and presence, are you a happy man?"

"I can't speak a lie to that, for I must yet meet my judge--I am not."

"You have one particular thought that makes you unhappy."

"I have one particular thought that makes me unhappy."

"How long has it made you unhappy?"

"For near two-and-twenty years."

"That's enough," she replied; "G.o.d's hand is in it all--I must now go.

I have done what I was axed to do; but there's a higher will at work.

Honest woman," she added, addressing Mrs. Dalton, "I wish you and your childre good night!"

The moment she went they almost ceased to think of her. The pot still hung on the fire, and little time was lost in preparing a meal of food.

From the moment _Gra Gal_ Sullivan's name was mentioned, the whole family observed that young Con started and appeared to become all at once deeply agitated; he walked backwards and forwards--sat down--and rose up--applied his hands to his forehead--appeared sometimes flushed, and again pale--and altogether seemed in a state which it was difficult to understand.

"What is the matter with you, Con?" asked his mother, "you seem dreadfully uneasy."

"I am ill, mother," he replied--"the fever that was near taking Tom away, is upon me; I feel that I have it by the pains that's in my head and the small o' my back."

"Lie down a little, dear," she added, "its only the pain, poor boy, of an empty stomach--lie down on your poor bed, G.o.d help you, and when the supper's ready you'll be better."

"It's her," he replied--"it's her--I know it"--and as he uttered the words, touched by her generosity, and the consciousness of his own poverty, he wept bitterly, and then repaired to his miserable bed, where he stretched himself in pain and sorrow.

"Now, Con," said his wife, in a tone of consolation and encouragement, "will you ever despair of G.o.d's mercy, or doubt his goodness, after what has happened?"

"I'm an unhappy man, Nancy," he replied, "but it never went to that with me, thank G.o.d--but where is that poor wild boy of ours, Tom,--oh, where is he now, till he gets one meal's mate?"

"He is up at the Murtaghs," said his sister, "an' I had better fetch him home; I think the poor fellow's almost out of his senses since Peggy Murtagh's death--that an' the dregs of the fever has him that he doesn't know what he's doin', G.o.d help him."

CHAPTER XII. -- Famine, Death, and Sorrow.

It has never been our disposition, either in the living life we lead, or in the fictions, humble and imperfect as they are, which owe their existence to our imagination, to lay too heavy a hand upon human frailty, any more than it has been to countenance or palliate vice, whether open or hypocritical. Peggy Murtagh, with whose offence and death the reader is already acquainted, was an innocent and affectionate girl, whose heart was full of kind, generous, and amiable feelings. She was very young, and very artless, and loved not wisely but too well; while he who was the author of her sin, was nearly as young and artless as herself, and loved her with a first affection. She was, in fact, one of those gentle, timid, and confiding creatures who suspect not evil in others, and are full of sweetness and kindness to every one. Never did there live--with the exception of her offence--a tenderer daughter, or a more affectionate sister than poor Peggy, and for this reason, the regret was both sincere and general, which was felt for her great misfortune. Poor girl! she was but a short time released from her early sorrows, when her babe followed her, we trust, to a better world, where the tears were wiped from her eyes, and the weary one got rest.

The scene in her father's house on this melancholy night, was such as few hearts could bear unmoved, as well on account of her parents' grief, as because it may be looked upon as a truthful exponent both of the dest.i.tution of the country, and of the virtues and sympathies of our people.

Stretched upon a clean bed in the only room that was off the kitchen, lay the fair but lifeless form of poor Peggy Murtagh. The bed was, as is usual, hung with white, which was simply festooned about the posts and canopy, and the coverlid was also of the same spotless color, as were the death clothes in which she was laid out. To those who are beautiful--and poor Peggy had possessed that frequently fatal gift--death in its first stage, bestows an expression of mournful tenderness that softens while it solemnizes the heart. In her case there was depicted all the innocence and artlessness that characterized her brief and otherwise spotless life. Over this melancholy sweetness lay a shadow that manifested her early suffering and sorrow, made still more touching by the presence of an expression which was felt by the spectator to have been that of repentance. Her rich auburn hair was simply divided on her pale forehead, and it was impossible to contemplate the sorrow and serenity which blended into each other upon her young brow, without feeling that death should disarm us of our resentments, and teach us a lesson of pity and forgiveness to our poor fellow-creatures, who, whatever may have been their errors, will never more offend either G.o.d or man. Her extreme youthfulness was touching in the highest degree, and to the simplicity of her beauty was added that unbroken stillness which gives to the lifeless face of youth the only charm that death has to bestow, while it fills the heart I to its utmost depths with the awful conviction that that is the slumber which no human care nor anxious pa.s.sion shall ever break, The babe, thin and pallid, from the affliction of its young and unfortunate mother, could hardly be looked, upon, in consequence of its position, without tears. They had placed it by her side, but within her arm, so that by this touching arrangement all the brooding tenderness of the mother's love seemed to survive and overcome the power of death itself. There they lay, victims of sin, but emblems of innocence, and where is the heart that shall, in the inhumanity of its justice, dare to follow them out of life, and disturb the peace they now enjoy by the heartless sentence of unforgiveness?

It was, indeed, a melancholy scene. The neighbors having heard of her unexpected death, came to the house, as is customary, to render every a.s.sistance in their power to the bereaved old couple, who were now left childless. And here too, might we read the sorrowful impress of the famine and illness which desolated the land. The groups around the poor departed one were marked with such a thin and haggard expression as general dest.i.tution always is certain to leave behind it. The skin of those who, with better health and feeding, had been fair and glossy as ivory, was now wan and flaccid;--the long bones of others projected sharply, and as it were offensively to the feelings of the spectators--the over-lapping garments hung loosely about the wasted and feeble person, and there was in the eyes of all a dull and languid motion, as if they turned in their socket by an effort. They were all mostly marked also by what appeared to be a feeling of painful abstraction, which, in fact, was nothing else than that abiding desire for necessary food, which in seasons of famine keeps perpetually gnawing, as they term it, at the heart, and pervades the system by that sleepless solicitation of appet.i.te, which, like the presence of guilt, mingles itself up, while it lasts, with every thought and action of one's life.

In this instance it may be remembered, that the aid which the poor girl had come to ask from Skinadre was, as she said, 'for the ould couple,'

who had, indeed, been for a long time past their last meal, a very common thing during such periods, and were consequently without a morsel of food. The appearance of her corpse, however, at the house, an event so unexpected, drove, for the time, all feelings of physical want from their minds; but this is a demand which will not be satisfied, no matter by what moral power or calamity it may be opposed, and the wretched couple were now a proof of it. Their conduct to those who did not understand this, resembled insanity or fatuity more than anything else.

The faces of both were ghastly, and filled with a pale, vague expression of what appeared to be horror, or the dull staring stupor, which results from the fearful conflict of two great opposing pa.s.sions in the mind--pa.s.sions, which in this case were the indomitable ones of hunger and grief. After dusk, when the candles were lighted, they came into the room where their daughter was laid out, and stood for some time contemplating herself and her infant in silence. Their visages were white and stony as marble, and their eyes, now dead and gla.s.sy, were marked by no appearance of distinct consciousness, or the usual expression of reason. They had no sooner appeared, than the sympathies of the a.s.sembled neighbors were deeply excited, and there was nothing heard for some minutes, but groans, sobbings, and general grief. Both stood for a short time, and looked with amazement about them. At length, the old man, taking the hand of his wife in his, said--

"Kathleen, what's this?--what ails me? I want something."

"You do, Brian--you do. There s Peggy there, and her child, poor thing; see how quiet they are! Oh, how she loved that child! an' see her darlin'--see how she keeps her arm about it, for fear anything! might happen it, or that any one might take it away from her; but that's her, all over--she loved everything."

"Ay," said the old man, "I know how she loved it; but, somehow, she was ever and always afeard, poor thing, of seemin' over fond of it before us or before strangers, bekaise you know the poor unhappy--bekaise you know--what was I goin' to say? Oh, ay, an' I'll tell you, although I didn't let on to her, still I loved the poor little thing myself--ay, did I. But, ah! Kathleen, wasn't she the good an' the lovin' daughter?"

The old woman raised her head, and looked searchingly around the room.

She seemed uneasy, and gave a ghastly smile, which it was difficult to understand. She then looked into her husband's face, after which she turned her eyes upon the countenances of the early dead who lay before her, and going over to them, stooped and looked closely into their still but composed faces, She then put her hand upon her daughter's forehead, touched her lips with her fingers, carried her hand down along her arm, and felt the pale features of the baby with a look of apparent wonder; and whilst she did this, the old man left the room and pa.s.sed into the kitchen.

"For G.o.d's love, an' take her away," said a neighboring woman, with tears in her eyes; "no one can stand this."

"No, no," exclaimed another, "it's best to let her have her own will; for until they both shed plenty of tears, they won't get the betther of the shock her unexpected death gave them."

"Is it thrue that Tom Dalton's gone mad, too?" asked another; "for it's reported he is."

"No; but they say he's risin' the counthry to punish d.i.c.k o' the Grange and Darby Skinadre--the one, he says, for puttin' his father and themselves out o' their farm; and the other for bein' the death, he says, of poor Peggy there and the child; an' for tak in', or offerin' to take, the farm over their heads."

The old woman then looked around, and, asked--

"Where is Brian? Bring him to me--I want him here. But wait," she added, "I will find him myself."

She immediately followed him into the I kitchen, where the poor old man was found searching every part of the house for food.

"What are you looking for, Brian?" asked another of his neighbors.

"Oh," he replied, "I am dyin' wid fair hunger--wid fair hunger, an' I want something to ait;" and as he spoke, a spasm of agony came over his face. "Ah," he added, "if Alick was livin' it isn't this way we'd be, for what can poor Peggy do for us afther her 'misfortune?' However, she is a good girl--a good daughter to us, an' will make a good wife, too, for all that has happened yet; for sure they wor both young and foolish, an' Tom is to marry her. She is now all we have to depend on, poor thing, an' it wrings my heart to catch her in lonesome places, cryin'

as if her heart would break; for, poor thing, she's sorry--sorry for her fault, an' for the shame an' sorrow it has brought her to; an' that's what makes her pray, too, so often as she does; but G.o.d's good, an'

he'll forgive her, bekaise she has repented."

"Brian," said his wife, "come away till I show you something."