Her own voice became infirm, and, instead of proceeding, she paused a moment, and then giving one long, convulsive sob, that rushed up from her very heart, she wept out long and bitterly. The grief now became a wail; and were it not for the presence of Con, who, however, could scarcely maintain a firm voice himself, the sorrow-worn mother and her unhappy daughters would have scarcely known when to cease.

"Mother dear!" he exclaimed--"what use is in this? You began with givin'

us a good advice, an' you ended with settin' us a bad example! Oh, mother, darlin', forgive me the word--never, never since we remember anything, did you ever set us a bad example."

"Con dear, I bore up as long as I could," she replied, wiping her eye; "but you know, after all, nature's nature, an' will have its way. You know, too, that this is the first tear I shed, since he left us."

"I know," replied her son, laying her careworn cheek over upon his bosom, "that you are the best mother that ever breathed, an' that I would lay down my life to save your heart from bein' crushed, as it is, an' as it has been."

She felt a few warm tears fall upon her face as he spoke; and the only reply she made was, to press him affectionately to her heart.

"G.o.d's merciful, if we're obedient," she added, in a few moments; "don't you remember, that when Abraham was commanded to kill his only son, he was ready to obey G.o.d, and do it; and don't you remember that it wasn't until his very hand was raised, with the knife in it, that G.o.d interfered. Whisht," she continued, "I hear a step--who is it? Oh, poor Tom!"

The poor young man entered as she spoke; and after looking about him for some time, placed himself in the arm chair.

"Tom, darlin'," said his sister Peggy, "don't sit in that--that's our poor father's chair; an' until he sits in it again, none of us ever will."

"n.o.body has sich a right to sit in it as I have," he replied, "I'm a murdherer."

His words, his wild figure, and the manner in which he uttered them, filled them with alarm and horror.

"Tom, dear," said his brother, approaching him, "why do you speak that way?--you're not a murdherer!"

"I am!" he replied; "but I haven't done wid the Sullivans yet, for what they're goin' to do--ha, ha, ha!--oh, no. It's all planned; an' they'll suffer, never doubt it."

"Tom," said Mary, who began to fear that he might, in some wild paroxysm, have taken the life of the unfortunate miser, or of some one else; "if you murdhered any one, who was it?"

"Who was it?" he replied; "if you go up to Curraghbeg churchyard, you'll find her there; the child's wid her--but I didn't murdher the child, did I?"

On finding that he alluded only to the unfortunate Peggy Murtagh, they recovered from the shock into which his words had thrown them. Tom, however, appeared exceedingly exhausted and feeble, as was evident from his inability to keep himself awake. His head gradually sank upon his breast, and in a few minutes he fell into a slumber. "I'll put him to bed," said Con; "help me to raise him."

They lifted him up, and a melancholy sight it was to see that face, which had once been such a n.o.ble specimen of manly beauty, now shrunk away into an expression of gaunt and haggard wildness, that was painful to contemplate. His sisters could not restrain their tears, on looking at the wreck that was before them; and his mother, with a voice of deep anguish, exclaimed--

"My brave, my beautiful boy, what, oh, what has become of you? Oh, Tom, Tom," she added--"maybe it's well for you that you don't know the breakin' hearts that's about you this night--or the bitter fate that's over him that loved you so well."

As they turned him about, to take off his cravat, he suddenly raised his head, and looking about him, asked--

"Where's my father gone?--I see you all about me but him--where's my fath--"

Ere the words were p.r.o.nounced, however, he was once more asleep, and free for a time from the wild and moody malady which oppressed him.

Such was the night, and such were the circ.u.mstances and feelings that ushered in the fearful day of Condy Dalton's trial.

CHAPTER XXIX. -- A Picture of the Present--Sarah Breaks her Word.

The gray of a cold frosty morning had begun to dawn, and the angry red of the eastern sky gradually to change into that dim but darkening aspect which marks a coming tempest of snow, when the parish priest, the Rev. Father Hanratty, accompanied by Nelly M'Gowan, pa.s.sed along the Ballynafail road, on their way to the Grange, for the purpose of having a communication with Charley Hanlon. It would, indeed, be impossible to describe a morning more strongly marked than the one in question, by that cold and shivering impression of utter misery which it is calculated to leave on any mind, especially when a.s.sociated with the sufferings of our people. The breeze was keen and so cutting, that one felt as if that part of the person exposed to it had undergone the process of excoriation, and when a stronger blast than usual swept over the naked and desolate-looking fields, its influence actually benumbed the joints, and penetrated the whole system with a sensation that made one imagine the very marrow within the bones was frozen.

They had not proceeded far beyond the miserable shed where Sarah, in the rapid prostration of typhus, had been forced to take shelter, when, in pa.s.sing a wretched cabin by the roadside, which, from its open door and ruinous windows, had all the appearance of being uninhabited, they heard the moans of some unhappy individual within, accompanied, as it were, with something like the low feeble wail of an infant.

"Ah," said the worthy priest, "this, I fear, is another of those awful cases of desertion and death that are too common in this terrible and scourging visitation. We must not pa.s.s here without seeing what is the matther, and rendering such a.s.sistance as we can."

"Wid the help o' G.o.d, my foot won't cross the threshel," replied Nelly--"I know it's the sickness--G.o.d keep it from us!--an' I won't put myself in the way o' it."

"Don't profain the name of the Almighty, you wretched woman," replied the priest, alighting from his horse; "it is always His will and wish, that in such trials as these you should do whatever you can for your suffering fellow-creatures."

"But if I should catch it," the other replied, "what 'ud become o' me?

mightn't I be as bad as they are in there; an' maybe in the same place, too; an' G.o.d knows I'm not fit to die."

"Stay where you are," said the priest, "until I enter the house, and if your a.s.sistance should be necessary, I shall command you to come in."

"Well, if you ordher me," replied the superst.i.tious creature, "that changes the case. I'll be then undher obadience to my clargy."

"If you had better observed the precepts of your religion, and the injunctions of your clergy, wretched woman, you would not be the vile creature you are to-day," he replied, as he hooked his horse's bridle upon a staple in the door-post, and entered the cabin.

"Oh, merciful father, support me!" he exclaimed, "what a sight is here!

Come in at once," he added, addressing himself to Nelly; "and if you have a woman's heart within you, aid me in trying what can be done."

Awed by his words, but with timidity and reluctance, she approached the scene of appalling misery which there lay before them. But how shall we describe it? The cabin in which they stood had been evidently for some time deserted, a proof that its former humble inmates had been all swept off by typhus; for in these peculiar and not uncommon cases, no other family would occupy the house thus left desolate, so that the cause of its desertion was easily understood. The floor was strewed in some places with little stopples of rotten thatch, evidently blown in by the wind of the previous night; the cheerless fire-place was covered with clots of soot, and the floor was all spattered over with the black shining moisture called soot-drops, which want of heat and habitation caused to fall from the roof. The cold, strong blast, too, from time to time, rushed in with wild moans of desolation, that rose and fell in almost supernatural tones, and swept the dead ashes and soot from the fireplace, and the rotten thatch from the floor, in little eddies that spun about until they had got into some nook or corner where the fiercer strength of the blast could not reach them. Stretched out in this wretched and abandoned hut, lay before the good priest and his companion, a group of misery, consisting of both the dying and the dead--to wit, a mother and her three children. Over in the corner, on the right hand side of the fire-place, the unhappy and perishing creature lay, divided, or rather torn asunder, as it were, by the rival claims of affection. Lying close to her cold and shivering breast was an infant of about six months old, striving feebly, from time to time, to draw from that natural source of affection the sustenance which had been dried up by chilling misery and want. Beside her, on the left, lay a boy--a pale, emaciated boy--about eight years old, silent and motionless, with the exception that, ever and anon, he turned round his heavy blue eyes as if to ask some comfort or aid, or even some notice from his unfortunate mother, who, as if conscious of these affectionate supplications, pressed his wan cheek tenderly with her fingers, to intimate to him, that as far as she could, she responded to, and acknowledged these last entreaties of the heart; whilst, again, she felt her affections called upon by the apparently dying struggles of the infant that was, in reality, fast perishing at the now-exhausted fountain of its life. Between these two claimants was the breaking heart of the woeful mother divided, but the alternations of her love seemed now almost wrought up to the last terrible agonies of mere animal instinct, when the sufferings are strong in proportion to that debility of reason which supervenes in such deaths as arise from famine, or under those feelings of indescribable torture which tore her affection, as it were, to pieces, and paralyzed her higher powers of moral suffering.

Beyond the infant again, and next the wall, lay a girl, it might be about eleven, stretched, as if in sleep, and apparently in a state of composure that struck one forcibly, when contrasted, from its utter stillness, with the yet living agonies by which she was surrounded. It was evident, from the decency with which the girl's thin scanty covering was arranged, and the emaciated arms placed by her side, that the poor parent had endeavored, as well as she could, to lay her out; and, oh, great G.o.d! what a task for a mother, and under what circ.u.mstances must it have been performed! There, however, did the corpse of this fair and unhappy child lie; her light and silken locks blown upon her still and death-like features by the ruffian blast, and the complacency which had evidently characterized her countenance when in life, now stamped by death, with the sharp and wan expression of misery and the grave. Thus surrounded lay the dying mother, and it was not until the priest had taken in, at more than one view, the whole terrors of this awful scene, that he had time to let his eyes rest upon her countenance and person.

When he did, however, the history, though a fearful one, was, in her case, as indeed in too many, legible at a glance, and may be comprised in one word--starvation.

Father Hanratty was a firm minded man, with a somewhat rough manner, but a heart natural and warm. After looking upon her face for a few moments, he clasped, his hands closely together, and turning up his eyes to Heaven, he exclaimed:

"Great G.o.d, guide and support me in this trying scene!"

And, indeed, it is not to be wondered at that he uttered such an exclamation. There lay in the woman's eyes--between her knit and painful eye-brows, over her shrunk upper forehead, upon her sharp cheek-bones, and along the ridge of her thin, wasted nose--there lay upon her skeleton arms, pointed elbows, and long-jointed fingers, a frightful expression, at once uniform and varied, that spoke of gaunt and yellow famine in all its most hideous horrors. Her eyeb.a.l.l.s protruded even to sharpness, and as she glared about her with a half conscious and half-instinctive look, there seemed a fierce demand in her eye that would have been painful, were it not that it was occasionally tamed down into something mournful and imploring, by a recollection of the helpless beings that were about her. Stripped, as she then was, of all that civilized society presents to a human being on the bed of death--without friends, aid of any kind, comfort, sympathy, or the consolations of religion--she might be truly said to have sunk to the mere condition of animal life--whose uncontrollable impulses had thus left their startling and savage impress upon her countenance, unless, as we have said, when the faint dawn of consciousness threw a softer and more human light into her wild features.

"In the name and in the spirit of G.o.d's mercy," asked the priest, "if you have the use of your tongue or voice, tell me what the matter is with you or your children? Is it sickness or starvation?"

The sound of a human voice appeared to arrest her attention, and rouse her a little. She paused, as it were, from her sufferings, and looked first at the priest, and then at his companion--but she spoke not. He then repeated the question, and after a little delay he saw that her lips moved.

"She is striving to speak," said he, "but cannot. I will stoop to her."

He repeated the question a third time, and, stooping, so as to bring his ear near her mouth, he could catch, expressed very feebly and indistinctly, the word--hunger. She then made an effort, and bent down her mouth to the infant which now lay still at her breast. She felt for its little heart, she felt its little lips--but they were now chill and motionless; its little hands ceased to gather any longer around her breast; it was cold--it was breathless--it was dead! Her countenance now underwent a singular and touching change--a kind of solemn joy--a sorrowful serenity was diffused over it. She seemed to remember their position, and was in the act, after having raised her eyes to heaven, of putting round her hand to feel for the boy who lay on the other side, when she was seized with a short and rather feeble spasm, and laying down her head in its original position between her children, she was at last freed from life and all the sufferings which its gloomy lot had inflicted upon her and those whom she loved.

The priest, seeing that she was dead, offered up a short but earnest prayer for the repose of her soul, after which he turned his attention to the boy.

"The question now is," he observed to his companion, "can we save this poor, but interesting child?"

"I hardly think it possible," she replied; "doesn't your reverence see that death's workin' at him--and an' aisey job he'll have of the poor thing now."

"Hunger and cold have here done awful work," said Father Hanratty, "as they have and will in many other conditions similar to this. I shall mount my horse, and if you lift the poor child up, I will wrap him as well as I can in my great coat,"--which, by the way, he stripped off him as he spoke. He then folded it round the boy, and putting him into Nelly's arms, was about to leave the cabin, when the child, looking round him for a moment, and then upon his mother, made a faint struggle to get back.

"What is it, asth.o.r.e?" asked the woman; "what is it you want?"

"Lave me wid my mother," he said; "let me go to her; my poor father's dead, an' left us--oh! let me stay with her."