hope, was indescribable.

The almost fierceness of his haste, which he now saw had been utterly useless, had flushed his cheek and lighted up his countenance, and he stood with his hands clasped, and raised as if in prayer, with firmly shut lips, and his eyes, in which you could view the transition from eager hope to utter despair, fixed upon her face, like a being that was changing into stone.

At the other side of the bed was his father, who had resumed his former attitude, and beside him stood his eldest son, whose utterly wretched countenance, alternating from one parent to the other, showed that he suffered that lowest state of misery, which anticipates still further and greater woe as a consequence from that which overwhelms at present.

My father left the room. I looked upon the group one instant. I felt that I could have resigned the possession of worlds to be permitted the luxury of raising the load of grief from those afflicted hearts; but it could not be, and I retired to relieve my surcharged feelings in solitude.

Ere morning dawned, nature had received another instalment of her debt.

My father and I attended the funeral, and were surprised at the apparent fortitude of Mr Scanlan. We wished to bring him with us to the Hall after the sad ceremony, but he would not come. We then accompanied him to his own house. As we entered, I glanced at him: he was ghastly pale. He looked slowly round, fixed his eyes one moment on the countenance of his younger son, another on the elder, and sank upon a chair.

Since the period of which I now write, I have often witnessed the closing scene of mortality, and various are the opinions I have heard, as to which point of time, between the moment of death and the first appearance abroad of the survivors in their mourning apparel, is the saddest, the most afflicting, or the most trying—whether the moment of dissolution, the first appearance of the undertaker, the laying out in the apparel of death, the bringing of the coffin, the last frantic kiss and look, the screwing down, the carrying out, the dull thud of the clay upon the coffin lid. Oh! think not that I am coolly writing this, that I am probing with the surgeon’s calmness the deep, the sensitive (with many bleeding) wounds that death has given.

I am but a young man, yet my brain reels, and my eyes burn, and my heart swells to my throat, as memory holds the mirror to my view, and I see depicted in it the scenes, and feel again the feelings, that have been more than once or twice excited at the stages which I have just recounted in order. But of all the stabs thus given to the heart, of all those moments of anguish, the keenest is that felt when the survivor re-enters the house, where the form and the voice and the cheerful laugh of the departed one had made his home a little paradise, and feels that that home is now for ever desolate! Is there a desert so deserted?

“James,” said Mr Scanlan, after he had looked steadfastly at him for some time, “you were the first she brought me; and when you came into the world, I was almost beside myself with joy; and when I was allowed to enter the room where she was sitting up in bed, with you in her arms, I almost smothered you both with kisses; and I cried, and laughed, and danced about, as if I was mad. Sure I need’nt be ashamed to own it, now that she’s gone. And when I told her that they said you were the image of me, she answered me, ‘So he ought, for sure you were always before my eyes;’ and when I said that I could’nt be ‘always,’ she said that ’twas the eyes of her heart she meant. So, Pat, avourneen (addressing the younger, who had been all this time crying bitterly), though you’re the living image of her that’s dead, and though father could’nt love son more than I do you, you’re not surprised that I gave James the preference sometimes, though I never loved you the less.”

“Father dear,” said Pat, “I was never jealous of Jem, nor he of me; we both knew that our faces and tempers and dispositions took after you both—Jem’s after you, and mine after my mother. Oh! mother dear! mother dear!” He burst into a paroxysm of grief, ran wildly into his mother’s room, and threw himself across the bed, roaring in a frenzied manner, “James, honey, isn’t the house terrible lonesome?” and a violent shudder ran through poor Scanlan’s frame. “Isn’t there a great echo in it? It’s very chilly; I believe I had better go and lie down on the bed.”

He stood up, and, continuing the forward movement of his body after he had risen to a standing position, would have fallen, extended on his face, but that I caught him just as his watchful son had sprung to save him.

Poor Pat now mastered his feelings in some degree, and turned his entire attention to assist his surviving parent. He was laid on the bed, and shortly recovered himself, and addressed my father. “I know your honour feels for my trouble, and will excuse the boys and me for not showing the attention we ought to show for your goodness.”

“Say nothing about attention to me, James; I am sorry for your trouble, and, God knows, I wish I knew how to relieve and comfort you.”

“I’m sure you do, sir.—Boys, I won’t be long with you. The pulse of my heart is gone. Look up to his honour, and never forget, that, though there’s no clanship in these times, and though many a shoneen holds a higher head than his in the country now, you still owe him your love and fealty, for he’s one of the real old stock; and your forefathers followed his forefathers in war and peace, when, if you stood on the highest crag of the Bogaragh, you could’nt see to the bounds of their wide domains. And while his honour is present, and I have my senses clear about me, I’ll lay my commands on you both, boys; and if ever you break through them (though I am sure you never will), let his honour, and the young master here bear witness against you.”

He then delivered what was simply a verbal will, directing how they should dispose of and divide his property and effects, and concluded as follows:—

“When your mother and I were married, we were both of us full of old sayings and proverbs, and we thought, like most others, that their meaning should be taken in the plainest and fullest signification; and as most of them are universally allowed to contain a great deal of wisdom and good sense, we thought that whoever regulated his or her conduct strictly according to their rule, would of necessity be the wisest person in the world.

One of these sayings, that I had been taught to believe was one of the wisest ever pronounced by man, was, ‘there’s luck in leisure,’ and this was my most favourite maxim; but when I got married, I found that your mother—that your mother had a favourite one also—‘delays are dangerous.’

Well, the first year, when the corn was coming up, a corn factor came to this part of the country, and offered a middling fair price for an average crop. Mary bade me take it, as I’d have that much money certain, and if the season should turn out bad, the factor would be the sufferer, and I’d be safe.

‘Take it at once,’ said she; ‘you know “delays are dangerous.”’

I began to consider that if the season should be only middling, inclining to bad, I might get as much money still, as the factor offered; and if it should turn out fine, the crop would produce a great deal more, whilst it would be only in the event of a bad season that I’d be apt to lose. ‘There’s luck in leisure,’ said I; ‘I’ll wait.’

Well, the season was dreadful: most of the crops were totally destroyed, and we suffered more than almost any of the neighbours. I was afraid to look Mary in the face, when I had made out the extent of my loss, but she only said, ‘Come, Jemmy, it can’t be helped; the worse luck now, the better another time. You’ll attend more to wise old sayings for the future; they were made out