His mother and I adjusted his pillows, and in a few seconds he was slumbering as peacefully as a little child.
The feelings of the poor woman seemed softened towards me, and for the first time since I entered the room she shed tears. I asked the age of her son? She told me that he was two-and-twenty. She wrung my hand hard as I left the room, and thanked me for my kindness to her poor bhoy.
It was late that night when my husband returned from the country, and we sat for several hours talking over our affairs, and discussing the soil and situation of the various farms he had visited during the day. It was past twelve when we retired to rest, but my sleep was soon disturbed by some one coughing violently, and my thoughts instantly reverted to Michael Macbride, as the hoarse sepulchral sounds echoed through the large empty room beyond which he slept. The coughing continued for some minutes, and I was so much overcome by fatigue and the excitement of the evening that I fell asleep, and did not awake until six o'clock the following morning.
Anxious to hear how the poor invalid had passed the night, I dressed myself and hurried to his chamber.
On entering the ball-room I found the doors and windows all open, as well as the one that led to the sick man's chamber. My foot was arrested on the threshold--for death was there. Yes! that fit of coughing had terminated his life--Michael had expired without a struggle in the arms of his mother.
The gay broad beams of the sun were not admitted into that silent room. The window was open, but the green blinds were carefully closed, admitting a free circulation of air, and just light enough to render the objects within distinctly visible. The body was laid out upon the bed enveloped in a white sheet; the head and hands alone were bare. All traces of sorrow and disease had passed away from the majestic face, that, interesting in life, now looked beautiful and holy in death--and happy, for the seal of heaven seemed visibly impressed upon the pure pale brow. He was at peace, and though tears of human sympathy for a moment dimmed my sight, I could not regret that it was so.
While I still stood in the door-way, Mrs. Macbride, whom I had not observed until then, rose from her knees beside the bed. She seemed hardly in her right mind, and began talking and muttering to herself.
"Och hone! he is dead--my fine bhoy is dead--widout a praste to pray wid him, or bless him in the last hour--wid none of his frinds and relations to lamint iver him, or wake him, but his poor heartbroken mother--Och hone! och hone! that I should ever live to see this day. Get up, my fine bhoy--get up wid ye! Why do you lie there?--owlder folk nor you are abroad in the sunshine.--Get up, and show them how supple you are!"
Then laying her cheek down to the cold cheek of the dead, she exclaimed, amid broken sobs and groans--
"Oh, spake to me--spake to me, Mike--my own Mike--'tis the mother that axes ye."