There was a deep pause, when the bereaved parent again broke forth--
"Mike, Mike--why did your uncle rare you like a jintleman to bring you to this. Och hone! och hone!--oh, never did I think to see your head lie so low.--My bhoy! my bhoy!--why did you die?--Why did You lave your frinds, and your money, and your good clothes, and your poor owld mother?"
Convulsive sobs again choked her utterance. She flung herself upon the neck of the corpse, and bathed the face and hands of him, who had once been her own, with burning tears.
I now came forward, and offered a few words of consolation. Vain--all in vain. The ear of sorrow is deaf to all save its own agonised moans. Grief is as natural to the human mind as joy, and in their own appointed hour both will have their way.
The grief of this unhappy Irish mother, like the down-pouring of a thunder shower, could not be restrained. But her tears soon flowed in less violent gushes--exhaustion rendered her more calm. She sat upon the bed, and looked cautiously round--"Hist!--did not you hear a voice? It was him who spake--yes--it was his own swate voice. I knew he was not dead. See, he moves!" This was the fond vain delusion of maternal love. She took his cold hand, and clasped it to her heart.
"Och hone!--he is gone, and left me for ever and ever. Oh, that my cruel brother was here--that I might point to my murthered child, and curse him to his face!"
"Is Mr. C--- your brother?" said I, taking this opportunity to divert her grief into another channel.
"Yes--yes--he is my brother, bad cess to him! and uncle to the bhoy. Listen to me, and I will tell you some of my mind. It will ease my sorrow, for my poor heart is breaking entirely, and he is there," pointing to the corpse, "and he knows that what I am afther telling you is thrue.
"I came of poor but dacent parints. There was but the two of us, Pat C--- and I. My father rinted a good farm, and he sint Pat to school, and gave him the eddication of a jintleman. Our landlord took a liking for the bhoy, and gave him the manes to emigrate to Canady. This vexed my father intirely, for he had no one barring myself to help him on the farm. Well, by and by, I joined myself to one whom my father did not approve--a bhoy he had hired to work wid him in the fields--an' he wrote to my brother (for my mother had been dead ever since I was a wee thing) to ax him in what manner he had best punish my disobedience; and he jist advises him to turn us off the place. I suffered, wid my husband, the extremes of poverty: we had seven childer, but they all died of the faver, and hard times, save Mike and the two weeny ones. In the midst of our disthress, it plased the Lord to remove my father, widout softenin' his heart towards me. But he left my Mike three hunder pounds; to be his whin he came to a right age; and he appointed my brother Pat guardian to the bhoy.
"My brother returned to Ireland when he got the news of my father's death, in order to get his share of the property, for my father left him the same as he did my son. He took away my bhoy wid him to Canady, in order to make a landed jintleman of him. Och hone! I thought my heart would broken thin, whin he took away my swate bhoy; but I was to live to see a darker day yet."