“Savior of the world!” she exclaimed, “I and my childre are lost; now, indeed, are we hopeless—oh, never till now, never till now!” She wept bitterly.
“What are you cryin' for now?” said he; “what are you cryin' for, I say?” he repeated, stamping his feet madly as he spoke; “stop at wanst, I'll have no cry—cryin' what—at—somever.”
She instantly dried her eyes.
“Wha—what kep that blasted whelp, Mul—Mulrennan, out till now, I say?”
“I don't know indeed, Art.”
“You—you don't! you kno—know noth-in'; An' now I'll have a smash, by the—the holy man, I'll—I'll smash every thing in—in the house.”
He then took up a chair, which, by one blow against the floor, he crashed to pieces.
“Now,” said he, “tha—that's number one; whe—where's that whelp, Mul—Mulrennan, till I pay—pay him for stayin' out so—so late. Send him here, send the ska-min' sco—scoundrel here, I bid you.”. Margaret, naturally dreading violence, went to get little Atty to pacify him, as well as to intercede for the apprentice; she immediately returned, and told him the latter was coming. Art, in the mean time, stood a little beyond the fireplace, with a small beach chair in his hand which he had made for Atty, when the boy was only a couple of years old, but which had been given to the other children in succession. He had been first about to break it also, but on looking at it, he paused and said—
“Not this—this is Atty's, and I won't break it.”
At that moment Mulrennan entered the room, with Atty behind him, but he had scarcely done so, when Art with all his strength flung the hard beach chair at his head; the lad, naturally anxious to avoid it, started to one side out of its way, and Atty, while in the act of stretching out his arms to run to his father, received the blow which had been designed for the other. It struck him a little above the temple, and he fell, but was not cut. The mother, on witnessing the act, raised her arms and shrieked, but on hearing the heavy, but dull and terrible sound of the blow against the poor boy's head, the shriek was suspended when half uttered, and she stood, her arms still stretched out, and bent a little upwards, as if she would have supplicated heaven to avert it;—her mouth was half open—her eyes apparently enlarged, and starting as if it were out of their sockets; there she stood—for a short time so full of horror as to be incapable properly of comprehending what had taken place. At length this momentary paralysis of thought passed away, and with all the tender terrors of affection awakened in her heart, she rushed to the insensible boy. Oh, heavy and miserable night! What pen can portray, what language describe, or what imagination conceive, the anguish, the agony of that loving mother, when, on raising her sweet, and beautiful, and most affectionate boy from the ground whereon he lay, that fair head, with its flaxen locks like silk, fell utterly helpless now to this side, and now to that!