“Art Maguire,” she said, “fly, fly,”—and she gave him one look; but, great God! what an object presented itself to her at that moment. A man stood before her absolutely hideous with horror; his face but a minute ago so healthy and high-colored, now ghastly as that of a corpse, his hands held up and clenched, his eyes frightful, his lips drawn back, and his teeth locked with strong and convulsive agony. He uttered not a word, but stood with his wild and gleaming eyes riveted, as if by the force of some awful spell, upon his insensible son, his only one, if he was then even that. All at once he fell down without sense or motion, as if a bullet had gone through his heart or his brain, and there lay as insensible as the boy he had loved so well.
All this passed so rapidly that the apprentice, who seemed also to have been paralyzed, had not presence of mind to do any thing but look from one person to another with terror and alarm.
“Go,” said Margaret, at length, “wake up the girls, and then fly—oh, fly—for the doctor.”
The two servant maids, however, had heard enough in her own wild shriek to bring them to this woful scene. They entered as she spoke, and, aided by the apprentice, succeeded with some difficulty in laying their master on his bed, which was in a back room off the parlor.
“In God's name, what is all this?” asked one of them, on looking at the insensible bodies of the father and son.
“Help me,” Margaret replied, not heeding the question, “help me to lay the treasure of my heart—my breakin' heart—upon his own little bed within, he will not long use it—tendherly, Peggy, oh, Peggy dear, tendherly to the broken flower—broken—broken—broken, never to rise his fair head again; oh, he is dead,” she said, in a calm low voice, “my heart tells me that he is dead—see how his limbs hang, how lifeless they hang. My treasure—our treasure—our sweet, lovin', and only little man—our only son sure—our only son is dead—and where, oh, where, is the mother's pride out of him now—where is my pride out of him now?”
They laid him gently and tenderly—for even the servants loved him as if he had been a relation—upon the white counterpane of his own little crib, where he had slept many a sweet and innocent sleep, and played many a lightsome and innocent play with his little sisters. His mother felt for his pulse, but she could feel no pulse, she kissed his passive lips, and then—oh, woful alternative of affliction!—she turned to his equally insensible father.
“Oh, ma'am,” said one of the girls, who had gone over to look at Art; “oh, for God's sake, ma'am, come here—here is blood comin' out of the masther's mouth.”
She was at the bedside in an instant, and there, to deepen her sufferings almost beyond the power of human fortitude, she saw the blood oozing slowly out of his mouth. Both the servants were now weeping and sobbing as if their hearts would break.
“Oh, mistress dear,” one of them exclaimed, seizing her affectionately by both hands, and looking almost distractedly into her face, “oh, mistress dear, what did you ever do to desarve this?”