“My brave, my beautiful boy, what, oh, what has become of you? Oh, Tom, Tom,” she added—“maybe it's well for you that you don't know the breakin' hearts that's about you this night—or the bitter fate that's over him that loved you so well.”
As they turned him about, to take off his cravat, he suddenly raised his head, and looking about him, asked—
“Where's my father gone?—I see you all about me but him—where's my fath—”
Ere the words were pronounced, however, he was once more asleep, and free for a time from the wild and moody malady which oppressed him.
Such was the night, and such were the circumstances and feelings that ushered in the fearful day of Condy Dalton's trial.
CHAPTER XXIX. — A Picture of the Present—Sarah Breaks her Word.
The gray of a cold frosty morning had begun to dawn, and the angry red of the eastern sky gradually to change into that dim but darkening aspect which marks a coming tempest of snow, when the parish priest, the Rev. Father Hanratty, accompanied by Nelly M'Gowan, passed along the Ballynafail road, on their way to the Grange, for the purpose of having a communication with Charley Hanlon. It would, indeed, be impossible to describe a morning more strongly marked than the one in question, by that cold and shivering impression of utter misery which it is calculated to leave on any mind, especially when associated with the sufferings of our people. The breeze was keen and so cutting, that one felt as if that part of the person exposed to it had undergone the process of excoriation, and when a stronger blast than usual swept over the naked and desolate-looking fields, its influence actually benumbed the joints, and penetrated the whole system with a sensation that made one imagine the very marrow within the bones was frozen.
They had not proceeded far beyond the miserable shed where Sarah, in the rapid prostration of typhus, had been forced to take shelter, when, in passing a wretched cabin by the roadside, which, from its open door and ruinous windows, had all the appearance of being uninhabited, they heard the moans of some unhappy individual within, accompanied, as it were, with something like the low feeble wail of an infant.
“Ah,” said the worthy priest, “this, I fear, is another of those awful cases of desertion and death that are too common in this terrible and scourging visitation. We must not pass here without seeing what is the matther, and rendering such assistance as we can.”