shame and sorrow, witnessed in his prison cell.  A little before they arrived within sight of his house, his companions perceived that he had fallen asleep; but to a stranger, ignorant of the occurrences of the day, the car presented the appearance of a party returning from a wedding or from some other occasion equally festive and social.  Most of them were the worse for liquor, and one of them in particular had reached a condition which may be too often witnessed in this country.  I mean that in which the language becomes thick; the eye knowing but vacant; the face impudent but relaxed; the limbs tottering, and the voice inveterately disposed to melody.  The general conversation, therefore, of those who accompanied the old man was, as is usual with persons so circumstanced, high and windy; but as far as could be supposed by those who heard them cheerful and amiable.  Over the loudness of their dialogue might be heard, from time to time, at a great distance, the song of the drunken melodist just alluded to, rising into those desperate tones which borrow their drowsy energy from intoxication alone.  Such was the character of those who accompanied the miser home; and such were the indications conveyed to the ears or eyes of I those who either saw or heard them, as they approached Fardorougha’s dwelling, where the unsleeping heart of the mother watched—­and oh! with what a dry and burning anguish of expectation, let our readers judge—­for the life or death of the only child that God had ever vouchsafed to that loving heart on which to rest all its tenderest hopes and affections.

The manner in which Honor O’Donovan spent that day was marked by an earnest and simple piety that would have excited high praise and admiration if witnessed in a person of rank or consideration in society.  She was, as the reader may remember, too ill to be able to attend the trial of her son, or as she herself expressed it in Irish, to draw strength to her heart by one look at his manly face; by one glance from her boy’s eye.  She resolved, however, to draw consolation from a higher source, and to rest the burden of her sorrows, as far as in her lay, upon that being in whose hands are the issues of life and death.  From the moment her husband left the threshold of his childless house on that morning until his return, her prayers to God and the saints were truly incessant.  And who is so well acquainted with the inscrutable ways of the Almighty, as to dare assert that the humble supplications of this pious and sorrowful mother were not heard and answered?  Whether it was owing to the fervor of an imagination wrought upon by the influence of a creed which nourishes religious enthusiasm in an extraordinary degree, or whether it was by direct support from that God who compassionated her affliction, let others determine; but certain it is, that in the course of that day she gained a calmness and resignation, joined to an increasing serenity of heart, such as she had not hoped to feel under a calamity so black and terrible.