His mother, on first sitting down, clasped her hands together, and in a silent ejaculation, with closed eyes, raised her heart to the Almighty, to supplicate aid and strength to enable her to part finally with that boy who was, and ever had been, dearer to her than her own heart.  Una trembled, and on meeting her brother so unexpectedly, blushed faintly, and, indeed, appeared to breathe with difficulty.  She held a bottle of smelling salts in her hand.

“John,” she said, “I will explain this visit.”

“My dear Una,” he replied, affectionately, “you need not—­it requires none—­and I beg you will not think of it one moment more.  I must now leave you together for about half an hour, as I have some business to do in town that will detain me about that time.”  He then left them.

“Connor,” said his mother, “sit down between this darlin’ girl an’ me, till I spake to you.”

He sat down and took a hand of each.

“A darlin’ girl she is, mother.  It’s now I see how very ill you have been, my own Una.”

“Yes,” she replied, “I was ill—­but when I heard that your life was spared, I got better.”

This she said with an artless but melancholy naivete, that was very trying to the fortitude of her lover.  As she spoke she looked fondly but mournfully into his face.

“Connor,” proceeded his mother, “I hope you are fully sensible of the mercy God has shown you, under this great trial?”

“I hope I am, indeed, my dear mother.  It is to God I surely owe it.”

“It is, an’ I trust that, go where you will and live where you may, the day will never come when you’ll forget the debt you owe the Almighty, for preventin’ you from bein’ cut down like a flower in the very bloom of your life.  I hope, avillish machree, that that day will never come.”

“God forbid it ever should, mother dear!”

“Thin you may learn from what has happened, avick agus asthofe, never, oh never, to despair of God’s mercy—­no matter into what thrial or difficulty you maybe brought.  You see, whin you naither hoped for it here, nor expected it, how it came for all that.”

“It did, blessed be God!”

“You’re goin’ now, ahagur, to a strange land, where you’ll meet—­ay, where my darlin’ boy will meet the worst of company; but remember, alanna avillish, that your mother, well as she loves you, an’ well, I own, as you deserve to be loved—­that mother that hung over the cradle of her only one—­that dressed him, an’ reared him, an’ felt many a proud heart out of him—­that mother would sooner at any time see him in his grave, his sowl bein’ free from stain, than to know that his heart was corrupted by the world, an’ the people you’ll meet in it.”

Something in the last sentence must have touched a chord in Una’s heart, for the tears, without showing any other’ external signs of emotion, streamed down her cheeks.

“My advice, then, to you—­an’ oh, avick machree, machree, it is my last, the last you will ever hear from my lips—­”