Honor had, as might be expected, recovered her serious composure, and spent a great portion of that day in offering up her prayers for the welfare of their son.  Indeed, much of her secret grief was checked by the alarm which she felt for her husband, whose conduct on that morning before he left home was marked by the wild excitement, which of late had been so peculiar to him.  Her surprise was consequently great when she observed, on his return, that he manifested a degree of calmness, if not serenity, utterly at variance with the outrage of his grief, or, we should rather say, the delirium of his despair, in the early part of the day.  She resolved, however, with her usual discretion, not to catechize him on the subject, lest his violence might revive, but to let his conduct explain itself, which she knew in a little time it would do.  Nor was she mistaken.  Scarcely had an hour elapsed, when, with something like exultation, he disclosed his plan, and asked her advice and opinion.  She heard it attentively, and for the first time since the commencement of their affliction, did the mother’s brow seem unburdened of the sorrow which sat upon it, and her eye to gleam with something like the light of expected happiness.  It was, however, on their retiring to rest that night that the affecting contest took place, which exhibited so strongly the contrast between their characters.  We mentioned, in a preceding part of this narrative, that ever since her son’s incarceration Honor had slept in his bed, and with her head on the very pillow which he had so often pressed.  As she was about to retire, Fardorougha, for a moment, appeared to forget his “plan,” and everything but the departure of his son.  He followed Honor to his bedroom, which he traversed, distractedly clasping his hands, kissing his boy’s clothes, and uttering sentiments of extreme misery and despair.

“There’s his bed,” he exclaimed; “there’s our boy’s bed—­but where is he himself? gone, gone forever!  There’s his clothes, our darlin’ son’s clothes; look at them.  Oh God! oh God! my heart will break outright.  Oh Connor, our boy, our boy, are you gone from us forever!  We must sit down to our breakfast in the mornin’, to our dinner, an’ to our supper at night, but our noble boy’s face we’ll never see—­his voice we’ll never hear.”

“Ah, Fardorougha, it’s thrue, it’s thrue!” replied the wife; “but remember he’s not in the grave, not in the clay of the churchyard; we haven’t seen him carried there, and laid down undher the heart—­breakin’ sound of the dead—­bell; we haven’t hard the cowld noise of the clay fallin’ in upon his coffin.  Oh no, no—­thanks, everlastin’ thanks to God, that has spared our boy’s life!  How often have you an’ I hard people say over the corpses of their children, ’Oh, if he was only alive I didn’t care in what part of the world it was, or if I was never to see his face again, only that he was livin’!’ An’ wouldn’t they, Fardorougha dear, give the world’s wealth to—­have their wishes?  Oh they would, they would—­an’ thanks forever be to the Almighty! our boy is livin’ and may yit be happy.  Fardorougha, let us not fly into the face of God, who has in His mercy spared our son.”