“Why? why won’t there?” he screamed—­“why won’t there, I say?  Havn’t you enough for them until I die?  Would you see your child breakin’ her heart?  Bodagh, you have no nather in you—­no bowels for your colleen dahs.  But I’ll spake for her—­I’ll argue wid you till this time to-morrow, or I’ll make you show feelin’ to her—­an’ if you don’t—­if you don’t—­”

“Wid the help o’ God, the man’s as mad as a March hare,” observed Mrs. O’Brien, “and there’s no use in losin’ breath wid him.”

“If it’s not insanity,” said John, “I know not what it is.”

“Young man,” proceeded Fardorougha, who evidently paid no attention to what the mother and son said, being merely struck by the voice of the latter, “young man, you’re kind, you have sinse and feelin’—­spake to your father—­don’t let him destroy his child—­don’t ax him to starve me, that never did him harm.  He loves you—­he loves you, for he can’t but love you—­sure, I know how I love my own darlin’ boy.  Oh, spake to him—­here I go down on my knees to you, to beg, as you hope to see God in heaven, that’t you’ll make him not break his daughter’s heart!  She’s your own sister—­there’s but the two of yees, an’ oh, don’t desart her in this throuble—­this heavy, heavy throuble!”

“I won’t interfere farther in it,” replied the young man, who, however, felt disturbed and anxious in the extreme.

“Mrs. O’Brien,” said he, turning imploringly, and with a wild, haggard look to the Bodngh’s wifs, “I’m turnin’ to you—­you’re her mother—­Oh think, think”—­

“I’ll think no more about it,” she replied.  “You’re mad, an’ thank God, we know it.  Of coorse it’ll run in the family, for which reasing my daughter ’ill never be joined to the son of a madman.”

He then turned as a last resource to O’Brien himself.  “Bodagh, Bodagh, I say,” here his voice rose to a frightful pitch, “I enthrate, I order, I command you to listen to me!  Marry them—­don’t kill your daughter, an’ don’t, don’t, dare to kill my son.  If you do I’ll curse you till the marks of your feet will scorch the ground you tread on.  Oh,” he exclaimed, his voice now sinking, and his reason awaking apparently from exhaustion, “what is come over me? what am I sayin’?—­but it’s all for my son, my son.”  He then rose, sat down, and for more than tweny minutes wept like an infant, and sobbed and sighed as if his heart would break.

A feeling very difficult to be described hushed his amazed auditory into silence; they felt something like pity towards the unfortunate old man, as well as respect for that affection which struggled with such moral heroism against the frightful vice that attempted to subdue this last surviving virtue in the breast of the miser.