the occurrence of that woful calamity, had been the solace and the sunshine of his life.  The guilty seducer, however, was not doomed to escape the penalty of his crime.  Morrissey—­for that was the poor man’s name—­cared not for law; whether it was to recompense him for the degradation of his daughter, or to punish him for inflicting the vengeance of outraged nature upon the author of her ruin.  What compensation could satisfy his heart for the infamy entailed upon her and him? what paltry damages from a jury could efface her shame or restore her innocence?  Then, the man was poor, and to the poor, under such circumstances, there exists no law, and, consequently, no redress.  He strove to picture to himself his beautiful and innocent child; but he could not bear to bring the image of her early and guiltless life near him.  The injury was irreparable, and could only be atoned for by the blood of the destroyer.  He could have seen her borne shameless and unpolluted to the grave, with the deep, but natural, sorrow of a father; he could have lived with her in destitution and misery; he could have begged with her through a hard and harsh world; he could have seen her pine in want; moan upon the bed of sickness; nay, more, he could have seen her spirit pass, as it were, to the God who gave it, so long as that spirit was guiltless, and her humble name without spot or stain; yes, he could have witnessed and borne all this, and the blessed memory of her virtues would have consoled him in his bereavement and his sorrow.  But to reflect that she was trampled down into guilt and infamy by the foot of the licentious libertine, was an event that cried for blood; and blood he had, for he murdered the seducer, and that with an insatiable rapacity of revenge that was terrible.  He literally battered the head of his victim out of all shape, and left him a dead and worthless mass of inanimate matter.  The crime, though desperate, was openly committed, and there were sufficient witnesses at his trial to make it a short one.  On that morning, neither arrest, nor friar, nor chaplain, nor jailer, nor sheriff could wring from him one single expression of regret or repentance for what he had done.  The only reply he made them was this—­“Don’t trouble me; I knew what my fate was to be, and will die with satisfaction.”

After cutting him down, his body, as we have said, was delivered to his friends, who, having wrapped it in a quilt, conveyed it on a common car to his own house, where he received the usual ablutions and offices of death, and was composed upon his own bed into that attitude of the grave which will never change.