had attributed to his excess of affection.  With words of comfort she soothed him; her arm now returned the support she had received from his; she led him home, languid and half-delirious, whilst she herself felt stunned as well by the violence as by the unaccountable nature of his illness.  On reaching home they found that the noise of social enjoyment had risen to the outrage of convivial extravagance; but the moment he staggered in, supported only by the faithful arm of his wife, a solemn and apprehensive spirit suddenly hushed their intemperance, and awed them into a conviction that such an illness upon the marriage day must be as serious as it was uncommon.  Felix was put to bed in pain and danger; but Alley smoothed his pillow, bound his head, and sat patient, and devoted, and wife-like, by his side.  During all that woeful night of sorrow she watched the feverish start, the wild glare of the half-opened eye, the momentary conscious glance, and the miserable gathering together of the convulsed limbs, hoping that each pang would diminish in agony and that the morning might bring ease and comfort.

     “Poor girl, put on thy stifling widow’s weeds,
     And ’scape at once from Hope’s accursed bands!”

We feel utterly incapable of describing, during the progress of this heavy night, the scorching and fiery anguish of his brother Hugh, or the distracted and wailing sorrow of poor Maura.  The unexpected and delightful revulsion of feeling produced upon both, especially on the former, by his temporary recovery, now utterly incapacitated them from bearing his relapse with anything like fortitude.  The frantic remorse of the guilty man, and the stupid but pungent grief of his sister, appeared but as the symptoms of weak minds and strong passions, when contrasted with the deep but patient affliction of his innocent and uncomplaining wife.  She wasted no words in sorrow; for during this hopeless night, self, happiness, affection, hope, were all forgotten in the absorbing efforts at his recovery.  Never, indeed, did the miseries and calamities of life draw from the fruitful source of a wife’s attached and faithful heart, a nobler specimen of that pure and disinterested devotion which characterizes woman, than was exhibited by the stricken-hearted Alley Bawn.

There was something in this peculiar case, as, indeed there are in all family occurrences of a similar nature, which induced them to try upon the suffering boy the full extent of their humble skill, rather than call in a strange physician to witness the disastrous, perhaps fatal, effects of domestic violence.  Had the cause of Felix’s illness been unknown to Hugh or Maura, they would have procured medical advice in the early part of the night.  Let us, however, not press too severely on the repentant brother.  Shame, and remorse, and penitence, ought to plead strongly for “the hope deferred that made his heart sick.”  Hugh’s passions arose to violence, but not to murder, a distraction which both law and morality too frequently forget to make.