“‘No mother,’ he says ’all we want now is to have you wid us.  Our hearts long for you, and why do you stay away from us?—­Oh! come mother dear, for we’re waitin’!’

“Torley, my manly son, I’ll come, for I’m jist ready.

“Hugh, husband of my heart, you’re not now lyin’ sick upon the damp cowld straw, as you war in the cabin on the mountains—­your head has no pain now, avick machree—­nor is your heart low and sorrowful wid your own illness and our want.—­The voices of the Dashers, or Blood-hounds, aren’t now in your ears, nor need you be afraid that they will disturb your bed of death—­an’ distract your poor sowl wid their blasphemin’, when you ought to think of God’s mercy.—­Oh! no, avillish, sure you feel none of that now, Hugh dear?

“‘Oh, no,’ he says, ’nothing of that do we feel now—­nothing of that do we fear.  But, come, Mary, oh, come, come to us—­and we think the time long till we see you again.’”

These affecting dialogues, or rather “dreams of a broken heart,” were literally nothing else than the mere echoes of her own afliction; for it was obvious that the love she felt for her husband and children, unconscious as she then was of it, gave form to the sentiments which her excited imagination had clothed in language that was so highly figurative.  For some time she was silent, or muttered to herself such fragments of unconnected language as rose to her fancy—­and ultimately laid down her head upon the little grassy mound which constituted their graves.  Here she had not lain long, when, overcome by the fatigue of the journey, she closed her eyes, and despite the chilliness of a biting night, sank into an unbroken slumber.

Sleep on, poor sufferer—­and let those whose crimes have placed thy distracted head upon that cold and unnatural pillow, reflect that they have a judge to meet, who will, in another life, not overlook the deeds done in this.  Who is there who would, even in this thy most pitiable destitution, exchange thy innocent, but suffering spirit, for M’Clutchy’s heart, or the dark crimes which it festers.

At length she awoke, but whether it was that the keen and piercing air had cooled the pulsation of her beating brain, or that the restoration to reason, which is called, when applied to the insane—­a lightening before death—­had taken place, it is impossible to say with anything like certainty.  At all events, on awakening, the first sensations she experienced were those of surprise and wonder, and immediately did she feel her mind filled with a train of shocking and fearful reminiscences.  Her physical sufferings were also great.  She felt benumbed and chilled; her heart was cold, and a shivering sickness ran through her whole frame, with a deadly presage of approaching dissolution.  She looked up to the sky, then round her at the graves, and in a moment recognized the burying-place of her husband and children.  All the circumstances then connected with the Extermination scene at Drum Dim, and that of the treble death in the mountains, rushed upon her recollection with a force at once vivid and powerful.