“Oh, my God!” exclaimed Bryan, “is it so?  My mother—­and such a mother!  Kathleen, my heart this minute tells me it is hopeless.  I must leave you—­I must go.”

“We will go up with you,” said Kathleen.  “Hanna, we will go up; for, if she is in danger, I would like to get the blessing of such a woman before she dies; but let us trust in G-od she won’t die, and that it’s only a sudden attack that will pass away.”

“Do so, Kathleen,” said her mother; “and you can fetch us word how she is.  May the Lord bring her safe over it at any rate; for surely the family will break their hearts afther her, an’ no wondher, for where was her fellow?”

Bryan was not capable of hearing these praises, which he knew to be so well and so justly her due, with firmness; nor could he prevent his tears, unless by a great effort, from bearing testimony to the depth of his grief.  Kathleen’s gaze, however, was turned on him with an expression which gave him strength; for indeed there was something noble and. sustaining in the earnest and consoling sympathy which he read in her dark and glorious eye.  On their way to Carriglass there was little spoken.  Bryan’s eye every now and then sought that of Kathleen; and he learned, for the first time, that it is only in affliction that the exquisite tenderness of true and disinterested love can be properly appreciated and felt.  Indeed he wondered at his own sensations; for in proportion as his heart became alarmed at the contemplation of his mother’s loss, he felt, whenever he looked upon Kathleen, that it also burned towards her with greater tenderness and power—­so true is it that sorrow and suffering purify and exalt all our nobler and better emotions.

Bryan and his companions, ere they had time to reach the house, were seen and. recognized by the family, who, from the restlessness and uncertainty which illness usually occasions, kept moving about and running out from time to time to watch the arrival of the priest or doctor.  On this occasion Dora came to meet them; but, alas! with what a different spirit from that which animated her on the return of her father from the metropolis.  Her gait was now slow, her step languid; and they could perceive that, as she approached them, she wiped away the tears.  Indeed her whole appearance was indicative of the state of her mother; when they met her, her bitter sobbing and the sorrowful earnestness of manner with which she embraced the sisters, wore melancholy assurances that the condition of the sufferer was not improved.  Hanna joined her tears with hers; but Kathleen, whose sweet voice in attempting to give the affectionate girl consolation, was more than once almost shaken out of its firmness, did all she could to soothe and relieve her.

On entering the house, they found a number of the neighboring females assembled, and indeed the whole family, in consequence of the alarm and agitation visible them, might not inaptly be compared to a brood of domestic fowl when a hawk, bent on destruction, is seen hovering over their heads.