and fatal maladies.  She complained, however, of slight illness, and went to bed without taking anything calculated to check what she felt.  Her sufferings during the night were dreadful:  high fever had set in with a fury that threatened to sweep the powers of life like a wreck before it.  The next morning the family, on looking into her state more closely, found it necessary to send instantly for a physician.

On arriving, he pronounced her to be in a dangerous pleurisy, from which, in consequence of her plethoric habit, he expressed but faint hopes of her recovery.  This was melancholy intelligence to her sons and daughters:  but to Peter, whose faithful wife she had been for thirty years, it was a dreadful communication indeed.

“No hopes, Docthor!” he exclaimed, with a bewildered air:  “did you say no hopes, sir?—­Oh! no, you didn’t—­you couldn’t say that there’s no hopes!”

“The hopes of her recovery, Mr. Connell, are but slender,—­if any.”

“Docthor, I’m a rich man, thanks be to God an’ to——­” he hesitated, cast back a rapid and troubled look towards the bed whereon she lay, then proceeded—­“no matther, I’m a rich man:  but if you can spare her to me, I’ll divide what I’m worth in the world wid you:  I will, sir; an’ if that won’t do, I’ll give up my last shillin’ to save her, an’ thin I’d beg my bit an’ sup through the counthry, only let me have her wid me.”

“As far as my skill goes,” said the doctor, “I shall, of course, exert it to save her; but there are some diseases which we are almost always able to pronounce fatal at first sight.  This, I fear, is one of them.  Still I do not bid you despair—­there is, I trust, a shadow of hope.”

“The blessin’ o’ the Almighty be upon you, sir, for that word!  The best blessing of the heavenly Father rest upon you an’ yours for it!”

“I shall return in the course of the day,” continued the physician; “and as you feel the dread of her loss so powerfully, I will bring two other medical gentlemen of skill with me.”

“Heavens reward you for that, sir!  The heavens above reward you an’ them for it!  Payment!—­och, that signifies but little:  but you and them ’ll be well paid.  Oh, Docthor, achora, thry an’ save her!—­Och, thry an’ save her!”

“Keep her easy,” replied the doctor, “and let my directions be faithfully followed.  In the meantime, Mr. Connell, be a man and display proper fortitude under a dispensation which is common to all men in your state.”

To talk of resignation to Peter was an abuse of words.  The poor man had no more perception of the consolation arising from a knowledge of religion than a child.  His heart sank within him, for the prop on which his affections had rested was suddenly struck down from under them.