The priest shook his head; “Ah, she is—­she is! and I fear she will scarcely recover her reason before the judgment of heaven opens upon her!”

“Oh thin may the Mother of Glory forbid that!” exclaimed her daughter—­“anything at all but that!  Can you do nothin’ for her, uncle?”

“I’m doing all I can for her, Mary,” replied the priest; “I’m watching a calm moment to get her confession, if possible.”

The sick woman had fallen into a momentary silence, during which, she caught the bed-clothes like a child, and felt them, and seemed to handle their texture, but with such an air of vacancy as clearly manifested that no corresponding association existed in her mind.

The action was immediately understood by all present.  Her daughter again burst into tears; and Peter, now almost choked with grief, pressing the sick woman to his heart, kissed her burning lips.

“Father, jewel,” said the daughter, “there it is, and I feard it—­the sign, uncle—­the sign!—­don’t you see her gropin’ the clothes?  Oh, mother, darlin’, darlin’!—­are we going to lose you for ever?”

“Oh!  Ellish, Ellish—­won’t you spake one word to me afore you go?  Won’t you take one farewell of me—­of me, aroon asthore, before you depart from us for ever!” exclaimed her husband.

“Feeling the bed-clothes,” said the priest, “is not always a, sign of death; I have known many to recover after it.

“Husht,” said Peter—­“husht!—­Mary—­Mary!  Come hear—­hould your tongues!  Oh, it’s past—­it’s past!—­it’s all past, an’ gone—­all hope’s over!  Heavenly fither!”

The daughter, after listening for a moment, in a paroxysm of wild grief, clasped her mother’s recumbent body in her arms, and kissed hen lips with a vehemence almost frantic.  “You won’t go, my darlin’—­is it from your own Mary that you’d go?  Mary, that you loved best of all your childhre!—­Mary that you always said, an’ every body said, was your own image!  Oh, you won’t go without one word, to say you know her!”

“For Heaven’s sake,” said Father Mulcahy, “what do you mean?—­are you mad?”

“Oh! uncle dear! don’t you hear?—­don’t you hear?—­listen an’ sure you will—­all hope’s gone now—­gone—­gone!  The dead rattle!—­listen!—­the dead rattle’s in her throat!”—­

The priest bent his ear a moment, and distinctly heard the gurgling noise produced by the phlegm, which is termed with wild poetical accuracy, by the peasantry—­the “dead rattle,” or “death rattle,” because it is the immediate and certain forerunner of death.

“True,” said the priest—­“too true; the last shadow of hope is gone.  We must now make as much of the time as possible.  Leave the room for a few minutes till I anoint her, I will then call you in.”

They accordingly withdrew, but in about fifteen or twenty minutes he once more summoned them to the bed of the dying woman.

“Come in,” said he, “I have anointed her—­come in, and kneel down till we offer up a Rosary to the Blessed Virgin, under the hope that she may intercede with God for her, and cause her to pass out of life happily.  She was calling for you, Peter, in your absence; you had better stay with her.”