“Tom,” said Mary, who began to fear that he might, in some wild paroxysm, have taken the life of the unfortunate miser, or of some one else; “if you murdhered any one, who was it?”

“Who was it?” he replied; “if you go up to Curraghbeg churchyard, you’ll find her there; the child’s wid her—­but I didn’t murdher the child, did I?”

On finding that he alluded only to the unfortunate Peggy Murtagh, they recovered from the shock into which his words had thrown them.  Tom, however, appeared exceedingly exhausted and feeble, as was evident from his inability to keep himself awake.  His head gradually sank upon his breast, and in a few minutes he fell into a slumber.  “I’ll put him to bed,” said Con; “help me to raise him.”

They lifted him up, and a melancholy sight it was to see that face, which had once been such a noble specimen of manly beauty, now shrunk away into an expression of gaunt and haggard wildness, that was painful to contemplate.  His sisters could not restrain their tears, on looking at the wreck that was before them; and his mother, with a voice of deep anguish, exclaimed—­

“My brave, my beautiful boy, what, oh, what has become of you?  Oh, Tom, Tom,” she added—­“maybe it’s well for you that you don’t know the breakin’ hearts that’s about you this night—­or the bitter fate that’s over him that loved you so well.”

As they turned him about, to take off his cravat, he suddenly raised his head, and looking about him, asked—­

“Where’s my father gone?—­I see you all about me but him—­where’s my fath—­”

Ere the words were pronounced, however, he was once more asleep, and free for a time from the wild and moody malady which oppressed him.

Such was the night, and such were the circumstances and feelings that ushered in the fearful day of Condy Dalton’s trial.

CHAPTER XXIX. —­ A Picture of the Present—­Sarah Breaks her Word.

The gray of a cold frosty morning had begun to dawn, and the angry red of the eastern sky gradually to change into that dim but darkening aspect which marks a coming tempest of snow, when the parish priest, the Rev. Father Hanratty, accompanied by Nelly M’Gowan, passed along the Ballynafail road, on their way to the Grange, for the purpose of having a communication with Charley Hanlon.  It would, indeed, be impossible to describe a morning more strongly marked than the one in question, by that cold and shivering impression of utter misery which it is calculated to leave on any mind, especially when associated with the sufferings of our people.  The breeze was keen and so cutting, that one felt as if that part of the person exposed to it had undergone the process of excoriation, and when a stronger blast than usual swept over the naked and desolate-looking fields, its influence actually benumbed the joints, and penetrated the whole system with a sensation that made one imagine the very marrow within the bones was frozen.