“Will you hear me out, then?” continued the nurse.

“No,” replied Sarah, attempting to get up—­“I want to hear no more; now I wish to live—­now I am sure of one, an’ that one my mother—­my own mother—­to love me—­to guide me—­to taich me all that I ought to know; but, above all, to love me.  An’ my father—­my poor unhappy father—­an’ he is unhappy—­he loves me, too.  Oh, Biddy, I can forgive you now for what you said—­I will be happy still—­an’ my mother will be happy—­an’ my father,—­my poor father—­will be happy yet; he’ll reform—­repent maybe; an’ he’ll wanst more get back his early heart—­his heart when it was good, an’ not hardened, as he says it was, by the world.  Biddy, did you ever see any one cry with joy before—­ha—­ha—­did you now?”

“God strengthen you, my poor child,” exclaimed the nurse, bursting into tears; “for what will become of you?  Your father, Sarah dear, is to be hanged for murdher, an’ it was your mother’s evidence that hanged him.  She swore against him on the thrial an’ his sentence is passed.  Bartle Sullivan wasn’t murdhered at all, but another man was, an’ it was your father that done it.  On next Friday he’s to be hanged, an’ your mother, they say, swore his life away!  If that’s not black news, I don’t know what is.”

Sarah’s face had been flushed to such a degree by the first portion of the woman’s intelligence, that its expression was brilliant and animated beyond belief.  On hearing its conclusion, however, the change from joy to horror was instantaneous, shocking, and pitiable, beyond all power of language to express.  She was struck perfectly motionless and ghastly; and as she kept her large lucid eyes fixed upon the woman’s face, the powers of life, that had been hitherto in such a tumult of delight within her, seemed slowly, and with a deadly and scarcely perceptible motion, to ebb out of her system.  The revulsion was too dreadful; and with the appearance of one who was anxious to shrink or hide from something that was painful, she laid her head down on the humble pillow of her bed.

“Now, asthore,” said the woman, struck by the woeful change—­“don’t take it too much to. heart; you’re young, an’ please God, you’ll get over it all yet.”

“No,” she replied, in a voice so utterly changed and deprived of its strength, that the woman could with difficulty hear or understand her.  “There’s but one good bein’ in the world,” she said to herself, “an’ that is Mave Sullivan:  I have no mother, no father—­all I can love now is Mave Sullivan—­that’s all.”

“Every one that knows her does,” said the nurse.

“Who?” said Sarah, inquiringly.

“Why, Mave Sullivan,” replied the other; “worn’t you spakin’ about her?”

“Was I?” said she, “maybe so—­what was I sayin’?”

She then put her hand to her forehead, as if she felt pain and confusion; after which she waved the nurse towards her, but on the woman stooping down, she seemed to forget that she had beckoned to her at all.