“My very heart knows and loves the word,” she said.  “Oh! why is it that I am to suffer this?  Is it possible that the empty name is all that’s left me afther all?  Mother, come here—­I am pleadin’ for my father now—­you pleaded against him, but I always took the weakest side—­here is God now among us—­you must stand before him—­look your daughter in the face—­an’ answer her as you expect to meet God, when you leave this throubled life—­truth—­truth now, mother, an’ nothin’ else.  Mother, I am dyin’.  Now, as God is to judge you, did you ever love my father as a wife ought?”

There was some irresistible spirit, some unaccountable power, in her manner and language,—­such command and such wonderful love of candor in her full dark eye—­that it was impossible to gainsay or withstand her.

“I will spake the thruth,” replied her mother, evidently borne away and subdued, “although it’s against myself—­to my shame an’ to my sorrow I say it—­that when I married your father, another man had my affections—­but, as I’m to appear before God, I never wronged him.  I don’t know how it is that you’ve made me confess it; but at any rate you’re the first that ever wrung it out o’ me.”

“That will do,” replied her daughter, calmly; “that sounds like murdher from a mother’s lips!  Lay me down now, Biddy.”

Mave, who had scarcely ever taken her eyes from off her varying and busy features, was now struck by a singular change which she observed come over them—­a change that was nothing but the shadow of death, and cannot be described.

“Sarah!” she exclaimed; “dear, darling Sarah, what is the matter with you?  Have you got ill again?”

“Oh! my child!” exclaimed her mother—­“am I to lose you this way at last?  Oh! dear Sarah, forgive me—­I’m you mother, and you’ll forgive me.”

“Mave,” said Sarah, “take this—­I remember seein’ yours and mine together not very long ago—­take this lock of my hair—­I think you’ll get a pair of scissors on the corner of the shelf—­cut it off with your own hands—­let it be sent to my father—­an’ when he’s dyin’ a disgraceful death, let him wear it next his heart—­an’ wherever he’s to be buried, let him have this buried with him.  Let whoever will give it to him, say that it comes from Sarah—­an’ that, if she was able, she would be with him through shame, an’ disgrace, an’ death; that she’d support him as well as she could in his trouble—­that she’d scorn the world for him—­an’ that because he said wanst in his life that he loved her; she’d forgive him all a thousand times, an’ would lay down her life for him.”

“You would do that, my noble girl!” exclaimed Mave, with a choking voice.

“An’ above all things,” proceeded Sarah, “let him be told, if it can be done, that Sarah said to him to die without fear—­to bear it up like a man, an’ not like a coward—­to look manfully about him on the very scaffold—­an’—­an’ to die as a man ought to die—­bravely an’ without fear—­bravely an’ without fear!”