“Oh, Brian dear,” said her weeping mother, “we helped ourselves to break her heart, as well as the rest.  We wouldn’t forgive her; we wouldn’t say the word, although her heart was breakin’ bekaise we did not.  Oh, Peggy,” she commenced in Irish, “oh, our daughter—­girl of the one fault! the kind, the affectionate, and the dutiful child, to what corner of the world will your father an’ myself turn now that you’re gone from us?  You asked us often an’ often to forgive you, an’ we would not.  You said you were sorry, in the sight of God an’ of man, for your fault—­that your heart was sore, an’ that you felt our forgiveness would bring you consolation; but we would not.  Ould man,” she exclaimed abruptly, turning to her husband, “why didn’t you forgive our only daughter?  Why, I say, didn’t you forgive her her one fault—­you wicked ould man, why didn’t you forgive her?”

“Oh, Kathleen, I’ll die,” he replied, mournfully, “I’ll die if I don’t get something to ait.  Is there no food?  Didn’t Peggy go to thry Darby Skinadre, an’ she hoped, she said, that she’d bring us relief; an’ so she went upon our promise to forgive her when she’d come back wid it.”

“I wish, indeed, I had a drop o’ gruel or something myself,” replied his wife, now reminded of her famished state by his words.

At this moment, however, relief, so far as food was concerned, did come.  The compassionate neighbors began, one by one, to return each with whatever could be spared from their own necessities, so that in the course of a little time this desolate old couple were supplied with provisions sufficient to meet the demands of a week or fortnight.

It is not our intention to describe, or rather to attempt to describe, the sorrow of Brian Murtagh and his wife, as soon as a moderate meal of food had awakened them, as it were, from the heavy and stupid frenzy into which the shock of their unhappy daughter’s death, joined to the pangs of famine, had thrown them.  It may be sufficient to say, that their grief was wild, disconsolate, and hopeless.  She was the only daughter they had ever had:  and when they looked back upon the gentle and unfortunate girl’s many virtues, and reflected that they had, up to her death, despite her earnest entreaties, withheld from her their pardon for her transgression, they felt, mingled with their affliction at her loss, such an oppressive agony of remorse as no language could describe.

Many of the neighbors now proposed the performance of a ceremony, which is frequently deemed necessary in cases of frailty similar to that of poor Peggy Murtagh:—­a ceremony which, in the instance before us, was one of equal pathos and beauty.  It consisted of a number of these humble, but pious and well-disposed people joining in what is termed the Litany of the Blessed Virgin, which was an earnest solicitation of mercy, through her intercession with her Son, for the errors, frailties, and sins of the departed; and, indeed, when her youth and beauty, and