her artlessness and freedom from guile, were taken into consideration, in connection with her unexpected death, it must be admitted that this act of devotion was as affecting as it was mournful and solemn.  When they came to the words, “Mother most pure, Mother most chaste, Mother undefiled, Mother most loving, pray for her!”—­and again to those, “Morning Star, Health of the Weak, Refuge of Sinners, Comfortress of the Afflicted, pray for her!”—­their voices faltered, became broken, and, with scarcely a single exception, they melted into tears.  And it was a beautiful thing to witness these miserable and half-famished creatures, shrunk and pinched with hunger and want, laboring, many of them, with incipient illness, and several only just recovered from it, forgetting their own distress and afflictions, and rendering all the aid and consolation in their power to those who stood in more need of it than themselves.  When these affecting prayers for the dead had been concluded, a noise was heard at the door, and a voice which in a moment hushed them into silence and awe.  The voice was that of him whom the departed girl had loved with such fatal tenderness.

“In the name of God,” exclaimed one of them, “let some of you keep that unfortunate boy out; the sight of him will kill the ould couple.”  The woman who spoke, however, had hardly concluded, when Thomas Dalton entered the room, panting, pale, tottering through weakness, and almost frantic with sorrow and remorse.  On looking at the unhappy sight before him, he paused and wiped his brow, which was moistened by excitement and over-exertion.

There was now the silence of death in the room so deep, that the shooting of a spark from one of the death-candles was heard by every one present, an incident which, small as it was, deepened the melancholy interest of the moment.

“An’ that’s it,” he at last exclaimed, in a voice which, though weak, quivered with excess of agony—­“that’s it, Peggy dear—­that’s what your love for me has brought you to!  An’ now it’s too late, I can’t help you now, Peggy dear.  I can’t bid you hould your, modest face up, as the darlin’ wife of him who loved you betther than all this world besides, but that left you, for all that a stained name an’ a broken heart!  Ay! an’ there’s what your love for me brought you to!  What can I do now for you, Peggy dear?  All my little plans for us both—­all that I dreamt of an’ hoped to come to pass, where are they now, Peggy dear?  And it wasn’t I, Peggy, it was poverty—­oh you know how I loved you!—­it was the downcome we got—­it was Dick-o’-the-Grange, that oppressed us—­that ruined us—­that put us out without house or home—­it was he, and it was my father—­my father that they say has blood on his hand, an’ I don’t doubt it, or he wouldn’t act the part he did—­it was he, too that prevented me from doin’ what my heart encouraged me to do for you!  O blessed God,” he exclaimed, “what will become of me! when I think of the