ed, do something with her needle toward the supply of their
pressing necessities. But her excuses were many, and were uttered with
genuine Irish eloquence and volubility. The principal of these,
however, were, that, what with taking care of her poor dear husband's
wounded hand, and looking after the _childer_, she had not time, and
could get nothing to do besides.

"Indeed, your honor," said she, "and sure we had everything that was
dacent about us, and were quite happy and comfortable, considering,
until my poor dear husband--God bless him, your worship!--kilt his
hand, and I don't know where is like to be the end of it."

"But," I remarked, "surely, Mrs. Wheelwright, you could have found time
to do a little something--if no more than to buy a loaf of bread and a
few coals now and then, to mitigate your sufferings."

"Fait, your honor"--for if the woman had ever lost any portion of the
peculiar _patois_ of her own country, while living in Paris as a
_femme de chambre_, or with Capt. Scarlett as a mistress, it had
all returned with her more recent associations, and she was now a pure
Emerald--"fait, your honor," said she, "and how could I be afther
laving the poor body in his distress to go out afther work, when I love
him above the world and all that's in it? And then, your worship, I'd
no clothes that was dacent to go out in, and to go to jontlemen's
houses with such tatters as these, Mr. Wheelwright, says I, it would
not do by any manner of means, says I. And that's the rights of it from
end to end, if your worship will ounly hear to me."

Wheelwright himself was evidently bowed down by the severity of his
wants and the depth of his degradation.

If moral energy had ever been one of his characteristics, it was quite
clear that its fire had long since been extinguished; and more than
all, it was equally evident that he was the object of domestic tyranny.
But he uttered no complaint, and indeed scarcely opened his lips,
unless in reply to the interrogations put to him.

My first business was to rescue the unhappy sufferers from immediate
want. Had the woman alone been concerned, my solicitude would have been
hardly discernible. But whatever had been the defects in the character
of Wheelwright, or the errors which, for the most part, were the
consequence, the wide contrast between his present and past condition
was truly affecting. For his indiscretions, never involving moral
obliquity, he had most grievously answ