red the house, the body had just been put
into the coffin and it is usual after this takes place, and before it
is nailed down, for the immediate relatives of the family to embrace the
deceased, and take their last look and farewell of his remains. In the
present instance, the children were brought over, one by one, to perform
that trying and melancholy ceremony. The first was an infant on the
breast, whose little innocent mouth was held down to that of its dead
father; the babe smiled upon his still and solemn features, and would
have played with his grave-clothes, but that the murmur of unfeigned
sorrow, which burst from all present, occasioned it to be removed. The
next was a fine little girl, of three or lour years, who inquired where
they were going to bring her daddy, and asked if he would not soon come
back to her.

"My daddy's sleeping a long time," said the child, "but I'll waken him
till he sings me 'Peggy Slevin.' I like my daddy best, bekase I sleep
wid him--and he brings me good things from the fair; he bought me this
ribbon," said she, pointing to a ribbon which he had purchased for her.

The rest of the children were sensible of their loss, and truly it was
a distressing scene. His eldest son and daughter, the former about
fourteen, the latter about two years older, lay on the coffin, kissing
his lips, and were with difficulty torn away from it.

"Oh!" said the boy, "he is going from us, and night or day we will never
see him or hear him more! Oh! father--father--is that the last sight we
are ever to see of your face? Why, father dear, did you die, and leave
us forever?--forever--wasn't your heart good to us, and your words kind
to us--Oh! your last smile is smiled--your last kiss given--and your
last kind word spoken to your children that you loved, and that loved
you as we did. Father, core of my heart, are you gone forever, and your
voice departed? Oh! the murdherers, oh! the murdherers, the murdherers!"
he exclaimed, "that killed my father; for only for them, he would be
still wid us: but, by the God that's over me, if I live, night or day I
will not rest, till I have blood for blood; nor do I care who hears it,
nor if I was hanged the next minute."

As these words escaped him, a deep and awful murmur of suppressed
vengeance burst from his relations. At length their sorrow became
too strong to be repressed; and as it was the time to take their last
embrace and look of him, they came up, and after f