, 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
long, sorrowful, implorin' look she used to give me. I'll go mad!--I'll
go mad!--I've killed her--I've murdhered her, an' there's no one to take
me up an' punish me for it! An' when I was ill, Peggy dear, when I had
time to think on my sick bed of all your love and all your sorrow and
distress and shame on my account, I thought I'd never see you in time
to tell you what I was to do, an' to give consolation to your breakin'
heart; but all that's now over; you are gone from me, an' like the
lovin' crathur you ever wor, you brought your baby along wid you! An'
when I think of it--oh God, when I think of it, before your shame, my
heart's delight, how your eye felt proud out of me, an' how it smiled
when it rested on me. Oh, little you thought I'd hould back to do you
justice--me that you doted on--an' yet it was I that sullied you--I! me!
Here," he shouted--"here, is there no one to saize