l
scarcely recover her reason before the judgment of heaven opens upon
her!"

"Oh thin may the Mother of Glory forbid that!" exclaimed her
daughter--"anything at all but that! Can you do nothin' for her, uncle?"

"I'm doing all I can for her, Mary," replied the priest; "I'm watching a
calm moment to get her confession, if possible."

The sick woman had fallen into a momentary silence, during which, she
caught the bed-clothes like a child, and felt them, and seemed to handle
their texture, but with such an air of vacancy as clearly manifested
that no corresponding association existed in her mind.

The action was immediately understood by all present. Her daughter again
burst into tears; and Peter, now almost choked with grief, pressing the
sick woman to his heart, kissed her burning lips.

"Father, jewel," said the daughter, "there it is, and I feard it--the
sign, uncle--the sign!--don't you see her gropin' the clothes? Oh,
mother, darlin', darlin'!--are we going to lose you for ever?"

"Oh! Ellish, Ellish--won't you spake one word to me afore you go? Won't
you take one farewell of me--of me, aroon asthore, before you depart
from us for ever!" exclaimed her husband.

"Feeling the bed-clothes," said the priest, "is not always a, sign of
death; I have known many to recover after it.

"Husht," said Peter--"husht!--Mary--Mary! Come hear--hould your tongues!
Oh, it's past--it's past!--it's all past, an' gone--all hope's over!
Heavenly fither!"

The daughter, after listening for a moment, in a paroxysm of wild grief,
clasped her mother's recumbent body in her arms, and kissed hen lips
with a vehemence almost frantic. "You won't go, my darlin'--is it from
your own Mary that you'd go? Mary, that you loved best of all your
childhre!--Mary that you always said, an' every body said, was your own
image! Oh, you won't go without one word, to say you know her!"

"For Heaven's sake," said Father Mulcahy, "what do you mean?--are you
mad?"

"Oh! uncle dear! don't you hear?--don't you hear?--listen an' sure you
will--all hope's gone now--gone--gone! The dead rattle!--listen!--the
dead rattle's in her throat!"--

The priest bent his ear a moment, and distinctly heard the gurgling
noise produced by the phlegm, which is termed with wild poetical
accuracy, by the peasantry--the "dead rattle," or "death rattle,"
because it is the immediate and certain forerunner of death.

"True," said the priest--"too true; the last shadow of