ot back the money. Eh? Ha, ha, ha, it's great
luck, Connor, isn't it great? An' you'll have it, you an' Una, _afther
my death_--for I won't starve for e'er a one o' yees."

"Father, father, I wish you would rest."

"Well, I will, avick, I will--bring me to bed--you'll sleep in your own
bed to-night. Your poor mother's head hasn't been off of the place where
your own lay, Connor. No, indeed; her heart's low--it's breakin'--it's
breakin'--but she won't let anybody make your bed but herself. Oh, the
mother's love, Connor--that mother's love, that mother's love--but,
Connor--"

"Well, father, dear."

"Isn't there something wrong, avick: isn't there something not right,
somehow?"

This question occasioned the son to feel as if his heart would literally
burst to pieces, especially when he considered the circumstances under
which the old man put it. Indeed, there was something so transcendently
appalling in his intoxication, and in the wild but affecting tone of his
conversation, that, when joined to his pallid and spectral appearance,
it gave a character, for the time being, of a mood that struck the heart
with an image more frightful than that of madness itself.

"Wrong, father!" he replied, "all's wrong, and I can't understand it.
It's wel for you that you don't know the doom that's upon us now, for
I feel how it would bring you down, and how it will, too. It will kill
you, my father--it will kill you."

"Connor, come home, avick, come home--I'm tired at any rate--come home
to you mother--come, for her sake--I know I'm not at home, an' she'll
not rest till I bring you safe back to her. Come now, I'll have no put
offs--you must come, I say--I ordher you--I can't and won't meet her wid
out you. Come, avick, an' you can sing mi the song goin' home--come wid
your owi poor ould father, that can't live widout you--come, a sullish
machree, I don't feel right here--we won't be properly happy till we go
to your lovin' mother."

"Father, father, you don't know what you're making me suffer! What
heart, blessed heaven, can bear--"

The door of his cell here opened, and the turnkey stated that some five
or six of his friends were anxious to see him, and, above all things, to
take charge of his father to his own home. This was a manifest relief to
the young man, who then felt more deeply on his unhappy father's account
than on his own.

"Some foolish friends," said he, "have given my father liquor, an'
it has got into his he