nce the passion of avarice had established its
accursed dominion in his heart, narrowed by degrees his domestic
establishment, until, towards the latter years of his life, it consisted
of only a laboring boy, as the term is, and a servant girl.

Indeed, no miser was ever known to maintain a large household; and that
for reasons too obvious to be detailed. Since Connor's incarceration,
however, his father's heart had so far expanded, that he hired two men
as inside servants, one of them, now the father of a large family, being
the identical Nogher M'Cormick, who, as the reader remembers, was in his
service at the time of Connor's birth. The other was a young man named
Thaddy Star, or Reillaghan, as it is called in Irish, who was engaged
upon the recommendation of Biddy Nulty, then an established favorite
with her master and mistress, in consequence of her faithful devotion
to! them and Connor, and her simple-hearted participation in their heavy
trouble. The manner in which they received the result of her son's trial
was not indeed calculated to sustain his mother. In the midst of the
clamor, however, she was calm and composed; but it would have been
evident, to a close observer, that a deep impression of religious duty
alone sustained her, and that the yearnings of the mother's heart,
though stilled by resignation to the Divine Will, were yet more
intensely agonized by the suppression of what she secretly felt. Such,
however, is the motive of those heroic acts of self-denial, which
religion only can enable us to perform. It does not harden the heart, or
prevent it from feeling the full force of the calamity or sorrow which
comes upon us; no, but whilst we experience it in all the rigor of
distress, it teaches us to reflect that suffering is our lot, and that
it is our duty to receive these severe dispensations in such a manner as
to prevent others from being corrupted by our impatience, or by our open
want of submission to the decrees of Providence. When the agony of the
Man of Sorrow was at its highest, He retired to a solitary place, and
whilst every pore exuded water and blood, he still exclaimed--"Not My
will, but Thine be done." Here was resignation, indeed, but at the
same time a heart exquisitely sensible of all it had to bear. And much,
indeed, as yet lay before that of the pious mother of our unhappy hero,
and severe was the trial which, on this very night, she was doomed to
encounter.

When Fardorougha awoke,