hin?--am I in time?"

"Only poorly," he returned; "you are, I hope."

The midwife, when they reached the door, got herself dismounted in all
haste, and was about entering the house, when Fardorougha, laying his
hand upon her shoulder, said in a tone of voice full of deep feeling--

"I need say nothing to you; what you can do, you will do--but one thing
I expect--if you see danger, call in assistance."

"It's all in the hands o' God, Fardorougha, acushla; be as aisy in your
mind as you can; if there's need for more help you'll hear it; so keep
the man an' horse both ready."

She then blessed herself and entered the house, repeating a short
prayer, or charm, which was supposed to possess uncommon efficacy in
relieving cases of the nature she was then called upon to attend.

Fardorougha Donovan was a man of great good sense, and of strong, but
not obvious or flexible feeling; this is to say, on strong occasions he
felt accordingly, but exhibited no remarkable symptoms of emotion.
In matters of a less important character, he was either deficient in
sensibility altogether, or it affected him so slightly as not to be
perceptible. What his dispositions and feelings might have been, had
his parental affections and domestic sympathies been cultivated by the
tender intercourse which subsists between a parent and his children,
it is not easy to say. On such occasions many a new and delightful
sensation--many a sweet trait of affection previously unknown--and, oh!
many, many a fresh impulse of rapturous emotion never before felt gushes
out of the heart; all of which, were it not for the existence of ties
so delightful, might have there lain sealed up forever. Where is the man
who does not remember the strange impression of tumultuous delight which
he experienced on finding himself a husband? And who does not recollect
that nameless charm, amounting almost to a new sense, which pervaded his
whole being with tenderness and transport on kissing the rose-bud lips
of his first-born babe? It is, indeed, by the ties of domestic life that
the purity and affection and the general character of the human heart
are best tried. What is there more beautiful than to see that fountain
of tenderness multiplying its affections instead of diminishing them,
according as claim after claim arises to make fresh demands upon its
love? Love, and especially parental love, like jealousy, increases
by what it feeds on. But, oh! from what an unknown world