into each other's arms, when
struck by a common sense of the loss of some individual that was dear to
both, because it was felt that the very fact of loving the same object
had now made them dear to each other.

The father, on seeing Bryan approach, stood for a few moments and looked
at him eagerly; he then approached him with a hasty and unsettled step,
and said, "Bryan, Bryan, I see it in your face, she has left us, she has
left us, she has left us all, an' she has left me; an' how am I to live
without her? answer me that; an then give me consolation if you can."

He threw himself on his son's neck, and by a melancholy ingenuity
attempted to seduce him as it were from the firmness which he appeared
to preserve in the discharge of this sorrowful task, with a hope that he
might countenance him in the excess of his grief--"Oh," he added, "I've
have lost her, Bryan--you and I, the two that she--that--she--Your word
was everything to her, a law to her; and she was so proud out of you--I
an' her eye would rest upon you smilin', as much as to say--there's my
son, haven't I a right to feel proud of him, for he has never once vexed
his mother's heart? nayther did you, Bryan, nayther did you, but now who
will praise you as she did? who will boast of you behind your back, for
she seldom did it to your face; and now that smile of love and kindness
will never be on her blessed lips more. Sure you won't blame me,
Bryan--oh, sure above all men livin', you won't blame me for feelin' her
loss as I do."

The associations excited by the language of his father were such as
Bryan was by no means prepared to meet. Still he concentrated all
his moral power and resolution in order to accomplish the task he had
undertaken, which, indeed, was not so much to announce his mother's
death, as to support his father under it. After a, violent effort, he at
length said:--

"Are you sorry, father, because God has taken my mother to Himself?
Would you wish to have her here, in pain and suffering? Do you grudge
her heaven? Father, you were always a brave and strong, fearless man,
but what are you now? Is this the example you are settin' to us, who
ought to look up to you for support? Don't you know my mother's in
heaven? Why, one would think you're sorry for it? Come, come, father,
set your childre' an example now when they want it, that they can look
up to--be a man, and don't forget that she's in God's Glory, Come in
now, and comfort the rest."