arney Casey, who felt anxious to know from the parents of
Grace Davoren whether any trace or tidings of her had been heard of,
went to pay the heart-broken family a visit for that purpose.

On entering, he found the father seated at his humble hearth, unshaven,
and altogether a man careless and negligent of his appearance. He sat
with his hands clasped before him, and his heavy eyes fixed on the
embers of the peat fire which smouldered on the hearth. The mother
was at her distaff, and so were the other two females--to wit, her
grandmother and Grace's sister. But the mother! gracious heaven, what a
spirit of distress and misery breathed from those hopeless and agonizing
features! There was not only natural sorrow there, occasioned by the
disappearance of her daughter, but the shame which resulted from
her fall and her infamy; and though last not least, the terrible
apprehension that the hapless girl had rushed by suicidal means into the
presence of an offended God, "unanointed, unaneled," with all her sins
upon her head. Her clothes were hanging from the branches of a large
burdock* against the wall, and from time to time the father cast
his eyes upon them with a look in which might be read the hollow but
terrible expression of despair.

* The branches of the burdock, when it is cut, trimmed, and
seasoned, are used by the humble classes to hang their
clothes upon. They grow upwards towards the top of the
stalk, and, in consequence of this, are capable of
sustaining the heaviest garment.

Honest Barney felt his heart deeply moved by all this, and, sooth
to say, his natural cheerfulness and lightness of spirit completely
abandoned him at the contemplation of the awful anguish which pressed
them down. There is nothing which makes such a coward of the heart as
the influence of such a scene. He felt that he stood within a circle
of misery, and that it was a solemn and serious task even to enter into
conversation with them. But, as he had come to make friendly inquiries
about the unfortunate girl, he forced himself to break this pitiable but
terrible silence of despair.

"I know," said he, with a diffident and melancholy spirit, "that it is
painful to you all to make the inquiries that I wish to make; but still
let me ask you if you have got any account of her?"

The mother's heart had been bursting-pent up as it were--and this
allusion to her withdrew the floodgates of its sorrow; she spread out