e
pangs of famine, had thrown them. It may be sufficient to say, that
their grief was wild, disconsolate, and hopeless. She was the only
daughter they had ever had: and when they looked back upon the gentle
and unfortunate girl's many virtues, and reflected that they had, up
to her death, despite her earnest entreaties, withheld from her their
pardon for her transgression, they felt, mingled with their affliction
at her loss, such an oppressive agony of remorse as no language could
describe.

Many of the neighbors now proposed the performance of a ceremony, which
is frequently deemed necessary in cases of frailty similar to that of
poor Peggy Murtagh:--a ceremony which, in the instance before us,
was one of equal pathos and beauty. It consisted of a number of these
humble, but pious and well-disposed people joining in what is termed
the Litany of the Blessed Virgin, which was an earnest solicitation of
mercy, through her intercession with her Son, for the errors, frailties,
and sins of the departed; and, indeed, when her youth and beauty, and
her artlessness and freedom from guile, were taken into consideration,
in connection with her unexpected death, it must be admitted that this
act of devotion was as affecting as it was mournful and solemn. When
they came to the words, "Mother most pure, Mother most chaste, Mother
undefiled, Mother most loving, pray for her!"--and again to those,
"Morning Star, Health of the Weak, Refuge of Sinners, Comfortress of the
Afflicted, pray for her!"--their voices faltered, became broken, and,
with scarcely a single exception, they melted into tears. And it was a
beautiful thing to witness these miserable and half-famished creatures,
shrunk and pinched with hunger and want, laboring, many of them, with
incipient illness, and several only just recovered from it, forgetting
their own distress and afflictions, and rendering all the aid and
consolation in their power to those who stood in more need of it
than themselves. When these affecting prayers for the dead had been
concluded, a noise was heard at the door, and a voice which in a moment
hushed them into silence and awe. The voice was that of him whom the
departed girl had loved with such fatal tenderness.

"In the name of God," exclaimed one of them, "let some of you keep that
unfortunate boy out; the sight of him will kill the ould couple." The
woman who spoke, however, had hardly concluded, when Thomas Dalton
entered the room, panting