ring
was arranged, and the emaciated arms placed by her side, that the poor
parent had endeavored, as well as she could, to lay her out; and, oh,
great God! what a task for a mother, and under what circumstances must
it have been performed! There, however, did the corpse of this fair and
unhappy child lie; her light and silken locks blown upon her still and
death-like features by the ruffian blast, and the complacency which had
evidently characterized her countenance when in life, now stamped by
death, with the sharp and wan expression of misery and the grave. Thus
surrounded lay the dying mother, and it was not until the priest had
taken in, at more than one view, the whole terrors of this awful scene,
that he had time to let his eyes rest upon her countenance and person.
When he did, however, the history, though a fearful one, was, in her
case, as indeed in too many, legible at a glance, and may be comprised
in one word--starvation.

Father Hanratty was a firm minded man, with a somewhat rough manner, but
a heart natural and warm. After looking upon her face for a few moments,
he clasped, his hands closely together, and turning up his eyes to
Heaven, he exclaimed:

"Great God, guide and support me in this trying scene!"

And, indeed, it is not to be wondered at that he uttered such an
exclamation. There lay in the woman's eyes--between her knit and painful
eye-brows, over her shrunk upper forehead, upon her sharp cheek-bones,
and along the ridge of her thin, wasted nose--there lay upon her
skeleton arms, pointed elbows, and long-jointed fingers, a frightful
expression, at once uniform and varied, that spoke of gaunt and yellow
famine in all its most hideous horrors. Her eyeballs protruded even
to sharpness, and as she glared about her with a half conscious and
half-instinctive look, there seemed a fierce demand in her eye that
would have been painful, were it not that it was occasionally tamed down
into something mournful and imploring, by a recollection of the helpless
beings that were about her. Stripped, as she then was, of all that
civilized society presents to a human being on the bed of death--without
friends, aid of any kind, comfort, sympathy, or the consolations of
religion--she might be truly said to have sunk to the mere condition of
animal life--whose uncontrollable impulses had thus left their startling
and savage impress upon her countenance, unless, as we have said, when
the faint dawn of consciousne