ss threw a softer and more human light into
her wild features.

"In the name and in the spirit of God's mercy," asked the priest, "if
you have the use of your tongue or voice, tell me what the matter is
with you or your children? Is it sickness or starvation?"

The sound of a human voice appeared to arrest her attention, and rouse
her a little. She paused, as it were, from her sufferings, and looked
first at the priest, and then at his companion--but she spoke not. He
then repeated the question, and after a little delay he saw that her
lips moved.

"She is striving to speak," said he, "but cannot. I will stoop to her."

He repeated the question a third time, and, stooping, so as to bring
his ear near her mouth, he could catch, expressed very feebly and
indistinctly, the word--hunger. She then made an effort, and bent down
her mouth to the infant which now lay still at her breast. She felt for
its little heart, she felt its little lips--but they were now chill
and motionless; its little hands ceased to gather any longer around her
breast; it was cold--it was breathless--it was dead! Her countenance
now underwent a singular and touching change--a kind of solemn joy--a
sorrowful serenity was diffused over it. She seemed to remember their
position, and was in the act, after having raised her eyes to heaven,
of putting round her hand to feel for the boy who lay on the other side,
when she was seized with a short and rather feeble spasm, and laying
down her head in its original position between her children, she was
at last freed from life and all the sufferings which its gloomy lot had
inflicted upon her and those whom she loved.

The priest, seeing that she was dead, offered up a short but earnest
prayer for the repose of her soul, after which he turned his attention
to the boy.

"The question now is," he observed to his companion, "can we save this
poor, but interesting child?"

"I hardly think it possible," she replied; "doesn't your reverence see
that death's workin' at him--and an' aisey job he'll have of the poor
thing now."

"Hunger and cold have here done awful work," said Father Hanratty, "as
they have and will in many other conditions similar to this. I shall
mount my horse, and if you lift the poor child up, I will wrap him as
well as I can in my great coat,"--which, by the way, he stripped off
him as he spoke. He then folded it round the boy, and putting him into
Nelly's arms, was about to leave the cab