r--my
mother--my own mother!--an' do you dare to tell me that this is black
news? Lave the house, I bid you. I'll get up--I'm not sick--I'm well.
Great God! yes, I'm well--very well; but how dare you name black news
an' my mother--my blessed mother--in the same breath, or on the same
day?"

"Will you hear me out, then?" continued the nurse.

"No," replied Sarah, attempting to get up--"I want to hear no more; now
I wish to live--now I am sure of one, an' that one my mother--my own
mother--to love me--to guide me--to taich me all that I ought to know;
but, above all, to love me. An' my father--my poor unhappy father--an'
he is unhappy--he loves me, too. Oh, Biddy, I can forgive you now for
what you said--I will be happy still--an' my mother will be happy--an'
my father,--my poor father--will be happy yet; he'll reform--repent
maybe; an' he'll wanst more get back his early heart--his heart when it
was good, an' not hardened, as he says it was, by the world. Biddy, did
you ever see any one cry with joy before--ha--ha--did you now?"

"God strengthen you, my poor child," exclaimed the nurse, bursting into
tears; "for what will become of you? Your father, Sarah dear, is to be
hanged for murdher, an' it was your mother's evidence that hanged him.
She swore against him on the thrial an' his sentence is passed. Bartle
Sullivan wasn't murdhered at all, but another man was, an' it was your
father that done it. On next Friday he's to be hanged, an' your mother,
they say, swore his life away! If that's not black news, I don't know
what is."

Sarah's face had been flushed to such a degree by the first portion of
the woman's intelligence, that its expression was brilliant and animated
beyond belief. On hearing its conclusion, however, the change from joy
to horror was instantaneous, shocking, and pitiable, beyond all power
of language to express. She was struck perfectly motionless and ghastly;
and as she kept her large lucid eyes fixed upon the woman's face, the
powers of life, that had been hitherto in such a tumult of delight
within her, seemed slowly, and with a deadly and scarcely perceptible
motion, to ebb out of her system. The revulsion was too dreadful;
and with the appearance of one who was anxious to shrink or hide from
something that was painful, she laid her head down on the humble pillow
of her bed.

"Now, asthore," said the woman, struck by the woeful change--"don't take
it too much to. heart; you're young, an' ple