ing to Mave, and extending her
arms towards her, "Mave Sullivan, let me die!"

The affectionate but disappointed girl had all Mave's sympathies, whose
warm and affectionate feelings recoiled from the coldness and apparent
want of natural tenderness which characterized the mother's manner,
under circumstances in themselves so affecting. Still, after having
soothed Sarah for a few minutes, and placed her head once more upon the
pillow, she whispered to the mother, who seemed to think more than to
feel:

"Don't be surprised; when you consider the state she's in--and indeed
it isn't to be wondered at after what she has heard--you must make every
allowance for the poor girl."

Sarah's emotions were now evidently in incessant play.

"Biddy," said she, "come here again; help me up."

"Dear Sarah," said Mave, "you are not able to bear all this; if you
could compose yourself an' forget everything unpleasant for a while,
till you grow strong--"

"If I could forget that my mother has no heart to love me with--that
she's cowld and strange to me: if I could forget that she's brought my
father to a shameful death--my father's heart wasn't altogether bad; no,
an' he was wanst--I mane in his early life--a good man. I know that--I
feel that--'dear Sarah, sleep--deep, dear Sarah'--no, bad as he is,
there was a thousand times more love and nature in the voice that spoke
them words than in a hundred women like my mother, that hasn't yet
kissed my lips. Biddy, come here, I say--here--lift me up again."

There was such energy, and fire, and command, in her voice and words
now, that Mave could not remonstrate any longer, nor the nurse refuse to
obey her. When she was once more placed sitting, she looked about her--

"Mother," she said, "come here!"

And as she pronounced the word mother, a trait so beautiful, so
exquisite, so natural, and so pathetic, accompanied it, that Mave once
more wept. Her voice, in uttering the word, quivered, and softened
into tenderness, with the affection which nature itself seems to have
associated with it. Sarah herself remarked this, even in the anguish of
the moment.

"My very heart knows and loves the word," she said. "Oh! why is it that
I am to suffer this? Is it possible that the empty name is all that's
left me afther all? Mother, come here--I am pleadin' for my father
now--you pleaded against him, but I always took the weakest side--here
is God now among us--you must stand before him--look your