anner
exclaimed, almost with one voice--

"May God pity you, Honor! for who but yourself would or could act as you
do this bitther, bitther night?"

"I'm only doin' what I ought to do," she replied, "what is religion good
for if it doesn't keep the heart right an' support us undher thrials
like this; what 'ud it be then but a name? But how, oh how, came his
father to be in sich a state on this bitther, bitther night, as you say
it is--aif oh! Heaven above sees it's that--how came his father, I say,
into sich a state?"

They then related the circumstance as it actually happened; and she
appeared much relieved to hear that his inebriety was only accidental.

"I am glad," she said, "that he got it as he did; for, indeed, if he had
made himself dhrunk this day, as too many like him do on such occasions,
he never again would appear the same man in my eyes, nor would my heart
ever more warm to him as it did. But thanks to God that he didn't take
it himself!"

She then heard, with a composure that could result only from fortitude
and resignation united, a more detailed account of her son's trial,
after which she added--

"As God is above me this night I find it asier to lose Connor than to
forgive the man that destroyed him; but this is a bad state of heart,
that I trust my Saviour will give me grace to overcome; an' I know He
will if I ax it as I ought; at all events, I won't lay my side on a bed
this night antil I pray to God to forgive Bartle Flanagan an' to turn
his heart."

She then pressed them, with a heart as hospitable as it was pious, to
partake of food, which they declined, from a natural reluctance to give
trouble where the heart is known to be pressed down by the violence of
domestic calamity. These are distinctions which our humble countrymen
draw with a delicacy that may well shame those who move in a higher rank
of life. Respect for unmerited affliction, and sympathy for the sorrows
of the just and virtuous, are never withheld by the Irish peasant when
allowed by those who can guide him either for goqd or for evil to follow
the impulses of his own heart. The dignity, for instance, of Honor
O'Donovan's bearing under a trial so overwhelming in its nature, and the
piety with which she supported it, struck them, half tipsy as they were,
so forcibly, that they became sobered down--some of them into a full
perception of her firmness and high religious feelings; and those who
were more affected by drink into