Whisht," she continued, "I hear a step--who is it?
Oh, poor Tom!" The poor young man entered as she spoke; and after looking about him for some time, placed himself in the arm chair.
"Tom, darlin'," said his sister Peggy, "don't sit in that--that's our poor father's chair; an' until he sits in it again, none of us ever will." "Nobody has sich a right to sit in it as I have," he replied, "I'm a murdherer." His words, his wild figure, and the manner in which he uttered them, filled them with alarm and horror.
"Tom, dear," said his brother, approaching him, "why do you speak that way ?--you're not a murdherer!" "I am!" he replied; "but I haven't done wid the Sullivans yet, for what they're goin' to do--ha, ha, ha!--oh, no.

It's all planned; an' they'll suffer, never doubt it." "Tom," said Mary, who began to fear that he might, in some wild paroxysm, have taken the life of the unfortunate miser, or of some one else; "if you murdhered any one, who was it ?" "Who was it ?" he replied; "if you go up to Curraghbeg churchyard, you'll find her there; the child's wid her--but I didn't murdher the child, did I ?" On finding that he alluded only to the unfortunate Peggy Murtagh, they recovered from the shock into which his words had thrown them.

Tom, however, appeared exceedingly exhausted and feeble, as was evident from his inability to keep himself awake.

His head gradually sank upon his breast, and in a few minutes he fell into a slumber.

"I'll put him to bed," said Con; "help me to raise him." They lifted him up, and a melancholy sight it was to see that face, which had once been such a noble specimen of manly beauty, now shrunk away into an expression of gaunt and haggard wildness, that was painful to contemplate.