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' please God, you'll get over it all yet." "No," she replied, in a voice so utterly changed and deprived of its strength, that the woman could with difficulty hear or understand her.
"There's but one good bein' in the world," she said to herself, "an' that is Mave Sullivan: I have no mother, no father--all I can love now is Mave Sullivan--that's all." "Every one that knows her does," said the nurse.
"Who ?" said Sarah, inquiringly.
"Why, Mave Sullivan," replied the other; "worn't you spakin' about her ?" "Was I ?" said she, "maybe so--what was I sayin' ?" She then put her hand to her forehead, as if she felt pain and confusion; after which she waved the nurse towards her, but on the woman stooping down, she seemed to forget that she had beckoned to her at all.
At this moment Mave and her mother entered, and after looking towards the bed on which she lay, they inquired in a whisper, from her attendant how she was.
The woman pointed hopelessly to her own head, and then looked significantly at Sarah, as if to intimate that her brain was then unsettled.
"There's something wrong here," she added, in an under tone, and touching her head, "especially since I tould her what had happened." "Is she acquainted with everything ?" asked her mother.
"She is," replied the other; "she knows that her father is to die on Friday an' that you swore agin' him." "But what on earth," said Mave, "could make you be so mad as to let her know anything of that kind ?" "Why, she sent me to get word," replied the simple creature, "and you wouldn't have me tell her a lie, an' the poor girl on her death-bed, I'm afeard." Her mother went over and stood opposite where she lay, that is, near the foot of her bed, and putting one hand under her chin, looked at her long and steadily.

Mave went to her side and taking her hand gently up, kissed it, and wept quietly, but bitterly.
It was, indeed, impossible to look upon her without a feeling of deep and extraordinary interest.