“Well, I will, avick, I will--bring me to bed--you'll sleep in your own bed to-night. Your poor mother's head hasn't been off of the place where your own lay, Connor. No, indeed; her heart's low--it's breakin'--it's breakin'--but she won't let anybody make your bed but herself. Oh, the mother's love, Connor--that mother's love, that mother's love--but, Connor--” “Well, father, dear.” “Isn't there something wrong, avick: isn't there something not right, somehow?” This question occasioned the son to feel as if his heart would literally burst to pieces, especially when he considered the circumstances under which the old man put it. Indeed, there was something so transcendently appalling in his intoxication, and in the wild but affecting tone of his conversation, that, when joined to his pallid and spectral appearance, it gave a character, for the time being, of a mood that struck the heart with an image more frightful than that of madness itself. “Wrong, father!” he replied, “all's wrong, and I can't understand it. It's wel for you that you don't know the doom that's upon us now, for I feel how it would bring you down, and how it will, too. It will kill you, my father--it will kill you.” “Connor, come home, avick, come home--I'm tired at any rate--come home to you mother--come, for her sake--I know I'm not at home, an' she'll not rest till I bring you safe back to her. Come now, I'll have no put offs--you must come, I say--I ordher you--I can't and won't meet her wid out you. Come, avick, an' you can sing mi the song goin' home--come wid your owi poor ould father, that can't live widout you--come, a sullish machree, I don't feel right here--we won't be properly happy till we go to your lovin' mother.” “Father, father, you don't know what you're making me suffer! What heart, blessed heaven, can bear--” The door of his cell here opened, and the turnkey stated that some five or six of his friends were anxious to see him, and, above all things, to take charge of his father to his own home. This was a manifest relief to the young man, who then felt more deeply on his unhappy father's account than on his own. “Some foolish friends,” said he, “have given my father liquor, an' it has got into his head--indeed, it overcame him the more as I never remember him to taste a drop of spirits during his life before. I can see no body now an' him in this state; but if they wish me well, let them take care of him, and leave him safe at his own house, and tell them I'll be glad if I can see them tomorrow, or any other time.” With considerable difficulty Fardorougha was removed from Connor, whom he clung to with all his strength, attempting also to drag him away. He then wept bitterly, because he declined to accompany him home, that he might comfort his mother, and enjoy the imagined recovery of his money from P----e, and the conviction which he believed they had just succeeded in getting against that notorious defaulter.