Try, try to soften that hard heart. Marry at once, Barry, at once, before you’re older and worse to cure; and you’ll have children, and love them; and when you feel, as feel you must, that the money is clinging round your soul, fling it from you, and think of the last words your sister said to you.” The sweat was now running down the cheeks of the wretched man, for the mixed rebuke and prayer of his sister had come home to him, and touched him; but it was neither with pity, with remorse, nor penitence. No; in that foul heart there was no room, even for remorse; but he trembled with fear as he listened to her words, and, falling on his knees, swore to her that he would do just as she would have him. “If I could but think,” continued she, “that you would remember what I am saying—” “Oh, I will, Anty: I will—indeed, indeed, I will!” “If I could believe so, Barry—I’d die happy and in comfort, for I love you better than anything on earth;” and again she pressed his hot red hand—“but oh, brother! I feel for you:—you never kneel before the altar of God—you’ve no priest to move the weight of sin from your soul—and how heavy that must be! Do you remember, Barry; it’s but a week or two ago and you threatened to kill me for the sake of our father’s money? you wanted to put me in a mad-house; you tried to make me mad with fear and cruelty; me, your sister; and I never harmed or crossed you. God is now doing what you threatened; a kind, good God is now taking me to himself, and you will get what you so longed for without more sin on your conscience; but it’ll never bless you, av you’ve still the same wishes in your heart, the same love of gold—the same hatred of a fellow-creature.” “Oh, Anty!” sobbed out Barry, who was now absolutely in tears, “I was drunk that night; I was indeed, or I’d never have said or done what I did.” “And how often are you so, Barry?—isn’t it so with you every night? That’s another thing; for my sake, for your own sake—for God’s sake, give up the dhrink. It’s killing you from day to day, and hour to hour. I see it in your eyes, and smell it in your breath, and hear it in your voice; it’s that that makes your heart so black:—it’s that that gives you over, body and soul, to the devil. I would not have said a word about that night to hurt you now; and, dear Barry, I wouldn’t have said such words as these to you at all, but that I shall never speak to you again. And oh! I pray that you’ll remember them. You’re idle now, always:—don’t continue so; earn your money, and it will be a blessing to you and to others. But in idleness, and drunkenness, and wickedness, it will only lead you quicker to the devil.”