“Don’t think of him or it now, my dear father—­don’t be discomposin’ your mind about them.”

Connor and his mother exchanged a melancholy glance; and the latter, who, on witnessing his frame of mind, could not help shedding bitter tears, said to him—­

“Fardorougha dear, Fardorougha asthore machree, won’t you be guided by me?  You’re now on your death—­bed, an’ think of God’s marcy—­it’s that you stand most in need of.  Sure, ayourneen, if you had all the money you ever had, you couldn’t bring a penny of it where you’re goin’.”

“Well, but I’m givin’ Connor advice that’ll sarve him.  Sure I’m not biddin’ him to set his heart on it, for I tould the priest I wouldn’t; but is that any raison why he’d not save it?  I didn’t tell the priest that I wouldn’t bid him do that.”

“Father,” said Connor, “for the love o’ God will you put these thoughts out o’ your heart and mind?”

“So Connor dear,” proceeded the old man, not attending to him, “in makin’ any bargain, Connor, be sure to make as hard a one as you can; but for all that be honest, an’ never lind a penny o’ money widout interest.”

“I think he’s wandherin’,” whispered his mother.  “Oh grant it may be so, marciful Jasus this day!”

“Honor ahagur.”

“Well, darlin’, what is it?”

“There’s another thing that throubles me—­I never knew what it was to feel myself far from my own till now.”

“How is that, dear?”

“My bones won’t rest in my own counthry; I won’t sleep wid them that belong to me.  How will I lie in a strange grave, and in a far land?  Oh, will no one bring me back to my own?”

The untutored sympathies of neither wife nor son could resist this beautiful and affecting trait of nature, and the undying love of one’s own land, emanating, as it did, so unexpectedly, from a heart otherwise insensible to the ordinary tendernesses of life.

“Sure you are at home, avourneen,” said Honor; “an’ will rest wid your friends and relations that have gone before you.”

“No,” said he, “I’m not, I’m far away from them, but now I feel more comforted; I have one wid me that’s dearer to me than them all.  Connor and I will sleep together, won’t we, Connor?”

This affectionate transition from every other earthly object to himself, so powerfully smote the son’s heart that he could not reply.

“What ails him, Connor?” said his wife.  “Help me to keep up his head—­Saver above!”

Connor raised his head, but saw at a glance that the last struggle in the old man’s heart was over.  The miser was no more.

Little now remains to be said.  The grief for old age, though natural, is never abiding.

The miser did sleep with his own; and after a decent period allotted to his memory, need we say that our hero and heroine, if we may be permitted so to dignify them, were crowned in the enjoyment of those affections which were so severely tested, and at the same time so worthy of their sweet reward.