“It must be done,” he said, “and the sooner it’s done the better; what would I give to have my darlin’ Kathleen here.  Her eye and her advice would give me the strength that I stand so much in need of.  My God, how will I meet him, or break the sorrowful tidings to him at all!  The Lord support me!”

“Ah, but Bryan,” said they, “you know he looks up to whatever you say, and how much he is advised by you, if there happens to be a doubt about anything.  Except her that’s gone, there was no one—­”

Bryan raised his hand with an expression of resolution and something like despair, in order as well as he could to intimate to them, that he wished to hear no allusion made to her whom they had lost, or that he must become incapacitated to perform the task he had to encounter, and taking his hat he proceeded to find his father, whom he met behind the garden.

It may be observed of deep grief, that whenever it is excited by the loss of what is good and virtuous, it is never a solitary passion, we mean within the circle of domestic life.  So far from that, there is not a kindred affection under the influence of a virtuous heart, that is not stimulated, and strengthened by its emotions.  How often, for instance, have two members of the same family rushed into each other’s arms, when struck by a common sense of the loss of some individual that was dear to both, because it was felt that the very fact of loving the same object had now made them dear to each other.

The father, on seeing Bryan approach, stood for a few moments and looked at him eagerly; he then approached him with a hasty and unsettled step, and said, “Bryan, Bryan, I see it in your face, she has left us, she has left us, she has left us all, an’ she has left me; an’ how am I to live without her? answer me that; an then give me consolation if you can.”

He threw himself on his son’s neck, and by a melancholy ingenuity attempted to seduce him as it were from the firmness which he appeared to preserve in the discharge of this sorrowful task, with a hope that he might countenance him in the excess of his grief—­“Oh,” he added, “I’ve have lost her, Bryan—­you and I, the two that she—­that—­she—­Your word was everything to her, a law to her; and she was so proud out of you—­I an’ her eye would rest upon you smilin’, as much as to say—­there’s my son, haven’t I a right to feel proud of him, for he has never once vexed his mother’s heart? nayther did you, Bryan, nayther did you, but now who will praise you as she did? who will boast of you behind your back, for she seldom did it to your face; and now that smile of love and kindness will never be on her blessed lips more.  Sure you won’t blame me, Bryan—­oh, sure above all men livin’, you won’t blame me for feelin’ her loss as I do.”

The associations excited by the language of his father were such as Bryan was by no means prepared to meet.  Still he concentrated all his moral power and resolution in order to accomplish the task he had undertaken, which, indeed, was not so much to announce his mother’s death, as to support his father under it.  After a, violent effort, he at length said:—­