“‘Come here, Dick,’ says Tom; ’God help you, my poor bouchal (* boy)—­Come here, and walk alongside of me, for you can’t go back to your mother, till I see her first—­God help you, my poor bouchal, it’s you that’s to be pitied, this blessed and sorrowful day;’ and the poor fellow could by no means keep in the tears.  But he was saved the trouble of breaking the dismal tidings to poor Sally; for as she stood watching the crowd, she saw a door carried upon their shoulders, with something like a man stretched upon it.  She turned in, feeling as if a bullet had gone through her head, and sat down with her back to the door, for fraid she might see the thruth, for she couldn’t be quite sure, they we’re at such a distance.  At last she ventured to take another look out, for she couldn’t bear what she felt within her, and just as she rose and came to the door, the first thing she saw coming down the hill a little above the house, was the body of her husband stretched on a door—­dead.  At that minute, her brother-in-law, Tom, just entered, in time to prevent her and the child she had in her arms from falling on the flure.  She had seen enough, God help her!—­for she took labor that instant, and, in about two hours, afterwards, was stretched a corpse beside her husband, with her heart-broken and desolate orphans in an uproar of outher misery about them.  That was the end of Larry M’Farland and Sally Lowry; two that might have done well in the world, had they taken care of themselves—­avoided, fairs and markets—­except when they had business there—­not given themselves idle fashions by drinking, or going to dances, and wrought as well for themselves as they did for others.”

“But how did he lose his life, at all at all?” inquired Nancy.

“Why, they found his hat in a bog-hole upon the water, and on searching the hole itself poor Larry was fished up from the bottom of it.”

“Well, that’s a murdhering sorrowful story,” said Shane Fadh:  “but you won’t be after passing that on us for the wake, ainy how.”

“Well, you must learn patience, Shane,” said the narrator, “for you know patience is a virtue.”

“I’ll warrant you that Tom and his wife made a better hand of themselves,” said Alick M’Kinley, “than Larry and Sally did.”

“Ah!  I wouldn’t fear, Alick,” said Tom, “but you would come at the truth—­’tis you that may say they did; there wasn’t two in the parish more comfortable than the same two, at the very time that Larry and Sally came by their deaths.  It would do you good to look at their hagyard—­the corn stacks were so nately roped and trimmed, and the walls so well made up, that a bird could scarcely get into it.  Their barn and cowhouse, too, and dwelling-house, were all comfortably thatched, and the windies all glazed, with not a broken pane in them.  Altogether they had come on wondherfully; sould a good dale of male and praties every year; so that in a short time they were able to lay by a little money to help to fortune off their little girls, that were growing up fine colleens, all out.”