She burst into tears.

“Oh, Art,” said she, “how my heart has sunk in spite of the good news I have for you.”

“In God’s name,” he asked, “what is it? is our darlin’ betther?”

“He is,” she replied, “he has opened his eyes this minute, and I want you to spake to him.”

They both entered stealthily, and to their inexpressible delight heard the child’s voice; they paused,—­breathlessly paused,—­and heard him utter, in a low sweet voice, the following words—­

“Daddy, won’t you come to bed wid me, wid your own Atty?”

This he repeated twice or thrice before they approached him, but when they did, although his eye turned from one to another, it was vacant, and betrayed no signs whatsoever of recognition.

Their hearts sank again, but the mother, whose hope was strong and active as her affection, said—­

“Blessed be the Almighty that he is able even to spake but he’s not well enough to know us yet.”

This was unhappily too true, for although they spoke to him, and placed themselves before him by turns, yet it was all in vain; the child knew neither them nor any one else.  Such, in fact, was now their calamity, as a few weeks proved.  The father by that unhappy blow did not kill his body, but he killed his mind; he arose from his bed a mild, placid, harmless idiot, silent and inoffensive—­the only words he was almost heard to utter, with rare exceptions, being those which had been in his mind when he was dealt the woful blow:—­“Daddy, won’t you come to bed wid me, wid your own Atty?” And these he pronounced as correctly as ever, uttering them with the same emphasis of affection which had marked them before his early reason had been so unhappily destroyed.  Now, even up to that period, and in spite of this great calamity, it was not too late for Art Maguire to retrieve himself, or still to maintain the position which he had regained.  The misfortune which befell his child ought to have shocked him into an invincible detestation of all intoxicating liquors, as it would most men; instead of that, however, it drove him back to them.  He had contracted a pernicious habit of diminishing the importance of first errors, because they appeared trivial in themselves; he had never permitted himself to reason against his propensities, unless through the indulgent medium of his own vanity, or an overweening presumption in the confidence of his moral strength, contrary to the impressive experience of his real weakness.  His virtues were many, and his foibles few; yet few as they were, our readers perceive that, in consequence of his indulging them, they proved the bane of his life and happiness.  They need not be surprised, then, to hear that from the want of any self-sustaining power in himself he fell into the use of liquor again; he said he could not live without it, but then he did not make the experiment; for he took every sophistry that appeared to make in his favor for granted.  He lived, if