"Oh, sun of my heart, think not now of me, nor of the children of your love, for we will follow you in time--but think of the happy country you're going to,--to live in the sunshine of heaven, among saints and angels for ever! Oh, sun of my heart, think too of what you lave behind you! What is it?
Oh! what is it to you--but poverty, and misery, and hardship--the cowld cabin and the damp bed--the frost of the sky--the frown of power, and the scourge of law--all this, oh, right hand of my affection, with the hard labor and the scanty food, do you fly from! Sure we had no friend in this world to protect or defend us against them that, would trample us under their feet! No friend for us because we are poor, and no friend for our religion because it is despised.

Then hasten, hasten, O light of my heart--and take refuge in the mercy of your God!" "Mary," said the priest, who had his eyes fixed upon the sick man, "Give God thanks, he is dead--and beyond the reach of human enmity forever." She immediately prostrated herself on the floor in token of humility and thanksgiving--then raising her eyes to heaven, she said, "may the heart of the woeful widow be grateful to the God who has taken him to his mercy before they came upon him! But here they are, and now I am not afraid of them.

They can't insult my blessed husband now, nor murdher him, as his father's villains did our dyin' son, on the cowld Esker of Drum Dhu; nor disturb him with their barbarous torments on the bed of death--and glory be to God for that!" Many of our readers may be led to imagine that the terrors of Mary O'Regan were altogether unproportioned to anything that might be apprehended from the approach of the officers of justice, or, at least to those who came to execute the law.

The state of Irish society at that time, however, was very different from what it is now, or has been for the last twenty years.

At that period one party was in the ascendant and the other directly under their feet; the former was in the possession of irresponsible power, and the other, in many matters, without any tribunal whatsoever to which, they could appeal.