Page:Irish assassin, or, The misfortunes of the family of O'Donnel (2).pdf/22

22 himself ho paused a moment, and muttering, "I will, 'tis fit it should be so," and darting furiously through the aisle, disappeared. He again entered dragging in Sir Neale O'Donnell. "Como on then wretched author of my being;— come see the devastation thou hast made!" and compelling him to approach the coffin, "Look," he said, "see where she bleeds beneath thy ruthless arm! Oh my deserted love! seest thou not how she supplicates thy mercy! Perdition! but I will be avenged!" Saying this he rushed from the church in a paroxysm of fury. Sir Neale in the meantime became the very picture of horror, and his teeth struck each other with dreadful violence. I looked first upon the coffin, then upon Farrell, and at length uttered an audible curse on all around him.

Scarcely had he time to repeat his meditation when again his infuriated son rushed forward with the rapidity of the wind, holding in each land a horse pistol. "Now then," he roared," Maria, I come, and in my train follows that monster to which your wrongs and my miseries are attributable. Now pride, where is thy triumph? now virtue, where is thy reward?" At that instant he aimed the deadly weapon at the heart of Sir Neale, who in the next moment was no more! murdered by the hand of his-only son! In the same instant the dreadful parricide discharged the other pistol at his own head; but by the interposition of a friendly arm, the barrel of the pistol was raised beyond its deadly level, and the wretched Arthur had not for that time the foul sin of suicide to add to that of the murder of the author of his being.

During this agonising scene, all around were completely spell bound; not a word escaped their lips, not a motion denoted their existence; but the moment Sir Neale bit his parent dust their senses returned, and with them a conviction of their own culpability in not having interposed their endeavour to prevent the catastrophe they had witnessed. With one accord they now