The Argosy — page 327: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

THR ARCosy. Nelly Devitt's Ghost. 307 The young gentleman had gone, no one knew where, and the brothers of the deserted girl were tracking him, thirsting for his life. I was only a little girl when it all happened, but living at the Hall, I heard many a whisper of it, and saw more of the troubles than I could well understand, then. The old lady, as we called her, was nearly wild about it, and all the servants said it was a shame for her to uphold him in his wrong-doing, and try so hard to mislead the Devitts, who were searching for him. The old man had come to the Hall at the first, and had a long interview with her, which ended by both being in a towering passion, and loud words of bitterness and anger were overheard by the servants. I heard the butler say, afterwards, that she offered the wretched father money, which he wrathfully refused, demanding that his poor girl should be righted by marriage; at which the old lady laughed scornfully, “Do you know what you are, my good man, and to whom you speak ?” she asked; and then she told him to act like a good tenant and sensible man, and take what she offered him, and go away ‘quietly. They said he cursed the whole set till he lost his voice with rage, and went away, white and speechless, to his wretched home. After that the family began to break up at the bakery. First the mother died—of grieving, it was thought; and then the older boy was lost in a storm on the bay. He had a boat of his own, and after the trouble grew very rash, venturing out 1n all weathers. The second son went abroad, in the hope of finding young Wynd- hurst, and died of a fever in some foreign place, leaving the youngest, a mere lad, at home with his father. About this time, they brought Nelly back and tried to keep her secretly ; but it came out, before long, that she was crazy; and when people heard strange wailing cries in the dead of night, they said it was Nelly Devitt in her madness, lamenting over the desolation her folly had brought. Poor thing! it was a bitter penance for wrong-doing, and many a Jong year she paid it, raving and moaning away her poor withered life behind the barred windows of her unhappy home. The youngest boy was like his mother in looks, and they must have been alike in nature, too ; for as soon as he grew old enough to under- stand his family’s misfortunes, he just grieved and drooped, as she had done, till they laid him beside her in the grave. The old man lived on, held in life by the care of the helpless creature who had deprived it of every charm for him. People used to say that he grew daily harder and harsher in his ways, until at last every one was afraid to go near him; and so they lived alone till the end, the lunatic and he; and truly it seemed that he was kept with her COMIC OOOKS. EO am _