The Black Prophet: A Tale Of Irish Famine

Produced by David Widger

THE BLACK PROPHET:

A TALE OF IRISH FAMINE.

By William Carleton

CHAPTER I. -- Glendhu, or the Black Glen; Scene of Domestic Affection.

Some twenty and odd years ago there stood a little cabin at the foot of a round hill, that very much resembled a cupola in shape, and which, from its position and height, commanded a prospect of singular beauty. This hill was one of a range that ran from north to southwest; but in consequence of its standing, as it were, somewhat out of the ranks, its whole appearance and character as a distinct feature of the country were invested with considerable interest to a scientific eye, especially to that of a geologist. An intersection or abrupt glen divided it from those which constituted the range or group alluded to; through this, as a pass in the country, and the only one for miles, wound a road into an open district on the western side, which road, about half a mile after its entering the glen, was met by a rapid torrent that came down from the gloomy mountains that rose to the left. The foot of this hill, which on the southern side was green and fertile to the top, stretched off and was lost in the rich land that formed the great and magnificent valley it helped to bound, and to which the chasm we have described was but an entrance; the one bearing to the other, in size and position, much the same relation that a small bye-lane in a country town bears to the great leading street which constitutes its principal feature.

Noon had long passed, and the dim sun of a wet autumnal day was sloping down towards the west through clouds and gloom, when a young girl of about twenty-one or twenty-two years of age came out of the cabin we have mentioned, and running up to the top of a little miniature hill or knob that rose beside it, looked round in every direction, as if anxious to catch a glimpse of some one whom she expected. It appeared, however, that she watched in vain; for after having examined the country in every direction with an eye in which might be read a combined expression of eagerness, anger and disappointment, she once more returned to the cabin with a slow and meditating step. This she continued to do from time to time for about an hour and a half, when at length a female appeared approaching, whom she at once recognized.

The situation of this hovel, for such, in fact, it must be termed, was not only strikingly desolate, but connected also with wild and supernatural terrors. From the position of the glen itself, a little within which it stood, it enjoyed only a very limited portion of the sun's cheering beams. As the glen was deep and precipitous, so was the morning light excluded from it by the northeastern hills, as was that of evening by those which rose between it and the west. Indeed, it would be difficult to find a spot marked by a character of such utter solitude and gloom. Naturally barren, it bore not a single shrub on which a bird could sit or a beast browse, and little, of course, was to be seen in it but the bare gigantic projections of rock which shot out of its steep sides in wild and uncouth shapes, or the grey, rugged expanses of which it was principally composed. Indeed, we feel it difficult to say whether the gloom of winter or the summer's heat fell upon it with an air of lonelier desolation. It mattered not what change of season came, the place presented no appearance of man or his works. Neither bird or beast was seen or heard, except rarely, within its dreary bosom, the only sounds it knew being the monotonous murmurs of the mountain torrent, or the wild echoes of the thunder storms that pealed among the hills about it. Silence and solitude were the characteristics which predominated in it and it would not be easy to say whether they were felt more during the gloom of November or the glare of June.

In the mouth of this glen, not far from the cabin we have described, two murders had been committed about twenty years before the period of our narrative, within the lapse of a month. The one was that of a carman, and the other of a man named Sullivan, who also had been robbed, as it was supposed the carman had been, for the bodies of both had been made way with and were never found. This was evident--in the one case by the horse and cart of the carman remaining by the grey stone in question, on which the traces of blood were long visible; and in the other by the circumstance of Sullivan's hat and part of his coat having been found near the cabin in question on the following day, in a field through which his path home lay, and in which was a pool of blood, where his foot-marks were deeply imprinted, as if in a struggle for life and death. For this latter murder a man named Dalton had been taken up, under circumstances of great suspicion, he having been the last person seen in the man's company. Both had been drinking together in the market, a quarrel had originated between them about money matters, blows had been exchanged, and Dalton was heard to threaten him in very strong language. Nor was this all. He had been observed following or rather dogging him on his way home, and although the same road certainly led to the residence of both, yet when his words and manner were taken into consideration, added to the more positive proof that the footmarks left on the place of struggle exactly corresponded with his shoes, there could be little doubt that he was privy to Sullivan's murder and disappearance, as well probably as to his robbery. At all events the glen was said to be haunted by Sullivan's spirit, which was in the habit, according to report, of appearing near the place of murder, from whence he was seen to enter this chasm--a circumstance which, when taken in connection with its dark and lonely aspect, was calculated to impress upon the place the I reputation of being accursed, as the scene of crime and supernatural appearances. We remember having played in it when young, and the feeling we experienced was one of awe and terror, to which might be added, on contemplating the “dread repose” and solitude around us, an impression that we were removed hundreds of miles from the busy ongoings and noisy tumults of life, to which, as if seeking protection, we generally hastened with a strong sense of relief, after having tremblingly gratified our boyish curiosity.

The young girl in question gave the female she had been expecting any thing but a cordial or dutiful reception. In personal appearance there was not a point of resemblance between them, although the _tout ensemble_ of each was singularly striking and remarkable. The girl's locks were black as the raven's wing: her figure was tall and slender, but elastic and full of symmetry. The ivory itself was not more white nor glossy than her skin; her teeth were--bright and beautiful, and her mouth a perfect rosebud. It is unnecessary to say that her eyes we're black and brilliant, for such ever belong to her complexion and temperament; but it in necessary to add, that they were piercing and unsettled, and you felt that they looked into you rather than at you or upon you. In fact, her features were all perfect, yet it often happened that their general expression was productive of no agreeable feeling on the beholder. Sometimes her smile was sweet as that of an angel, but let a single impulse or whim be checked, and her face assumed a character of malignity that made her beauty appear like that which we dream of in an evil spirit.

The other woman, who stood to her in the relation of step-mother, was above the middle size. Her hair was sandy, or approaching to a pale red; her features were coarse, but regular; and her whole figure that of a well-made and powerful woman. In her countenance might be read a peculiar blending of sternness and benignity, each evidently softened down by an expression of melancholy--perhaps of suffering--as if some secret care lay brooding at her heart. The inside of the hovel itself had every mark of poverty and destitution about it. Two or three stools, a pot or two, one miserable standing bed, and a smaller one gathered up under a rug in the corner, were almost all that met the eye on entering it; and simple as these meagre portions of furniture were, they bore no marks of cleanliness or care. On the contrary, everything appeared to be neglected, squalid and filthy--such, precisely, as led one to see at a glance that the inmates of this miserable hut were contented with their wretched state of life, and had no notion whatsoever that any moral or domestic duty existed, by which they might be taught useful notions of personal comfort and self-respect.

“So,” said the young woman, addressing her step-mother, as she entered, “you're come back at last, an' a purty time you tuck to stay away!”

“Well,” replied the other, calmly, “I'm here now at any rate; but I see you're in one of your tantrums, Sally, my lady. What's wrong, I say? In the mean time don't look as if you'd ait us widout salt.”

“An' a bitter morsel you'd be,” replied the younger, with a flashing glance--“divil a more so. Here am I, sittin', or running out an' in, these two hours, when I ought to be at the dance in Kilnahushogue, before I go to Barny Gormly's wake; for I promised to be at both. Why didn't you come home in time?”

“Bekaise, achora, it wasn't agreeable to me to do so. I'm beginnin' to got ould an' stiff, an' its time for me to take care of myself.”

“Stiffer may you be, then, soon, an' oulder may you never be, an' that's the best I wish you!”

“Aren't you afeard to talk to me in that way?” said the elder of the two.

“No--not a bit. You won't flake me now as you used to do. I am able an' willin' to give blow for blow at last, thank goodness; an' will, too, if ever you thry that thrick.”

The old woman gazed at her angrily, and appeared for a moment to meditate an assault. After a pause, however, during which the brief but vehement expression of rising fury passed from her countenance, and her face assumed an expression more of compassion than of anger, she simply said, in a calm tone of voice--

“I don't know that I ought to blame you so much for your temper, Sarah. The darkness of your father's sowl is upon yours; his wicked spirit is in you, an' may Heaven above grant that you'll never carry about with you, through this unhappy life, the black an' heavy burden that weighs down his heart! If God hasn't said it, you have his coorse, or something nearly as bad, before you. Oh! go to the wake as soon as you like, an' to the dance, too. Find some one that'll take you off of my hands; that'll put a house over your head--give you a bit to ait, an' a rag to put on you; an' may God pity him that's doomed to get you! If the woeful state of the country, an' the hunger an' sickness that's abroad, an' that's comin' harder an' faster on us every day, can't tame you or keep you down, I dunna what will. I'm sure the black an' terrible summer we've had ought to make you think of how we'll get over all that's before us! God pity you, I say again, an' whatever poor man is to be cursed wid you!”

“Keep your pity for them that wants it,” replied the other, “an' that's not me. As for God's pity, it isn't yours to give, and even if it was, you stand in need of it yourself more than I do. You're beginning to praich to us now that you're not able to bait us; but for your praichments an' your baitins, may the divil pay you for all alike!--as he will--an' that's my prayer.”

A momentary gush of the step-mother's habitual passion overcame her; she darted at her step-daughter, who sprung to her limbs, and flew at her in return. The conflict at first was brief, for the powerful strength of the elder female soon told. Sarah, however, quickly disengaged herself, and seizing an old knife which lay on a shell that served as a dresser, she made a stab at the very heart of her step-mother, panting as she did it with an exulting vehemence of vengeance that resembled the growlings which a savage beast makes when springing on its prey.

“Ha!” she exclaimed, “you have it now--you have it! Call on God's pity now, for you'll soon want it. Ha! ha!”

The knife, however, owing to the thick layers of cloth with which the dress of the other was patched, as well as to the weakness of the thin and worn blade, did not penetrate her clothes, nor render her any injury whatsoever. The contest was again resumed. Sarah, perceiving that she had missed her aim, once more put herself into a posture to renew the deadly attempt; and the consequence was, that a struggle now took place between them which might almost be termed one for life and death. It was indeed a frightful and unnatural struggle. The old woman, whose object was, if possible, to disarm her antagonist, found all her strength--and it was great--scarcely a match for the murderous ferocity which was now awakened in her. The grapple between them consequently became furious; and such was the terrible impress of diabolical malignity which passion stamped upon the features of this young tigress, that her step-mother's heart, for a moment quailed on beholding it, especially when associated with the surprising activity and strength which she put forth., Her dark and finely-pencilled eye-brows were fiercely knit, as it were, into one dark line; her lips were drawn back, displaying her beautiful teeth, that were now ground together into what resembled the lock of death: her face was pale with over-wrought with resentment, and her deep-set eyes glowed with a wild and flashing fire that was fearful, while her lips were encircled with the white foam of revengeful and deadly determination; and what added most to the terrible expression on her whole face was the exulting smile of cruelty which shed its baleful light over it, resolving the whole contest, as it were, and its object--the murder of her step-mother--into the fierce play of some beautiful vampire that was ravening for the blood of its awakened victim.

After a struggle of some two or three minutes, the strength and coolness of the step-mother at length prevailed, she wrested the knife out of Sarah's hands and, almost at the same moment, stumbled and fell. The other, however, was far from relaxing her hold. On the contrary, she clung to her fiercely, shouting out--

“I won't give you up yet--I love you too well for that--no, no, it's fond of you I'm gettin'. I'll hug you, mother, dear; ay will I, and kiss you too, an' lave my mark behind me!” and, as she spoke, her step-mother felt her face coming in savage proximity to her own.

“If you don't keep away, Sarah,” said the other, “I'll stab you. What do you mane, you bloody devil? It is going to tear my flesh with your teeth you are? Hould off! or, as heaven's above us, I'll stab you with the knife.”

“You can't,” shouted the other; “the knife's bent, or you'd be done for before this. I'll taste your blood for all that!” and, as the words were uttered, the step-mother gave a sudden scream, making at the same time a violent effort to disentangle herself, which she did.

Sarah started to her feet, and flying towards the door, exclaimed with shouts of wild triumphant laughter--

“Ha, ha, ha! do you feel anything? I was near havin' the best part of one of your ears--ha, ha, ha!--but unfortunately I missed it; an' now look to yourself. Your day is gone, an' mine is come. I've tasted-your blood, an' I like it--ha, ha, ha!--an' if as you say it's kind father for me to be fond o' blood, I say you had better take care of yourself. And I tell you more: we'll take care of your fair-haired beauty for you--my father and myself will--an' I'm told to act against her, an' I will too; an' you'll see what we'll bring your pet, _Gra Gal_ Sullivan, to yet! There's news for you!”

She then went down to the river which flowed past, in whose yellow and turbid waters--for it was now swollen with rain--she washed the blood from her hands and face with an apparently light heart. Having meditated for some time, she fell a laughing at the fierce conflict that had just taken place, exclaiming to herself--

“Ha, ha, ha! Well now if I had killed her--got the ould knife into her heart--I might lave the counthry. If I had killed her now, throth it 'ud be a good joke, an' all in a fit of passion, bekase she didn't come home in time to let me meet him. Well, I'll go back an' spake soft to her, for, afther all, she'll give me a hard life of it.”

She returned; and, having entered the hut, perceived that the ear and cheek of her step-mother were still bleeding.

“I'm sorry for what I did,” she said, with the utmost frankness and good nature. “Forgive me, mother; you know I'm a hasty devil--for a devil's limb I am, no doubt of it. Forgive me, I say--do now--here, I'll get something to stop the blood.”

She sprang at the moment, with the agility of a wild cat, upon an old chest that stood in the corner of the hut, exhibiting as she did it, a leg and foot of surpassing symmetry and beauty. By stretching herself up to her full length, she succeeded in pulling down several old cobwebs that had been for years in the corner of the wall; and in the act of doing so, disturbed some metallic substance, which fell first upon the chest, from which it tumbled off to the ground, where it made two or three narrowing circles, and then lay at rest.

“Murdher alive, mother!” she exclaimed, “what is this? Hallo! a tobaccy-box--a fine round tobaccy-box of iron, bedad--an what's this on it!--let me see; two letthers. Wait till I rub the rust off; or stay, the rust shows them as well. Let me see--P. an' what's the other? ay, an' M. P. M.--arra, what can that be for? Well, devil may care! let it lie on the shelf there. Here now--none of your cross looks, I say--put these cobwebs to your face, an' they'll stop the bleedin'. Ha, ha, ha!--well--ha, ha, ha!--but you are a sight to fall in love wid this minute!” she exclaimed, laughing heartily at the blood-stained visage of the other. “You won't spake, I see. Divil may care then, if you don't you'll do the other thing--let it alone: but, at any rate, there's the cobwebs for you, if you like to put them on; an' so _bannatht latht_, an' let that be a warnin' to you not to raise your hand to me again.

'A sailor courted a farmer's daughter
That lived contageous to the isle of Man,'” &c.

She then directed her steps to the dance in Kilnahushogue, where one would actually suppose, if mirth, laughter, and extraordinary buoyancy of spirits could be depended on, that she was gifted, in addition to her remarkable beauty, with the innocent and delightful disposition of an angel.

The step-mother having dressed the wound as well as she could, sat down by the fire and began to ruminate on the violent contest which had just taken place, and in which she had borne such an unfortunate part. This was the first open and determined act of personal resistance which she had ever, until that moment, experienced at her step-daughter's hands; but now she feared that, if they were to live, as heretofore, under the same roof, their life would be one of perpetual strife--perhaps of ultimate bloodshed--and that these domestic brawls might unhappily terminate in the death of either. She felt that her own temper was none of the best, and knew that so long as she was incapable of restraining it, or maintaining her coolness under the provocations to which the violent passions of Sarah would necessarily expose her, so long must such conflicts as that which had just occurred take place between them. She began now to fear Sarah, with whose remorseless disposition she was too well acquainted, and came to the natural conclusion, that a residence under the same roof was by no means compatible with her own safety.

“She has been a curse to me!” she went on, unconsciously speaking aloud; “for when she wasn't able to bate me herself, her father did it for her. The divil is said to be fond of his own; an' so does he dote on her, bekase she's his image in everything that's bad. A hard life I'll lead between them from this out, espeshially now that she's got the upper hand of me. Yet what else can I expect or desarve? This load that is on my conscience is worse. Night and day I'm sufferin' in the sight of God, an' actin' as if I wasn't to be brought in judgment afore him. What am I to do? I wish I was in my grave! But then, agin', how am I to face death?--and that same's not the worst; for afther death comes judgment! May the Lord prepare me for it, and guide and direct me how to act! One thing, I know, must be done--either she or I will lave this house; for live undher the same roof wid her I will not.”

She then rose up, looked out of the door a moment, and, resuming her seat, went on with her soliloquy--

“No; he said it was likely he wouldn't be home to-night. Wanst he gets upon his ould prophecies, he doesn't care how long he stays away; an' why he can take the delight he does in prophesyin' and foretellin' good or evil, accordin' as it sarves his purpose, I'm sure I don't know--espeshially when he only laughs in his sleeve at the people for believin' him; but what's that about poor _Gra Gal_ Sullivan? She threatened her, and spoke of her father, too, as bein' in it. Ah, ah! I must watch him there; an' you, too, my lady divil--for it 'ill go hard wid me if either of you injure a hair of her head. No, no, plaise God!--none of your evil doins or unlucks prophecies for her, so long, any way, as I can presarve her from them. How black the evenin' is gatherin', but God knows that it's the awful saison all out for the harvest--it is that--it is that!”

Having given utterance to these sentiments, she took up the tobacco-box which Sarah had, in such an accidental manner, tumbled out of the wall, and surveying it for some moments, laid it hastily on the chest, and, clasping her hands exclaimed--

“Saviour of life! it's the same! Oh, merciful God, it's thrue! it's thrue!--the very same I seen wid him that evenin': I know it by the broken hinge and the two letthers. The Lord forgive me my sins!--for I see now that do what we may, or hide it as we like, God is above all! Saviour of life, how will this end? an' what will I do?--or how am I to act? But any way, I must hide this, and put it out of his reach.”

She accordingly went out, and having ascertained that no person saw her, thrust the box up under the thatch of the roof, in such a way that it was impossible to suspect, by any apparent disturbance of the roof, that it was there; after which, she sat down with sensations of dread that were new to her, and that mingled themselves as strongly with her affections as it was possible for a woman of a naturally firm and undaunted character to feel them.

CHAPTER II. -- The Black Prophet Prophesies.

At a somewhat more advanced period of the same evening, two men were on their way from the market-town of Ballynafail, towards a fertile portion of the country, named Aughamuran, which lay in a southern direction from it. One of them was a farmer, of middling, or rather of struggling, circumstances, as was evident from the traces of wear and tear that were visible upon a dress that had once been comfortable and decent, although now it bore the marks of careful, though rather extensive repair. He was a thin placid looking man, with something, however, of a careworn expression in his features, unless when he smiled, and then his face beamed with a look of kindness and goodwill that could not readily be forgotten. The other was a strongly-built man, above the middle size, whose complexion and features were such as no one could look on with indifference, so strongly were they indicative of a twofold character, or, we should rather say, calculated to make a twofold impression. At one moment you might consider him handsome, and at another his countenance filled you with an impression of repugnance, if not of absolute aversion; so stern and inhuman were the characteristics which you read in it. His hair, beard, and eye-brows were an ebon black, as were his eyes; his features were hard and massive; his nose, which was somewhat hooked, but too much pointed, seemed as if, while in a plastic state, it had been sloped by a trowel towards one side of his face, a circumstance which, while taken in connection with his black whiskers that ran to a point near his mouth, and piercing eyes, that were too deeply and narrowly set, gave him, aided by his heavy eyebrows, an expression at once of great cruelty and extraordinary cunning. This man, while travelling in the same direction with the other, had suffered himself to be overtaken by him: in such a manner, however, that their coming in contact could not be attributed to any particular design on his part.

“Why, then, _Donnel Dhu_,” said the farmer, “sure it's a sight for sore eyes to see you in this side of the country; an' now that I do see you, how are you?”

“Jist the ould six-an'-eight-pence, Jerry; an' how is the Sullivan blood in you, man alive? good an' ould blood it is, in troth; how is the family?”

“Why we can't--hut, what was I goin' to say?” replied his companion; “we can't--complain--ershi--mishi!--why, then, God help us, it's we that can complain, Donnel, if there was any use in it; but, mavrone, there isn't; so all I can say is, that we're jist mixed middlin', like the praties in a harvest, or hardly that same, indeed, since this woful change that has come on us.”

“Ay, ay,” replied the other; “but if that change has come on you, you know it didn't come without warnin' to the counthry; there's a man livin' that foretould as much--that seen it comin'--ay, ever since the pope was made prisoner, for that was what brought Bonaparte's fate--that's now the cause of the downfall of everything upon him.”

“An' it was the hard fate for us, as well as for himself,” replied Sullivan, “little he thought, or little he cared, for what he made us suffer, an' for what he's makin' us suffer still, by the come-down that the prices have got.”

“Well, but he's sufferin' himself more than any of us,” replied Donnel; “however, that was prophesied too; it's read of in the ould Chronicles. 'An eagle will be sick,' says St. Columbkill, 'but the bed of the sick eagle is not a tree, but a rock; an' there, he must suffer till the curse of the Father* is removed from him; an' then he'll get well, an' fly over the world.'”

* This is--the Pope, in consequence of Bonaparte having
imprisoned him.

“Is that in the prophecy, Donnel?”

“It's St. Columbian's words I'm spakin'.”

“Throth, at any rate,” replied Sullivan, “I didn't care we had back the war prices again; aither that, or that the dear rents were let down to meet the poor prices we have now. This woeful saison, along wid the low prices and the high rents, houlds out a black and terrible look for the counthry, God help us!”

“Ay,” returned the Black Prophet, for it was he, “if you only knew it.”

“Why, was that, too, prophesied?” inquired Sullivan.

“Was it? No; but ax yourself is it. Isn't the Almighty in his wrath, this moment proclaimin' it through the heavens and the airth? Look about you, and say what is it you see that does not foretel famine--famine--famine! Doesn't the dark wet day, an' the rain, rain, rain, foretel it? Doesn't the rotten' crops, the unhealthy air, an' the green damp foretel it? Doesn't the sky without a sun, the heavy clouds, an' the angry fire of the West, foretel it? Isn't the airth a page of prophecy, an' the sky a page of prophecy, where every man may read of famine, pestilence, an' death? The airth is softened for the grave, an' in the black clouds of heaven you may see the death-hearses movin' slowly along--funeral afther funeral--funeral afther funeral--an' nothing to folly them but lamentation an' wo, by the widow an' orphan--the fatherless, the motherless, an' the childless--wo an' lamentation--lamentation an' wo.”

Donnel Dhu, like every prophecy man of his kind--a character in Ireland, by the way, that has nearly, if not altogether, disappeared--was provided with a set of prophetic declamations suited to particular occasions and circumstances, and these he recited in a voice of high and monotonous recitative, that caused them to fall with a very impressive effect upon the minds and feeling of his audience. In addition to this, the very nature of his subject rendered a figurative style and suitable language necessary, a circumstance which, aided by a natural flow of words, and a felicitious illustration of imagery--for which, indeed, all prophecy-men were remarkable--had something peculiarly fascinating and persuasive to the class of persons he was in the habit of addressing. The gifts of these men, besides, were exercised with such singular delight, that the constant repetition of their oracular exhibitions by degrees created an involuntary impression on themselves, that ultimately rose to a kind of wild and turbid enthusiasm, partaking at once of imposture and fanaticism. Many of them were, therefore, nearly as much the dupes of the delusions that proceeded from their own heated imaginations as the ignorant people who looked upon them as oracles; for we know that nothing at all events so much generates imposture as credulity.

“Indeed, Donnel,” replied Sullivan, “what you say is unfortunately too thrue. Everything we can look upon appears to have the mark of God's displeasure on it; but if we have death and sickness now, what'll become of us this time twelve months, when we'll feel this failure most?”

“I have said it,” replied the prophet; “an' if my tongue doesn't tell truth, the tongue that never tells a lie will.”

“And what tongue is that?” asked his companion.

“The tongue of the death-bell will tell it day afther day to every parish in the land. However, we know that death's before us, an' the grave, afther all, is our only consolation.”

“God help us,” exclaimed Sullivan, “if we hadn't betther and brighter consolation than the grave. Only for the hopes in our Divine Redeemer an' his mercy, it's little consolation the grave could give us. But indeed, Donnel, as you say, everything about us is enough to sink the heart within one--an' no hope at all of a change for the betther. However, God is good, and, if it's His will that we should suffer, it's our duty to submit to it.”

The prophet looked around him with a gloomy aspect, and, truth to say, the appearance of everything on which the eye could rest, was such as gave unquestionable indications of wide-spread calamity to the country.

The evening, which was now far advanced, had impressed on it a character of such dark and hopeless desolation as weighed down the heart with a feeling of cold and chilling gloom that was communicated by the dreary aspect of every thing around. The sky was obscured by a heavy canopy of low, dull clouds that had about them none of the grandeur of storm, but lay overhead charged with those wintry deluges which we feel to be so unnatural and alarming in autumn, whose bounty and beauty they equally disfigure and destroy. The whole summer had been sunless and wet--one, in fact, of ceaseless rain which fell, day after day, week after week, and month after month, until the sorrowful consciousness had arrived that any change for the better must now come too late, and that nothing was certain but the terrible union of famine, disease, and death which was to follow. The season, owing to the causes specified, was necessarily late, and such of the crops as were, ripe had a sickly and unthriving look, that told of comparative failure, while most of the fields which, in our autumns, would have been ripe and yellow, were now covered with a thin, backward crop, so unnaturally green that all hope of maturity was out of the question. Low meadows were in a state of inundation, and on alluvial soils the ravages of the floods Were visible in layers of mud and gravel that were deposited over many of the prostrate corn fields. The peat turf lay in oozy and neglected heaps, for there had not been sun enough to dry it sufficiently for use, so that the poor had want of fuel, and cold to feel, as well as want of food itself. Indeed, the appearance of the country, in consequence of this wetness in the firing, was singularly dreary and depressing. Owing to the difficulty with which it burned, or rather wasted away, without light or heat, the eye, in addition to the sombre hue which the absence of the sun cast over all things, was forced to dwell upon the long black masses of smoke which trailed slowly over the whole country, or hung, during the thick sweltering calms, in broad columns that gave to the face of nature an aspect strikingly dark and disastrous, when associated, as it was, with the destitution and suffering of the great body of the people. The general appearance of the crops was indeed deplorable. In some parts the grain was beaten down by the rain; in airier situations it lay cut but unsaved, and scattered over the fields, awaiting an occasional glance of feeble sunshine; and in other and richer soils, whole fields, deplorably lodged, were green with the destructive exuberance of a second growth. The season, though wet, was warm; and it is unnecessary to say that the luxuriance of all weeds and unprofitable production was rank and strong, while an unhealthy fermentation pervaded every thing that was destined for food. A brooding stillness, too, lay over all nature; cheerfulness had disappeared, even the groves and hedges were silent, for the very birds had ceased to sing, and the earth seemed as if it mourned for the approaching calamity, as well as for that which had been already felt. The whole country, in fact, was weltering and surging with the wet formed by the incessant overflow of rivers, while the falling cataracts, joined to a low monotonous hiss, or what the Scotch term _sugh_, poured their faint but dismal murmurs on the gloomy silence which otherwise prevailed around.

Such was the aspect of the evening in question: but as the men advanced, a new element of desolation soon became visible. The sun, ere he sank among the dark western clouds, shot out over this dim and miserable prospect a light so angry, yet so ghastly, that it gave to the whole earth a wild, alarming, and spectral hue, like that seen in some feverish dream. In this appearance there was great terror and sublimity, for as it fell on the black shifting clouds, the effect was made still more awful by the accidental resemblance which they bore to coffins, hearses, and funeral processions, as observed by the prophecy-man, all of which seemed to have been lit up against the deepening shades of evening by some gigantic death-light that superadded its fearful omens to the gloomy scenes on which it fell.

The sun, as he then appeared, might not inaptly be compared to some great prophet, who, clothed with the majesty and terror of I an angry God, was commissioned to launch! his denunciations against the iniquities of nations, and to reveal to them, as they lay under the shadow of his wrath, the terrible calamities with which he was about to visit their transgressions.

The two men now walked on in silence for some time, Donnel Dhu having not deemed it necessary to make any reply to the pious and becoming sentiments uttered by Sullivan.

At length the latter spoke.

“Barrin' what we all know, Donnel, an' that's the saison an' the sufferin' that's in it, is there no news stirrin' at all? Is it thrue that ould Dick o' the Grange is drawin' near to his last account?”

“Not so bad as that; but he's still complainin'. It's one day up and another day down wid' him--an' of coorse his laise of life can't be long now.”

“Well, well,” responded Sullivan, “it's not for us to pass judgment on our fellow-creatures; but by all accounts he'll have a hard reckonin'.”

“That's his own affair, you know,” said Donnel Dhu; “but his son, master Richard, or 'Young Dick,' as they call him, will be an improvement upon the ould stock.”

“As to that, some says ay, an' some says no; but I believe myself, that he has, like his father, both good and bad in him; for the ould man, if the maggot bit him, or that if he took the notion, would do one a good turn; an' if he took a likin' to you, he'd go any lin'th to sarve you; but, then, you were never sure of him--nor he didn't himself know this minute what he'd do the next.”

“That's thrue enough,” replied Donnel Dhu; “but lavin' him to shift for himself, I'm of opinion that you an' I are likely to get wet jackets before we're much oulder. Ha! Did you see that lightnin'? God presarve us! it was terrible--an'--ay, there it is--the thundher! God be about us, thundher at this hour is very fearful. I would give a thrifle to be in my own little cabin, an' indeed I'm afeard that I won't be worth the washin' when I get there, if I can go back sich a night as it's goin' to be.”

“The last few years, Donnel, has brought a grievous change,upon me and mine,” replied Sullivan. “The time was, an' it's not long since, when I could give you a comfortable welcome as well as a willin' one; however, thank God, it isn't come to sich a hard pass wid me yet that I haven't a roof an' a bit to ait to offer you; an' so to sich as it is you're heartily welcome. Home! oh, you mustn't talk of home this night. Blood, you know, is thicker than wather, an' if it was only on your wife Nolly's account, you should be welcome. Second an' third cousins by the mother's side we are, an' that's purty strong. Oh, no, don't talk of goin' home this night.”

“Well,” replied the other, “I'm thankful to you, Jerry, an' indeed as the night's comin' on so hard and stormy, I'll accept your kind offer; a mouthful of any thing will do me, an' a dry sate at your hearth till mornin'.”

“Unfortunately, as I said,” replied Sullivan, “it's but poor an' humble treatment I can give you; but if it was betther you should be jist as welcome to it, an' what more can I say?”

“What more can you say, indeed! I know your good heart, Jerry, as who doesn't? Dear me, how it's poorin' over there towards the south--ha, there it is again, that thundher! Well, thank goodness, we haven't far to go, at any rate, an' the shower hasn't come round this far yet. In the mean time let us step out an' thry to escape it if we can.”

“Let us cross the fields, then,” said Sullivan, “an' get up home by the Slang, an' then behind our garden: to be sure, the ground is in a sad plash, but then it will save a long twist round the road, an' as you say, we may escape the rain yet.”

Both accordingly struck off the highway, and took a short path across the fields, while at every step the water spurted up out of the spongy soil, so that they were soon wet nearly to their knees, so thoroughly saturated was the ground with the rain which had incessantly fallen. After toiling thro' plashy fields, they at length went up, as Sullivan had said, by an old unfrequented footpath, that ran behind his garden, the back of which consisted of a thick elder hedge, through which scarcely the heaviest rain could penetrate. At one end of this garden, through a small angle, forming a _cul de sac_, or point, where the hedge was joined by one of white thorn, ran the little obsolete pathway alluded to, and as another angle brought them at once upon the spot we are describing, it would so happen that if any one had been found there when they appeared, it would be impossible to leave it if they wished to do so, without directly meeting them, there being no other mode of egress from it except by the footpath in question.

In that sheltered nook, then, our travellers found a young man about two or three and twenty, holding the unresisting hand of a very beautiful and bashful-looking girl, not more than nineteen, between his. From their position, and the earnestness with which the young peasant addressed her, there could be but little doubt as to the subject matter of their conversation. If a bolt from the thunder which had been rolling a little back among the mountains, and which was still faintly heard in the distance, had fallen at the feet of the young persons in question, it could not have filled them with more alarm than the appearance of Sullivan and the prophet. The girl, who became pale and red by turns, hung her head, then covered her face with her hands; and after a short and ineffectual struggle, burst into tears, exclaiming--

“Oh, my God, it is my father!”

The youth, for he seemed scarcely to have reached maturity, after a hesitating glance at Sullivan, seemed at once to have determined the course of conduct he should pursue. His eye assumed a bold and resolute look--he held himself more erect--and, turning towards the girl, without removing his gaze from her father, he said in a loud and manly tone--

“Dear Mave, it is foolish to be frightened. What have you done that ought to make you aither ashamed or afeared? If there's blame anywhere, it's mine, not yours, and I'll bear it.”

Sullivan, on discovering this stolen interview--for such it was--felt precisely as a man would feel, who found himself unexpectedly within the dart of a rattlesnake, with but one chance of safety in his favor and a thousand against him. His whole frame literally shook with the deadly depth of his resentment; and in a voice which fully betrayed its vehemence, he replied--

“Blame! ay, shame an' blame--sin an' sorrow there is an' ought to rest upon her for this unnatural and cursed meetin'! Blame! surely, an' as I stand here to witness her shame, I tell her that there would not be a just God in Heaven, if she's not yet punished for holdin' this guilty discoorse with the son of the man that has her uncle's blood--my brother's blood--on his hand of murdher--”

[Illustration: PAGE 785-- “It's false,” replied the young fellow]

“It's false,” replied the young fellow, with kindling eye; “it's false, from your teeth to your marrow. I know my father's heart an' his thought--an' I say that whoever charges him with the murder of your brother, is a liar--a false and damnable li--”

He checked himself ere he closed the sentence.

“Jerry Sullivan,” said he, in an altered voice, “I ax your pardon for the words---it's but natural you should feel as you do; but if it was any other man than yourself that brought the charge of blood against my father, I would thramp upon him where he stands.”

“An' maybe murdher him, as my poor brother was murdhered. Dalton, I see the love of blood in your eye,” replied Sullivan, bitterly.

“Why,” replied the other, “you have no proof that the man was murdered at all. His body was never found; and no one can say what became of him. For all that any one knows to the contrary, he may be alive still.”

“Begone, sirra,” said Sullivan, in a burst of impetuous resentment which he could not restrain, “if I ever know you to open your lips to that daughter of mine--if the mane crature can be my daughter--I'll make it be the blackest deed but one that ever a Dalton did; and as for you--go in at wonst--I'll make you hear me by and by.”

Dalton looked at him once more with a kindling but a smiling eye.

“Speak what you like,” said he--“I'll curb myself. Only, if you wish your daughter to go in, you had better leave the way and let her pass.”

Mave--for such was her name--with trembling limbs, burning blushes and palpitating heart, then passed from the shady angle where they stood; but ere she did, one quick and lightning glance was bestowed upon her lover, which, brief though it was, he felt as a sufficient consolation for the enmity of her father.

The prophet had not yet spoken; nor indeed had time been given him to do so, had he been inclined. He looked on, however, with' surprise, which soon assumed the appearance, as well as the reality, of some malignant satisfaction which he could not conceal.

He eyed Dalton with a grin of peculiar bitterness.

“Well,” said he, “it's the general opinion that if any one knows or can tell what the future may bring about, I can; an', if my knowledge doesn't desave me, Dalton, I think, while you're before me, that I'm lookin' at a man that was never born to be drowned at any rate. I prophecy that, die when you may, you'll live to see your own funeral.”

“If you're wise,” replied the young man, “you'll not provoke me now Jerry Sullivan may say what he wishes--he's safe, an he knows why; but I warn you, Donnel Dhu, to take no liberty with me; I'll not bear it.

“Troth, I don't blame Jerry Sullivan,” rejoined the prophet. “Of coorse no man would wish to have a son-in-law hanged. It's in the prophecy that you'll go to the surgeons yet.”

“Did you foresee in your prophecies this mornin' that you'd get yourself well drubbed before night?” asked Dalton, bristling up.

“No,” said the other; “my prophecy seen no one able to do it.”

“You and your prophecy are liars, then,” retorted the other: “an' in the doom you're kind enough to give me, don't be too sure but you meant yourself. There's more of murdher an' the gallows in your face than there is in mine. That's all I'll say, Donnel. Anything else you'll get from me will be a blow; so take care of yourself.”

“Let him alone, Donnel,” said Sullivan; “it's not safe to meddle with one of his name. You don't know what harm he may do you.”

“I'm not afeard of him,” said the prophet, with a sneer; “he'll find himself a little mistaken, if he tries his hand. It won't be for me you'll hang, my lad.”

The words were scarcely uttered when a terrific blow on the eye, struck with the rapidity of lightning, shot him to the earth, where he lay for about half a minute, apparently insensible. He then got up, and after shaking his head, as if to rid himself of a sense of confusion and stupor, looked at Dalton for some time.

“Well,” said he, “it's all over now--but the truth is, the fault was my own. I provoked him too much, an' without any occasion. I'm sorry you struck me, Condy, for I was only jokin' all the time. I never had ill-will against you; an' in spite of what has happened, I haven't now.”

A feeling of generous regret, almost amounting to remorse, instantly touched Dalton's heart; he seized the hand of Donnel, and expressed his sorrow for the blow he had given him.

“My God,” he exclaimed, “why did I strike you? But sure no one could for a minute suppose that you weren't in earnest.”

“Well, well,” said the other, “let it be a warnin' to both of us; to me, in the first place, never to carry a joke too far; and to you, never to allow your passion to get the betther of you, afaird that you might give a blow in anger that you'd have cause to repent of all the days of your life. My eye and cheek is in a frightful state; but no matther, Condy, I forgive you, especially in the hope that you'll mark my advice.”

Dalton once more asked his pardon, and expressed his unqualified sorrow at what had occurred; after which he again shook hands with Dalton and departed.

Sullivan felt surprised at this rencontre, especially at the nature of its singular termination; he seemed, however, to fall into a meditative and gloomy mood, and observed when Dalton had gone--

“If I ever had any doubt, Donnel, that my poor brother owed his death to a Dalton, I haven't it now.”

“I don't blame you much for sayin' so,” replied Donnel. “I'm sorry myself for what has happened, and especially as you were present. I'm afeard, indeed', that a man's life would be but little in that boy's hands under a fit of passion. I provoked him too much, though.”

“I think so,” said Sullivan. “Indeed, to tell you the truth, I had as little notion that you wore jokin' as he had.”

“That's my drame out last night, at all events,” said Donnel.

“How is that?” asked Sullivan, as they approached the door.

“Why,” said he, “I dreamed that I was lookin' for a hammer at your house, an' I thought that you hadn't one to give me; but your daughter Mave came to me, and said, 'here's a hammer for you, Donnel, an' take care of it, for it belongs to Condy Dalton.' I thought I took it, an' the first thing I found myself doin' was drivin' a nail in what appeared to be my own coffin. The same dhrame would alarm me but that I know that dhrames goes by contrairies, as I've reason to think this will.”

“No man understands these things better than yourself, Donnel,” said Sullivan; “but, for my part, I think there's a dangerous kick in the boy that jist left us; and I'm much mistaken or the world will hear of it an' know it yet.”

“Well, well,” said Donnel Dhu, in a very Christian-like spirit, “I fear you're right, Jerry; but still let us hope for the best.”

And as he spoke, they entered the house.

CHAPTER III. -- A Family on the Decline--Omens.

Jerry Sullivan's house and place had about them all the marks and tokens of gradual decline. The thatch on the roof had begun to get black, and in some places was sinking into rotten ridges; the yard was untidy and dirty; the walls and hedges were broken and dismantled; and the gates were lying about, or swinging upon single hinges. The whole air of the premises was uncomfortable to the spectator, who could not avoid feeling that there existed in the owner either wilful neglect or unsuccessful struggle. The chimneys, from which the thatch had sank down, stood up with the incrustations of lime that had been trowelled round their bases, projecting uselessly out from them; some of the quoins had fallen from the gable; the plaster came off the walls in several places, and the whitewash was sadly discolored.

Inside, the aspect of everything was fully as bad, if not worse. Tables and chairs, and the general furniture of the house, had all that character of actual cleanliness and apparent want of care which poverty superinduces upon the most strenuous efforts of industry. The floor was beginning to break up into holes; tables and chairs were crazy; the dresser, though clean, had a cold, hungry, unfurnished look; and, what was unquestionably the worst symptom of all, the inside of the chimney brace, where formerly the sides and flitches of deep, fat bacon, grey with salt, were arrayed in goodly rows, now presented nothing but the bare and dust-covered hooks, from which they had depended in happier times. About a dozen of herrings hung at one side of a worn salt-box, and at the other a string of onions that was nearly Stripped, both constituting the principal kitchen, varied, perhaps, with a little buttermilk,--which Sullivan's family were then able to afford themselves with their potatoes.

We cannot close our description here, however; for sorry we are to say, that the severe traces of poverty were as visible upon the inmates themselves as upon the house and its furniture. Sullivan's family consisted of his eldest daughter, aged nineteen, two growing boys, the eldest about sixteen, and several younger children besides. These last were actually ragged--all of them were scantily and poorly clothed; and if any additional proof were wanting that poverty, in one of its most trying shapes, had come among them, it was to be found in their pale, emaciated features, and in that languid look of care and depression, which any diminution in the natural quantity of food for any length of time uniformly impresses upon the countenance. In fact, the whole group had a sickly and wo-worn appearance, as was evident from the unnatural dejection of the young, who, instead of exhibiting the cheerfulness and animation of youth, now moped about without gayety, sat brooding in corners, or struggled for a warm place nearest to the dull and cheerless fire.

“The day was, Donnel,” said Sullivan, whilst he pointed, with a sigh, to the unfurnished chimney, “when we could give you--as I said awhile agone--a betther welcome--in one sense--I mane betther tratement--than we can give you now; but you know the times that is in it, an' you know the down-come we have got, an' that the whole country has got--so you must only take the will for the deed now--to such as we have you're heartily welcome. Get us some dinner, Bridget,” he added, turning to his wife; “but, first and foremost, bring that girl into the room here till she hears what I have to say to her; and, Donnel, as you wor a witness to the disgraceful sight we seen a while agone, come in an' hear, too, what I'm goin' to say to her. I'll have no black thraisin in my own family against my own blood, an' against the blood of my loving brother, that was so traicherously shed by that boy's father.”

The persons he addressed immediately passed into the cold, damp room as he spoke--Mave, the cause of all this anxiety, evidently in such a state of excitement as was pitiable. Her mother, who, as well as every other member of the family, had been ignorant of this extraordinary attachment, seemed perfectly bewildered by the language of her husband, at whom, as at her daughter, she looked with a face on which might be read equal amazement and alarm.

Mave Sullivan was a young creature, shaped with extraordinary symmetry, and possessed of great natural grace. Her stature was tall, and all her motions breathed; unstudied ease and harmony. In color, her long, abundant hair was beautifully fair--precisely of that delightful shade which generally accompanies a pale but exquisitely clear and almost transparent complexion. Her face was oblong, and her features so replete with an expression of innocence and youth, as left on the beholder a conviction that she breathed of utter guilelessness and angelic purity itself. This was principally felt in the bewitching charm of her smile, which was irresistible, and might turn the heart of a demon into love. All her motions were light and elastic, and her whole figure, though not completely developed, was sufficiently rounded by the fulness of health and youth to give promise of a rich and luxurious maturity. On this occasion she became deadly pale, but as she was one of those whose beauty only assumes a new phase of attraction at every change, her paleness now made her appear, if possible, an object of greater interest.

“In God's name, Jerry,” asked her mother, looking from father to daughter in a state of much distress, “what is wrong, or what has happened to put you in such a condition? I see by the anger in your eye an' the whiteness of your cheeks, barrin' the little red spot in the middle, that something out o' the way all out has happened to vex you.”

“You may well say so, Bridget,” he replied; “but when I tell you that I came upon that undutiful daughter of ours coortin' wid the son of the man that murdhered her uncle--my only brother--you won't be surprised at the state you see me in--coortin' wid a fellow that Dan M'Gowan here knows will be hanged yet, for he's jist afther tellin' him so.”

“You're ravin', Jerry,” exclaimed his wife, who appeared to feel the matter as incredible; “you don't mane to tell me that she'd spake to, or know, or make any freedoms whatsomever wid young Condy Dalton, the son of her uncle's murdherer? Hut, no, Jerry, don't say that, at all events--any disgrace but that--death, the grave--or--or anything--but sich an unnatural curse as that would be.”

“I found them together behind the garden not many minutes ago,” replied Sullivan. “Donnel here seen them as well as I did--deny it she can't; an' now let her say what brought her there to meet him, or rather what brought him all the way to meet her? Answer me that, you disgrace to the name--answer me at wanst!”

The poor girl trembled and became so weak as to be scarcely able to stand: in fact, she durst not raise her eye to meet that of either parent, but stood condemned and incapable of utterance.

The night had now nearly set in, and one of her little sisters entered with a rush candle in her hand, the light of which, as it fell dimly and feebly on the group, gave to the proceedings a wild and impressive appearance. The prophecy-man, with his dark, stern look, peculiar nose, and black raven hair that fell thickly over his shoulders, contrasted strongly with the fair, artless countenance and beautiful figure of the girl who stood beside him, whilst over opposite them were Sullivan himself and his wife, their faces pale with sorrow, anxiety, and indignation.

“Give me the candle,” proceeded her father; “hand it to me, child, and leave the room; then,” he proceeded, holding it up to a great-coat of frieze which hung against the wall--“there's his coat--there's my lovin' brother's coat; look upon it now, an' ax yourself what do you desarve for meeting against our will an' consint the son of him that has the murdher of the man that owned it on his hands an' on his heart? What do you desarve, I say?”

The girl spoke not, but the black prophet, struck by the words and the unexpected appearance of the murdered man's coat, started; in a moment, however, he composed himself, and calmly turned his eyes upon Sullivan, who proceeded to address his daughter.

“You have nothing to say, then? You're guilty, an' of coorse you have no excuse to make; however, I'll soon put an end to all this. Bring me a prayerbook. If your book oath can bind you down against ever----”

He could proceed no further. On uttering the last words, his daughter tottered, and would have fallen to the ground, had not Donnel Dhu caught her in his arms. She had, in fact, become almost insensible from excess of shame and over excitement, and, as Donnel carried her towards a bed that was in the corner of the room, her head lay over against his face.

It is unnecessary to say that Sullivan's indignation was immediately lost in alarm. On bringing the candle near her, the first thing they observed were streaks of blood upon Donnel Dhu's face, that gave to it, in connection with the mark of the blow he had received, a frightful and hideous expression.

“What is this?” exclaimed her mother, seizing the candle and holding it to the beautiful features of her trembling daughter, which were now also dabbled with blood. “In God's name, what ails my child? O Mave, Mave, my darlin', what's come over you? Blessed mother of marcy, what blood is this? _Achora, machree_, Mave, spake to! me--to the mother that 'ud go distracted, an' that will, too, if anything's wrong wid you. It was cruel in you, Jerry, to spake to; her so harsh as you did, an' to take her to task before a sthranger in such a cuttin' manner. Saiver of Airth, Mave, darlin', won't you spake to me, to your own mother?”'

“Maybe I did spake to her too severely,” said the father, now relenting, “an' if I did, may God forgive me; for sure you know, Bridget, I wouldn't injure a hair of my darlin's head. But this blood! this blood! oh, where did it come from?”

Her weakness, however, proved of but short duration, and their apprehension was soon calmed. Mave looked around her rather wildly, and no sooner had her eyes rested on Donnel Dhu than she shrieked aloud, and turning her face away from him, with something akin to fear and horror, she flung herself into her mother's arms, exclaiming, as she hid her face in her bosom: “Oh save me from that man; don't let! him near me; don't let him touch me. I can't tell why, but I'm deadly afraid of him. What blood is that upon his face? Father, stand between us!”

“Foolish girl!” exclaimed her father, “you don't know what you're sayin'. Of coorse, Donnel, you'll not heed her words for, indeed, she hasn't come to herself yet. But, in God's name, where did this blood come from that's upon you and her?”

“You can't suppose, Jerry,” said Donnel, “that the poor girl's words would make me take any notice of them. She has been too much frightened, and won't know, maybe in a few minutes, that she spoke them at all.”

“That's thrue,” said her mother; “but with regard to the blood----”

She was about to proceed, when Mave rose up, and requested to be taken out of the room.

“Bring me to the kitchen,” said she, “I'm afraid; and see this blood, mother.”

Precisely as she spoke, a few drops of blood fell from her nose, which, of course, accounted for its appearance on Donnel's face, and probably for her terror also at his repulsive aspect.

“What makes you afeard of poor Donnel, asthore?” asked her mother--“a man that wouldn't injure a hair of your head, nor of one belongin' to you, an' never did.”

“Why, when my father,” she returned, “spoke about the coat there, an' just as Donnel started, I looked at it, an' seen it movin', I don't know why, but I got afeard of him.”

Sullivan held up the candle mechanically, as she spoke, towards the coat, upon which they all naturally gazed; but, whether from its dim flickering light, or the force of imagination, cannot be determined, one thing was certain, the coat appeared actually to move again, as if disturbed by some invisible hand. Again, also, the prophet involuntary started, but only for a single moment.

“Tut,” said he, “it's merely the unsteady light of the candle; show it here.”

He seized the rushlight from Sullivan, and approaching the coat, held it so close to it, that had there been the slightest possible motion, it could not have escaped their observation.

“Now,” he added, “you see whether it moves or not; but, indeed, the poor girl is so frightened by the great scowldin' she got, that I don't wondher at the way she's in.”

Mrs. Sullivan kept still gazing at the coat, in a state of terror almost equal to that of her daughter.

“Well,” said she, “I've often heard it said that one is sometimes to disbelieve their own eyes; an' only that I known the thing couldn't happen, I would swear on the althar that I seen it movin'.”

“I thought so myself, too,” observed Sullivan, who also seemed to have been a good deal perplexed and awed by the impression; “but of coorse I agree wid Donnel, that it was the unsteady light of the rush that made us think so; howaniver, it doesn't matther now; move or no move, it won't bring him that owned it back to us, so God rest him!--and now, Bridget, thry an' get us some-thin' to ait.”

“Before the girl leaves the room,” said the prophecy man, “let me spake what I think an' what I know. I've lost many a weary day an' night in studyin' the further, an' in lookin' into what's to come. I must spake, then, what I think an' what I know, regardin' her. I must; for when the feelin' is on me, I can't keep the prophecy back.”

“Oh! let me go, mother,” exclaimed the alarmed girl; “let me go; I can't bear to look at him.”

“One minute, acushla, till you hear what he has to say to you,” and she held her back, with a kind of authoritative violence, as Mave attempted to leave the room.

“Don't be alarmed my purty creature,” spoke the prophet; “don't be alarmed at what I'm goin' to say to you, an' about you, for you needn't. I see great good fortune before you. I see a grand an' handsome husband at your side, and a fine house to live in. I see stairs, an' carpets, an' horses, an' hounds, an' yourself, with jewels in your white little ears, an' silks, an' satins on your purty figure. That's a wakin' dhrame I had, an' you may all mark my words, if it doesn't come out thrue; it's on the leaf, an' the leaf was open to me. Grandeur an' wealth is before her, for her beauty an' her! goodness will bring it all about, an' so I read it.”

“An' what about the husband himself?” asked the mother, whose affections caused! her to feel a strong interest in anything that might concern the future interest of her daughter; “can you tell us nothing about his appearance, that we might give a guess at him?”

“No,” replied M'Gowan, for such was the prophet's name, “not to you; to none but herself can I give the marks an' tokens that will enable her to know the man that is to be her husband when she sees him; and to herself, in the mornin', I will, before I go that is if she'll allow me--for what is written in the dark book ought to be read and expounded. Her beauty an' her goodness will do it all!”

The man's words were uttered m a voice so replete with those soft and insinuating tones that so powerfully operate upon the female heart; they breathed, too such an earnest spirit of good will, joined to an evident admiration of the beauty and goodness he alluded to, that the innocent girl, not-withstanding her previous aversion, felt something like gratification at what he said, not on account ol the prospects held out to her, but because of the singular charm and affectionate spirit which breathed in his voice; or, might it not have been that delicate influence of successful flattery which so gently pervades the heart of woman, and soothes that vanity which unconsciously lurks in the very purest and most innocent of the sex? So far from being flattered by his predictions, she experienced a strong sensation of disappointment, because she knew where her affections at that moment rested, and felt persuaded that if she were destined to enjoy the grandeur shadowed out for her, it never could be with him whom she then loved. Notwithstanding all this, she felt her repugnance against the prophet strongly counterbalanced by the strange influence he began to exercise over her; and with this impression she and they passed to the kitchen, where in a few minutes she was engaged in preparing food for him, with a degree of good feeling that surprised herself.

There is scarcely anything so painful to hearts naturally generous, like those of the Sullivans, as the contest between the shame and exposure of the conscious poverty on the one hand, and the anxiety to indulge in a hospitable spirit on the other. Nobody unacquainted with Ireland could properly understand the distress of mind which this conflict almost uniformly produces. On the present occasion it was deeply felt by this respectable but declining family, and Mave, the ingenuous and kind-hearted girl, felt much of her unaccountable horror of this man removed by its painful exercise. Still her aversion was not wholly overcome, although much diminished; for, ever as she looked at his swollen and disfigured face, and thought of the mysterious motions of the murdered man's coat, she could not avoid turning away her eyes, and wishing that she had not seen him that evening. The scanty meal was at length over; a meal on which many a young eye dwelt with those yearning looks that take their character from the hungry and wolfish spirit which marks the existence of a “hard year,” as it is called in our unfortunate country, and which, to a benevolent heart, forms such a sorrowful subject for contemplation. Poor Bridget Sullivan did all in her power to prevent this evident longing from being observed by M'Gowan, by looking significantly, shaking' her head, and knitting her brows, at the children; and when these failed she had recourse to threatening attitudes, and all kinds of violent gestures: and on these proving also unsuccessful, she was absolutely forced to speak aloud--

“Come, childhre, start out now, an' play yourselves; be off, I say, an' don't stand ready to jump down the daicent man's throat wid every bit he aits.”

She then drove them abroad somewhere, but as the rain fell heavily the poor creatures were again forced to return, and resume their pitiable watch until the two men had finished their scanty repast.

Seated around the dull and uncomfortable fire, the whole family now forgot the hunger and care for a time, in the wild legends with which M'Gowan entertained them, until the hour of rest.

“We haven't the best bed in the world,” observed Sullivan, “nor the best bed-clothes aither, but, as I said before, I wish, for all our sakes, they were betther. You must take your chance with these two slips o' boys to-night as well as you can. If you wish to tumble in now you may; or, may be you'd join us in our prayers. We sthrive, God! help us, to say a Rosary every night; for, afther all, there's nothin' like puttin' oneself! undher the holy protection of the Almighty, blessed be His name! Indeed, this sickness that's goin' is so rife and dangerous that it's good to sthrive to be prepared, as it is indeed, whatever comes, whether hunger or plenty, sickness or health; an' may God keep us prepared always!”

M'Gowan seemed for a moment at a loss, but almost immediately said in reply--

“You are right, Jerry, but as for me, I say whatever prayers I do say, always by myself; for I can then get my mind fixed upon them betther. I'll just turn into bed, then, for troth I feel a little stiff and tired; so you must only let me have my own way to-night. To-morrow night I'll pray double.” He then withdrew to his appointed place of rest, where, after having partially undressed himself, he lay down, and for some time could hear no other sound than the solemn voices of this struggling and afflicted little fold, as they united in offering up their pious and simple act of worship to that Great Being, in whose providential care they felt such humble and confiding trust.

When their devotions were concluded, they quietly, and in a spirit at once of resignation and melancholy, repaired to their respective sleeping places, with the exception of old Sullivan himself, who, after some hesitation, took down the great coat already so markedly alluded to--and exclaiming, partly to those within hearing--

“I don't know--but still there can't be any harm in it; sure it's betther that it should be doin' some good than hangin' up there idle, against the wall, such a night as this. Here, Dan, for the first time since I put it up wid my own hands, except to shake the dust off of it, I'm goin' to turn this big coat to some use. There,” he added, spreading it over them; “let it help to keep you warm to-night--for God knows, you want it, you an' them poor gorsoons. Your coverin' is but light, an' you may hear the downpowrin' of rain that's in it; an' the wind, too, is risin' fast, every minute--gettin' so strong, indeed, that I doubt it 'ill be a storm before it stops; an' Dan, if it 'udn't be too much, may be you'd not object to offer up one pather an' avy for the poor sowl of him that owned it, an' that was brought to his account so suddenly and so terribly. There,” he added, fixing it upon them; “it helps to keep you warm at any rate; an' it's surely betther to have it so employed than hangin' idle, as I said, against the wall.”

M'Gowan immediately sat up in the bed, and putting down his hands, removed the coat.

“We don't want it at all,” he replied; “take it away, Jerry--do, for heaven's sake. The night's not at all so cowld as you think, an' we'll keep one another warm enough wid-out it, never fear.”

“Troth you do want it,” said Sullivan; “for fareer gair, it's the light coverin' that's over you an' them, poor boys. Heighho, Dan, see what innocence is--poor things, they're sound already--an' may God pity them an' provide for them, or enable me to do it!” And as he looked down upon the sleeping lads, the tears came so abundantly to his eyes, that he was forced to wipe them away. “Keep the coat, Dan,” he added; “you do want it.”

“No,” replied the other. “The truth is, I couldn't sleep under it. I'm very timersome, an' a little thing frightens me.”

“Oh,” said Sullivan, “I didn't think of that: in troth, if you're timersome, it's more than the world b'lieves of you. Well, well--I'll hang it up again; so good night, an' a sound sleep to you, an' to every man that has a free conscience in the sight of God!”

No response was given to this prayer, and his words were followed by a deep and solemn silence, that was only broken occasionally by the heavy pattering of the descending rain, and the fitful gusts of the blast, as they rushed against the house, and sung wildly among the few trees by which it and the garden were enclosed.

Every one knows that a night of wind and storm, if not rising actually to a tempest or hurricane, is precisely that on which sleep is with its deepest influence upon men. Sullivan's family, on that which we are describing, were a proof of this; at least until about the hour of three o'clock, when they were startled by a cry for help, so loud and frightful, that in a moment he and the boys huddled on their dress, and hurried to the bed in which the prophet lay. In a minute or two they got a candle lit; and truly the appearance of the man was calculated to drive fear and alarm into their hearts. They found him sitting in the bed, with his eyes so wild and staring that they seemed straining out of their sockets. His hair was erect, and his mouth half open, and drawn back; while the perspiration poured from him in torrents. His hands were spread, and held up, with their palms outwards, as if in the act of pushing something back that seemed to approach him. “Help,” he shouted, “he is comin' on me--he will have me powerless in a minute. He is gaspin' now, as he--Stay back, stay back--here--here, help; it's the murdhered man--he's upon me. Oh!--Oh, God! he's comin' nearer and nearer. Help me--save me!”

Sullivan on holding the candle to his face, perceived that he was still asleep; and suspecting the nature of his dream, he awoke him at once. On seeing a portion of the family about him, he started again, and looked for a moment so completely aghast that he resembled horror personified.

“Who--what--what are you? Oh,” he exclaimed, recovering, and striving to compose himself, “ha--Good God! what a frightful drame I had. I thought I was murdherin' a man; murdherin' the”--he paused, and stared wildly about him.

“Murdherin' who?” asked Jerry.

“Murdherin'! eh--ha--why, who talks about murdherin'?”

“Compose yourself,” added Sullivan; “you did; but you're frightened. You say you thought you were murdherin' some one; who was it?”

“Yes, yesr” he replied; “it was myself. I thought the murdhered man was--I mean, that the man was murdherin' myself.” And he looked with a terrible shudder of fear towards the great coat.

“Hut,” said Sullivan, “it was only a drame; compose yourself; why should you be alarmed?--your hand is free of it. So, as I said, compose yourself; put your trust in God, an' recommend yourself to his care.”

“It was a terrible drame,” said the other, once more shuddering; “but then it was a drame. Good God; yes! However, I ax pardon for disturbin' you all, an' breaking in upon your sleep. Go to bed now; I'm well enough; only jist set that bit of candle by the bed-side for awhile, till I recover, for I did get a fearful fright.”

He then laid himself down once more, and having wiped the perspiration from his forehead, which was now cadaverous, he bade them good night, and again endeavored to compose himself to rest. In this he eventually succeeded, the candle burning itself out; and in about three-quarters of an hour the whole family were once more wrapped in sound and uninterrupted repose.

The next morning the Sullivan family rose to witness another weary and dismal day of incessant rain, and to partake of a breakfast of thin stirabout, made and served up with that woful ingenuity, which necessity, the mother of invention in periods of scarcity, as well as in matters of a different character, had made known to the benevolent hearted wife of Jerry Sullivan. That is to say, the victuals were made so unsubstantially thin, that in order to impose, if possible, on the appetite, it was deemed necessary to deceive the eye by turning the plates and dishes round and round several times, while the viands were hot, so as by spreading them over a larger surface, to give the appearance of a greater quantity. It is, heaven knows, a melancholy cheat, but one with which the periodical famines of our unhappy country have made our people too well acquainted. Previous, however, to breakfast, the prophet had a private interview with Mave, or the _Gra Gal_, as she was generally termed to denote her beauty and extraordinary power of conciliating affection; _Gra Gal_ signifying the fair love, or to give the more comprehensive meaning which it implied, the fair-haired beauty whom all love, or who wins all love. This interview lasted, at least, a quarter of an hour, or it might be twenty minutes, but as the object of it did not then transpire, we can only explain the appearances which followed it, so far at least, as the parties themselves were concerned. The _Gra Gal_, as we shall occasionally call her, seemed pleased, if not absolutely gratified, by the conversation that passed between them. Her eye was elated, and she moved about like one who appeared to have been relieved from some reflection that had embarrassed and depressed her; still it might have been observed that this sense of relief had nothing in it directly affecting the person of the prophet himself, on whom her eyes fell from time to time with a glance that changed its whole expression of satisfaction to one of pain and dislike. On his part there also appeared a calm sedate feeling of satisfaction, under which, however, an eye better acquainted with human nature might easily detect a triumph. He looked, to those who could properly understand him, precisely as an able diplomatist would who had succeeded in gaining a point.

When breakfast was over, and previous to his departure, he brought Jerry Sullivan and his wife out to the barn, and in a tone and manner of much mystery, assuming at the same time that figurative and inflated style so peculiar to him, and also to his rival the Senachie, he thus addressed them--

“Listen,” said he, “listen, Jerry Sullivan, and Bridget, his wife; a child was born, and a page was written--the moon saw it, and the stars saw it; but the sun did not, for he is dark to fate an' sees nothing but the face of nature. Do you understand that, Jerry Sullivan, an' you Bridget, his wife?”

“Well, troth we can't say we do yet, at all events,” they replied; “but how could we, ye know, if it's regardin' prophecy you're spakin'.”

“Undherstand it!” he replied, contemptuously, “you undherstand it!--no nor Father Philemy Corcoran himself couldn't undherstand it, barrin' he fasted and prayed, and refrained from liquor, for that's the way to get the ray o' knowledge; at laist it's, the way I got it first--however, let that pass. As I was sayin' a child was born and a page was written--and an angel from heaven was sent to Nebbychodanazor, the prophet, who was commanded to write. What will I write? says Nebbychodanazor, the prophet. Write down the fate of a faymale child, by name Mave Sullivan, daughter to Jerry Sullivan and his wife Bridget, of Aughnmurrin. Amin, says the prophet; fate is fate, what's before is not behind, neither is what's behind before, and every thing will come to pass that's to happen. Amin, agin, says the prophet, an' what am I to write? Grandeur an' wealth--up stairs and down stairs--silks-an' satins--an inside car--bracelets, earrings, and Spanish boots, made of Morroccy leather, tanned at Cordovan. Amin, agin, says Nebbychodanazor, the prophet; this is not that, neither is that the other, but every is everything--naither can something be nothing, nor nothing something, to the end of time; and time itself is but cousin jarmin to eternity--as is recorded in the great book of fate, fortune and fatality. Write again, says the angel. What am I to write? At the name of Mabel Sullivan place along wid all the rest, two great paragons of a woman's life, Marriage and Prosperity--write marriage happy, and prosperity numerous--and so the child's born, an' the page written--beauty and goodness, a happy father, and a proud mother--both made wealthy through her means.”

“And so,” he proceeded, dropping the recitative, and resuming his natural voice--

“Be kind and indulgent to your daughter, for she'll yet live to make all your fortunes. Take care of her and yourself till I sees yez again.”

And without adding another word he departed.

CHAPTER IV. -- A Dance, and Double Discovery.

The dance to which Sarah M'Gowan went after the conflict with her step-mother, was but a miserable specimen of what a dance usually is in Ireland. On that occasion, there were but comparatively few assembled; and these few, as may be guessed, consisted chiefly of those gay and frolicsome spirits whom no pressure of distress, nor anything short of sickness or death, could sober down into seriousness. The meeting, in fact, exhibited a painful union of mirth and melancholy. The season brought with it none of that relief to the peasantry which usually makes autumn so welcome. On the contrary, the failure of the potato crop, especially in its quality, as well as that in the grain generally, was not only the cause of hunger and distress, but also of the sickness which prevailed. The poor were forced, as they too often are, to dig their potatoes before they were fit for food; and the consequences were disastrous to themselves in every sense. Sickness soon began to appear; but then it was supposed that as soon as the new grain came in, relief would follow. In this expectation, however, they were, alas! most wofully disappointed. The wetness of the summer and autumn had soured and fermented the grain so lamentably, that the use of it transformed the sickness occasioned by the unripe and bad potatoes into a terrible and desolating epidemic. At the period we are treating of, this awful scourge had just set in, and was beginning to carry death and misery in all their horrors throughout the country. It was no wonder, then, that, at the dance we are describing, there was an almost complete absence of that cheerful and light-hearted enjoyment which is, or at least which was, to be found at such meetings. It was, besides, owing to the severity of the evening, but thinly attended. Such a family had two or three members of it sick; another had buried a fine young woman; a third, an only son; a fourth, had lost the father, and the fifth, the mother of a large family. In fact, the conversation on this occasion was rather a catalogue of calamity and death, than that hearty ebullition of animal spirits which throws its laughing and festive spirits into such assemblies. Two there were, however, who, despite of the gloom which darkened both the dance and the day, contrived to sustain our national reputation for gayety and mirth. One of these was our friend, Sarah, or, as she was better known, Sally M'Gowan, and the other a young fellow named Charley Hanlon, who acted as a kind of gardener and steward to Dick o' the Grange. This young fellow possessed great cheerfulness, and such an everlasting fund of mirth and jocularity, as made him the life and soul of every dance, wake, and merry-meeting in the parish. He was quite a Lothario in his sphere--a lady-killer--and so general an admirer of the sex, that he invariably made I love to every pretty girl he met, or could lure into conversation. The usual consequences followed. Nobody was such a favorite with the sex in general, who were ready to tear each other's caps about him, as they sometimes actually did; and indeed this is not at all to be wondered at. The fellow was one of the most open, hardy liars that ever lived. Of shame he had heard; but of what it meant, no earthly eloquence could give him the slightest perception; and we need scarcely add, that his assurance was boundless, as were his powers of flattery. It is unnecessary to say, then, that a man so admirably calculated to succeed with the sex, was properly appreciated by them, and that his falsehood, flattery, and assurance were virtues which enshrined the vagabond in their hearts. In short, he had got the character of being a rake; and he was necessarily obliged to suffer the agreeable penalty of their admiration and favor in consequence. The fellow besides, was by no means ill-looking, nor ill-made, but just had enough of that kind of face and figure which no one can readily either find fault with or praise.

This gallant and Sally M'Gowan, were in fact, the life of the meeting; and Sally, besides, had the reputation of being a great favorite with him--a circumstance which considerably diminished her popularity with her own sex. She herself felt towards him that kind of wild, indomitable affection, which is as vehement as it is unregulated in such minds as hers. For instance, she made no secret of her attachment to him, but on the contrary, gloried in it, even to her father, who, on this subject, could exercise no restraint whatsoever over her. It is not our intention to entertain our readers with the history of the occurrences which took place at the dance, as they are, in fact, not worth recording. Hanlon, at its close, prepared to see Sally home, as is usual.

“You may come with me near home,” she replied; “but I'm not goin' home to-night.”

“Why, where the dickens are you goin' then?” he asked.

“To Barny Gorrnly's wake; there 'ill be lots of fun there, too,” she replied. “But come--you can come wid me as far as the turn-up to the house; for I won't go in, nor go home neither, till afther the berril, tomorrow.”

“Do you know,” said he, rather gravely, “the Grey Stone that's at the mouth of the Black Glen?”

“I ought,” said she; “sure that's where the carman was found murdhered.”

“The same,” added Hanlon. “Well, I must go that far to-night,” said he.

“And that's jist where I turn off to the Gormly's.”

“So far, then, we'll be together,” he replied.

“But why that far only, Charley--eh?”

“That's what you could never guess,” said he, “and very few else aither; but go I must, an' go I will. At all events, I'll be company for you in passin' it. Are you never afeard at night, as you go near it?”

“Divil a taste,” she replied; “what 'ud I be afeard of? my father laughs at sich things; although,” she added, musing, “I think he's sometimes timorous for all that. But I know he's often out at all hours, and he says he doesn't care about ghosts--I know I don't.”

The conversation now flagged a little, and Hanlon, who had been all the preceding part of the evening full of mirth and levity, could scarcely force himself to reply to her observations, or sustain any part in the dialogue.

“Why, what the sorra's comin' over you?” she asked, as they began to enter into the shadow of the hill at whose foot her father's cabin stood, and which here, for about two hundred yards, fell across the road. “It is gettin' afeard you are?”

“No,” he replied; “but I was given to undherstand last night, that if I'd come this night to the Grey Stone, I'd find out a saicret that I'd give a great deal to know.”

“Very well,” she replied, we'll see that; an' now, raise your spirits. Here we're in the moonlight, thank goodness, such as it is. Dear me, thin, but it's an awful night, and the wind's risin'; and listen to the flood, how it roars in the glen below, like a thousand bulls!”

“It is,” he replied; “but hould your tongue now for a little, and as you're here stop wid me for a while, although I don't see how I'm likely to come by much knowledge in sich a place as this.”

They now approached the Grey Stone, and as they did the moon came out a little from her dark shrine of clouds, but merely with that dim and feeble light which was calculated to add ghastliness and horror to the wildness and desolation of the place.

Sally could now observe that her companion was exceedingly pale and agitated, his voice, as he spoke, became disturbed and infirm; and as he laid his hand upon the Grey Stone he immediately withdrew it, and taking off his hat he blessed himself, and muttered a short prayer with an earnestness and solemnity for which she could not account. Having concluded it, both stood in silence for a short time, he awaiting the promised information--for which on this occasion he appeared likely to wait in vain;--and she without any particular purpose beyond her natural curiosity to watch and know the event.

The place at that moment was, indeed, a lonely one, and it was by no means surprising that, apart from the occurrence of two murders, one on, and the other near, the spot where they stood, the neighboring peasantry should feel great reluctance in passing it at night. The light of the moon was just sufficient to expose the natural wildness of the adjacent scenery. The glen itself lay in the shadow of the hill, and seemed to the eye so dark that nothing but the huge outlines of the projecting crags, whose shapes appeared in the indistinctness like gigantic spectres, could been seen; while all around, and where the pale light of! the moon fell, nothing was visible but the muddy gleams of the yellow flood as it rushed, with its hoarse and incessant roar, through a flat country on whose features the storm and the hour had impressed a character of gloom, and the most dismal desolation. Nay, the still appearance of the Grey Stone, or rock, at which they stood, had, when contrasted with the moving elements about them, and associated with the murder committed at its very foot, a solemn appearance that was of itself calculated to fill the mind with awe and terror. Hanlon felt this, as, indeed, his whole manner indicated.

“Well,” said his companion, alluding to the short prayer he had just concluded, “I didn't expect to see you at your prayers like a voteen this night at any rate. Is it fear that makes you so pious upon our hands? Troth, I doubt there's a white feather,--a cowardly dhrop--in you, still an' all.”

“If you can be one minute serious, Sally, do, I beg of you. I am very much disturbed, I acknowledge, an' so would you, mabe, if you knew as much as I do.”

“You're the color of death,” she replied putting her fingers upon his cheek; “--an, my God! is it paspiration I feel such a night as this? I declare to goodness it is. Give me the white pocket-handkerchy that you say Peggy Murray gave you. Where is it?” she proceeded, taking it out of his pocket. “Ah, ay, I have it; stoop a little; take care of your hat; here now,” and while speaking she wiped the cold perspiration from his forehead. “Is this the one she made you a present of, an' put the letthers on?”

“It is,” he replied, “the very same--but she didn't make me a present of it, she only hemmed it for me.”

“That's a lie of you,” she replied, fiercely; “she bought it for you out of her own pocket. I know that much. She tould Kate Duffy so herself, and boasted of it: but wait.”

“Well,” replied Hanlon, anxious to keep down the gust of jealousy which he saw rising, “and if she did, how could I prevent her?”

“What letthers did she put on it?”

“P. and an M.,” he replied, “the two first letthers of my name.”

“That's another lie,” she exclaimed; “they're not the two first letthers of your name, but of her own; there's no M in Hanlon. At any rate, unless you give the same handkerchy to me, I'll make it be a black business to her.”

“Keep it, keep it, wid all my heart,” he replied, glad to get rid of a topic which at that moment came on him so powerfully and unseasonably. “Do what you like wid it.”

“You say so willingly, now--do you?”

“To be sure I do; an' you may tell the whole world that I said so, if you like.”

“P. M.--oh, ay, that's for Peggy Murray--maybe the letthers I saw on the ould tobaccy-box I found in the hole of the wall to-day were for Peggy Murray. Ha! ha! ha! Oh, may be I won't have a brag over her!”

“What letthers?” asked Hanlon eagerly; “a tobaccy-box, did you say?”

“Ay did I--a tobaccy-box. I found it in a hole in the wall in our house to-day; it tumbled out while I was gettin' some cobwebs to stop a bleedin'.”

“Was it a good one?” asked Hanlon, with apparent carelessness, “could one use it?”

“Hardly; but no, it's all rusty, an' has but one hinge.”

“But one hinge!” repeated the other, who was almost breathless with anxiety; “an' the letthers--what's this you say they wor?”

“The very same that's on your handkerchy,” she replied--“a P. an' an M.”

“Great God!” he exclaimed, “is this possible! Heavens! What is that? Did you hear anything?”

“What ails you?” she enquired. “Why do you look so frightened?”

“Did you hear nothing?” he again asked.

“Ha! ha!--hear!” she replied, laughing--“hear; I thought I heard something like a groan; but sure 'tis only the wind. Lord! what a night! Listen how the wind an' storm growls an' tyrannizes and rages down in the glen there, an' about the hills. Faith there'll be many a house stripped this night. Why, what ails you? Afther all, you're but a hen-hearted divil, I doubt; sorra thing else.”

Hanlon made her no reply, but took his hat off, and once more offered up a short prayer, apparently in deep and most extraordinary excitement.

“I see,” she observed, after he had concluded, “that you're bent on your devotions this night; and the devil's own place you've pitched upon for them.”

“Well, now,” replied Hanlon, “I'll be biddin' you good-night; but before you go, promise to get me that tobaccy-box you found; it's the least you may give it to me for Peggy Murray's handkerchy.”

“Hut,” returned Sally, “it's not worth a thraneen; you couldn't use it even if you had it; sure it's both rusty and broken.”

“No matther for that,” he replied; “I want to play a thrick on Peggy Murray wid it, so as to have a good laugh against her--the pair of us--you wid the handkerchy, and me wid the tobaccy-box.”

“Very well,” she replied. “Ha! ha! ha!--that'll be great. At any rate, I've a crow to pluck wid the same Peggy Murray. Oh, never you fear, you must have it; the minnit I get my hands on it, I'll secure it for you.”
After a few words more of idle chat they separated; he to his master's house, which was a considerable distance off; and this extraordinary creature--unconscious of the terrors and other weaknesses that render her sex at once so dependent on and so dear to man--full only of delight at the expected glee of the wake--to the house of death where it was held.

In the country parts of Ireland it is not unusual for those who come to a wake-house from a distance, to remain there until the funeral takes place: and this also is frequently the case with the nearest door neighbors. There is generally a solemn hospitality observed on the occasion, of which the two classes I mention partake. Sally's absence, therefore, on that night, or for the greater portion of the next day, excited neither alarm nor surprise at home. On entering their miserable sheiling, she found her father, who had just returned, and her step-mother in high words; the cause of which, she soon learned, had originated in his account of the interview between young Dalton and Mave Sullivan, together with its unpleasant consequences to himself.

“What else could you expect,” said his wife, “but what you got? You're ever an' always too ready wid your divil's grin an' your black prophecy to thim you don't like. I wondher you're not afeard that some of them might come back to yourself, an' fall upon your own head. If ever a man tempted Providence you do.”

“Ah, dear me!” he exclaimed, with a derisive sneer, rendered doubly repulsive by his own hideous and disfigured face, “how pious we are! Providence, indeed! Much I care about Providence, you hardened jade, or you aither, whatever puts the word into your purty mouth. Providence! oh, how much we regard it, as if Providence took heed of what we do. Go an' get me somethin' to put to this swellin', you had betther; or if it's goin' to grow religious you are, be off out o' this; we'll have none of your cant or pishthrougues here.”

“What's this?” inquired Sarah, seating; herself on a three legged stool, “the ould work, is it? bell-cat, bell-dog. Ah, you're a blessed pair an' a purty pair, too; you, wid your swelled face an' blinkin' eye. Arrah, what dacent man gave you that? An' you,” she added, turning to her step-mother, “wid your cheeks poulticed, an' your eye blinkin' on the other side--what a pair o' beauties you are, ha! ha! ha! I wouldn't be surprised if the divil an' his mother fell in consate wid you both!--ha! ha!”

“Is that your manners, afther spendin' the night away wid yourself?”
asked her father, angrily. “Instead of stealin' into the house thremblin' wid fear, as you ought to be, you walk in wid your brazen face, ballyraggin' us like a Hecthor.”

“Devil a taste I'm afeard,” she replied, sturdily; “I did nothin' to be afeard or ashamed of, an' why should I?”

“Did you see Mr. Hanlon on your travels, eh?”

“You needn't say eh about it,” she replied, “to be sure I did; it was to meet him that I went to the dance; I have no saicrets.”

“Ah, you'll come to a good end yet, I doubt,” said her father.

“Sure she needn't be afeard of Providence, any how,” observed his wife.

“To the divil wid you, at all events,” he replied; “if you're not off out o' that to get me somethin' for this swellin' I'll make it worse for you.”

“Ay, ay, I'll go,” looking at him with peculiar bitterness, “an wid the help of the same Providence that you laugh at, I'll take care that the same roof won't cover the three of us long. I'm tired of this life, and come or go what may, I'll look to my sowl an' lead it no longer.

“Do you mane to break our hearts?” he replied, laughing; “for sure we couldn't do less afther her, Sally; eh, ha! ha! ha! Before you lave us, anyhow,” he added, “go and get me some Gaiharrawan roots to bring down this swellin'; I can't go to the Grange wid sich a face as this on me.”

“You'll have a blacker an' a worse one on the day of judgment,” replied Nelly, taking up an old spade as she spoke, and proceeding to look for the Casharrawan (Dandelion) roots he wanted.

When she had gone, the prophet, assuming that peculiar sweetness of manner, for which he was so remarkable when it suited his purpose, turned to his daughter, and putting his hand into his waistcoat pocket, pulled out a tress of fair hair, whose shade and silky softness were exquisitely beautiful.

“Do you see that,” said he, “isn't that pretty?”

“Show,” she replied, and taking the tress into her hand, she looked at it.

“It is lovely; but isn't that aquil to it?” she continued, letting loose her own of raven black and equal gloss and softness--“what can it brag over that? eh,” and as she compared them her black eye flashed, and her cheek assumed a rich glow of pride and conscious beauty, that made her look just such a being as an old Grecian statuary would have wished to model from.

“It is aiquil to hers any day,” replied her father, softening into affection as he contemplated her; “and indeed, Sally, I think you're her match every way except--except--no matter, troth are you.”

“What are you going to do wid it?” she asked; “is it to the Grange it's goin'?”

“It is an' I want you to help me in what I mentioned to you. If I get what I'm promised, we'll lave the country, you and I, and as for that ould vagabond, we'll pitch her to ould Nick. She's talking about devotion and has nothing but Providence in her lips.”

“But isn't there a Providence?” asked his daughter, with a sparkling eye.

“Devil a much myself knows or cares,” he replied, with indifference, “whether there is or not.”

“Bekase if there is,” she said, pausing--“if there is, one might as well--”

She paused again and her fine features assumed an intellectual meaning--a sorrowful and meditative beauty, that gave a new and more attractive expression to her face than her father had ever witnessed on it before.

“Don't vex me, Sarah,” he replied, snappishly. “Maybe it's goin' to imitate her you are. The clargy knows these things maybe--an' maybe they don't. I only wish she'd come back with the caaharrawan. If all goes right, I'll pocket what'll bring yourself an' me to America. I'm beginnin' somehow to get unaisy; an' I don't wish to stay in this country any longer.”

Whilst he spoke, the sparkling and beautiful expression which had lit up his daughter's countenance passed away, and with it probably the moment in which it was possible to have opened a new and higher destiny to her existence.

Nelly, in the meantime, having taken an old spade with her to dig the roots she went in quest of, turned up Glendhu, and kept searching for some time in vain, until at length she found two or three bunches of the herb growing in a little lonely nook that lay behind a projecting ledge of rock, where one would seldom think of looking for herbage at all. Here she found a little, soft, green spot, covered over with dandelion; and immediately she began to dig it up. The softness of the earth and its looseness surprised her a good deal; and moved by an unaccountable curiosity, she pushed the spade further down, until it was met by some substance that felt rather hard. From this she cleared away the earth as well as she could, and discovered that the spade had been opposed by a bone; and on proceeding to examine still further, she discovered that the spot on which the dandelions had grown, contained the bones of a full grown human body.

CHAPTER V. -- The Black Prophet is Startled by a Black Prophecy.

Having satisfied herself that the skeleton was a human one, she cautiously put back the earth, and covered it up with the green sward, as graves usually are covered, and in such a way that there should exist, from the undisturbed appearance of the place, as little risk as possible of discovery. This being-settled, she returned with the herbs, laying aside the spade, from off which she had previously rubbed the red earth, so as to prevent any particular observation; she sat down, and locking her fingers into each other, swayed her body backwards and forwards in silence, as a female does in Ireland when under the influence of deep and absorbing sorrow, whilst from time to time she fixed her eyes on the prophet, and sighed deeply.

“I thought,” said he, “I sent you for the dandelion; where is it?”

“Oh,” she replied, unrolling it from the corner of her apron, “here it is--I forgot it--ay, I forgot it--and no wondher--oh, no wondher, indeed!--Providence! You may blaspheme Providence as much as you like; but he'll take his own out o' you yet; an' indeed, it's comin' to that--it is, Donnel, an' you'll find it so.”

The man had just taken the herbs into his hand and was about to shred them into small leaves for the poultice, when she uttered the last words. He turned his eyes upon her; and in an instant that terrible scowl, for which he was so remarkable, when in a state of passion, gave its deep and deadly darkness to his already disfigured visage. His eyes blazed, and one half of his face became ghastly with rage.

“What do you mane?” he asked; “what does she mane, Sarah? I tell you, wanst for all, you must give up ringing Providence into my ears, unless you wish to bring my hand upon you, as you often did! mark that!”

“Your ears,” she replied, looking at him calmly, and without seeming to regard his threat; “oh, I only wish I could ring the fear of Providence into your heart--I wish I I could; I'll do for yourself what you often pretend to do for others: but I'll give you warnin'. I tell you now, that Providence: himself is on your track--that his judgment's hangin' over you--and that it'll fall upon! you before long. This is my prophecy, and; a black one you'll soon find it.”

That Nelly had been always a woman of some good nature, with gleams of feeling and humanity appearing in a character otherwise apathetic, hard, and dark, M'Gowan well knew; but that she was capable of bearding him in one of his worst and most ferocious moods, was a circumstance which amazed and absolutely overcame him. Whether it was the novelty or the moral elevation of the position she so unexpectedly assumed, or some lurking conviction within himself which echoed back the truth of her language, it is difficult to say. Be that, however, as it might, he absolutely quailed before her; and instead of giving way to headlong violence or outrage, he sat down, and merely looked on her in silence and amazement.

Sarah thought he was unnecessarily tame on the occasion, and that her prophecy ought not to have been listened to in silence. The utter absence of all fear, however, on the part of the elder female, joined to the extraordinary union of determination and indifference with which she spoke, had something morally impressive in it; and Sarah, who felt, besides, that there seemed a kind of mystery in the words of the denunciation, resolved to let the matter rest between them, at least for the present.

A silence of some time now ensued, during which she looked from the one to the other with an aspect of uncertainty. At length, she burst into a hearty laugh--

“Ha, ha, ha!--well,” said she, “it's a good joke at any rate to see my father bate with his own weapons. Why, she has frightened you more wid her prophecy than ever you did any one wid one of your own. Ha, ha, ha!”

To this Sally neither replied, nor seemed disposed to reply.

“Here,” added Sarah, handing her stepmother a cloth, “remimber you have to go to Darby Skinadre's for meal. I'd go myself, an' save you in the journey, but that I'm afraid you might fall in love wid one another in my absence. Be off now, you ould stepdivle, an' get the meal; or if you're not able to go, I will.”

After a lapse of a few minutes, the woman rose, and taking the cloth, deliberately folded it up, and asked him for money to purchase the meal she wanted.

“Here,” said he, handing her a written paper, “give him that, an' it will do as well as money. He expects Master Dick's interest for Dalton's farm, an' I'll engage he'll attend to that.”

She received the paper, and looking at it, said--

“I hope this is none of the villainy I suspect.”

“Be off,” he replied, “get what you want, and that's all you have to do.”

“What's come over you?” asked Sarah of her father, after the other had gone. “Did you get afeard of her?”

“There's something in her eye,” he replied, “that I don't like, and that I never seen there before.”

“But,” returned the other, a good deal surprised, “what can there be in her eye that you need care about? You have nobody's blood on your hands, an' you stole nothing. What made you look afeard that time?”

“I didn't look afeard.”

“But I say you did, an' I was ashamed of you.”

“Well, never mind--I may tell you something some o' these days about that same woman. In the meantime, I'll throw myself on the bed, an' take a sleep, for I slept but little last night.”

“Do so,” replied Sarah; “but at any rate, never be cowed by a woman. Lie down, an' I'll go over awhile to Tom Cassidy's. But first, I had better make the poultice for your face, to take down the ugly swellin'.”

Having made and applied the poultice, she went off, light-hearted as a lark, leaving her worthy father to seek some rest if he could.

She had no sooner disappeared than the prophet, having closed and bolted the door, walked backwards and forwards, in a moody and unsettled manner.

“What,” he exclaimed to himself, “can be the matther with that woman, that made her look at me in sich a way a while agone? I could not mistake her eye. She surely knows more than I thought, or she would not fix her eye into mine as she did. Could there be anything in that dhrame about Dalton an' my coffin? Hut! that's nonsense. Many a dhrame I had that went for nothin'. The only thing she could stumble on is the Box, an' I don't think she would be likely to find that out, unless she went to throw down the house; but, anyhow, it's no harm to thry.” He immediately mounted the old table, and, stretching up, searched the crevice in the wall where it had been, but, we need not add, in vain. He then came down again, in a state of dreadful alarm, and made a general search for it in every hole and corner visible, after, which his agitation became wild and excessive.

“She has got it!” he exclaimed--“she has stumbled on it, aided by the devil'--an' may she soon be in his clutches!--and it's the only thing I'm afeard of! But then,” he added, pausing, and getting somewhat cool--“does she know it might be brought against me, or who owned it? I don't think she does; but still, where can it be, and what could she mane by Providence trackin' me out?--an' why did she look as if she: knew something? Then that dhrame I can't get it out o' my head this whole day--and the terrible one I had last night, too! But that last is aisily 'counted for. As it is, I must only wait, and watch her; and if I find she can be dangerous, why--it'll be worse for her--that's all!”

He then threw himself on the wretched bed, and, despite of his tumultuous reflections, soon fell asleep.

CHAPTER VI. -- A Rustic Miser and His Establishment

There is to be found in Ireland, and, we presume, in all other countries, a class of hardened wretches, who look forward to a period of dearth as to one of great gain and advantage, and who contrive, by exercising the most heartless and diabolical principles, to make the sickness, famine, and general desolation which scourge their fellow-creatures, so many sources of successful extortion and rapacity, and consequently of gain to themselves. These are Country Misers or Money-lenders, who are remarkable for keeping meal until the arrival of what is termed a hard year, or a dear summer, when they sell it out at an enormous or usurious prices, and who, at all times, and under all circumstances, dispose of it only at terms dictated by their own griping spirit and the crying necessity of the unhappy purchasers.

The houses and places of such persons are always remarkable for a character in their owners of hard and severe saving, which at a first glance has the appearance of that rare virtue in our country, called frugality--a virtue which, upon a closer inspection, is found to be nothing with them but selfishness, sharpened up into the most unscrupulous avarice and penury.

About half a mile from the Sullivan's, lived a remarkable man of this class, named Darby Skinadre. In appearance he was lank and sallow, with a long, thin, parched looking face, and a miserable crop of yellow beard, which no one could pronounce as anything else than “a dead failure;” added to this were two piercing ferret eyes, always sore and with a tear standing in each, or trickling down his fleshless cheeks; so that, to persons disposed to judge only by appearances, he looked very like a man in a state of perpetual repentance for his transgressions, or, what was still farther from the truth, who felt a most Christian sympathy with the distresses of the poor. In his house, and about it, there was much, no doubt, to be commended, for there was much to mark the habits of the saving man. Everything was neat and clean, not so much from any innate love of neatness and cleanliness, as because these qualities were economical in themselves. His ploughs and farming implements were all snugly laid up, and covered, lest they might be injured by exposure to the weather; and his house was filled with large chests and wooden hogsheads, trampled hard with oatmeal, which, as they were never opened unless during a time of famine, had their joints and crevices festooned by innumerable mealy-looking cobwebs, which description of ornament extended to the dresser itself, where they might be seen upon most of the cold-looking shelves, and those neglected utensils, that in other families are mostly used for food. His haggard was also remarkable for having in it, throughout all the year, a remaining stack or two of oats or wheat, or perhaps one or two large ricks of hay, tanned by the sun of two or three summers into tawny hue--each or all kept in the hope of a failure and a famine.

In a room from the kitchen, he had a beam, a pair of scales, and a set of weights, all of which would have been vastly improved by a visit from the lord-mayor, had our meal-monger lived under the jurisdiction of that civic gentleman. He was seldom known to use metal weights when disposing of his property; in lieu of these he always used round stones, which, upon the principle of the Scottish proverb, that “many a little makes a muckle,” he must have found a very beneficial mode of transacting business.

If anything could add to the iniquity of his principles, as a plausible but most unscrupulous cheat, it was the hypocritical prostitution of the sacred name and character of religion to his own fraudulent impositions upon the poor and the distressed. Outwardly, and to the eye of men, he was proverbially strict and scrupulous in the observation of its sanctions, but outrageously severe and unsparing upon all who appeared to be influenced either by a negligent or worldly spirit, or who omitted the least tittle of its forms. Religion and its duties, therefore, were perpetually in his mouth but never with such apparent zeal and sincerity as when enforcing his most heartless and hypocritical exactions upon the honest and struggling creatures whom necessity or neglect had driven into his meshes.

Such was Darby Skinadre; and certain we are that the truth of the likeness we have given of him will be at once recognized by our readers as that of the roguish hypocrite, whose rapacity is the standing curse of half the villages of the country, especially during the seasons of distress, or failure of crops.

Skinadre on the day we write of, was reaping a rich harvest from the miseries of the unhappy people. In a lower room of his house, to the right of the kitchen as you entered it, he stood over the scales, weighing out with a dishonest and parsimonious hand, the scanty pittance which poverty enabled the wretched creatures to purchase from him; and in order to give them a favorable impression of his piety, and consequently of his justice, he had placed against the wall a delf crucifix, with a semi-circular receptacle at the bottom of it for holding holy water This was as much as to say “how could I cheat you, with the image of our Blessed Redeemer before my eyes to remind me of my duty, and to teach me, as He did, to love my fellow-creatures?” And with many of; the simple people, he actually succeeded in making the impression he wished; for they could not conceive it possible, that any principle, however rapacious, could drive a man to the practice of such sacrilegious imposture.

There stood Skinadre, like the very Genius of Famine, surrounded by distress, raggedness, feeble hunger, and tottering disease, in all the various aspects of pitiable suffering, hopeless desolation, and that agony of the heart which impresses wildness upon the pale cheek, makes the eye at once dull and eager, parches the mouth and gives to the voice of misery tones that are hoarse and hollow. There he stood, striving to blend consolation with deceit, and in the name of religion and charity subjecting the helpless wretches to fraud and extortion. Around him was misery, multiplied into all her most appalling shapes. Fathers of families were there, who could read in each other's faces too truly the gloom and anguish that darkened the brow and wrung the heart. The strong man, who had been not long-before a comfortable farmer, now stood dejected and apparently broken down, shorn of his strength, without a trace of either hope or spirit; so wofully shrunk away too, from his superfluous apparel, that the spectators actually wondered to think that this was the large man, of such powerful frame, whose feats of strength had so often heretofore filled them with amazement. But, alas! what will not sickness and hunger do? There too was the aged man--the grand-sire himself--bent with a double weight of years and sorrow--without food until that late hour; forgetting the old pride that never stooped before, and now coming with, the last feeble argument, to remind the usurer that he and his father had been schoolfellows and friends, and that although he had refused to credit his son and afterwards his daughter-in-law, still, for the sake of old times, and of those who were now no more, he hoped he would not refuse his gray hairs and tears, and for the sake of the living God besides, that which would keep his son, and his daughter-in-law, and his famishing grandchildren, who had not a morsel to put in their mouths, nor the means of procuring it on earth--if he failed them.

And there was the widower, on behalf of his motherless children, coming with his worn and desolate look of sorrow, almost thankful to God that his Kathleen was not permitted to witness the many-shaped miseries of this woful year; and yet experiencing the sharp and bitter reflection that now, in all their trials--in his poor children's want and sickness--in their moanings by day and their cries for her by night, they have not the soft affection of her voice nor the tender touch of her hand to soothe their pain--nor has he that smile, which was ever his, to solace him now, nor that faithful heart to soothe him with its affection, or to cast its sweetness into the bitter cup of affliction. Alas! no; he knows that her heart will beat for him and them no more; that that eye of love will never smile upon them again; and so he feels the agony of her loss superadded to all his other sufferings, and in this state he approaches the merciless usurer.

And the widow--emblem of desolation and dependence--how shall she meet and battle with the calamities of this fearful season? She out of whose heart these very calamities draw forth the remembrances of him she has lost, with such vividness that his past virtues are added to her present sufferings; and his manly love as a husband--his tenderness as a parent--his protecting hand and ever kind heart, crush her solitary spirit by their memory, and drag it down to the utmost depths of affliction. Oh! bitter reflection!--“if her Owen wore now alive, and in health, she would not be here; but God took him to Himself, and now unless he--the miser--has compassion on her, she and her children--her Owen's children--must lie down and die! If it were not for their sakes, poor darlings, she would I wish to follow him out of such a world; but now she and the Almighty are all that they have to look to, blessed be His name!”

Others there were whose presence showed; how far the general destitution had gone into the heart of society, and visited many whose circumstances had been looked upon as beyond its reach. The decent farmer, for instance, whom no one had suspected of distress, made his appearance among them with an air of cheerfulness that was put on to baffle suspicion. Sometimes he laughed as if his heart were light, and again expressed a kind of condescending sympathy with some poor person or other, to whom he spoke kindly, as a man would do who knew nothing personally of the distress which he saw about him, but who wished to encourage those who did with the cheering hope that it must soon pass away. Then affecting the easy manner of one who was interesting himself for another person, he asked to have some private conversation with the usurer, to whom he communicated the immediate want that pressed upon him and his family.

It is impossible, however, to describe the various aspects and claims of misery which presented themselves at Skinadre's house. The poor people flitted to and fro silently and dejectedly, wasted, feeble, and sickly--sometimes in small groups of twos and threes, and sometimes a solitary individual might be seen hastening with earnest but languid speed, as if the life of some dear child or beloved parent, of a husband or wife, or perhaps, the lives of a whole farcify, depended upon his or her arrival with food.

CHAPTER VII. -- A Panorama of Misery.

Skinadre, thin and mealy, with his coat off, but wearing a waistcoat to which were attached flannel sleeves, was busily engaged in his agreeable task of administering to their necessities. Such was his smoothness of manner, and the singular control which a long life of hypocrisy had given him over his feelings, that it was impossible to draw any correct distinction between that which he only assumed, and that which he really felt. This consequently gave him an immense advantage over every one with whom he came in contact, especially the artless and candid, and all who were in the habit of expressing what they thought. We shall, however, take the liberty of introducing him to the reader, and allow honest Skinadre to speak for himself.

“They're beggars--them three--that woman and her two children; still my heart bleeds for them, bekase we should love our neighbors as ourselves; but I have given away as much meal in charity, an' me can so badly afford it, as would--I can't now, indeed, my poor woman! Sick--troth they look sick, an' you look sick yourself. Here, Paddy Lenahan, help that woman an' her two poor children out of that half bushel of meal you've got; you won't miss a handful for God's sake.”

This he said to a poor man who had just purchased some oat-meal from him; for Skinadre was one of those persons who, however he might have neglected works of mercy himself, took great delight in encouraging others to perform them.

“Troth it's not at your desire I do it, Darby,” replied the man; “but bekase she an' they wants it, God help them. Here, poor creature, take this for the honor of God: an' I'm only sorry, for both our sakes, that I can't do more.”

“Well, Jemmy Duggan,” proceeded the miser, addressing a new-comer, “what's the news wid you? They're hard times, Jemmy; we all know that an' feel it too, and yet we live, most of us, as if there wasn't a God ta punish us.”

“At all events,” replied the man, “we feel what sufferin' is now, God help us! Between hunger and sickness, the counthry was never in such a state widin the memory of man, What, in the name o' God, will become of the poor people, I know not. The Lord pity them an' relieve them!”

“Amen, amen, Jemmy! Well, Jemmy, can I do any thing for you? But Jemmy, in regard to that, the thruth is, we have brought all these scourges on us by our sins and our transgressions; thim that sins, Jemmy, must suffer.”

“There's no one denyin' it, Darby; but you're axin' me can you do any thing for me, an' my answer to that is, you can, if you like.”

“Ah! Jemmy, you wor ever an' always a wild, heedless, heerum-skeerum rake, that never was likely to do much good; little religion ever rested on you, an' now I'm afeard no signs on it.”

“Well, well, who's widout sin? I'm sure I'm not. What I want is, to know if you'll credit me for a hundred of meal till the times mends a trifle. I have the six o' them at home widout their dinner this day, an' must go widout if you refuse me. When the harvest comes round, I'll pay you.”

“Jemmy, you owe three half-year's, rent; an' as for the harvest an' what it'll bring, only jist look at the day that's in it. It goes to my heart to refuse you, poor man; but Jemmy, you see you have brought this on yourself. If you had been an attentive, industrious man, an' minded your religion, you wouldn't be as you are now. Six you have at home, you say?”

“Ay, not to speak of the woman; an' myself. I know you won't, refuse them, Darby, bekase if we're hard pushed now, it's, a'most every body's case as well as mine. Be what I may, you know I'm honest.”

“I don't doubt your honesty, Jemmy; but Jemmy, if I sell my meal to a man that can pay and won't, or if I sell my meal to a man that would pay and can't, by which do I lose most? There it is, Jemmy--think o' that now. Six in family, you say?”

“Six in family, wid the woman an' myself.”

“The sorra man livin' feels more for you than I do, an' I would let you have the meal if I could; but the truth is, I'm makin' up my rent--an' Jemmy, I lost so much last year by my foolish good nature, an' I gave away so much on trust, that now I'm brought to a hard pass myself. Troth I'll fret enough this night for havin' to refuse you. I know it was rash of me to make the promise I did; but still, God forbid that ever any man should be able to throw it in my face, an' say that Darby Skinadre ever broke his promise.”

“What promise?”

“Why, never to sell a pound of meal on trust.”

“God help us, then!--for what to do or where to go I don't know.”

“It goes to my heart, Jemmy, to refuse you--six in family, an' the two of yourselves. Troth it does, to my very heart itself; but stay, maybe we may manage it. You have no money, you say?”

“No money now, but won't be so long, plaise God.”

“Well, but haven't you value of any kind?--: sure, God help them, they can't starve, poor cratures--the Lord pity them!” Here he wiped away a drop of villainous rheum which ran down his cheek, and he did it with such an appearance of sympathy, that almost any one would have imagined it was a tear of compassion for the distresses of the poor man's family.

“Oh! no, they can't starve. Have you no valuables of any kind, Jemmy!--ne'er a baste now, or anything that way?”

“Why, there's a young heifer; but I'm strugglin' to keep it to help me in the rent. I was obliged to sell my pig long ago, for I had no way of feedin' it.”

“Well, bring me the heifer, Jemmy, an' I won't let the crathurs starve. We'll see what can be done when it comes here. An' now, Jemmy, let me ax if you wint to hear mass on last Sunday?”

“Troth I didn't like to go in this trim. Peggy has a web of frieze half made this good while; it'll be finished some time, I hope.”

“Ah! Jemmy, Jemmy, it's no wondher the world's the way it is, for indeed there's little thought of God or religion in it. You passed last Sunday like a haythen, an' now you see how you stand to-day for the same.”

“You'll let me bring some o' the meal home wid me now,” said the man; “the poor cratures tasted hardly anything to-day yet, an' they wor cryin' whin I left home. I'll come back wid the heifer fullfut. Troth they're in utther misery, Darby.”

“Poor things!--an' no wondher, wid such a haythen of a father; but, Jemmy, bring the heifer here first till I look at it, an' the sooner you bring it here the sooner they'll have relief, the crathurs.”

It is not our intention to follow up this iniquitous bargain any further; it is enough to say that the heifer passed from Jemmy's possession into his, at about the fourth part of its value.

To those who had money he was a perfect honey-comb, overflowing with kindness and affection, expressed in such a profusion of warm and sugary words, that it was next to an impossibility to doubt his sincerity.

“Darby,” said a very young female, on whose face was blended equal beauty and sorrow, joined to an expression that was absolutely death-like, “I suppose I needn't ax you for credit?” He shook his head.

“It's for the couple,” she added, “an' not for myself. I wouldn't ax it for myself. I know my fault, an' my sin, an' may God forgive myself in the first place, an' him that brought me to it, an' to the shame that followed it! But what would the ould couple do now widout me?”

“An' have you no money? Ah, Margaret Murtagh! sinful creature--shame, shame, Margaret. Unfortunate girl that you are, have you no money?”

“I have not, indeed; the death of my brother Alick left us as we are; he's gone from them now; but there was no fear of me goin' that wished to go. Oh, if God in His goodness to them had took me an' spared him, they wouldn't be sendin' to you this day for meal to keep life in them till things comes round.”

“Troth I pity them--from my heart I pity them now they're helpless and ould--especially for havin' sich a daughter as you are; but if it was my own father an' mother, God rest them, I couldn't give meal out on credit. There's not in the parish a poorer man than I am. I'm done wid givin' credit now, thank goodness; an' if I had been so long ago, it isn't robbed, and ruined, an' beggared by rogues I'd be this day, but a warm, full man, able and willin' too to help my neighbors; an' it is not empty handed I'd send away any messenger from your father or mother, as I must do, although my heart bleeds for them this minute.”

Here once more he wiped away the rheum, with every appearance of regret and sorrow. In fact, one would almost suppose that by long practice he had trained one of his eyes--for we ought to have said that there was one of them more sympathetic than the other--to shed its hypocritical tear at the right place, and in such a manner, too, that he might claim all the credit of participating in the very distresses which he refused to relieve, or by which he amassed his wealth.

The poor heart-broken looking girl, who by the way carried an unfortunate baby in her arms, literally tottered out of the room, sobbing bitterly, and with a look of misery and despair that it was woeful to contemplate.

“Ah, then, Harry Hacket,” said he, passing to another, “how are you? an' how are you all over in Derrycloony, Harry? not forgettin' the ould couple?”

“Throth, middlin' only, Darby. My fine boy, Denis, is down wid this illness, an' I'm wantin' a barrel of meal from you till towards Christmas.”

“Come inside, Harry, to this little nest here, till I tell you something; an', by the way, let your father know I've got a new prayer that he'll like to learn, for it's he that's the pious man, an' attinds to his duties--may God enable him! and every one that has the devotion in the right place; _amin a Chiernah!_”

He then brought Hacket into a little out-shot behind the room in which the scales were, and shutting the door, thus proceeded in a sweet, confidential kind of whisper--

“You see, Harry, what I'm goin' to say to you is what I'd not say to e'er another in the parish, the divil a one--God pardon me for swearin'--_amin a Chiernah!_ I'm ruined all out--smashed down and broke horse and foot; there's the Slevins that wint to America, an' I lost more than thirty pounds by them.”

“I thought,” replied Hacket, “they paid you before they went; they were always a daicent and an honest family, an' I never heard any one speak an ill word o' them.”

“Not a penny, Harry.”

“That's odd, then, bekaise it was only Sunday three weeks, that Murty Slevin, their cousin, if you remember, made you acknowledge that they paid you, at the chapel green.”

“Ay, an' I do acknowledge; bekaise, Harry, one may as well spake charitably of the absent as not; it's only in private to you that I'm lettin' out the truth.”

“Well, well,” exclaimed the other, rather impatiently, “what have they to do wid us?”

“Ay, have they; it was what I lost by them an' others--see now, don't be gettin' onpatient, I bid you--time enough for that when you're refused--that prevints me from bein' able to give credit as I'd wish. I'm not refusin' you, Harry; but _achora_, listen; you'll bring your bill at two months, only I must charge you a trifle for trust, for chances, or profit an' loss, as the schoolmasther says; but you're to keep it a saicret from livin' mortal, bekaise if it 'ud get known in these times that I'd do sich a thing, I'd have the very flesh ait off o' my bones by others wantin' the same thing; bring me the bill, then, Harry, an' I'll fill it up myself, only be _dhe husth_ (* hold your tongue) about it.”

Necessity forces those who are distressed to comply with many a rapacious condition of the kind, and the consequence was that Hacket did what the pressure of the time compelled him to do, passed his bill to Skinadre, at a most usurious price, for the food which was so necessary to his family.

It is surprising how closely the low rustic extortioner and the city usurer upon a larger scale resemble each other in the expression of their sentiments, in their habits of business, their plausibility, natural tact, and especially, in that hardness of heart and utter want of all human pity and sympathy, upon which the success of their black arts of usury and extortion essentially depends. With extortion in all its forms Skinadre, for instance, was familiar. From those who were poor but honest, he got a bill such as he exacted from Hacket, because he knew that, cost what it might to them, he was safe in their integrity. If dishonest, he still got a bill and relied upon the law and its cruel list of harassing and fraudulent expenses for security. From others he got property of all descriptions; from some, butter, yarn, a piece of frieze, a pig, a cow, or a heifer. In fact, nothing that possessed value came wrong to him, so that it is impossible to describe adequately the web of mischief which this blood-sucking old spider contrived to spread around him, especially for those whom he knew to be too poor to avail themselves of a remedy against his villany.

“Molly Cassidy, how are you?” he said, addressing a poor looking woman who carried a parcel of some description rolled up under her cloak; “how are all the family, achora?”

“Glory be to God for it, they can scarcely be worse;” replied the woman, in that spirit of simple piety and veneration for the Deity, which in all their misery characterizes the Irish people; “but sure we're only sufferin' like others, an' indeed not so bad as many; there's Mick Kelly has lost his fine boy Lanty; and his other son, young Mick, isn't expected to live, an' all wid this sickness, that was brought on them, as it is everywhere, wid bad feedin'.”

“They're miserable times, Molly, at least I find them so; for I dunna how it happens, but every one's disappointment falls upon me, till they have me a'most out of house an' home--throth it 'ud be no wondher I'd get hard-hearted some day wid the way I'm thrated an' robbed by every one; aye, indeed, bekase I'm good-natured, they play upon me.”

The poor creature gave a faint smile, for she knew the man's character thoroughly.

“I have a dish of butther here, Darby,” she said, “an' I want meal instead of it.”

“Butther, Molly; why thin, Molly, sure it isn't to me you're bringing butther--me that has so much of it lyin' on my hands here already. Sure, any way, it's down to dirt since the wars is over--butther is; if it was anything else but butther, Molly: but--it's of no use; I've too much of it.”

“The sorra other thing I have, thin, Mr. Skinadre; but sure you had betther look at it, an' you'll find it's what butther ought to be, firm, claine, and sweet.”

“I can't take it, achora; there's no market for it now.”

“Here, as we're distressed, take it for sixpence a pound, and that's the lowest price--God knows, if we wern't as we are, it isn't for that you'd get it.”

“Troth, I dar' say, you're ill off--as who isn't in these times? an' it's worse they're gettin' an' will be gettin' every day. Troth, I say, my heart bleeds for you; but we can't dale; oh, no! butther, as I said, is only dirt now.”

“For God's sake, thin,” exclaimed the alarmed creature, “take it for whatever you like.”

“It 'ud go hard wid me to see your poor family in a state of outther want,” he replied, “an' it's not in my nature to be harsh to a struggling person---so whether I lose or gain, I'll allow you three-pence a pound for it.”

A shade of bitterness came across her features at this iniquitous proposal; but she felt the truth of that old adage in all its severity, that necessity has no law.

“God help us,” she exclaimed--“threepence a pound for such butther as this!--however, it's the will of God sure, an' it can't be helped--take it.”

“Ay, it's aisy said, take it; but not to say what'll I do wid it, when I have it; however, that's the man I am, an' I know how it'll end wid me--sarvin' every one, workin' for every one, an' thinkin' of every one but myself, an' little thanks or gratitude for all--I know I'm not fit for sich a world--but still it's a consolation to be doin' good to our fellow-creatures when we can, an' that's what lightens my heart.”

A woman now entered, whose appearance excited general sympathy, as was evident from the subdued murmurs of compassion which were breathed from the persons assembled, as soon as she entered the room. There was something about her which, in spite of her thin and worn dress, intimated a consciousness of a position either then or at some previous time, above that of the common description of farmer's wives. No one could mistake her for a highly-educated woman--but there was in her appearance that decency of manner resulting from habits of independence and from moral feeling, which at a first glance, whether it be accompanied by superior dress or not, indicates something which is felt to entitle its proprietor to unquestionable respect. The miser, when she entered, had been putting away the dish of butter into the outshot we have mentioned, so that he had not yet an opportunity of seeing her, and, ere he returned to the scales, another female possessing probably not less interest to the reader, presented herself--this was Mave or Mabel, the young and beautiful daughter of the pious and hospitable Jerry Sullivan.

Skinadre on perceiving the matron who preceded her, paused for a moment, and looked at her with a wince in his thin features that might be taken for an indication of either pleasure or pain. He' closed the sympathetic eye, and wiped it--but this not seeming to satisfy him, he then closed both, and blew his nose with a little skeleton mealy handkerchief that lay on a sack beside him for that purpose.

“Hem--a-hem! why, thin, Mrs. Dalton, it isn't to my poor place I expected you would come.”

“Darby,” she replied, “there is no use for any length of conversation between you and me--I'm here contrary to the wishes of my family--but I am a mother, and cannot look upon their destitution without feeling that I should not allow my pride to stand between them and death: we are starving, I mean--they are; and I'm come to ask you for credit; if we are ever able to pay you, we will; if not, it's only one good act done to a family that often did many to you when they thought you grateful.”

“I'm the worst in the world--I'm the worst in the world,” replied Skinadre; “but it wasn't till I knew that you'd be put out o' your farm that I offered for it, and now you've taken away my carrecther, an' spoken ill o' me everywhere, an' said that I bid for it over your heads; ay, indeed, an' that it was your husband that set me up, by the way--oh, yes--an' supposin' it was, an' I'm not denyin' it, but is that any raisin that I'd not bid for a good farm, when I knew that yez 'ud be put out of it?”

“I am now spakin' about the distress of our family,” said Mrs. Dalton, “you know that sickness has been among us, and is among us--poor Tom is just able to be up, but that's all.”

“Troth, an' it 'ud be well for you all, an' for himself too, that he had been taken away afore he comes in a bad end. What he will come too, if God hasn't said it. I hope he feels the affliction he brought on poor Ned Munay an' his family by the hand he made of his unfortunate daughter.”

“He does feel it. The death of her brother and their situation has touched his heart, an' he's only waitin' for better health and better times to do her justice; but now what answer do you give me?”

“Why, this: I'm harrished by what I've done for every one; an'--an'--the short and the long of it is, that I've naither male nor money to throw away. I couldn't afford it and I can't. I'm a rogue, Mrs. Dalton--a miser, an extortioner, an ungrateful knave, and everything that is bad an' worse than another; an' for that raison, I say, I have naither male nor money to throw away. That's what I'd say if I was angry; but I'm not angry. I do feel for you an' them; still I can't afford to do what you want, or I'd do it, for I like to do good for evil, bad as I am. I'm strivin' to make up my rent an' to pay an unlucky bill that I have due to-morrow, and doesn't know where the money's to come from to meet both.”

“Mave Sullivan, achora, what can I--”

Mrs. Dalton, from her position in the room, could not have noticed the presence of Mave Sullivan, but even had she been placed otherwise, it would have been somewhat difficult to get a glimpse of the young creature's face. Deeply did she participate in the sympathy which was felt for the mother of her mother, and so naturally delicate were her feelings, that she had drawn up the hood of her cloak, lest the other might have felt the humiliation to which Mave's presence must have exposed her by the acknowledgment of her distress. Neither was this all the gentle and generous girl had to suffer. She experienced, in her own person, as well as Mrs. Dalton did, the painful sense of degradation which necessity occasions, by a violation of that hereditary spirit of decent pride and independence which the people consider as the prestige of high respect, and which, even while it excites compassion and sympathy, is looked upon, to a certain extent, as diminished by even a temporary visitation of poverty. When the meal-man, therefore, addressed her, she unconsciously threw the hood of her cloak back, and disclosed to the spectators a face burning with blushes and eyes filled with tears. The tears, however, were for the distress of Mrs. Dalton and her family, and the blushes for the painful circumstances which compelled her at once to witness them, and to expose those which were left under her own careworn father's roof. Mrs. Dalton, however, on looking round and perceiving what seemed to be an ebullition merely of natural shame, went over to her with a calm but mournful manner that amounted almost to dignity.

“Dear Mave,” she said, “there is nothing here to be ashamed of. God forbid that the struggle of an honest family with poverty should bring a blot upon either your good name or mine. It does not, nor it will not: so dry your tears, my darlin' girl; there are better times before us all, I trust. Darby Skinadre,” she added, turning to the miser, “you are both hard-hearted and ungrateful, or you would remember, in our distress, the kindness we showed you in yours. If you can cleanse your conscience from the stain of ingratitude, it must be by a change of life.”

“Whatever stain there may be on my ungrateful conscience,” he replied, turning up his red eyes, as it were with thanksgiving, “there's not the stain of blood and murdher on it--that's one comfort.”

Mrs. Dalton did not seem to hear him, neither did she seem to look in the direction of where he stood. As the words were uttered she had been in the act of extending her hand to Mave Sullivan, who had hers stretched out to receive it. There now occurred, however, a mutual pause. Her hand was withdrawn, as was that of Mave also, who had suddenly become pale as death.

“God bless you, my darlin' girl!” exclaimed Mrs. Dalton, sighing, as if with some hidden sorrow; “God bless you and yours, prays my unhappy heart this day!”

And with these words she was about to depart, when Mave, trembling and much agitated, laid her hand gently and timidly upon her,--adding, in a low, sweet, tremulous voice,

“My heart is free from that suspicion--I can't tell why--but I don't believe it.”

And while she spoke, her small hand gradually caught that of Mrs. Dalton, as a proof that she would not withhold the embrace on that account. Mrs. Dalton returned her pressure, and at the same moment kissed the fair girl's lips, who sobbed a moment or two in her arms, where she threw herself. The other again invoked a blessing upon her head, and walked out, having wiped a few tears from her pale cheeks.

The miser looked upon this exhibition of feeling with some surprise; but as his was not a heart susceptible of the impressions it was calculated to produce, he only said in a tone of indifference:

“Well, to be sure now, Mave, I didn't expect to see you shakin' hands wid and kissin' Condy Dalton's wife, at any rate, considerin' all that has happened atween the families. However, it's good to be forgivin'; I hope it is; indeed I know that; for it comes almost to a feelin' in myself. Well, _achora_, what am I to do for you?”

“Will you let me speak to you inside a minute?” she asked.

“Will I? Why, then, to be sure I will; an' who knows but it's my daughter-in-law I might have you yet, _avillish!_ Yourself and Darby's jist about an age. Come inside, _ahagur_.”

Their dialogue was not of very long duration. Skinadre, on returning to the scales, weighed two equal portions of oatmeal, for one of which Mave paid him.

“I will either come or send for this,” she said laying her hand on the one for which she had paid. “If I send any one, I'll give the token I mentioned.”

“Very well, a suchar--very well,” he replied; “it's for nobody livin' but yourself I'd do it; but sure, now that I must begin to coort you for Darby, it won't be aisy to refuse you for anything in raison.”

“Mind, then,” she observed, as she seized one of the portions, in order to proceed home; “mind,” said she, laying her hand upon that which she was leaving behind her; “mind it's for this one I have paid you.”

“Very well, achora, it makes no difference; sure a kiss o' them red, purty lips o' yours to Darby will pay the inthrest for all.”

Two other females now made their appearance, one with whom our readers are already acquainted. This was no other than the prophet's wife, who had for her companion a woman whom neither she herself nor any one present knew.

“Mave Sullivan, darlin',” exclaimed the former, “I'm glad to see you. Are you goin' home, now?”

“I am, Nelly,” replied Mave, “jist on my step.”

“Well, thin, if you stop a minute or two, I'll be part o' the way wid you. I have somethin' to mention as we go along.”

“Very well, then,” replied Mave; “make as much haste as you can, Nelly, for I'm in a hurry;” and an expression of melancholy settled upon her countenance as she spoke.

The stranger was a tall thin woman, much about the age and height of the prophet's 'wife, but neither so lusty nor so vigorous in appearance, She was but indifferently dressed, and though her features had evidently been handsome in her younger days, yet there was now a thin, shrewish expression about the nose, and a sharpness about the compressed lips, and those curves which bounded in her mouth, that betokened much firmness if not obstinancy in her character, joined to a look which might as well be considered an indication of trial and suffering, as of a temper naturally none of the best.

On hearing Mave Sullivan's name mentioned, she started, and looked at her keenly, and for a considerable time; after which she asked for a drink of water, which she got in the kitchen, where she sat, as it seemed to rest a little.

Nelly, in the meantime, put her hand in a red, three-cornered pocket that hung by her side, and pulling out a piece of writing, presented it to the meal man. That worthy gentleman, on casting his eye over it, read as follows:

“Dear Skinadre: Give Daniel M'Gowan, otherwise the Black Prophet, any quantity of meal necessary for his own family, which please charge, (and you know why,) to your friend,

“Dick o' the Grange, Jun.”

Skinadre's face, on perusing this document, was that of a man who felt himself pulled in different directions by something at once mortifying and pleasant. He smiled at first, then bit his lips, winked one eye, then another; looked at the prophet's wife with complacency, but immediately checked himself, and began to look keen and peevish. This, however, appeared to be an error on the other side; and the consequence was, that, after some comical alterations, his countenance settled down into its usual expression.

“Troth,” said he, “that same Dick o' the Grange, as he calls himself, is a quare young gintleman; as much male as you want--a quare, mad--your family's small, I think?”

“But sharp an' active,” she replied, with a hard smile, as of one who cared not for the mirth she made, “as far as we go.”

“Ay,” said he, abruptly, “divil a much--God pardon me for swearin'--ever they wor for good that had a large appetite. It's a bad sign of either man or woman. There never was a villain hanged yet that didn't ait more to his last breakfast than ever he did at a meal in his life before. How-an-ever, one may as well have a friend; so I suppose, we must give you a thrifle.”

When her portion was weighed out, she and Mave Sullivan left this scene of extortion together, followed by the strange woman, who seemed, as it were, to watch their motions, or at least to feel some particular interest in them.

He had again resumed his place at the scales, and was about to proceed in his exactions, when the door opened, and a powerful young man, tall, big boned and broad shouldered, entered the room, leading or rather dragging with him the poor young-woman and her child, who had just left the place in such bitterness and affliction. He was singularly handsome, and of such resolute and manly bearing, that it was impossible not to mark him as a person calculated to impress one with a strong anxiety to know who and what he might be. On this occasion his cheek was blanched and his eye emitted a turbid fire, which could scarcely be determined as that of indignation or illness.

“Is it thrue,” he asked, “that you've dared to refuse to this--this--unfor--is it thrue that you've dared to refuse this girl and her starvin' father and mother the meal she wanted? Is this thrue, you hard-hearted ould scoundrel?--bekaise if it is, by the blessed sky above us, I'll pull the wind-pipe out of you, you infernal miser!”

He seized unfortunate Skinadre by the neck, as he spoke, and almost at the same moment forced him to project his tongue about three inches out of his mouth, causing his face at the same time to assume, by the violence of the act, an expression of such comic distress and terror, as it was difficult to look upon with gravity.

“Is it thrue,” he repeated, in a voice of thunder, “that you've dared to do so scoundrelly an act, an' she, the unfortunate creature, famishing wid hunger herself?”

While he spake, he held Skinadre's neck as if in a vice--firm in the same position--and the latter, of course, could do nothing more than turn his ferret eyes round as well as he could, to entreat him to relax his grip.

“Don't choke him, Tom,” exclaimed Hacket, who came forward, to interpose; “you'll strangle him; as Heaven's above, you will.”

“An' what great crime would that be?” answered the other, relaxing his awful grip of the miser. “Isn't he an' every cursed meal-monger like him a curse and a scourge to the counthry--and hasn't the same counthry curses and scourges enough widhout either him or them? Answer me now,”
he proceeded, turning to Skinadre, “why did you send her away widout the food she wanted?”

“My heart bled for her; but--”

“It's a lie, you born hypocrite--it's a lie--your heart never bled for anything, or anybody.”

“But you don't know,” replied the miser, “what I lost by--”

“It's a lie, I say,” thundered out the gigantic young fellow, once more seizing the unfortunate meal-monger by the throat, when out again went his tongue, like a piece of machinery touched by a spring, and again were the red eyes now almost starting out of his head, turned round, whilst he himself was in a state of suffocation, that rendered his appearance ludicrous beyond description--“it's a lie, I say, for you have neither thruth nor heart--that's what we all know.”

“For Heaven's sake, let the man go,” said Hacket, “or you'll have his death to answer for “--and as he spoke he attempted to unclasp the young man's grip; “Tom Dalton, I say, let the man go.”

Dalton, who was elder brother to the lover of Mave Sullivan, seized Hacket with one of his hands, and spun him like a child to the other end of the room.

“Keep away,” he exclaimed, “till I settle wid him--here now, Skinadre, listen to me--you refused my father credit when we wanted it, although you knew we were honest--you refused him credit when we were turned out of our place, although you knew the sickness was among us--well, you know whether we that wor your friends, an'--my father at least--the makin' of you”--and as he spoke, he accompanied every third word by a shake or two, as a kind of running commentary upon what he said; “ay--you did--you knew it well, and I could bear all that; but I can't bear you to turn this unfortunate girl out of your place, widout what she wants, and she's sinkin' wid hunger herself. If she's in distress, 'twas I that brought her to it, an' to shame an' to sorrow too--but I'll set all right for you yet, Margaret dear--an' no one has a betther right to spake for her.”

“Tom,” said the young woman, with a feeble voice, “for the love of God let him go or he'll drop.”

“Not,” replied Dalton, “till he gives you what you come for. Come now,”
he proceeded, addressing the miser, “weigh her. How much will you be able to carry, Margaret?”

“Oh, never mind, now, Tom,” she replied, “I don't want any, it's the ould people at home--it's them--it's them.”

“Weigh her out,” continued the other, furiously; “weigh her out a stone of meal, or by all the lies that ever came from your lips, I'll squeeze the breath out of your body, you deceitful ould hypocrite.”

“I will,” said the miser, panting, and adjusting his string of a cravat, “I will, Tom; here, I ain't able, weigh it yourself--I'm not--indeed I'm not able,” said he, breathless; “an' I was thinkin when you came in of sendin' afther her, bekase, when I heard of the sickness among them, that I mayn't sin, but I found my heart bleedin' inwar--”

[Illustration: PAGE 807-- Tom's clutches were again at his throat]

Tom's clutches were again at his throat. “Another lie,” he exclaimed, “and you'r a gone man. Do what I bid you.”

Skinadre appeared, in point of fact, unable to do so, and Dalton seeing this, weighed the unhappy young woman a stone of oatmeal, which, on finding it too heavy for her feeble strength, he was about to take up himself when he put his hands to his temples, then staggered and fell.

They immediately gathered about him to ascertain the cause of this sudden attack, when it appeared that he had become insensible. His brow was now pale and cold as marble, and a slight dew lay upon his broad forehead; his shirt was open, and exposed to view a neck and breast, which, although sadly wasted, were of surpassing whiteness and great manly beauty.

Margaret, on seeing him fall, instantly placed her baby in the hands of another woman, and flying to him, raised his head and laid it upon her bosom; whilst the miser, who had now recovered, shook his head, lifted his hands, and looked as if he felt that his house was undergoing pollution. In the meantime, the young woman bent her mouth down to his ear, and said, in tones that were wild and hollow, and that had more of despair than even of sorrow in them--

“Tom, oh, Tom, are you gone?--hear me!”

But he replied not to her. “Ah! there was a day,” she added, looking with a mournful smile around, “when he loved to listen to my voice; but that day has passed forever.”

He opened his eyes as she spoke; hers were fixed upon him. He felt a few warm tears upon his face, and she exclaimed in a low voice, not designed for other ears--

“I forgive you all, Tom, dear--I forgive you all!”

He looked at her, and starting to his feet, exclaimed--

“Margaret, my own Margaret, hear me! She is dyin',” he shouted, in a hoarse and excited voice--“she is dyin' with want. I see it all. She's dead!”

It was too true; the unhappy girl had passed into another life; but, whether from a broken heart, caused by sin, shame, and desertion, or from famine and the pressure of general destitution and distress, could never properly be ascertained.

“I see!” exclaimed Dalton, his eyes again blazing, and his voice hollow with emotion--“I see--there she lies; and who brought her to that? But I intended to set all right. Ay--there she lies. An' again, how are we at home? Brought low down, down to a mud cabin! Now, Dick o' the Grange, an' now, Darby Skinadre--now for revenge. The time is come. I'll take my place at the head of them, and what's to be done, must be done. Margaret Murtagh, you're lying dead before me, and by the broken heart you died of--”

He could add no more; but with these words, tottering and frantic, he rushed out of the miser's house.

“Wid the help o' God, the young savage is as mad as a March hare,”
observed Skinadre, coolly; “but, as it's all over wid the unfortunate crature, I don't see why an honest man should lose his own, at any rate.”

Whilst uttering these words, he seized the meal, and deliberately emptied it back into the chest from which young Dalton had taken it.

CHAPTER VIII. -- A Middle Man and Magistrate--Master and Man.

Having mentioned a strange woman who made her appearance at Skinadre's, it may be necessary, or, at least, agreeable to the reader, that we should account for her presence under the roof of that worthy individual, especially as she is likely to perform a part of some interest in our tale. We have said already that she started on hearing Mave Sullivan's name mentioned, and followed her and the Black Prophet's wife like a person who watched their motions, and seemed to feel some peculiar interest in either one or both. The reader must return, then, to the Grey Stone already alluded to, which to some of the characters in our narrative will probably prove to be a “stone of destiny.”

Hanlon, having departed from Sarah M'Gowan in a state of excitement, wended his way along a lonely and dreary road, to the residence of his master, Dick o' the Grange. The storm had increased, and was still increasing at every successive blast, until it rose to what might be termed a tempest. It is, indeed, a difficult thing to describe the peculiar state of his feelings as he struggled onwards, sometimes blown back to a stand-still, and again driven forward by the gloomy and capricious tyranny of the blast, as if he were its mere plaything. In spite, however, of the conflict of the external elements as they careered over the country around him, he could not shake from his imagination the impression left there by the groan which he had heard at the Grey Stone. A supernatural terror, therefore, was upon him, and he felt as if he were in the presence of an accompanying spirit--of a spirit that seemed anxious to disclose the fact that murder would not rest; and so strongly did this impression gain upon him, that in the fitful howling of the storm, and in its wild wailing and dying sobs among the trees and hedges, as he went along, he thought he could distinguish sounds that belonged not to this life. Still he proceeded, his terrors thus translating, as it were, the noisy conflict of the elements into the voices of the dead, or thanking Heaven that the strong winds brought him to a calmer sense of his position, by the necessity that they imposed of preserving himself against their violence. In this anomalous state he advanced, until he came to a grove of old beeches that grew at the foot of one of the hill-ranges we have described, and here the noises he heard were not calculated to diminish his terrors. As the huge trees were tossed and swung about in the gloomy moonlight, his ears were assailed by a variety of wild sounds which had never reached them before. The deep and repeated crashes of the tempest, as it raged among them, was accompanied by a frightful repetition of hoarse moanings, muffled groans, and wild unearthly shrieks, which encountered him from a thousand quarters in the grove, and he began to feel that horrible excitement which is known to be occasioned by the mere transition from extreme cowardice to reckless indifference.

Still he advanced homewards, repeating his prayers with singular energy, his head uncovered notwithstanding the severity of the night, and the rain pouring in torrents upon him, when he found it necessary to cross a level of rough land, at all times damp and marshy, but in consequence of the rains of the season, now a perfect morass. Over this he had advanced about half a mile, and got beyond the frightful noises of the woods, when some large object rose into the air from a clump of plashy rushes before him, and shot along the blast, uttering a booming sound, so loud and stunning that he stood riveted to the earth. The noise resembled that which sometimes proceeds from a humming-top, if a person could suppose one made upon such a gigantic scale as to produce the deep and hollow buzz which this being emitted. Nothing could now convince him that he was not surrounded by spirits, and he felt confident that the voice of undiscovered murder was groaning on the blast--shrieking, as it were, for vengeance in the terrible voice of the tempest. He once more blessed himself, repeated a fresh prayer, and struggled forward, weak, and nearly exhausted, until at length he reached the village adjoining which his master, Dick o' the Grange, resided.

The winds now, and for some minutes previously, had begun to fall, and the lulls in the storm were calmer and more frequent, as well as longer in duration. Hanlon proceeded to his master's, and peering through the shutters, discovered that the servants had not yet retired to rest; then bending his steps further up the village, he soon reached a small isolated cabin, at the door of which he knocked, and in due time was admitted by a thin, tall female.

“God protect us, dear, you're lost!--blessed father, sich a night! Oh! my, my! Well, well; sit near the spark o' fire, sich as it is; but, indeed, it's little you'll benefit by it. Any way, sit down.”

Hanlon sat on a stool, and laying his hat beside him on the floor, he pressed the rain as well as he could out of his drenched hair, and for some time did not speak, whilst the female, squatted upon the ground, somewhat like a hare in her form, sat with the candle in her hand, which she held up in the direction of his face, whilst her eyes were riveted on him with a look of earnest and solemn inquiry.

“Well,” she at length said, “did your journey end, as I tould you it would, in nothing? And yet, God presarve me, you look--eh!--what has happened?--you look like one that was terrified, sure enough. Tell me, at wanst, did the dhrame come out thrue?”

“I'll not have a light heart this many a day,” he replied; “let no one say there's not a Providence above us to bring murdher to light.”

“God of glory be about us!” she exclaimed, interrupting him; “something has happened! Your looks would frighten one, an' your voice isn't like the voice of a livin' man. Tell me--and yet, for all so curious as I feel, I'm thremblin' this minute--but tell me, did the dhrame come out thrue, I say?”

“The dhrame came out thrue,” he replied, solemnly. “I know where the tobaccy box is that he had about him; the same that transported my poor uncle, or that was partly the means of doin' it.”

The woman crossed herself, muttered a short ejaculatory prayer, and again gathered her whole features into an expression of mingled awe and curiosity.

“Did you go to the place you dhramed of?” she asked.

“I went to the Grey Stone,” he replied, “an' offered up a prayer for his sowl, afther puttin' my right hand upon it in his name, jist as I did on yesterday; afther I got an account of the tobaccy box, I heard a groan at the spot--as heaven's above me, I did.”

“Savior of earth, _gluntho shin!_”

“But that wasn't all. On my way home, I heard, as I was passin' the ould trees at the Rabbit Bank, things that I can't find words to tell you of.”

“Well acushla, glory be to God for everything! it's all his will, blessed be his name! What did you hear, avick?--but wait till I throw a drop o' the holy wather that I have hangin' in the little bottle at the bed-post upon us.”

She rose whilst speaking and getting the bottle alluded to, sprinkled both herself and him, after which she hung it up again in its former position.

“There, now, nothin' harmful, at any rate, can come near us afther that, blessed be his name. Well, what did you hear comin' home?--I mean at the Rabbit Bank. Wurrah,” she added, shuddering, “but it's it that's the lonely spot after night! What was it, dear?”

“Indeed, I can scarcely tell you--sich groans, an' wild shoutins, an' shrieks, man's ears never hard in this world, I think; there I hard them as I was comin' past the trees, an' afther I passed them; an' when I left them far behind me, I could hear, every now and then, a wild shriek that made my blood run cowld. But there was still worse as I crossed the Black Park; something got up into the air out o' the rushes before me, an' went off wid a noise not unlike what Jerry Hamilton of the Band makes when he rubs his middle finger up against the tamborine.”

“Heaven be about us!” she exclaimed, once more crossing herself, and uttering a short prayer for protection from evil; “but tell me, how did you know it was his Box, and how did you find it out?”

“By the letters P. M., and the broken hinge,” he replied.

“Blessed be the name of God!” she exclaimed again--“He won't let the murdher lie, that's clear. But what I want to know is, how did your goin' to the Grey Stone bring you to the knowledge of the box?”

He then gave her a more detailed account of his conversation with Sarah M'Gowan, and the singular turn which it chanced to take towards the subject of the handkerchief, in the first instance; but when the coincidence of the letters were mentioned, together with Sarah's admission that she had the box in her possession, she clasped her hands, and looking upwards exclaimed--

“Blessed be the name of the Almighty for that! Oh, I feel there is no doubt now the hand of God is in it, an' we'll come at the murdher or the murdherers yet.”

“I hope so,” he replied; “but I'm lost Wid wet an' cowld; so in the meantime I'll be off home, an' to my bed. I had something to say to you about another matther, but I'll wait till mornin'; dear knows, I'm in no condition to spake about anything else to-night. This is a snug little cabin; but, plaise God, in the coorse of a week or so, I'll have you more comfortable than you are. If my own throuble was over me, I wouldn't stop long in the neighborhood; but as the hand of God seems to be in this business, I can't think of goin' till it's cleared up, as cleared up it will be, I have no doubt, an' can have none, afther what has happened this awful night.”

Hanlon's situation with his master was one with which many of our readers are, no doubt, well acquainted. He himself was a clever, active, ingenious fellow, who could, as they say in the country, put a hand to anything, and make himself useful in a great variety of employments. He had in the spring of that year, been engaged as a common laborer by Dick o' the Grange, in which capacity he soon attracted his employer's notice, by his extraordinary skill in almost everything pertaining to that worthy gentleman's establishment. It is true he was a stranger in the country, of whom nobody knew anything--for there appeared to be some mystery about him; but as Dick cared little of either his place of birth or pedigree, it was sufficient for him to find that Hanlon was a very useful, not to say valuable young man, about his house, that he understood everything, and had an eye and hand equally quick and experienced. The consequence was, that he soon became a favorite with the father, and a kind of _sine qua non_ with the son, into whose rustic gallantries he entered, with a spirit that satisfied the latter of his capacity to serve him in that respect as well as others. Hanlon, in truth, was just the person for such a master, and for such an establishment as he kept. Dick o' the Grange was not a man who, either by birth, education, or position in society, could entertain any pretensions to rank with the gentry of the surrounding country. It is true he was a magistrate, but then he was a middleman, and as such found himself an interested agent in the operation of one of the worst and most cruel systems that ever cursed either the country or the people. We of course mean that which suffered a third party to stand between the head landlord, and those who in general occupied the soil. Of this system, it may be with truth said, that the iniquity lay rather in the principal on which it rested, than in the individual who administered it; because it was next to an impossibility that a man anxious to aggrandize his family--as almost every man is--could, in the exercise of the habits which enable him to do so, avoid such a pressure upon those who were under him as amounted to great hardships and injustice. The system held out so many temptations to iniquity in the management of land, and in the remuneration of labor, that it required an amount of personal virtue and self-denial to resist them, that were scarcely to be expected from any one, so difficult was it to overlook or neglect the opportunities for oppression and fraud which it thus offered.

Old Dick, although bearing the character of being a violent and outrageous man, was, however, one of those persons of whom there will be always somebody found to speak favorably. Hot and ungovernable in temper, he unquestionably was, and capable of savage and cruel acts; but at the same time his capricious and unsteady impulses rendered him uncertain, whether for good or evil; so much so, indeed, that it was impossible to know when to ask him for a favor; nor was it extraordinary to find him a friend this day to the man whose avowed enemy he proclaimed himself yesterday; and this same point of character was true the other way---for whilst certain that you had him for a friend, perhaps you found him hard at work to oppress or over-reach you if he could. The consequence of this peculiarity was that he had a two-fold reputation in the country. Some were found to abuse him, and others to mention many acts of generosity and kindness which he had been known to perform under circumstances where they were least to be expected. This perhaps was one reason why they made so strong an impression upon the people, and were so distinctly remembered to his advantage. It is true he was a violent party man, but then he wanted coolness to adjust his principles, and thus make them subservient to his private interests. For this reason, notwithstanding his strong and out-spoken prejudices, it was a well know fact, that the Roman Catholic population preferred him as a magistrate to many who were remarkable for a more equal and even tenor of life, and in whom, under greater plausibility of manner, there existed something which they would have readily exchanged for his violent abuse of them and their creed.

Such was Dick o' the Grange, a man who, as a middleman and a magistrate, stood out a prominent representative of a class that impressed themselves strongly upon their times, and who, whether as regards their position or office, would not find at the present day in the ranks of any party in Ireland a single man who could come forward and say they were not an oppressive evil to the country.

Dick o' the Grange, at this period of our narrative, was far advanced in years, and had, some time past, begun to feel what is known in men who have led a hard convivial life, as that breaking down of the constitution, which is generally the forerunner of dissolution. On this account he had for some time past resigned the management of his property altogether to his son, young Dick, who was certainly wild and unreflecting, but neither so impulsively generous, nor so habitually violent as his father. The estimate of his character which went abroad was such as might be expected--many thought him better than the old man. He was the youngest son and a favorite--two circumstances which probably occasioned his education to be neglected, as it had been. All his sisters and brothers having been for some years married and settled in life, he, and his father, who was a widower, kept a bachelor's house, where we regret to say the parental surveillance over his morals was not so strict as it ought to have been. Young Dick was handsome, and so exceedingly vain of his person, that any one wishing to gain a favor either from himself or his worthy sire, had little more to do than dexterously apply a strong dose of flattery to this his weakest point, and the favor was sure to be granted, for his influence over old Dick was boundless.

In this family, then, it was that Hanlon held the situation we have described--that is, partly a gardener, and partly a steward, and partly a laboring man. There was a rude and riotous character in and about Dick's whole place, which marked it at once as the property of a person below the character of a gentleman. Abundance there was, and great wealth; but neither elegance nor neatness marked the house or furniture. His servants partook of the same equivocal appearance, as did the father and son, and the “Grange” in general; but, above all and everything in his establishment, must we place, in originality and importance, Jemmy Branigan, who, in point of fact, ought to receive credit for the greater portion of old Dick's reputation, or at least for all that was good of it. Jemmy was his old, confidential--enemy--for more than forty years, during the greater portion of which period it could scarcely be said with truth that, in Jemmy's hands, Dick o' the Grange ought to be looked to as a responsible person. When we say “enemy,” we know perfectly well what we mean; for if half a dozen battles between Jemmy and his master every day during the period above mentioned constituted friendship, then, indeed, the reader may substitute the word friend, if he pleases.

In fact, Dick and Jemmy had become notorious throughout the whole country; and we are certain that many of our readers will, at first glance, recognize these two remarkable individuals. Truly, the ascendancy which Jemmy had gained over the magistrate, was surprising; and nothing could be more amusing than the interminable series of communications, both written and oral, which passed between them, in the shape of dismissals from service on the one side, and notices to leave on the other; each of which whether written or oral, was treated by the party noticed with the most thorough contempt. Nothing was right that Jemmy disapproved of, and nothing wrong that had his sanction, and this without any reference whatsoever to the will of his master, who, if he happened to get into a passion about it, was put down by Jemmy, who got into a greater passion still; so that, after a long course of recrimination and Billinsgate on both sides, delivered by Jemmy in an incomparably louder voice, and with a more consequential manner, old Dick was finally forced to succumb.

The worthy magistrate and his son were at breakfast next morning, when young “Master Richard,” as he was called, rung the bell, and Jemmy attended--for we must add, that Jemmy discharged the duties of butler, together with any other duty that he himself deemed necessary, and that without leave asked or given.

“Where's Hanlon, Jemmy?” he asked.

“Hanlon? troth, it's little matther where he is, an' devil a one o' myself cares.”

“Well, but I care, Jemmy, for I want him. Where is he?”

“He's gone up to that ould streele's, that lives in the cabin above there. I don't like the same Hanlon; nobody here knows anything about him, nor he won't let them know anything about him. He's as close as Darby Skinadre, and as deep as a dhraw-well. Altogether, he looks as if there was a weight on his conscience, for all his lightness an' fun--an' if I thought so, I'd discharge him at wanst.”

“And I agree with you for once,” observed his master; “there is some cursed mystery about him. I don't like him, either, to say the truth.”

“An' why don't you like him?” asked Jemmy, with a contemptuous look.

“I can't say; but I don't.”

“No! you can't? I know you can't say anything, at all events, that you ought to say,” replied Jemmy, who, like, his master, would have died without contradiction; “but I can say why you don't like him; it's bekaise he's the best sarvint ever was about your place; that's the raison you don't like him. But what do you know about a good sarvint or a bad one, or anything else that's useful to you, God help you.”

“If you were near my cane, you old scoundrel, I'd pay you for your impertinence, ay would I.”

“Ould scoundrel, is it? Oh, hould your tongue; I'm not of your blood, thank God!--and don't be fastenin' your name upon me. Ould scoundrel, indeed!--Troth, we could spare an odd one now and then out of our own little establishment.”

“Jemmy, never mind,” said the son, “but tell Hanlon I want to speak to him in the office after breakfast.”

“If I see him I will, but the devil an inch I'll go out o' my way for it--if I see him I will, an' if I don't I won't. Did you put a fresh bandage to your leg, to keep in them Pharisee (* Varicose, we presume) veins o' yours, as the docthor ordhered you?”

This, in fact, was the usual style of his address to the old magistrate, when in conversation with him.

“Damn the quack!” replied his master: “no, I didn't.”

“An' why didn't you?”

“You're beginning this morning,” said the other, losing temper. “You had better keep quiet, keep your distance, if you're wise--that's all.”

“Why didn't you, I ax,” continued Jemmy, walking up to him, with his hands in his coat pocket, and looking coolly, but authoritatively in his face. “I tell you, and if you don't know how to take care of yourself, I do, and I will. I'm all that's left over you now; an' in spite of all I can do, it's a purty account I'd be able to give of you, if I was called on.”

“This to my face!” exclaimed Dick--“this to my face, you villain!”--and, as he spoke, the cane was brandished over Jemmy's head, as if it would descend every moment.

“Ay,” replied Jemmy, without budging, “ay, indeed--an' a purty face it is--a nice face hard drinkin' an' a bad life has left you. Ah! do it if you dare,” he added, as the other swung his staff once or twice, as if about to lay it down in reality; “troth, if you do, I'll know how to act.”

“What would you do, you old cancer--what would you do if I did?”

“Troth, what you'll force me to do some day. I know you will, for heaven an' earth couldn't stand you; an' if I do, it's not me you'll have to blame for it. Ah, that same step you'll drive me to--I see that.”

“What will you do, you old viper, that has been like a blister to me my whole life--what will you do?”

“Send you about your business,” replied Jemmy, coolly, but with all the plenitude of authority in his manner; “send you from about the place, an' then I'll have a quiet house. I'll send you to your youngest daughter's or somewhere, or any where, out of this. So now that you know my determination you had betther keep yourself cool, unless, indeed, you wish to thravel. Oh, then heaven's above, but you wor a bitther sight to me, an' but it was the unlucky day that ever the divil druv you acrass me!”

“Dick,” said the father, “as soon as you go into the office, write a discharge, as bad a one, for that old vagabond, as the English language can enable you to do--for by the light of heaven, he shan't sleep another night under this roof.”

“Shan't I?--we'll see that, though. To the divil I pitch yourself an' your discharge--an' now mark my words: I'll be no longer throubled wid you; you've been all my life a torment and a heart-break to me--a blister of French flies was swan's down, compared to you, but by the book, I'll end it at last--ay, will I--I give you up--I surrendher you as a bad bargain--I wash my hands of you--This is Tuesday mornin', God bless the day and the weather--an' woeful weather it is--but sure it's betther than you desarve, an' I don't doubt but it's you and the likes o' you that brings it on us! Ay, this is Tuesday mornin', an' I now give you warnin' that on Saturday next, you'll see the last o' me--an' don't think that this warnin' is like the rest, or that I'll relint again, as I was foolish enough to do often before. No--my mind's made up--an' indeed--” here his voice sank to a great calmness and philosophy, like a man who was above all human passion, and who could consequently talk in a voice of cool and quiet determination;--“An' indeed,” he added, “my conscience was urgin' me to this for some time past--so that I'm glad things has taken this turn.”

“I hope you'll keep your word, then,” said his master, “but before you go, listen to me.”

“Listen to you--to be sure I will; God forbid I wouldn't; let there be nothing at any rate, but civility between us while we're together. What is it?”

“You asked me last night to let widow Leary's cow out o' pound?”

“Ay, did I!”

“And I swore I wouldn't.”

“I know you did. Who would doubt that, at any rate?”

“Well, before you leave us, be off now, and let the animal out o' the pound.”

“Is that it? Oh, God help you! what'll you do when you'll be left to yourself, as you will be on Saturday next? Let her out, says you. Troth, the poor woman had her cow safe and sound at home wid her before she went to bed last night, and her poor childre had her milk to kitchen their praties, the craythurs. Do you think I'd let her stay in till the maggot bit you? Oh, ay, indeed! In the mane time, as soon as you are done breakfast, I want you in the study, to put the bindage on that ould, good-for-nothin' leg o' yours; an' mark my words, let there be no shirkin' now, for on it must go, an' will, too. If I see that Hanlon, I'll tell him you want to see him, Master Richard; an' now that I'm on it, I had betther say a word to you before I go; bekaise when I do go, you'll have no one to guide you, God help you, or to set you a Christian patthern. You see that man sittin' there wid that bad leg, stretched out upon the chair?”

“I do, Jemmy--ha, ha, ha! Well, what next?”

“That man was the worst patthern ever you had. In the word, don't folly his example in anything--in any one single thing, an' then there may be some chance o' you still. I'll want you by-an'-by in the study, I tould you.”

These last words were addressed to his master, at whom he looked as one might be supposed to do at a man whose case, in a moral sense, was hopeless; after which, having uttered a groan that seemed to imitate the woeful affliction he was doomed, day by day, to suffer, he left the room.

It is not our intention, neither is it necessary that we should enter into the particulars of the interview which Hanlon had that morning with young Dick. It is merely sufficient to state that they had a private conversation in the old magistrate's office, at which the female whom Hanlon had visited the night before was present. When this was concluded, Hanlon walked with her a part of the way, evidently holding serious and interesting discourse touching a subject which we may presume bore upon the extraordinary proceedings of the previous night. He closed by giving her directions how to proceed on her journey; for it seemed that she was unacquainted with the way, being, like himself, but a stranger in the neighborhood:--“You will go on,” said he, “till you reach the height at Aughindrummon, from that you will see the trees at the Rabbit Bank undher you; then keep the road straight till you come to where it crosses the ford of the river: a little on this side, and where the road turns to your right, you will find the Grey Stone, an' jist opposite that you will see the miserable cabin where the Black Prophet lives.”

“Why do they call him the Black Prophet?”

“Partly, they tell me, from his appearance, an' partly bekaise he takes delight in prophesyin' evil.”

“But could he have anything to do wid the murdher?”

“I was thinkin' about that,” he replied, “and had some talk this mornin' wid a man that's livin' a long time--indeed that was born--a little above the place--and he says that the Black Prophet, or M'Gowan, did not come to the neighborhood till afther the murdher. I wasn't myself cool enough last night to ask his daughter many questions about it; an' I was afraid, besides, to appear over-anxious in the business. So now that you have your instructions in that and the other matthers, you'll manage every thing as well as you can.”

Hanlon then returned to the Grange, and the female proceeded on her mission to the house, if house it could be called, of the Black Prophet, for the purpose, if possible, of collecting such circumstances as might tend to throw light upon a dark and mysterious murder.

When Sarah left her father, after having poulticed his face, to go a kailley, as she said, to a neighbor's house, she crossed the ford of the river, and was proceeding in the same directions that had been taken by Hanlon the preceding night, when she met a strange woman, or rather she found her standing, apparently waiting for herself, at the Grey Stone. From the position of the stone, which was a huge one, under one ledge of which, by the way, there grew a little clump of dwarf elder, it was impossible that Sarah could pass her, without coming in tolerable close contact; for the road was an old and narrow one, though perfectly open and without hedge or ditch on either side of it.

“Maybe you could tell me, young woman, whereabouts here a man lives that they call Donnel Dhu, or the Black Prophet; his real name is M'Gowan, I think.”

“I ought to be able to tell you, at any rate,” replied Sarah; “I'm his daughter.”

The strange woman, on surveying Sarah more closely, looked as if she never intended to remove her eyes from her countenance and figure. She seemed for a moment, as it were, to forget every other object in life--her previous conversation with Hanlon--the message on which she had been sent--and her anxiety to throw light upon the awful crime that had been committed at the spot whereon she stood. At length she sighed deeply, and appeared to recover her presence of mind, and to break through the abstraction in which she had been wrapped. “You're his daughter, you say?”

“Ay, I do say so.”

“Then you know a young man by name Pierce--och, what am I sayin'!--by name Charley Hanlon?”

“To be sure I do--I'm not ashamed of knowin' Charles Hanlon.”

“You have a good opinion of him, then?”

“I have a good opinion of him, but not so good as I had thought.”

“Mush a why then, might one ask?”

“I'm afeard he's a cowardly crathur, and rather unmanly a thrifle. I like a man to be a man, an' not to get as white as a sheet, an' cowld as a tombstone, bekaise he hears what he thinks to be a groan at night, an' it may be nothin' but an owld cow behind a ditch. Ha! ha! ha!”

“An' where did he hear the groan?”

“Why, here where we're standin'. Ha! ha! ha! I was thinkin' of it since, an' I did hear somethin' very like a groan; but what about it? Sich a night as last night would make any one groan that had a groan in them.”

“You spoke about ditches, but sure there's no ditches here.”

“Divil a matther--who cares what it was? What did you want wid my father?”

“It was yourself that I wanted to see.”

“Faix, an' you've seen me, then, an' the full o' your eye you tuck out o' me. You'll know me again, I hope.”

“Is your mother livin'?”

“No.”

“How long is she dead, do you know?”

“I do not; I hardly remember anything about her. She died when I was a young slip--a mere child, I believe. Still,” she proceeded, rather slowly, musing and putting her beautiful and taper fingers to her chin--“I think that I do remember--it's like a dhrame to me though, an' I dunna but it is one--still it's like a dhrame to me, that I was wanst in her arms, that I was cryin', an' that she kissed me--that she kissed me! If she had lived, it's a different life maybe I'd lead an' a different creature I'd be to-day, maybe, but I never had a mother.”

“Did your father marry a second time?”

“He did.”

“Then you have a step-mother?”

“Ay have I.”

“Is she kind to you, an' do you like her?”

“Middlin'--she's not so bad--better than I deserve, I doubt; I'm sorry for what I did to her; but then I have the divil's temper, an' have no guide o' myself when it comes on me. I know whatever she may be to me, I'm not the best step-daughter to her.”

The strange female was evidently much struck with the appearance and singularly artless disposition of Sarah, as well as with her extraordinary candor; and indeed no wonder; for as this neglected creature spoke, especially with reference to her mother, her eyes flashed and softened with an expression of brilliancy and tenderness that might be said to resemble the sky at night, when the glowing corruscations of the Aurora Borealis sweep over it like expanses of lightning, or fade away into those dim but graceful undulations which fill the mind with a sense of such softness and beauty.

“I don't know,” observed her companion, sighing and looking at her affectionately, “how any step-mother could be harsh to you.”

“Ha! ha! ha! don't you, indeed? Faix, then, if you had me, maybe you wouldn't think so--I'm nothin' but a born divil when the fit's on me.”

“Charley Hanlon,” proceeded the strange woman, “bid me ax you for the ould tobaccy-box you promised him last night.”

“Well, but he promised me a handkerchy; have you got it?”

“I have,” replied the other, producing it; “but, then, I'm not to give it to you, unless you give me the box for it.”

“But I haven't the box now,” said Sarah, “how-and-ever, I'll get it for him.”

“Are you sure that you can an' will?” inquired the other.

“I had it in my hand yesterday,” she said, “an' if it's to be had I'll get it.”

“Well, then,” observed the other mildly, “as soon as you get him the box, he'll give you this handkerchy, but not till then.”

“Ha!” she exclaimed, kindling, “is that his bargain; does he think I'd thrick him or cheat him?--hand it here.”

“I can't,” replied the other; “I'm only to give it to you when I get the box.”

“Hand it here, I say,” returned Sarah, whose eyes flashed in a moment; “it's Peggy Murray's rag, I suppose--hand it here, I bid you.”

The woman shook her head and replied, “I can't--not till you get the box.”

Sarah replied not a word, but sprang at it, and in a minute had it in her hands.

“I would tear it this minute into ribbons,” she exclaimed, with eyes of fire and glowing cheeks, “and tramp it undher my feet too; only that I want it to show her, that I may have the advantage over her.”

There was a sharp, fierce smile of triumph on her features as she spoke; and altogether her face sparkled with singular animation and beauty.

“God bless me!” said the strange woman, looking at her with a wondering yet serious expression of countenance; “I wanst knew a face like yours, an' a temper the aiquil of it--at any rate, my good girl, you don't pay much respect to a stranger. Is your stepmother at home?”

“She is not, but my father is; however, I don't think he'll see you now. My stepmother's gone to Darby Skinadre, the meal-monger's.”

“I'm goin' there.”

“An' if you see her,” replied the other, “you'll know her; a score on her cheek--ha, ha, ha; an' when you see it, maybe you'll thank God that I am not your step-daughter.”

“Isn't there a family named Sullivan that lives not far from Skinadre's?”

“There is; Jerry Sullivan, it's his daughter that's the beauty--_Gra Gal_ Sullivan. Little she knows what's preparin' for her!”

“How am I to go to Skinadre's from this?” asked the woman.

“Up by that road there; any one will tell you as you go along.”

“Thank you, dear,” replied the woman, tenderly; “God bless you; you are a wild girl, sure enough; but above all things, afore I go, don't forget the box for--for--och, for--Charley Hanlon. God bless you, a _colleen machree_, an' make you what you ought to be!”

Sarah, during many a long day, had not heard herself addressed in an accent of kindness or affection; for it would be wrong to bestow upon the rude attachment which her father entertained for her, or his surly mode of expressing it, any term that could indicate tenderness, even in a remote degree. She looked, therefore, at the woman earnestly, and as she did, her whole manner changed to one of melancholy and kindness. A soft and benign expression came like the dawn of breaking day over her features, her voice fell into natural melody and sweetness, and, approaching her companion, she took her hand and exclaimed--

“May God bless you for them words! it's many a day since I heard the voice o' kindness. I'll get the box, if it's to be had, if it was only for your own sake.”

She then passed on to her neighbor's house, and the next appearance of her companion was that in which the reader caught, a glimpse of her in the house of Darby Skinadre, from which she followed Nelly M'Gowan and Mave Sullivan with an appearance of such interest.

CHAPTER IX. -- Meeting of Strangers--Mysterious Dialogue.

_Gra Gal_ Sullivan and the prophet's wife, having left the meal-shop, proceeded in the direction of Aughamurran, evidently in close, and if one could judge by their gestures, deeply important conversation. The strange woman followed them at a distance, meditating, as might be perceived by her hesitating manner, upon the most seasonable moment of addressing either one or both, without seeming to interrupt or disturb their dialogue. Although the actual purport of the topic they discussed could not be known by a spectator, yet even to an ordinary observer, it was clear that the elder female uttered something that was calculated to warn or alarm the younger.

She raised her extended forefinger, looked earnestly into the face of her companion, then upwards solemnly, and, clasping her hands with vehemence, appeared to close her assertion by appealing to heaven in behalf of its truth; the younger looked at her with wonder, seemed amazed, paused suddenly on her step, raised her hands, and looked as if about to express terror; but, checking herself, appeared as it were perplexed by uncertainty and doubt. After this the elder woman seemed to confide some secret or sorrow to the other, for she began to weep bitterly, and to wring her hands as if with remorse, whilst her companion looked like one who had been evidently transformed into an impersonation of pure and artless sympathy. She caught the rough hand of the other--and, ere she had proceeded very far in her narrative, a few tears of compassion stole down her youthful cheek--after which she began to administer consolation in a manner that was at once simple and touching. She pressed the hand of the afflicted woman between hers, then wiped her eyes with her own handkerchief, and soothed her with a natural softness of manner that breathed at once of true tenderness and delicacy.

As soon as this affecting scene had been concluded, the strange woman imperceptibly mended her pace, until her proximity occasioned them to look at her with that feeling which prompts us to recognize the wish of a person to address us, as it is often expressed, by an appearance of mingled anxiety and diffidence, when they approach us. At length Mave Sullivan spoke--

“Who is that strange woman that is followin' us, an' wants to say something, if one can judge by her looks?”

“Well, I don't know,” replied Nelly; “but whatsomever it may be, she wishes to speak to you or me, no doubt of it.”

“She looks like a poor woman,'”* said Mave, “an' yet she didn't ask anything in Skinadre's, barring a drink of water; but, God pity her if she's comin' to us for relief poor creature! At any rate, she appears to have care and distress in her face; I'll spake to her.”

* A common and compassionate name for a person forced
to ask alms.

She then beckoned the female to approach them, who did so; but they could perceive as she advanced, that they had been mistaken in supposing her to be one of those unhappy beings whom the prevailing famine had driven to mendicancy. There was visible in her face a feeling of care and anxiety certainly, but none of that supplicating expression which is at once recognized as the characteristic of the wretched class to which they supposed her to belong. This circumstance particularly embarrassed the inexperienced girl, whose gentle heart at the moment sympathized with the stranger's anxieties, whatever they may have been, and she hesitated a little, when the woman approached, in addressing her. At length she spoke:

“We wor jist sayin' to one another,” she observed, “that it looked as if you wished to spake to either this woman or me.”

“You're right enough, then,” she replied; “I have something to say to her, and a single word to yourself, too.”

“An' what is it you have to say to me?” asked Nelly; “I hope it isn't to borrow money from me, bekase if it is, my banker has failed, an' left me as poor as a church mouse.”

“Are you in distress, poor woman,” inquired the generous and kind-hearted girl. “Maybe you're hungry; it isn't much we can do for you; but little as it is, if you come home with me, you'll come to a family that won't scruple to share the little they have now with any one that's worse off than themselves.”

“Ay, you may well say 'now,'” observed the prophet's wife; “for until now, it's they that could always afford it; an' indeed it was the ready an' the willin' bit was ever at your father's table.”

The stranger looked upon the serene and beautiful features of Mave with a long gaze of interest and admiration; after which she added, with a sigh:

“And you, I believe, are the girl they talk so much about for the fair face and good heart? Little pinetration it takes to see that you have both, my sweet girl. If I don't mistake, your name is Mave Sullivan, or _Gra Gal_, as the people mostly call you.”

Mave, whose natural delicacy was tender and pure as the dew-drop of morning, on hearing her praises thus uttered by the lips of a stranger, blushed so deeply, that her whole neck and face became suffused with that delicious crimson of modesty which, alas! is now of such rare occurrence among the sex, unconscious that, in doing so, she was adding fresh testimony to the impressions which had gone so generally abroad of her extraordinary beauty, and the many unostentatious virtues which adorned her humble life.

“Mave Sullivan is my name,” she replied, smiling through her blushes: “as to the nickname, the people will call one what they like, no matther whether it's right or wrong.”

“The people's seldom wrong, then, in givin' names o' the kind,” returned the stranger; “but in your case, they're right at all events, as any one may know that looks upon you: that sweet face an' them fair looks is seldom if ever found with a bad heart. May God guard you, my purty and innocent girl, an' keep you safe from all evil, I pray his holy name.”

The prophet's wife and Mave exchanged looks as the woman spoke: and the latter said:

“I hope you don't think there's any evil before me.”

“Who is there,” replied the stranger, “that can say there's not? Sure it's before us and about us every hour in the day; but in your case, darlin', I jist say, be on your guard, an' don't trust or put belief in any one that you don't know well. That's all I can say, an' indeed all I know.”

“I feel thankful to you,” replied Mave; “and now that you wish me well, (for I'm sure you do,) maybe you'd grant me a favor?”

“If it is widin the bounds of my power, I'll do it,” returned the other; “but it's little I can do, God help me.”

“Nelly,” said Mave, “will you go on to the cross-roads there, an' I'll be with you in a minute.”

The cross-roads alluded to were only a couple of hundred yards before them. The prophet's wife proceeded, and Mave renewed the conversation.

“What I want you to do for me is this--that is if you can do it--maybe you could bring a couple of stones of meal to a family of the name of--of--” here she blushed again, and her confusion became so evident that she felt it impossible to proceed until she had recovered in some degree her composure. “Only two or three years agone,” she continued, “they were the daicentest farmers in the parish; but the world went against them as it has of late a'most against every one, owing to the fall of prices, and now they're out of their farm, very much reduced, and there's sickness amongst them, as well as want. They've been living,” she proceeded, wiping away the tears which were now fast flowing, “in a kind of cabin or little cottage not far from the fine house an' place that was not long ago their own. Their name,” she added, after a pause in which it was quite evident that she struggled strongly with her feelings, “is--is--Dal-ton.”

“O was the young fellow one of them,” asked the woman, “that was so outrageous awhile ago in the miser's? I think I heard the name given to him.”

“Oh, I have nothing to say for him,” replied Mave; “he was always wild, but they say never bad-hearted; it's the rest of the family I'm thinking about--and even that young man isn't more than three or four days up out o' the fever. What I want you to do is to bring the male I'm spakin' of to that family; any one will show you their little place; an' to leave it there about dusk this evenin', so that no one will ever know that you do it; an' as you love God an' hope for mercy, don't breathe my name in the business at all.”

“I will do it for you,” replied the other; “but in the meantime where am I to get the meal?”

“Why, at the miser's,” replied Mave; “and when you go there, tell him that the person who told him they wouldn't forget it to him, sent you for it, an' you'll get it.”

“God forbid I refused you that much,” said the stranger; “an' although it'll keep me out longer than I expected, still I'll manage it for you, an' come or go what will, widout mentioning your name.”

“God bless you for that,” said Mave, “an grant that you may never be brought to the same hard pass that they're in, and keep you from ever having a heavy or a sorrowful heart.”

“Ah, _acushla oge_,” replied the woman with a profound sigh, “that prayer's too late for me; anything else than a heavy and sorrowful heart I've seldom had: for the last twenty years and upwards little but care and sorrow has been upon me.

“Indeed, one might easily guess as much,” said Mave, “you have a look of heart-break and sorrow, sure enough. But answer me this: how do you know that there's evil before me or, about me?'

“I don't know much about it,” returned the other; “but I'm afeard there's something to your disadvantage planned or plannin' against you. When I seen you awhile ago I didn't know you till I heard your name; I'm a stranger here, not two weeks in the neighborhood, and know hardly anybody in it.”

“Well,” observed Mave, who had fallen back upon her own position, and the danger alluded to by the stranger, “I'll do nothing that's wrong myself, and if there's danger about me, as I hear there is, it's a good thing to know that God can guard me in spite of all that any one can do against me.”

“Let that be your principle, ahagur--sooner or latter the hand o' God can and will make everything clear, and after all, dear, he is the best protection, blessed be his name!”

They had now reached the cross-roads already spoken of, where the prophet's wife again joined them for a short time, previous to her separation from Mave, whose way from that point lay in a direction opposite to theirs.

“This woman,” said Mave, “wishes to go to Condy Dalton's in the course of the evening, and you, Nelly, can show her from the road the poor place they now live in, God help them.”

“To be sure,” replied the other, “an' the house where they did live when they wor as themselves, full, an' warm, an' daicent; an' it is a hard case on them, God knows, to be turned out like beggars from a farm that they spent hundreds on, and to be forced to see the landlord, ould Dick o' the Grange, now settin' it at a higher rent and putting into his own pocket the money they had laid out upon improvin' it an' makin' it valuable for him and his; troth, it's open robbery an' nothin' else.”

“It in a hard case upon them, as every body allows,” said Mave, “but it's over now, and can't be helped. Good-bye, Nelly, an' God bless you; an' God bless you too,” she added, addressing the strange woman, whose hand she shook and pressed. “You are a great deal oulder than I am, an' as I said, every one may read care an' sorrow upon your face. Mine doesn't show it yet, I know, but for all that the heart within me is full of both, an' no likelihood of its ever bein' otherwise with me.”

As she spoke, the tears again gushed down her cheeks; but she checked her grief by an effort, and after a second hurried good-bye, she proceeded on her way home.

“That seems a mild girl,” said the strange woman, “as she is a lovely creature to look at.”

“She's better than she looks,” returned the prophet's wife, “an' that's a great deal to say for her.”

“That's but truth,” replied the stranger, “and I believe it; for indeed she has goodness in her face.”

“She has and in her heart,” replied Nelly; “no wondher, indeed, that every one calls her the _Gra Gal_, for it's she that well deserves it. I You are bound for Condy Dalton's, then?” she added, inquiringly. “I am,” said the other. “I think you must be a stranger in the country, otherwise I'd know your face,” continued Nelly--“but maybe you're a relation of theirs.”

“I am a stranger,” said the other; “but no relation.”

“The Daltons,” proceeded Nelly, “are daicent people,--but hot and hasty, as the savin' is. It's the blow before the word wid them always.”

“Ah, tut they say,” returned her companion, “that a hasty heart was never a bad one.”

“Many a piece o' nonsense they say as well as that,” rejoined Nelly; “I know them that 'ud put a knife into your heart hastily enough--ay, an' give you a hasty death, into the bargain. They'll first break your head--cut you to the skull, and then, indeed, they'll give you a plaisther. That was ever an' always the carrecther of the same Daltons; an', if all accounts be thrue, the hand of God is upon them, an' will be upon them till the bloody deed is brought to light.”

“How is that?” inquired the other, with intense interest, whilst her eyes became riveted upon Nelly's hard features.

“Why, a murdher that was committed betther than twenty years ago in this neighborhood.”

“A murdher!” exclaimed the stranger. “Where?--when?--how?”

“I can tell you where, an' I can tell you when,” replied Nelly; “but there I must stop--for unless I was at the committin' of it, you might know very well I couldn't tell you how.”

“Where then?” she asked, and whilst she did so, it was by a considerable effort that she struggled to prevent her agitation from being noticed by the prophet's wife.

“Why, near the Grey Stone at the crossroads of Mallybenagh--that's the where!”

“An' now for the when?” asked the stranger, who almost panted with anxiety as she spoke.

“Let me see,” replied Nelly, “fourteen and six makes twenty, an' two before that or nearly--I mane the year of the rebellion, Why it's not all out two-and-twenty years, I think.”

“Aisey,” said the other, “I'm but very weak an' feeble--will you jist wait till I rest a minute upon this green bank by the road.”

“What ails you?” asked Nelly. “You look as if you got suddenly ill.”

“I did get a little--but it'll soon pass away,” she answered--“thrue enough,” she added in a low voice, and as if in a soliloquy; “God is a just Judge--he is--he is! Well, but--oh, I'll soon get better--well, but listen, what became of the murdhered man?--was the body ever got?”

“Nobody knows that--the body was never got--that is to say nobody knows where it's now lyin', snug enough too.”

“Ha!” thought the stranger, eying her furtively--“snug enough!--there's more knowledge where that came from. What do you mane by snug enough?”
she asked abruptly.

“Mane!” replied the other, who at once perceived the force of the unguarded expression she had used;--“mane, why what could I mane, but that whoever did the deed, hid the body where very few would be likely to find it.”

Her companion now stood up, and approaching the prophet's wife, raised her hand, and said in a tone that was both startling and emphatic--

“I met you this day as you may think, by accident; but take my word for it, and, as sure as we must both account for our acts, it was the hand o' God that brought us together. I now look into your face, and I tell you that I see guilt and throuble there--ay, an' the dark work of a conscience that's gnawin' your heart both night and day.”

Whilst speaking, she held her face within about a foot of Nelly's, into which she looked with an expression so searching and dreadful in its penetration, that the other shrunk back, and felt for a moment as if subdued by a superior spirit. It was, however, only for a moment; the sense of her subjection passed away, and she resumed that hard and imperturbable manner, for which she had been all her life so remarkable, unless, like Etna and Vesuvius, she burst out of this seeming coldness into fire and passion. There, however, they stood looking sternly into each others' faces, as if each felt anxious that the other should quail before her gaze--the stranger, in order that her impressions might be confirmed, and the prophet's wife, that she should, by the force of her strong will, fling off those traces of inquietude which she knew very well were often too legible in her countenance.

“You are wrong,” said Nelly, “an' have only mistaken my face for a lookin'-glass. It was your own you saw, all it was your own you wor spaking of--for if ever I saw a face that publishes an ill-spent life on the part of its owner, yours is it.”

“Care an' sorrow I have had,” replied the other, “an' the sin that causes sorrow, I grant; but there's somethin' that's weighin' down your heart, an' that won't let you rest until you give it up. You needn't deny it, for you can't hide it--hard your eye is, but it's not clear, and I see that it quivers, and is unaisy before mine.”

“I said you're mistaken,” replied the other; “but even supposin' you wor not, how is it your business whether my mind is aisy or not? You won't have my sins to answer for.”

“I know that,” said the stranger; “and God sees my own account will be too long and too heavy, I doubt. I now beg of you, as you hope to meet judgment, to think of what I said. Look into your own heart, and it will tell you whether I am right or whether I am wrong. Consult your husband, and if he has any insight at all into futurity, he must tell you that, unless you clear your conscience, you'll have a hard death-bed of it.”

“You're goin' to Condy Dalton's,” replied Nelly, with much coolness, but whether assumed or not it is difficult to say; “look into his face, and try what you can find there. At any rate, report has it that there's blood upon his hand, an' that the downfall of himself and his family is only the vengeance of God, an' the curse of murdher that's pursuin' him and them.”

“Why,” inquired the other, eagerly, “was he accused of it?”

“Ay, an' taken up for it; but bekaise the body wasn't found, they could do nothing to him.”

“May Heaven assist me!” exclaimed the stranger, “but this day is----however, God's will be done, as it will be done! Are you goin'?”

“I'm goin',” replied Nelly; “by crossin' the fields here, I'll save a great deal of ground; and when you get as far as the broken bridge, you'll see a large farm-house widout any smoke from it; about a quarter of a mile or less beyant that you'll find the house you're lookin' for--the house where Condy Dalton lives.”

Having thus directed the stranger, the prophet's wife entered a gap that led into a field, and proceeded on her way homewards, having, ere she parted, glanced at her with a meaning which rendered it extremely difficult to say whether the singular language addressed to her had left behind it any such impression as the speaker wished to produce. Their glances met and dwelt on each other for a short time: the strange woman pointed solemnly towards the sky, and the prophet's wife smiled carelessly; but yet, by a very keen eye, it might have been noticed that, under this natural or affected indifference, there lurked a blank or rather an unquiet expression, such as might intimate that something within her had been moved by the observations of her strange companion.

CHAPTER X. -- The Black Prophet makes a Disclosure.

The latter proceeded on her way home, having marked the miserable hovel of Condy Dalton. At present our readers will accompany us once more to the cabin of Donnel Dhu, the prophet.

His wife, as the reader knows, had been startled into something like remorse, by the incidents which had occurred within the last two days, and especially by the double discovery of the dead body and the Tobacco box. Sarah, her step-daughter, was now grown, and she very reasonably concluded, her residence in the same house with this fiery and violent young female was next to an impossibility.--The woman herself was naturally coarse and ignorant; but still there was mixed, up in her character a kind of apathetic or indolent feeling of rectitude or vague humanity, which rendered her liable to occasional visitations of compunction for whatever she did that was wrong. The strongest principle in her, however, was one which is frequently to be found among her class--I mean such a lingering impression of religious feeling as is not sufficiently strong to prevent the commission of crime, but yet is capable by its influence to keep the conscience restless and uneasy under its convictions. Whether to class this feeling with weakness or with virtue, is indeed difficult; but to whichsoever of them it may belong, of one thing we are certain, that many a mind, rude and hardened by guilt, is weak or virtuous only on this single point. Persons so constituted are always remarkable for feelings of strong superstition, and are easily influenced by the occurrence of slight incidents, to which they are certain to attribute a peculiar significance, especially when connected with anything that may occasion them uneasiness for the time, or which may happen to occupy their thoughts, or affect their own welfare or interests.

The reader need not be surprised, therefore, on learning that this woman, with all her apathy of character on the general matters of life, was accessible to the feeling or principle we have just described, nor that the conversation she had just had with the strange woman, both disturbed and alarmed her.

On returning, she found her husband and step-daughter both at home; the latter hacking up some white thorn wood with an old hatchet, for the fire, and the other sitting with his head bent gloomily upon his hand, as if ruminating upon the vicissitudes of a troubled or ill-spent life.

Having deposited her burthen, she sat down, and drawing a long breath, wiped her face with the corner of a blue praskeen which she always wore, and this she did with a serious and stern face, intimating, as it were, that her mind was engaged upon matters of deep interest, whatever they might have been.

“What's that you're doin'?” she inquired of Sarah, in a grave, sharp voice.

“Have you no eyes?” replied the other; “don't you see what I am doin'?”

“Where did you get them white thorns that you're cuttin' up?”

“Where did I get them, is it?”

“Ay; I said so.”

“Why, where they grew--ha, ha, ha! There's information for you.”

“Oh, God help you! how do you expect to get through life at all?”

“Why, as well as I can--although not, maybe, as well as I wish.”

“Where did you cut them thorns, I ax?”

“An' I tould you; but since that won't satisfy you, I cut them on the _Rath_ above there.”

“Heaven presarve us, you hardened jade, have you no fear of anything about you?”

“Divil a much that I know of, sure enough.”

“Didn't you know that them thorns belongs to the fairies, and that some evil will betide any one that touches or injures a single branch o' them.”

“Divil a single branch I injured,” replied Sarah, laughing; “I cut down the whole tree at wanst.”

“My sowl to glory, if I think its safe to live in the house wid you, you hardened divil.”

“Troth, I think you may well say so, afther yesterday's escape,”
returned Sarah; “an' I have no objection that you should go to glory, body an' soul; an' a purty piece o goods will be in glory when you're there--ha, ha, ha!”

“Throw out them thorns, I bid you.”

“Why so? Don't we want them for the fire?”

“No matther for that; we don't want to bring 'the good people'--this day's Thursday, the Lord stand between us an' harm--amin!--about our ears. Out wid them.”

“No, the sorra branch.”

“Out wid them, I say, Are you afeard of neither God nor the divil?”

“Not overburdened with much fear of either o' them,” replied the daring young creature.

“Aren't you afeard o' the good people, then?”

“If they're good people, why should we be afeard o' them? No, I'm not.”

“Put the thorns out, I bid you again.”

“Divil a chip, mother dear; if your own evil conscience or your dirty cowardice makes you afeard o' the fairies, don't think I am. I don't care that about them. These same thorns must boil the dinner in spite of all the fairies in Europe; so don't fret either yourself or me on the head o' them.”

“Oh, I see what's to come! There's a doom over this house, that's all, an' over some, if not all o' them that's in it. Everything's leadin' to it; an' come it will.”

“Why, mother, dear, at this rate you'll leave my father nothin' to say. You're keepin' all the black prophecies to yourself. Why don't you rise up, man alive,” she added, turning to him, “and let her hear how much of the divil's lingo you can give?--It's hard, if you can't prophesy as much evil as she can. Shake yourself, ruffle your feathers, or clap your wings three times, in the divil's name, an' tell her she'll be hanged; or, if you wish to soften it, say she'll go to Heaven in a string. Ha, ha, ha!”

At this moment, a poor, famine-struck looking woman, with three or four children, the very pictures of starvation and misery, came to the door, and, in that voice of terrible destitution, which rings feeble and hollow from an empty and exhausted frame, she implored them for some food.

“We haven't it for you, honest woman,” said Nelly, in her cold, indifferent voice--“it's not for you now.”

The hope of relief was nearly destroyed by the unfeeling tones of the voice in which she was answered. She looked, however, at her famishing children, and once more returned to the door, after having gone a few steps from it.

“Oh, what will become of these?” she added, pointing to the children. “I don't care about myself--I think my cares will soon be over.”

“Go to the divil out o' that!” shouted the prophet--“don't be tormentin' us wid yourself and your brats.”

“Didn't you hear already,” repeated his wife, “that you got your answer? We're poor ourselves, and we can't help every one that comes to us. It's not for you now.”

“Don't you hear that there's nothing for you?” again cried the prophet, in an angry voice; “yet you'll be botherin' us!”

“Indeed, we haven't it, good woman,” repeated Nelly; “so take your answer.”

“Don't you know that's a lie?” said Sarah, addressing her step-mother. “You have it, if you wish to give it.”

“What's a lie?” said her father, starting, for he had again relapsed into his moodiness. “What's a lie?--who--who's a liar?”

“You are!” she replied, looking him coolly and contemptuously in the face; “you tell the poor woman that there's nothing for her. Don't you know that's a lie? It may be very well to tell a lie to them that can bear it--to a rich bodagh, or his proud lady of a wife--although it's a mean thing even to them; but to tell a lie to that heartbroken woman and her poor childhre--her childhre--aren't they her own?--an' who would spake for them if she wouldn't. If every one treated the poor that way, what would become of them? Ay, to look in her face, where there's want an' hunger, and answer distress wid a lie--it's cruel--cruel!”

“What a kind-hearted creature she is,” said her step-mother, looking towards her father--“isn't she?”

“Come here, poor woman,” said Sarah, calling her back; “it is for you. If these two choose to let you and your childhre die or starve, I won't;” and she went to the meal to serve them as she spoke.

The woman returned, and looked with considerable surprise at her; but Nelly went also to the meal, and was about to interpose, when Sarah's frame became excited, and her eyes flashed, as they always did when in a state of passion.

“If you're wise, don't prevent me,” she said. “Help these creatures I will. I'm your match now, an' more than your match, thank God; so be quiet.”

“If I was to die for it, you won't have your will now, then,” said Nelly.

“Die when you like, then,” replied Sarah; “but help that poor woman an' her childhre I will.”

“Fight it out,” said Donnel Dhu, “its a nice quarrel, although Sal has the right on her side.”

“If you prevent me,” said she, disregarding her step-mother, “you'll rue it quickly; or hould--I'm beginnin' to hate this kind of quarrellin'--here, let her have as much meal as will make my supper; I'll do without any for the sake of the childhre, this night.”

This was uttered in a tone of voice more mitigated, but at the same time so resolute, that Nelly stepped back and left her to pursue her own course.

She then took a wooden trencher, and with a liberal hand assisted the poor creatures, who began to feel alarmed at the altercation which their distress had occasioned in the family.

“You're starvin', childre,” said she, whilst emptying the meal into the poor woman's bag.

“May the blessin' of God rest upon you,” whispered the woman, “you've saved my orphans;” and, as she uttered the words, her hollow eyes filled, and a few tears ran slowly down her cheeks.

Sarah gave a short, loud laugh, and snatching up the youngest of the children, stroked its head and patted its cheek, exclaiming--

“Poor thing; you won't go without your supper this night, at any rate.”

She then laughed again in the same quick, abrupt manner, and returned into the house.

“Why, then,” said her step-mother, looking at her with mingled anger and disdain, “is it tears you're sheddin'--cryin', no less! Afther that, maricles will never cease.”

Sarah turned towards her hastily; the tears, in a moment, were dried upon her cheeks, and as she looked at her hard, coarse, but well-shaped features, her eyes shone with a brilliant and steady light for more than a minute. The expression was at once; lofty and full of strong contempt, and, as she stood in this singular but striking mood, it would indeed be difficult to conceive a finer type of energy, feeling, and beauty, than that which was embodied in her finely-turned and exquisite figure. Having thus contemplated the old woman for some time, she looked upon the ground, and her face passed rapidly into a new form and expression of beauty. It at once became soft and full of melancholy, and might have been mistaken for an impersonation of pity and sorrow.

“Oh, no!” she exclaimed, in a low voice, that was melody itself; “I never got it from either the one or the other--the kind or soft word--an' it's surely no wondher that I am as I am.”

And as she spoke she wept. Her heart had been touched by the distress of her fellow creatures, and became, as it were, purified and made tender by its own sympathies, and she wept. Both of them looked at her; but as they were utterly incapable of understanding what she felt, this natural struggle of a great but neglected spirit excited nothing on their part but mere indifference.

At this moment, the prophet, who seemed laboring under a fierce but gloomy mood, rose suddenly up, and exclaimed--

“Nelly--Sarah!--I can bear this, no longer; the saicret must come out. I am--”

“Stop,” screamed Sarah, “don't say it--don't say it! Let me leave the counthry. Let me go somewhere--any where--let me--let me--die first.”

“I am----,” said he.

“I know it,” replied his wife; “a murdherer! I know it now--I knew it since yesterday mornin'.”

“Give him justice,” said Sarah, now dreadfully excited, and seizing him by the breast of his coat,--“give him common justice--give the man justice, I say. You are my father, aren't you? Say how you did it. It was a struggle--a fight; he opposed you--he did, and your blood riz, and you stabbed him for fear he might stab you. That was it. Ha! ha! I know it was, for you are my father, and I am your daughter; and that's what I would do like a man. But you never did it--ah! you never did it in cowld blood, or like a coward.”

There was something absolutely impressive and commanding in her sparkling eyes, and the energetic tones of her voice, whilst she addressed him.

“Donnel,” said the wife, “it's no saicret to me; but it's enough now that you've owned it. This is the last night that I'll spend with a murdherer. You know what I've to answer for on my own account; and so, in the name of God, we'll part in the mornin'.”

“Ha!” exclaimed Sarah, “you'd leave him now, would you? You'd desart him now; now that all the world will turn against him; now that every tongue will abuse him; that every heart will curse him; that every eye will turn away from him with hatred; now that shame, an' disgrace, an' guilt is all upon his head; you'd leave him, would you, and join the world against him? Father, on my knees I go to you;” and she dropped down as she spoke; “here on my knees I go to you, an' before you spake, mark, that through shame an' pain, an' sufferin', an' death, I'll stay by you, an' with you. But, I now kneel to you--what I hardly ever did to God--an for his sake, for God's sake, I ask you; oh say, say that you did not kill the man in cowld blood; that's all! Make me sure of that, and I'm happy.”

“I think you're both mad,” replied Donnel. “Did I say that I was a murdherer? Why didn't you hear me out?”

“You needn't,” returned Nelly; “I knew it since yestherday mornin'.”

“So you think,” he replied, “an' it's but nathural you should, I was at the place this day, and seen where you dug the _Casharrawan_. I have been strugglin' for years to keep this saicret, an' now it must come out; but I'm not a murdherer.”

“What saicret, father, if you're not a murdherer?” asked Sarah; “what saicret; but there is not murder on you; do you say that?”

“I do say it; there's neither blood nor murdher on my head! but I know who the murdherer is, an' I can keep the saicret no longer!”

Sarah laughed, and her eyes sparkled up with singular vividness. “That'll do,” she exclaimed; “that'll do; all's right now; you're not a murdherer, you killed no man, aither in cowld blood or otherwise; ha! ha! you're a good father; you're a good father; I forgive you all now, all you ever did.”

Nelly stood contemplating her husband with a serious, firm, but dissatisfied look; her chin was supported upon her forefinger and thumb; and instead of seeming relieved by the disclosure she had just heard, which exonerated him from the charge of blood, she still kept her eyes riveted upon him with a stern and incredulous aspect.

“Spake out, then,” she observed coolly, “an' tell us all, for I am not convinced.”

Sarah looked as if she would have sprang at her.

“You are not convinced,” she exclaimed; “you are not convinced! Do you think he'd tell a lie on such a subject as this?” But no sooner had she uttered the words than she started as if seized by a spasm. “Ah, father,” she exclaimed, “it's now your want of truth comes against you; but still, still I believe you.”

“Tell us all about it,” said Nelly, coldly; “let us hear all.”

“But you both promise solemnly, in the sight of God, never to breathe this to a human being till I give yez lave.”

“We do; we do,” replied Sarah; “in the sight of God, we do.”

“You don't spake,” said he, addressing Nelly.

“I promise it.”

“In the sight of God?” he added, “for I know you.”

“Ay.” said she, “in the sight of God, since you must have it so.”

“Well, then,” said he, “the common report is right; the man that murdhered him is Condy Dalton. I have kept it in till I can bear it no longer. It's my intention to go to a magistrate's as soon as my face gets well. For near two-and-twenty years, now, this saicret is lyin' hard upon me; but I'll aise my mind, and let justice take it's coorse. Bad I have been, but never so bad as to take my fellow-crature's life.”

“Well, I'm glad to hear it,” said his wife; “an' now I can undherstand you.”

“And I'm both glad and sorry,” exclaimed Sarah; “sorry for the sake of the Daltons. Oh! who would suppose it! and what will become of them?”

“I have no peace,” her father added; “I have not had a minute's peace ever since it happened; for sure, they say, any one that keeps their knowledge of murdher saicret and won't tell it, is as bad as the murdherer himself. There's another thing I have to mention,” he added, after a pause; “but I'll wait for a day or two; it's a thing I lost, an', as the case stands now, I can do nothing widout it.”

“What is it, father?” asked Sarah, with animation; “let us know what it is.”

“Time enough yet,” he replied; “it'll do in a day or two; in the mean time it's hard to tell but it may turn up somewhere or other; I hope it may; for if it get into any hands but my own--”

He paused and bent his eyes with singular scrutiny first upon Sarah, who had not the most distant appreciation of his meaning. Not so Nelly, who felt convinced that the allusion he made was to the Tobacco-box, and her impression being that it was mixed up in some way with an act of murder, she determined to wait until he should explain himself at greater length upon the subject. Had Sarah been aware of its importance, she would have at once disclosed all she knew concerning it, together with Hanlon's anxiety to get it into his possession. But of this she could know nothing, and for that reason there existed no association, in her mind, to connect it with the crime which the Prophet seemed resolved to bring to light.

When Donnel Dhu laid himself down upon the bed that day, he felt that by no effort could he shake a strong impression of evil from off him. The disappearance of the Box surprised him so much, that he resolved to stroll out and examine a spot with which the reader is already acquainted. On inspecting the newly-disturbed earth, he felt satisfied that the body had been discovered, and this circumstance, joined with the disappearance of the Tobacco-box, precipitated his determination to act as he was about to do; or, perhaps altogether suggested the notion of taking such steps as might bring Condy Dalton to justice. At present it is difficult to say why he did not allude to the missing Box openly, but perhaps that may be accounted for at a future and more appropriate stage of our narrative.

CHAPTER XI. -- Pity and Remorse.

The public mind, though often obtuse and stupid in many matters, is in others sometimes extremely acute and penetrating. For some years previous to the time laid in our tale, the family of Condy Dalton began to decline very perceptibly in their circumstances. There had been unpropitious seasons; there had been failure of crops and disease among the cattle--and, perhaps what was the worst scourge of all, there existed a bad landlord in the person of Dick-o'-the-Grange. So long, however, as they continued prosperous, their known principles of integrity and strict truth caused them to be well spoken of and respected, in spite of the imputation which had been made against them as touching the murder of Sullivan. In the course of time, however, when the evidences of struggle succeeded those of comfort and independence, the world began to perceive the just judgments of God as manifested in the disasters which befel them, and which seemed to visit them as with a judicial punishment. Year after year, as they sank in the scale of poverty, did the almost forgotten murder assume a more prominent and distinct shape in the public mind, until at length it became too certain to be doubted, that the slow but sure finger of God's justice was laid upon them as an additional proof that crime, however it may escape the laws of men, cannot veil itself from the all-seeing eye of the Almighty.

There was, however, an individual member of the family, whose piety and many virtues excited a sympathy in her behalf, as general as it was deep and compassionate. This was Mrs. Dalton, towards whom only one universal impression of good-will, affection, and respect prevailed. Indeed, it might be said that the whole family were popular in the country; but, notwithstanding their respectability, both individually and collectively, the shadow of crime was upon them; and as long as the people saw that everything they put their hand to failed, and that a curse seemed to pursue them, as if in attestation of the hidden murder, so long did the feeling that God would yet vindicate His justice by their more signal punishment, operate with dreadful force against them, with the single exception we have mentioned.

Mrs. Dalton, on her return home from her unsuccessful visit to the miser's, found her family in the same state of grievous privation in which she had left them. 'Tis true she had not mentioned to any of them her intention of appealing to the gratitude or humanity of Skinadre; yet they knew, by an intuitive perception of her purpose, that she had gone to him, and although their pride would not allow them to ask a favor directly from him, yet they felt pleased that she had made the experiment, and had little doubt that the miser, by obliging her in the request she went to prefer, would gladly avail himself of the circumstance to regain their good will, not so much on their own account, as for the sake of standing well in the world, in whose opinion he knew he had suffered by his treachery towards them in the matter of their farm. She found her husband seated in an old arm-chair, which, having been an heir-loom in the family for many a long year, had, with one or two other things, been purchased in at the sheriff's sale. There was that chair, which had come down to them from three or four generations; an old clock, some smaller matters, and a grey sheep, the pet of a favorite daughter, who had been taken away from them by decline during the preceding autumn. There are objects, otherwise of little value, to which we cling for the sake of those unforgotten affections, and old mournful associations that invest indifferent things with a feeling of holiness and sorrow by which they are made sacred to the heart.

Condy Dalton was a man tolerably well stricken in years; his face was pale, but not unhealthy looking; and his hair, which rather flowed about his shoulders, was almost snow white--a circumstance which, in this case, was not attributed to the natural progress of years, but to that cankered remorse which turns the head grey before its time. Their family now consisted of two sons and two daughters, the original number having been two sons and three daughters--one of the latter having fallen a victim to decline, as we have already stated. The old man was sitting in the arm-chair, in which he leant back, having his chin at the same time on his breast, a position which gave something very peculiar to his appearance.

As Mrs. Dalton had occupied a good deal of time in unsuccessfully seeking for relief from other sources, it is unnecessary to say that the day had now considerably advanced, and the heavy shadows of this dismal and unhealthy evening had thrown their gloom over the aspect of all nature, to which they gave an appearance of desolation that was in painful keeping with the sickness and famine that so mercilessly scourged the kingdom at large. A pot of water hung upon a dark slow fire, in order that as little time as possible might be lost in relieving their physical wants, on Mrs. Dalton's return with the relief which they expected.

“Here's my mother,” said one of her daughters, looking with a pale cheek and languid eye out of the door; for she, too, had been visited by the prevailing illness; “an', my God! she's comin' as she went--empty handed!”

The other sister and Con, her brother, went also to look out, and there she was, certainly without relief.

“She isn't able to carry it herself,” said their father; “or maybe she's comin' to get one of you--Con, I suppose--to go for it. Bad as Skinadre is, he wouldn't have the heart to refuse us a lock o' meal to keep the life in us. Oh! no, he'd not do that.”

In a few moments Mrs. Dalton entered, and after looking upon the scene of misery about her, she sat down and burst into tears. “Mother,” said the daughter, “there's no relief, then? You came as you went, I see.”

“I came as I went, Nanty; but there is relief. There's relief for the poor of this world in Heaven; but on this earth, an' in this world, there is none for us--glory be to the name of God, still.”

“So Skinadre refused, then?” said her husband; “he wouldn't give the meal?”

“No,” she replied, “he would not; but the truth is, our woful' state is now so well known, that nobody will trust us; they know there's no chance of ever bein' paid, an' they all say they can't afford it.”

“I'm not surprised at what Tom says,” observed our friend, young Con, “that the meal-mongers and strong farmers that keep the provisions up on the poor desarves to be smashed and tramped under foot; an' indeed they'll get it, too, before long, for the people can't stand this, especially when one knows that there's enough, ay, and more than enough, in the country.”

“If had tobacco,” said the old man, “I didn't care--that would keep the hunger off o' me; but it's poor Mary, here, now recoverin' from the sickness, that I pity; don't cry, Mary, dear; come here, darlin', come here, and turn up that ould creel, and sit down beside me. It's useless to bid you not to cry, avourneen machree, bekaise we all know what you feel; but you have one comfort--you are innocent--so are you all--there's nothing on any of your minds--no dark thought to lie upon your heart--oh, no, no; an' if it was only myself that was to suffer, I could bear it; but to see them that's innocent sufferin' along wid me, is what kills me. This is the hand of God that's upon us, an' that will be upon us, an' that has been upon us, an' I knew it would be so; for ever since that black night, the thought--the thought of what happened!--ay, it's that that's in me, an' upon me--it's that that has put wrinkles in my cheek before their time, an' that has made my hair white before its time, and that has--”

“Con, dear,” observed his wife, “I never wished you to be talkin' of that before them; sure you did as much as a man could do; you repented, an' were sorry for it, an' what more could be expected from you?”

“Father, dear,” said Mary, drying, or struggling to dry her tears, “don't think of me, or of any of us, nor don't think of anything that will disturb your mind--don't think of the, at any rate--I'm very weak, but I'm not so hungry as you may think; if I had one mouthful of anything just to take this feelin' that I have inwardly, an' this weakness away, I would be satisfied--that would do me; an' although I'm cryin' it's more to see your misery, father dear, an' all your miseries, than for what I'm sufferin' myself; but there's a kiss for you, it's all I have to give you.”

“Mary, dear,” said her sister, smote to the heart by her words, “you're sufferin' more than any of us, you an' my father,” and she encircled her lovingly and mournfully in her arms as she spoke, and kissed her wan lips, after which she went to the old man, and said in a voice of compassion and consolation that was calculated to soothe any hearers--

“Oh, father, dear, if you could only banish all uneasy thoughts from your mind--if you could only throw that darkness that's so often over you, off you, we could bear anything--anything--Oh, anything, if we seen you aisy in your mind, an' happy!”

Mrs. Dalton had dried her tears, and sat upon a low stool musing and silent, and apparently revolving in her mind the best course to be pursued under such circumstances. It was singular to observe the change that had taken place in her appearance even within a few hours; the situation of her family, and her want of success in procuring them food, had so broken down her spirits and crushed her heart, that the lines of her face were deepened and her features sharpened and impressed with the marks of suffering as strongly as if they had been left there by the affliction of years. Her son leant himself against a piece of the broken wall that partially divided their hut into something like two rooms, if they could be called so, and from time to time he glanced about him, now at his father, then at his poor sisters, and again at his heart-broken mother, with an impatient agony of spirit that could scarcely be conceived.

“Well,” said he, clenching his hands and grinding his teeth, “it is expected that people like us will sit tamely undher sich tratement as we have resaved from Dick o' the Grange. Oh, if we had now the five hundre good pounds that we spent upon our farm--spent, as it turned out, not for ourselves, but to enable that ould villain of a landlord to set it to Darby Skinadre; for I b'lieve it's he that's to get it, with strong inthrest goin' into his pocket for all our improvements; if we had now,”
he continued, his passion rising, “if we had that five hundre pounds now, or one hundre, or one pound, great God! ay, or one shillin' now, wouldn't it save some of you from starving”

This reflection, which in the young man excited only wrath, occasioned the female portion of the family to burst into fresh sorrow; not so the old man; he arose hastily, and paced up and down the floor in a state of gloomy indignation and fury which far transcended that of his son.

“Oh!” said he, “if I was a young man, as I was wanst--but the young men now are poor, pitiful, cowardly--I would--I would;” he paused suddenly, however, looked up, and clasping his hands, exclaimed--“forgive me, O God! forgive the thought that was in my unhappy heart! Oh, no, no, never, never allow yourself, Con, dear, to be carried away by anger, for 'fraid you might do in one minute, or in a short fit of anger, what might make you pass many a sleepless night, an' maybe banish the peace of God from your heart forever!”

“God bless you for them last words, Condy!” exclaimed his wife, “that's the way I wish you always to spake; but what to do, or where to go, or who to turn to, unless to God himself, I don't know.”

“We're come to it at last,” said their daughter Peggy; “little we thought of it, but at all events, it's betther to do that than to do worse--betther than to rob or steal, or do an ondaicent act of any kind. In the name of God, then, rather than you should die of hunger, Mary--you an' my father an' all of yez--I'll go out and beg from the neighbors.”

“Beg!” shouted the old man, with a look of rage--“beg!” he repeated, starting to his feet and seizing his staff--“beg! you shameless and disgraceful strap. Do you talk of a Dalton goin' out to bee? taka that!”

And as he spoke, he hit her over the arm with a stick he always carried.

“Now that will teach you to talk of beg-gin'. No!--die--die first--die at wanst; but no beggin' for any one wid the blood of a Dalton in their veins. Death--death--a thousand times sooner!”

“Father--oh! father, father, why, why did you do that?” exclaimed his son, “to strike poor kind an' heart-broken Peggy, that would shed her blood for you or any of us. Oh! father, I am sorry to see it.”

The sorrowing girl turned pale by the blow, and a few tears came down her cheeks; but she thought not of herself, nor of her sufferings. After the necessary pause caused by the pain, she ran to him, and, throwing her arms about his neck, exclaimed in a gush of sorrow that was perfectly heart-rending to witness--

“Oh! father dear, forgive me--your own poor Peggy; sure it was chiefly on your account and Mary's I was goin' to do it. I won't go, then, since you don't wish it; but I'll die with you.”

The old man flung the stick from him, and clasping her in his arms, he sobbed and wept aloud.

“My darlin' child,” he exclaimed, “that never yet gave one of us a bad word or angry look--will you forgive your unhappy father, that doesn't know what he's doin'! Oh! I feel that this state we're in--this outher desolation an' misery we're in--will drive me mad! but that hasty blow, _avourneen machree_--that hasty blow an' the hot temper that makes me give it, is my curse yet, has always been my curse, an' ever will be my curse; it's that curse that's upon me now, an' upon all of us this minute--it is, it is!”

“Condy,” said his wife, “we all know that you're not as bad as you make yourself. Within the last few years your temper has been sorely tried, and your heart too, God knows; for our trials and our downcome in this world has been great. In all these trials, however, and sufferings, its a consolation to us, that we never neglected to praise an' worship the Almighty--we are now brought almost to the very last pass--let us go to our knees, then, an' throw ourselves upon His mercy, and beg of Him to support us, an' if it's His holy will, to aid us, and send us relief.”

“Oh, Mary dear,” exclaimed her husband, “but you are the valuable and faithful wife! If ever woman was a protectin' angel to man, you wor to me. Come children, in the name of the merciful God, let us kneel and pray.”

The bleak and depressing aspect of twilight had now settled down upon the sweltering and deluged country, and the air was warm, thick, moist, and consequently unhealthy. The cabin of the Daltons was placed in a low, damp situation; but fortunately it was approached by a remnant of one of those old roads or causeways which had once been peculiar to the remote parts of the country, and also of very singular structure, the least stone in it being considerably larger than a shilling loaf. This causeway was nearly covered with grass, so that in addition to the antique and desolate appearance which this circumstance gave it, the footsteps of a passenger could scarcely be heard as they fell upon the thick close grass with which its surface was mostly covered.

Along this causeway, then, at the very hour when the Daltons, moved by that piety which is characteristic of our peasantry, had gone to prayer, was the strange woman whom we have already noticed, proceeding with that relief which it may be God in His goodness had ordained should reach them in answer to the simple but trustful spirit of their supplications. On reaching the miserable looking cabin, she paused, listened, and heard their voices blend in those devout tones that always mark the utterance of prayer among the people. They were, in fact, repeating a Rosary, and surely, it is not for those who differ with them in creed, or for any one who feel the influence of true charity, to quarrel with the form of prayer, when the heart is moved as theirs were, by earnestness and humble piety.

The strange woman on approaching the door more nearly, stood again for a minute or two, having been struck more forcibly by something which gave a touching and melancholy character to this simple act of domestic worship. She observed, for instance, that their prayers were blended with many sighs, and from time to time, a groan escaped from one of the males, which indicated either deep remorse or a sense of some great misery. One of the female voices, too, was so feeble as scarcely to be heard, yet there ran through it, she felt, a spirit of such tender and lowly resignation, mingled with such an expression of profound sorrow, as almost moved her to tears. The door was open, and the light so dim, that she could not distinctly see their persons--two circumstances which for a moment induced her to try if it were possible to leave the meal there without their knowledge. She determined otherwise, however, and as their prayers were almost immediately concluded, she entered the house. The appearance of a stranger in the dusky gloom carrying a burden, caused them to suppose that it was some poor person coming to ask charity, or permission to stop for the night.

“Who is this?” asked Condy. “Some poor person, I suppose, axin' charity,” he added. “But God's will be done, we haven't it to give this many a long day. Glory be to his name!”

“This is Condy Dalton's house?” said the strange woman in a tone of inquiry.

“Sich as it is, it's his house, an' the best he has, my poor creature. I wish it was betther both for his sake and yours,” he replied, in a calm and resigned voice, for his heart had been touched and solemnized by the act of devotion which had just concluded.

Mrs. Dalton, in the meantime, had thrown a handful of straw on the fire to make a temporary light.

“Here,” said the stranger, “is a present of meal that a' friend sent you.”

“Meal!” exclaimed Peggy Dalton, with a faint scream of joy; “did you say meal?” she asked.

“I did,” replied the other; “a friend that heard of your present distress, and thinks you don't desarve it, sent it to you.”

Mrs. Dalton raised the burning straw, and looked for about half a minute into her face, during which the woman carried the meal over and placed it on the hearth.

“I met you to-day, I think,” said Mrs. Dalton, “along with Donnel Dhu's wife on your way to Darby Skinadre's?”

“You might,” replied the woman; “for I went there part o' the road with her.”

“And who are we indebted to for the present?” she asked again.

“I'm not at liberty to say,” replied the other; “barrin' that it's from a friend and well-wisher.”

Mrs. Dalton clasped her hands, and looking with an appearance of abstraction, on the straw as it burned in the fire, said in a voice that became infirm by emotion--

“Oh! I know it; it can be no other. The friend that she speaks of is the girl--the blessed girl--whose goodness is in every one's mouth--_Gra Gal_ Sullivan. I know it, I feel it.”

“Now,” said the woman, “I must go; but before I go, I wish to look on the face of Condy Dalton.”

“There's a bit of rush on the shelf there,” said Mrs. Dalton to one of her daughters; “bring it over and light it.”

The girl did so, and the strange woman, taking the little taper in her hand, approached Dalton, and looking with a gaze almost fearfully solemn and searching into his face.

“You are Condy Dalton?” she asked.

“I am,” said he.

“Answer me now,” she proceeded, “as if you were in the presence of God at judgment, are you happy?”

Mrs. Dalton, who felt anxious for many reasons, to relieve her unfortunate husband from this unexpected and extraordinary catechist, hastened to reply for him.

“How, honest woman, could a man be happy who is in a state of such destitution, or who has had such misfortunes as he has had;” and as she spoke her eyes filled with tears of compassion for her husband.

“Don't break it upon me,” said the woman, solemnly, “but let me ax my question, an' let him give his answer. In God's name and presence, are you a happy man?”

“I can't speak a lie to that, for I must yet meet my judge--I am not.”

“You have one particular thought that makes you unhappy.”

“I have one particular thought that makes me unhappy.”

“How long has it made you unhappy?”

“For near two-and-twenty years.”

“That's enough,” she replied; “God's hand is in it all--I must now go. I have done what I was axed to do; but there's a higher will at work. Honest woman,” she added, addressing Mrs. Dalton, “I wish you and your childre good night!”

The moment she went they almost ceased to think of her. The pot still hung on the fire, and little time was lost in preparing a meal of food.

From the moment _Gra Gal_ Sullivan's name was mentioned, the whole family observed that young Con started and appeared to become all at once deeply agitated; he walked backwards and forwards--sat down--and rose up--applied his hands to his forehead--appeared sometimes flushed, and again pale--and altogether seemed in a state which it was difficult to understand.

“What is the matter with you, Con?” asked his mother, “you seem dreadfully uneasy.”

“