"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 a.s.sumed 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 a.s.sumed 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 pa.s.sed 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 ap.r.o.n, "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 pa.s.sion, 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 circ.u.mstance which amazed and absolutely overcame him. Whether it was the novelty or the moral elevation of the position she so unexpectedly a.s.sumed, 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 d.i.c.k'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 n.o.body'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 Ca.s.sidy'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 cla.s.s 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 circ.u.mstances, dispose of it only at terms dictated by their own griping spirit and the crying necessity of the unhappy purchasers.