"May the blessin' of G.o.d 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 s.n.a.t.c.hing 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, coa.r.s.e, 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 pa.s.sed 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 G.o.d, 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 G.o.d--an for his sake, for G.o.d'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 G.o.d, never to breathe this to a human being till I give yez lave."

"We do; we do," replied Sarah; "in the sight of G.o.d, we do."

"You don't spake," said he, addressing Nelly.

"I promise it."

"In the sight of G.o.d?" he added, "for I know you."

"Ay." said she, "in the sight of G.o.d, 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 a.s.sociation, 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 circ.u.mstance, 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 circ.u.mstances. 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 d.i.c.k-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 G.o.d 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 a.s.sume 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 G.o.d'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 compa.s.sionate. 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 G.o.d would yet vindicate His justice by their more signal punishment, operate with dreadful force against them, with the single exception we have mentioned.