I have time for no more; the chaise now waits which is to conduct me to dear Berry Hill and the arms of the best of men.

* * * * *

WILLIAM CARLETON

The Black Prophet

      William Carleton, the Irish novelist, was born in Co.  Tyrone
     on February 20, 1794.  His father was a small farmer, the
     father of fourteen children, of whom William was the youngest. 
     After getting some education, first from a hedge schoolmaster,
     and then from Dr. Keenan of Glasslough, Carleton set out for
     Dublin and obtained a tutorship.  In 1830 he collected a number
     of sketches, and these were published under the title of
     “Traits and Stories of the Irish Peasantry,” and at once
     enjoyed considerable popularity.  In 1834 came “Tales of
     Ireland,” and from that time forward till his death Carleton
     produced with great industry numerous short stories and
     novels, though none of his work after 1848 is worthy of his
     reputation.  “The Black Prophet” was published in 1847, and
     Carleton believed rightly that it was his best work.  It was
     written in a season of unparalleled scarcity and destitution,
     and the pictures and scenes represented were those which he
     himself witnessed in 1817 and 1822.  Many of Carleton’s novels
     have been translated into French, German, and Italian, and
     they will always stand for faithful and powerful pictures of
     Irish life and character.  Carleton died in Dublin on January
     30, 1869.

I.—­The Murders in the Glen

The cabin of Donnel M’Gowan, the Black Prophet, stood at the foot of a hill, near the mouth of a gloomy and desolate glen.

In this glen, not far from the cabin, two murders had been committed twenty years before.  The one was that of a carman, and the other a man named Sullivan; and it was supposed they had been robbed.  Neither of the bodies had ever been found.  Sullivan’s hat and part of his coat had been found on the following day in a field near the cabin, and there was a pool of blood where his foot-marks were deeply imprinted.  A man named Dalton had been taken up under circumstances of great suspicion for this latter murder, for Dalton was the last person seen in Sullivan’s company, and both men had been drinking together in the market.  A quarrel had ensued, blows had been exchanged, and Dalton had threatened him in very strong language.

No conviction was possible because of the disappearance of the body, but Dalton had remained under suspicion, and the glen, with its dark and gloomy aspect, was said to be haunted by Sullivan’s spirit, and to be accursed as the scene of crime and supernatural appearances.

Within M’Gowan’s cabin, which bore every mark of poverty and destitution, a young girl about twenty-one, of tall and slender figure, with hair black as the raven’s wing, and eyes dark and brilliant, wrangled fiercely with an older woman, her stepmother.  From words they passed to a fearful struggle of murderous passion.