On the cross-examination, he said “the reason why he let the matter rest until now was that he did not wish to be the means of bringin’ a fellow-creature to an untimely death.  His conscience, however, always kept him uneasy, and many a time of late the murdhered man appeared to him, and threatened him for not disclosing what he knew.”

“You say the murdered man appeared to you.  Which of them?”

“Peter Magennis—­what am I sayin’?  I mean Bartle Sullivan.”

The counsel for the defence requested the judge and jury to make a note of Peter Magennis, and then asked the Prophet what kind of a man Bartle Sullivan was.

“He was a very remarkable man in appearance; stout, with a long face, and a scar on his chin.”

“And you saw that man murdered?”

“I seen him dead after havin’ been murdhered.”

“Do you think, now, if he were to rise again from the grave that you would know him?”

Then the counsel turned round, spoke to some person behind, and a stranger advanced and mounted a table confronting the Black Prophet.

“Whether you seen me dead or buried is best known to yourself,” said the stranger.  “All I can say is that here I am, Bartle Sullivan, alive an’ well.”

Hearing the name, crowds pressed forward, recognising Bartle Sullivan, and testifying their recognition by a general cheer.

There were two persons present, however, Condy Dalton and the Prophet, on whom Sullivan’s appearance produced very opposite effects.

Old Dalton at first imagined himself in a dream, and it was only when Sullivan, promising to explain all, came over and shook hands with him, and asked his pardon, that the old man understood he was innocent.

The Prophet looked with mortification rather than wonder at Sullivan; then a shadow settled on his countenance, and he muttered to himself, “I am doomed!  Something drove me to this.”

The trial was quickly ended.  Sullivan’s brother and several jurors established his identity, and Condy Dalton was discharged.

The judge then ordered the Prophet and Roddy Duncan to be taken into custody, and an indictment of perjury to be prepared at once.  The graver charge of murder was, however, brought against M’Gowan, the murder of a carman named Peter Magennis, and the following day he found himself in the very dock where Dalton had stood.

V.—­Fate:  the Discoverer

The trial of Donnel M’Gowan brought several strange things to light.  It was proved that the Prophet’s real name was McIvor, that he had a wife living, and that this wife was a sister to the murdered carman, Peter Magennis.  After the murder, McIvor fled to America with his daughter, and his wife lost sight of him.  She had only returned to these parts recently, and she identified the skeleton of her brother because of a certain malformation of the foot.

Then a pedlar, known in the neighbourhood as Toddy Mack, deposed that he had given Magennis a steel tobacco-box with the letters “P.  M.” punched on it.