Before she could say anything, her husband fell senseless at her side, groaning dolefully.  While the bystanders raised him, she clapped her hands, and exalted her voice in ejaculations, as Irishwomen, when grieved or astonished or vexed, usually do; and now, as proud of Jeremiah’s dreaming capabilities as she had before been impatient of them, rehearsed his vision of the murder, and authenticated the visit of the two sailors to her house, almost while he was in the act of making her the confidant of his prophetic ravings.  The auditors stept back in consternation, crossing themselves, smiting their breasts, and crying out, “The Lord save us!  The Lord have mercy upon us!”

Jeremiah slowly awoke from his swoon.  The gentleman who had discovered the body commanded his attendants back to the lonesome glen, where it lay.  Poor Jeremiah fell on his knees, and with tears streaming down his cheeks, prayed to be saved from such a trial.  His neighbors almost forced him along.

All soon gained the spot, a narrow pass between slanting piles of displaced rocks; the hills from which they had tumbled rising brown and barren and to a great height above and beyond them.  And there, indeed, upon the strip of verdure which formed the winding road through the defile, lay the corpse of one of the sailors who had visited the publican’s house the evening before.

Again Jeremiah dropt on his knees, at some distance from the body, exclaiming, “Lord save us!—­yes! oh, yes, neighbors, this is the very place!—­only—­the saints be good to us again!—­’twas the tall sailor I seen killing the little sailor, and here’s the tall sailor murthered by the little sailor.”

“Dhrames go by conthraries, some way or another,” observed one of his neighbors; and Jeremiah’s puzzle was resolved.

Two steps were now indispensable to be taken; the county coroner should be summoned, and the murderer sought after.  The crowd parted to engage in both matters simultaneously.  Evening drew on when they again met in the pass:  and the first, who had gone for the coroner, returned with him, a distance of near twenty miles; but the second party did not prove so successful.  In fact they had discovered no clue to the present retreat of the supposed assassin.

The coroner impaneled his jury, and held his inquest under a large upright rock, bedded in the middle of the pass, such as Jeremiah said he had seen in his dream.  A verdict of willful murder against the absent sailor was quickly agreed upon; but ere it could be recorded, all hesitated, not knowing how to individualize a man of whose name they were ignorant.