Woodward, after a significant look, bade him good night, and took his way home.

Barney Casey, however, still dogged him stealthily, because he knew not whether the dose was intended for Grace Davoren or his brother Charles.  Mrs. Lindsay had made no secret of her intention to leave her property to the latter, whose danger, and the state of whose health, had awakened all those affections of the mother which had lain dormant in her heart so long.  The revivification of her affections for him was one of those capricious manifestations of feeling which can emanate from no other source but the heart of a mother.  Independently of this, there was in the mind of Mrs. Lindsay a principle of conscious guilt, of hardness of heart, of all want of common humanity, that sometimes startled her into terror.  She knew the villany of her son Woodward, and, after all, the heart of a woman and a mother is not like the heart of a man.  There is a tendency to recuperation in a woman’s and a mother’s heart, which can be found nowhere else; and the contrast which she felt herself forced to institute between the generous character of her son Charles and the villany of Woodward broke down the hard propensities of her spirit, and subdued her very wickedness into something like humanity.  Virtue and goodness, after all, will work their way, especially where a mother’s feelings, conscious of the evil and conscious of the good, are forced to strike the balance between them.  This consideration it was which determined Mrs. Lindsay, in addition to other considerations already alluded to, to come to the resolution of leaving her property to her son Charles.  There is, besides, a want of confidence and of mutual affection in villany which reacts upon the heart, precisely as it did upon that of Mrs. Lindsay.  She knew that her eldest son was in intention a murderer; and there is a terrible summons in conscience which sometimes awakens the soul into a sense of virtue and truth.

Be this as it may, Barney Casey’s vigilance was ineffectual.  From the night on which Woodward got the bottle from the herbalist, Charles Lindsay began gradually and slowly to decline.  Barney’s situation in the family was that of a general servant, in fact, a man of all work, and the necessary consequence was, that he could not contravene the conduct of Harry Woodward, although he saw clearly that, notwithstanding Charles’s wound was nearly healed, his general health was getting worse.

Now, the benevolence and singular power of Valentine Greatrakes are historical facts which cannot be contradicted.  After about a month from the time he cured Alice Goodwin he came to the town of Rathfillan, with several objects in view, one of which was to see Alice Goodwin, and to ascertain that her health was perfectly reestablished.  But the other and greater one was that which we shall describe.  Mr. Lindsay, having perceived that his son Charles’s health was gradually becoming worse, though his wound was healed, and on finding