“Is Andy ill?” inquired Nell; “and how long?”

“Bedad, going on ten days.”

“Well,” said the woman, “I knew nothin’ about that; but I want to see Meehaul Neil, and I know he’s in the house.”

“Faix he’s not, Nelly, an’ you know I wouldn’t tell you a lie about it.”

“Did you get the linen that was stolen from your masther?” inquired Nell significantly, turning at the same time a piercing glance on the waiter; “an’ tell me,” she added, “how is Sally Lavery, and where is she?”

“It wasn’t got,” he replied, in a kind of stammer; “an’ as to Sally, the nerra one o’ me knows any thing about her, since she left this.”

“Sheemus,” replied Nell, “you know that Meehaul Neil is in the house; but I’ll give you two choices, either to bring me to the speech of him, or else I’ll give your masther the name of the thief that stole his linen; ay! the name of the thief that resaved it.  I name nobody at present; an’ for that matther, I know nothin’.  Can’t all the world tell you that Nell M’Cullum knows nothin’!”

“Ghe dhevin, Nelly,” said the waiter, “maybe Meehaul is in the house unknownst to me.  I’ll try, any how, an’ if he’s to the fore, it won’t be my fault or he’ll see you.”

Nell, while the waiter went to inform Meehaul, took two ribbons out of her pocket, one white and the other black, both of which she folded into what would appear to a bystander to be a simple kind of knot.  When the innkeeper’s son and the waiter returned to the hall, the former asked her what the nature of her business with him might be.  To this she made no reply, except by uttering the word husht! and pulling the ends, first of the white ribbon, and afterwards of the black.  The knot of the first slipped easily from the complication, but that of the black one, after gliding along from its respective ends, became hard and tight in the middle.

“Tha sha marrho! life passes and death stays,” she exclaimed.  “Andy Connor’s dead, Meehaul Neil; an’ you may tell your father that he must get some one else to look afther his sheep.  Ay! he’s dead!—­But that’s past.  Meehaul, folly me; it’s you I want, an’ there’s no time to be lost.”

She passed out as she spoke, leaving the waiter in a state of wonder at the extent of her knowledge, and of the awful means by which, in his opinion, she must have acquired it.

Meehaul, without uttering a syllable, immediately walked after her.  The pace at which she went was rapid and energetic, betokening a degree of agitation and interest on her part, for which he could not account.  As she had no object in bringing him far from the house, she availed herself of the first retired spot that presented itself, in order to disclose the purport of her visit.  “Meehaul Neil,” said she, “we’re now upon the Common, where no ear can hear what passes between us.  I ax have you spirit to keep your sister Ellen from shame and sorrow?” The young man started, and became strongly excited at such a serious prelude to what she was about to utter.