“Well, but you know all the outs and ins of the house, the rooms and passages, and everything that way so thoroughly, that one could depend upon your account of them.”

“Depend upon them—­ay, as well as you might upon the Gospel itself;—­she was fond of M’Carthy, they say, and they think she is still; but, be dhu husth, (* Hold your tongue.) there’s one that knows betther.  You don’t like M’Carthy?”

“To be sure I do, as the devil does holy wather.”

“Well,” proceeded Mogue, “I’ve a thing in my head about him—­but sure he’s in the black list as it is.”

“Well, what is it you have in your head about him?”

Mogue shook it, but added, “Never mind, I’ll think it over again, and when I’m made up on it, maybe I’ll tell you.  Don’t we meet on this day week?”

“Sartainly, will you come?”

“I intend it, for the truth is, Misther Magrath, that the Millstone must be broke; that I may die in pace, but it must, an’ any one that stands in the way of it must suffer.  May I be happy, but they must.”

The pedlar looked cautiously about him, and seeing that the coast was clear and no person visible, he thrust a letter into his hand, adding, “you may lave it in some place where the ould chap, or either of the sons, will be sure to find it.  Maybe it’ll tache them a little more civility to their neighbors.”

Mogue looked at the document, and placing it securely in his pocket, asked, “Is it a notice?”

The other nodded in the affirmative, and added, with a knowing wink, “There’s a coffin and a cross-bones in it, and the name is signed wid real blood, Mogue; and that’s the way to go about breakin’ the Millstone, my man.”

“That I may never do an ill turn, but it is.  Well, God bless you, Misther Magrath, an’ whisper now, don’t forget an odd patther-anavy goin’ to bed, in hopes that God will prosper our honest endayvours.  That was a hard thing upon young Devlin in Murray’s murdher.  I’m not sure whether you do, but I know that that act was put upon him through ill-will; and now he’ll hang for it.  But sure it’s one comfort that he’ll die a martyr, glory be to God!”

The pedlar, having assented to this, got on his pack, and leaving Mogue to meditate on the new discovery which he had made respecting Julia Purcel, he proceeded on towards the highway to which we have alluded.

Purcel himself, in the course of a few miles’ drive, reached the parsonage, in which the Rev. Jeremiah Turbot ought to have lived, but in which, for several years past, he had not resided; if we except about a fortnight twice a year, when he came to sweep off as weighty a load of tithes as he could contrive to squeeze out of the people through worthy Mat Purcel, his proctor.