Mike declared, after his recovery, that though incapable of motion on the mountains, he was not altogether insensible to what passed around him.  The loud tones of their conversation he could hear.  The oath which young M’Kenna uttered in a voice so wild and exalted, fell clearly on his ear, and he endeavored to contradict it, in order that he might be secured and punished in the event of his death.  He also said; that the pain he suffered in the act of being conveyed home, occasioned him to groan feebly; but that the sobs, and cries, and loud conversation of those who surrounded him, prevented his moans from being heard.  It is probable, after all, that were it not for the accidental fall of Owen upon his body, he might not have survived the wound, inasmuch as the medical skill, which contributed to restore him, would not have been called in.

Though old Frank M’Kenna and his family felt an oppressive load of misery taken off their hearts by the prospect of Reillaghan’s recovery, yet it was impossible for them to be insensible to the fate of their son, knowing as they did, that he must have been out among the mountains during the storm.  His unhappy mother and Rody sat up the whole night, expecting his return, but morning arrived without bringing him home.  For six days afterwards the search for him was general and strict; his friends and neighbors traversed the mountain wastes until they left scarcely an acre of them unexplored.  On the sixth day there came a thaw, and towards the close of the seventh he was found a “stiffened corpse,” upon the very spot where he had shot his rival, and on which he had challenged the Almighty to stretch him in death, without priest or prayer, if he were guilty of the crime with which he had been charged.  He was found lying with a, circle drawn round him, his head pillowed upon the innocent blood which he had shed with the intention of murder, and a bloody cross marked upon his breast and forehead.  It was thought that in the dread of approaching death he had formed it with his hand, which came accidentally in contact with the blood that lay in clots about him.

[Illustration:  PAGE 886—­ Upon the very spot where he had shot his rival]

The manner of his death excited a profound and wholesome feeling among the people, with respect to the crime which he attempted to commit.  The circumstances attending it, and his oath upon the spot where he shot Reillaghan, are still spoken of by the fathers of the neighboring villages, and even by some who were present at the search for his body, it was also doubly remarkable on account of a case of spectral illusion which it produced, and which was ascribed to the effect of M’Kenna’s supernatural appearance at the time.  The daughter of a herdsman in the mountains was strongly affected by the spectacle of his dead body borne past her father’s door.  In about a fortnight afterwards she assured her family that he appeared to her.  She saw the