The mother was about to inform him of the son’s having gone to the mountains, when the latter returned, breathless, pale, and horror-struck.

Rody eyed him keenly, and laid down the bit he was conveying to his mouth.

“Heavens above us!” exclaimed his mother, “what ails you?”

He only replied by dashing his hat upon the ground, and exclaiming, “Up wid yez!—­up wid yez!—­quit your dinners!  Oh, Rody! what’ll be done?  Go down to Owen Reillaghan’s—­go ‘way—­go down—­an’ tell thim—­Oh, vick-na-hoie! but this was the unfortunate day to us all?  Mike reillaghan is shot with my gun; she went off in his hand goin’ over a snow wreath, an’ he’s lyin’ dead in the mountains?”

The screams and the wailing which immediately rose in the family were dreadful.  Mrs. M’Kenna almost fainted; and the father, after many struggles to maintain his firmness, burst into the bitter tears of disconsolation and affliction.  Rody was calmer, but turned his eyes from one to another with a look of deep compassion, and again eyed Frank keenly and suspiciously.

Frank’s eye caught his, and the glance which had surveyed him with such a scrutiny did not escape his observation.  “Rody,” said he, “do you go an’ brake it to the, Reillaghans:  you’re the best to do it; for, when we were settin’ out, you saw that he-carried the gun, an’ not me.”

“Thrue for you,” said Rody; “I saw that, Frank, and can swear to it; but that’s all I did see.  I know nothing of what happened in the mountains.”

“Damnho sheery orth! (* Eternal perdition on you!) What do you mane, you villain?” exclaimed Prank, seizing the tongs, and attempting to strike him:  “do you dar to suspect that I had any hand in it.”

“Wurrah dheelish, Frank,” screamed the sisters, “are you goin’ to murdher Rody?”

“Murdher,” he shouted, in a paroxysm of fury, “Why the curse o’ God upon you all, what puts murdher into your heads?  Is it my own family that’s the first to charge me wid it?”

“Why, there’s no one chargin’ you wid it,” replied Rody; “not one, whatever makes you take it to yourself.”

“An’ what did you look at me for, thin, the way you did?  What did you look at me for, I say?”

“Is it any wondher,” replied the servant coolly, “when you had sich a dreadful story to tell?”

“Go off,” replied Frank, now hoarse with passion—­“go off! an’ tell the Reillaghans what happened; but, by all the books that ever was opened or shut, if you breathe a word about murdher—­about—­if you do, you villain, I’ll be the death o’ you!”

When Rody was gone on this melancholy errand, old M’Kenna first put the tongs, and everything he feared might be used as a weapon by his frantic son, out of his reach; he then took down the book on which he had the night before sworn so rash and mysterious an oath, and desired his son to look upon it.

“Frank,” said he, solemnly, “you swore on that blessed book last night, that Mike Reillaghan never would be the husband of Peggy Gartland—­he’s a corpse to-day!  Yes,” he continued, “the good, the honest, the industhrious boy is”—­his sobs became so loud and thick that he appeared almost suffocated.  “Oh,” said he, “may God pity us!  As I hope to meet my blessed Savior, who was born on this day, I would rather you wor the corpse, an’ not Mike Reillaghan!”