The interview between Henderson and M’Gowan was a long one; and the disclosures made were considered of too much importance for the former to act without the co-operation and assistance of another magistrate.  He accordingly desired the Prophet to come to him on the following day but one, when he said he would secure the presence of a Major Johnson; who was also in the commission, and by whose warrant old Condy Dalton had been originally arrested on suspicion of the murder.  It was recommended that every thing that had transpired between them should be kept strictly secret, lest the murderer, if made acquainted with the charge which was about to be brought home to him, should succeed in escaping from justice.  Young Dick, who had been sent for by his father, recommended this, and on those terms they separated.

CHAPTER XV. —­ A Plot and a Prophecy.

Our readers cannot forget a short dialogue which took place between Charley Hanlon and the strange female, who has already borne some part in the incidents of our story.  It occurred on the morning she had been sent to convey the handkerchief which Hanlon had promised to Sarah M’Gowan, in lieu of the Tobacco-Box of which we have so frequently made mention, and which, on that occasion, she expected to have received from Sarah.  After having inquired from Hanlon why Donnel Dhu was called the Black Prophet, she asked: 

“But could he have anything to do with the murdher?”

To which Hanlon replied, that “he had been thinkin’ about that, an’ had some talk, this mornin’, wid a man that’s livin’ a long time—­indeed, that was born a little above the place, an’ he says that the Black Prophet, or M’Gowan, did not come to the neighborhood till afther the murdher.”

Now this person was no other than Red Rody Duncan, to whom our friend Jemmy Branigan made such opprobrious allusion in the character of the Black Prophet to Dick-o’-the-Grange.  This man, who was generally known by the sobriquet of Red Body, had been for some time looking after the situation of bailiff or driver to Dick-o’-the-Grange; and as Hanlon was supposed to possess a good deal of influence with young Dick, Duncan very properly thought he could not do better than cultivate his acquaintance.  This was the circumstance which brought them together at first, and it was something of a dry, mysterious manner which Hanlon observed in this fellow, when talking about the Prophet and his daughter, that caused him to keep up the intimacy between them.

When Donnel Dhu had closed his lengthened conference with Henderson, he turned his steps homewards, and had got half-way through the lawn, when he was met by Red Rody.  He had, only a minute or two before, left young Dick, with whom he held another short conversation; and as he met Rody, Dick was still standing within about a hundred yards of them, cracking his whip with that easy indolence and utter disregard of everything but his pleasures, which chiefly constituted his character.