“Him!  Is it him!  Why, what puts such a thing as that into your head’?”

“Faith, to tell you the truth, Rody, his daughter Sarah an’ myself is beginnin’ to look at one another; an’, to tell you the truth again, I’d wish to know more about the same Prophet before I become his son-in-law, as I have some notion of doin’.”

“I hard indeed that you wor pullin’ a string wid her, an’ now that I think of it, if you give me a lift wid ould Jemmy, I’ll give you one there.  The bailiff’s berth is jist the thing for me; not havin’ any family of my own, you see I could have no objection to live in the Grange, as their bailiff always did; but, aren’t you afeard to tackle yourself to that divil’s clip, Sarah?”

“Well, I don’t know,” replied the other; “I grant it’s a hazard, by all accounts.”

“An’ yet” continued Rody, “she’s a favorite with every one; an’ indeed there’s not a more generous or kinder-hearted creature alive this day than she is.  I advise you, however, not to let her into your saicrets, for if it was the knockin’ of a man on the head and that she knew it, and was asked about it, out it would go, rather than she’d tell a lie.”

“They say she’s handsomer than Gra Gal Sullivan,” said Hanlon; “and I think myself she is.”

“I don’t know; it’s a dead tie between them; however, I can give you a lift with her father, but not with herself, for somehow, she doesn’t like a bone in my skin.”

“She and I made a swop,” proceeded Hanlon, “some time ago, that ’ud take a laugh out o’ you:  I gave her a pocket-hand-kerchy; and she was to give me an ould Tobaccy-Box—­but she says she can’t find it, altho’ I have sent for it, an’ axed it myself several times.  She thinks the step-mother has thrown it away or hid it somewhere.”

Body looked at him inquiringly.

“A Tobaccy-Box,” he exclaimed; “would you like to get it?”

“Why,” replied Hanlon, “the poor girl has nothing else to give, an’ I’d like to have something from her, even if a ring never was to go on us, merely as a keepsake.”

“Well, then,” replied Duncan, with something approaching to solemnity in his voice, “mark my words—­you promise to give me a lift for the drivership with old Jemmy and the two Dicks?”

“I do.”

“Well, then, listen:  If you will be at the Grey Stone to-morrow night at twelve o’clock—­midnight—­I’ll engage that Sarah will give you the box there.”

“Why, in troth, Eody, to tell you the truth if she could give it to me at any other time an’ place, I’d prefer it.  That Grey Stone is a wild place to be in at midnight.”

“It is a wild place; still it’s there, an’ nowhere else, that you must get the box.  And now that the bargain’s made, do you think it’s thrue that this old Hendherson”—­here he looked very cautiously about him—­“has as much money as they say he has?”

“I b’lieve he’s very rich.”

“It is thrue that he airs the bank notes in the garden here, and turns the guineas in the sun, for fraid—­for fraid—­they’d get blue-mowled—­is it?”