“Say whatever you have to say before my father and mother, then,” she replied; “I have no—­” she paused a moment and seemed embarrassed.  The Prophet, who skilfully threw in the allusion to her hair, guessed the words she was on the point of uttering, and availing’ himself of her difficulty, seemed to act as if she had completed what she was about to say.

“I know, dear,” he added, “you have no saicrets from them:  I’m glad to hear it, an’ for that raison I’m willin’ to say what I had to say in their presence; so far as I’m concerned, it makes no difference.”

The allusion to her hair; added to the last observations, reminded her that it might be possible that he had some message from her lover, and she consequently seemed to waver a little, as if struggling against her strong, instinctive abhorrence of him.

“Don’t be afeard, Mave dear,” said her mother, “sure, poor honest Donnel wishes you well, an’ won’t prophesize any harm to you.  Go with him.”

“Do, achora,” added the father; “Donnel can have nothing to say to you that can have any harm in it—­go for a minute or two, since he wishes it.”

Reluctantly, and with an indomitable feeling against the man, she went out, and stood under the shelter of a little elder hedge that adjoined the house.

“Now, tell me,” she asked, quickly, “what is it you have to say to me?”

“I gave young Condy Dalton the purty ringlet of hair you sent him.”

“What did he say?” she inquired.

“Not much,” he replied, “till I tould him it was the last token that ever you could send him afther what your father said to you.”

“Well?”

“Why, he cursed your father, an’ said he desirved to get his neck broke.”

“I don’t believe that,” she replied, “I know he never said them words, or anything like them.  Don’t mislead me, but tell me what he did say.”

“Ah! poor Mave,” he replied, “you little know what hot blood runs in the Daltons’ veins.  He said very little that was creditable to himself—­an’ indeed I won’t repate it—­but it was enough to make any girl of spirit have done wid him.”

“An’ don’t you know,” she replied, mournfully, “that I have done with him; an’ that there never can be anything but sorrow and good will between us?  Wasn’t that my message to him by yourself?”

“It was, dear, an’ I hope you’re still of the same mind.”

“I am,” she said; “but you are not tellin’ me the truth about him.  He never spoke disrespectfully of my father or me.”

“No, indeed, asthore, he did not then—­oh, the sorra syllable—­oh no; if I said so, don’t believe me.”  And yet the very words he uttered, in consequence of the meaning which, they received from his manner, made an impression directly the reverse of their natural import.

“Well then,” she said, “that’s all you have to say to me?”

“No,” he replied, “it is not; I want to know from you when you’ll be goin’ to your uncle’s, at Mullaghmore.”