It was just as these thoughts occurred to him that he arrived at the Stone, where he stood anxiously waiting and listening, and repeating his pater noster, as well as he could, for several minutes, but without hearing or seeing any one.

“I might have known,” thought he, “that the rascal could bring about nothing of the kind, an’ I am only a fool for heedin’ him at all.”

At this moment, however, he heard the noise of a light, quick footstep approaching, and almost immediately afterwards Sarah joined him.

“Well, I am glad you are come,” said he, “for God knows when I thought of our last stand here, I was anything but comfortable.”

“Why,” replied Sarah, “what wor you afeard of?  I hate a cowardly man, an’ you are cowardly.”

“Not where mere flesh and blood is consarned,” he replied; “I’m afeard of neither man nor woman—­but I wouldn’t like to meet a ghost or spirit, may the Lord presarve us!”

“Why, now?  What harm could a ghost or spirit do you?  Did you ever hear that they laid hands on or killed any one?”

“No; but for all that, it’s well known that several persons have died of fright, in consequence.”

“Ay, of cowardliness; but it wasn’t the ghost killed them.  Sure the poor ghost only comes to get relief for itself—­to have masses said; or, maybe, to do justice to some one that is wronged in this world.  There’s Jimmy Beatty, an’ he lay three weeks of fright from seein’ a ghost, an’ it turned out when all was known, that the ghost was nothing more or less than Tom Martin’s white-faced cow—­ha! ha! ha!”

“At any rate, let us change the subject,” said Hanlon; “you heard yourself the last night we wor here, what I’ll never forget.”

“We heard some noise like a groan, an’ that was all; but who could tell what it was, or who cares either?”

“I, for one, do; but, dear Sarah, have you the box?”

“Why does your voice tremble that way for?  Is it fear? bekaise if I thought it was, I wouldn’t scruple much to walk home with’ out another word, an’ bring the box with me.”

“You have it, then?”

“To be sure I have, an’ my father an’ Nelly is both huntin’ the house for it.”

“Why, what could your father want with it?”

“How can I tell?—­an’ only that I promised it to you, I wouldn’t fetch it at all?”

“I thought you had given it up for lost; how did you get it again?”

“That’s nothing to you, an’ don’t trouble your head about it.  There it is now, an’ I have kept my word; for while I live, I’ll never break it if I can.  Dear me, how bright that flash was!”

As Hanlon was taking the box out of her hand, a fearful flash of sheeted lightning opened out of a cloud almost immediately above them, and discovered it so plainly, that the letters P. M. were distinctly legible on the lid of it, and nearly at the same moment a deep groan was heard, as if coming-out of the rock.