indeed, was very general during the period we are describing, the fact being that the poor people, especially the females, had conceived a notion, and not a very unreasonable one, too, that a large crop of hair not only predisposed them to the fever which then prevailed, but rendered their recovery from it more difficult.  These notions, to be sure, resulted naturally enough from the treatment which medical men found it necessary to adopt in dealing with it—­every one being aware that in order to relieve the head, whether by blister or other application, it is necessary to remove the hair.  Be this, however, as it may, it is our duty to state here that the traffic we allude to was very general, and that many a lovely and luxuriant crop came under the shears of the pedlars who then strolled through the country.

“Afther all, aunt,” said Hanlon, after having bidden her good morrow, “I’m afraid it was a foolish weakness to depend upon a dhrame.  I see nothing clear in the business yet.  Here now we have got the Box, an’ what are we the nearer to the discovery?”

“Well,” replied his aunt, for in that relation she stood to him, “is it nothing to get even that?  Sure we know now that it was his, an’ do you think that M’Gowan, or as they call him, the Black Prophet, would be in sich a state to get it—­an’ his wife, too, it seems—­unless there was some raison on their part beyond the common, to come at it?”

“It’s a dark business altogether; but arn’t we thrown out of all trace of it in the mane time?  Jist when we thought ourselves on the straight road to the discovery, it turns out to be another an’ a different murdher entirely—­the murdher of one Sullivan.”

At this moment, the pedlar, who had been dressing himself in another small apartment, made, his appearance, just in time to catch his concluding words.

“An’ now,” Hanlon added, “it appears that Sullivan’s body has been found at last.  The Black Prophet and Body Duncan knows all about the murdher, an’ can prove the act home to Condy Dalton, and identify the body, they say, besides.”

The pedlar looked at the speakers with a face of much curiosity and interest, then mused for a time, and at length took a turn or two about the floor, after which he sat down and began to drum his fingers on the little table which had been placed for breakfast.

“Afther I get my breakfast,” he said at length, “I’ll thank you to let me know what I have to pay.  It’s not my intention to stop undher this roof any longer; I don’t think I’d be overly safe.”

“Safe!—­arrah why so?” asked the woman.

“Why,” he replied, “ever since I came here, you have done nothing but collogue—­collogue—­an’ whisper, an’ lay your heads together, an’ divil a syllable can I hear that hasn’t murdher at the front an’ rear of it—­either spake out, or get me my bill.  If you’re of that stamp, it’s time for me to thravel; not that I’m so rich as to make it worth any body’s while to take the mouthful of wind out o’ me that’s in me.  What do you mean by this discoorse?”