“May God rest the sowls of the dead!” replied the woman, “but it’s not for nothing that we talk as we do, an’ if you knew but all, you wouldn’t think so.”

“Very likely,” he replied, in a dry but dissatisfied voice; “maybe, sure enough, that the more I’d know of it, the less I’d like of it—­here now is a man named Sullivan—­Barney, Bill, or Bartley, or some sich name, that has been murdhered, an’ it seems the murdherer was sent to gaol yestherday evenin’—­the villain!  Get me my bill, I say, it’s an unsafe neighborhood, an’ I’ll take myself out of it, while I’m able.”

“It’s not widout raisin we talk of murdher then,” replied the woman.

“Faith may be so—­get me my bill, then, I bid you, an’ in the mane time, let me have, my breakfast.  As it is, I tell you both that I carry no money to signify about me.”

“Tell him the truth, aunt,” said Hanlon, “there’s no use in lyin’ under his suspicion wrongfully, or allowin’ him to lave your little place for no raison.”

“The truth is, then,” she proceeded, throwing the corner of her apron over her left shoulder, and rocking herself to and fro, “that this young man had a dhrame some time ago—­he dremt that a near an’ dear friend of his an’ of mine too, that was murdhered in this neighborhood, appeared to him, an’ that he desired him to go of a sartain night, at the hour of midnight, to a stone near this, called the Grey Stone, an’ that there he would get a clue to the murdherer.”

‘Well, an’ did he?”

“He went—­an’—­but you had betther tell it yourself, avillish,” she added, addressing Hanlon; “you know best.”

The pedlar instantly fixed his anxious and lively eyes on the young man, intimating that he looked to him for the rest of the story.

“I went,” proceeded Hanlon, “and you shall hear everything that happened.”

It is unnecessary for us, however, to go over the same ground a second time.  Hanlon minutely detailed to him all that had taken place at the Grey Stone, precisely as it occurred, if we allow for a slight exaggeration occasioned by his terrors, and the impressions of supernatural manifestations which they left upon his imagination.

The pedlar heard all the circumstances with an astonishment which changed his whole bearing into that of deep awe and the most breathless attention.  The previous eccentricity of his manner by degrees abandoned him; and as Hanlon proceeded, he frequently looked at him in a state of abstraction, then raised his eyes towards heaven, uttering, from time to time, “Merciful Father!”—­“Heaven preserve us!” and such like, thus accompanying him by a running comment of exclamations as he went along.

“Well,” said he, when Hanlon had concluded, “surely the hand of God is in this business; you may take that for granted.”

“I would fain hope as much,” replied Hanlon; “but as the matthers stand now, we’re nearly as far from it as ever.  Instead of gettin’ any knowledge of the murdherer we want to discover, it proves to be the murdher of Sullivan that has been found out.”