“Very well, Rody,” said the Prophet, with a grim but bitter smile, “it’ll be time enough then.  Now, go and manage these fellows, an’ see you do things as they ought to be done.”

“She’s fond o’ Charley Hanlon, to my own knowledge.”

“Who is?”

“Sarah, an’ between you an’ me, it’s not a Brinoge like him that’s fit for her.  She’s a, hasty and an uncertain kind of a girl—­:a good dale wild or so—­an’ it isn’t, as I said, the! likes o’ that chap that ’id answer her, but a steady, experienced, sober—­”

“Honest man, Rody.  Well, I’m not in a laughin’ humor, now; be off, an’ see that you do yourself an’ us all credit.”

When he was gone, the Prophet drew a long breath—­one, however, from its depth, evidently indicative of anything but ease of mind.  He then rose, and was preparing to go out, when Sarah, who had only laid herself on the bed, without undressing, got up, and approaching him, said, in a voice tremulous with weakness: 

“Father, I have heard every word you and Rody said.”

“Well,” replied her father, looking at her, “I supposed as much.  I made no secret of anything; however, keep to your bed—­you’re—­”

“Father, I have changed my mind; you have neither my heart nor wish in anything you’re bent on this night.”

“Changed your mind!” replied the Prophet, bitterly.  “Oh! you’re a real woman, I suppose, like your mother; you’ll drive some unfortunate man to hate the world an all that’s in it yet?”

“Father, I care as little about the world as you do; but still never will I lay myself out to do anything that’s wrong.”

“You promised to assist us then in Mave Sullivan’s business, for all that,” he replied.  “You can break your word, too.  Ah! real woman again.”

“Sooner than keep that promise, father, now, I would willingly let the last dhrop of blood out o’ my heart—­my unhappy heart—­Father, you’re provin’ yourself to be what I can’t name.  Listen to me—­you’re on the brink o’ destruction.  Stop in time, an’ fly, for there’s a fate over you.  I dremt since I lay down—­not more than a couple of hours ago—­that I saw the Tobacco Box you were lookin’ for, in the hands of—­”

“Don’t bother or vex me with your d—­d nonsense about dhrames,” he replied, in a loud and excited voice.  “The curse o’ Heaven on all dhrames, an’ every stuff o’ the kind.  Go to bed.”

He slapped the door violently after him as he spoke, and left her to her own meditations.

CHAPTER XXX. —­ Self-sacrifice—­Villany

Time passes now as it did on the night recorded in the preceding chapter.  About the hour of two o’clock, on the same night, a chaise was standing at the cross roads of Tulnavert, in which a gentleman, a little but not much the worse of liquor, sat in a mood redolent of anything but patience.  Many ejaculations did he utter, and some oaths, in consequence of the delay of certain parties whom he expected to meet there.  At length the noise of many feet was heard, and in the course of a few minutes a body of men advanced in the darkness, one of whom approached the chaise, and asked—­“Is that Masther Dick?”