Hanlon made her no reply, but took his hat off, and once more offered up a short prayer, apparently in deep and most extraordinary excitement.

“I see,” she observed, after he had concluded, “that you’re bent on your devotions this night; and the devil’s own place you’ve pitched upon for them.”

“Well, now,” replied Hanlon, “I’ll be biddin’ you good-night; but before you go, promise to get me that tobaccy-box you found; it’s the least you may give it to me for Peggy Murray’s handkerchy.”

“Hut,” returned Sally, “it’s not worth a thraneen; you couldn’t use it even if you had it; sure it’s both rusty and broken.”

“No matther for that,” he replied; “I want to play a thrick on Peggy Murray wid it, so as to have a good laugh against her—­the pair of us—­you wid the handkerchy, and me wid the tobaccy-box.”

“Very well,” she replied.  “Ha! ha! ha!—­that’ll be great.  At any rate, I’ve a crow to pluck wid the same Peggy Murray.  Oh, never you fear, you must have it; the minnit I get my hands on it, I’ll secure it for you.”  After a few words more of idle chat they separated; he to his master’s house, which was a considerable distance off; and this extraordinary creature—­unconscious of the terrors and other weaknesses that render her sex at once so dependent on and so dear to man—­full only of delight at the expected glee of the wake—­to the house of death where it was held.

In the country parts of Ireland it is not unusual for those who come to a wake-house from a distance, to remain there until the funeral takes place:  and this also is frequently the case with the nearest door neighbors.  There is generally a solemn hospitality observed on the occasion, of which the two classes I mention partake.  Sally’s absence, therefore, on that night, or for the greater portion of the next day, excited neither alarm nor surprise at home.  On entering their miserable sheiling, she found her father, who had just returned, and her step-mother in high words; the cause of which, she soon learned, had originated in his account of the interview between young Dalton and Mave Sullivan, together with its unpleasant consequences to himself.

“What else could you expect,” said his wife, “but what you got?  You’re ever an’ always too ready wid your divil’s grin an’ your black prophecy to thim you don’t like.  I wondher you’re not afeard that some of them might come back to yourself, an’ fall upon your own head.  If ever a man tempted Providence you do.”

“Ah, dear me!” he exclaimed, with a derisive sneer, rendered doubly repulsive by his own hideous and disfigured face, “how pious we are!  Providence, indeed!  Much I care about Providence, you hardened jade, or you aither, whatever puts the word into your purty mouth.  Providence! oh, how much we regard it, as if Providence took heed of what we do.  Go an’ get me somethin’ to put to this swellin’, you had betther; or if it’s goin’ to grow religious you are, be off out o’ this; we’ll have none of your cant or pishthrougues here.”