“It is aiquil to hers any day,” replied her father, softening into affection as he contemplated her; “and indeed, Sally, I think you’re her match every way except—­except—­no matter, troth are you.”

“What are you going to do wid it?” she asked; “is it to the Grange it’s goin’?”

“It is an’ I want you to help me in what I mentioned to you.  If I get what I’m promised, we’ll lave the country, you and I, and as for that ould vagabond, we’ll pitch her to ould Nick.  She’s talking about devotion and has nothing but Providence in her lips.”

“But isn’t there a Providence?” asked his daughter, with a sparkling eye.

“Devil a much myself knows or cares,” he replied, with indifference, “whether there is or not.”

“Bekase if there is,” she said, pausing—­“if there is, one might as well—­”

She paused again and her fine features assumed an intellectual meaning—­a sorrowful and meditative beauty, that gave a new and more attractive expression to her face than her father had ever witnessed on it before.

“Don’t vex me, Sarah,” he replied, snappishly.  “Maybe it’s goin’ to imitate her you are.  The clargy knows these things maybe—­an’ maybe they don’t.  I only wish she’d come back with the caaharrawan.  If all goes right, I’ll pocket what’ll bring yourself an’ me to America.  I’m beginnin’ somehow to get unaisy; an’ I don’t wish to stay in this country any longer.”

Whilst he spoke, the sparkling and beautiful expression which had lit up his daughter’s countenance passed away, and with it probably the moment in which it was possible to have opened a new and higher destiny to her existence.

Nelly, in the meantime, having taken an old spade with her to dig the roots she went in quest of, turned up Glendhu, and kept searching for some time in vain, until at length she found two or three bunches of the herb growing in a little lonely nook that lay behind a projecting ledge of rock, where one would seldom think of looking for herbage at all.  Here she found a little, soft, green spot, covered over with dandelion; and immediately she began to dig it up.  The softness of the earth and its looseness surprised her a good deal; and moved by an unaccountable curiosity, she pushed the spade further down, until it was met by some substance that felt rather hard.  From this she cleared away the earth as well as she could, and discovered that the spade had been opposed by a bone; and on proceeding to examine still further, she discovered that the spot on which the dandelions had grown, contained the bones of a full grown human body.

CHAPTER V. —­ The Black Prophet is Startled by a Black Prophecy.