“God protect us, dear, you’re lost!—­blessed father, sich a night!  Oh! my, my!  Well, well; sit near the spark o’ fire, sich as it is; but, indeed, it’s little you’ll benefit by it.  Any way, sit down.”

Hanlon sat on a stool, and laying his hat beside him on the floor, he pressed the rain as well as he could out of his drenched hair, and for some time did not speak, whilst the female, squatted upon the ground, somewhat like a hare in her form, sat with the candle in her hand, which she held up in the direction of his face, whilst her eyes were riveted on him with a look of earnest and solemn inquiry.

“Well,” she at length said, “did your journey end, as I tould you it would, in nothing?  And yet, God presarve me, you look—­eh!—­what has happened?—­you look like one that was terrified, sure enough.  Tell me, at wanst, did the dhrame come out thrue?”

“I’ll not have a light heart this many a day,” he replied; “let no one say there’s not a Providence above us to bring murdher to light.”

“God of glory be about us!” she exclaimed, interrupting him; “something has happened!  Your looks would frighten one, an’ your voice isn’t like the voice of a livin’ man.  Tell me—­and yet, for all so curious as I feel, I’m thremblin’ this minute—­but tell me, did the dhrame come out thrue, I say?”

“The dhrame came out thrue,” he replied, solemnly.  “I know where the tobaccy box is that he had about him; the same that transported my poor uncle, or that was partly the means of doin’ it.”

The woman crossed herself, muttered a short ejaculatory prayer, and again gathered her whole features into an expression of mingled awe and curiosity.

“Did you go to the place you dhramed of?” she asked.

“I went to the Grey Stone,” he replied, “an’ offered up a prayer for his sowl, afther puttin’ my right hand upon it in his name, jist as I did on yesterday; afther I got an account of the tobaccy box, I heard a groan at the spot—­as heaven’s above me, I did.”

“Savior of earth, gluntho shin!”

“But that wasn’t all.  On my way home, I heard, as I was passin’ the ould trees at the Rabbit Bank, things that I can’t find words to tell you of.”

“Well acushla, glory be to God for everything! it’s all his will, blessed be his name!  What did you hear, avick?—­but wait till I throw a drop o’ the holy wather that I have hangin’ in the little bottle at the bed-post upon us.”

She rose whilst speaking and getting the bottle alluded to, sprinkled both herself and him, after which she hung it up again in its former position.

“There, now, nothin’ harmful, at any rate, can come near us afther that, blessed be his name.  Well, what did you hear comin’ home?—­I mean at the Rabbit Bank.  Wurrah,” she added, shuddering, “but it’s it that’s the lonely spot after night!  What was it, dear?”