It is not our intention, neither is it necessary that we should enter into the particulars of the interview which Hanlon had that morning with young Dick.  It is merely sufficient to state that they had a private conversation in the old magistrate’s office, at which the female whom Hanlon had visited the night before was present.  When this was concluded, Hanlon walked with her a part of the way, evidently holding serious and interesting discourse touching a subject which we may presume bore upon the extraordinary proceedings of the previous night.  He closed by giving her directions how to proceed on her journey; for it seemed that she was unacquainted with the way, being, like himself, but a stranger in the neighborhood:—­“You will go on,” said he, “till you reach the height at Aughindrummon, from that you will see the trees at the Rabbit Bank undher you; then keep the road straight till you come to where it crosses the ford of the river:  a little on this side, and where the road turns to your right, you will find the Grey Stone, an’ jist opposite that you will see the miserable cabin where the Black Prophet lives.”

“Why do they call him the Black Prophet?”

“Partly, they tell me, from his appearance, an’ partly bekaise he takes delight in prophesyin’ evil.”

“But could he have anything to do wid the murdher?”

“I was thinkin’ about that,” he replied, “and had some talk this mornin’ wid a man that’s livin’ a long time—­indeed that was born—­a little above the place—­and he says that the Black Prophet, or M’Gowan, did not come to the neighborhood till afther the murdher.  I wasn’t myself cool enough last night to ask his daughter many questions about it; an’ I was afraid, besides, to appear over-anxious in the business.  So now that you have your instructions in that and the other matthers, you’ll manage every thing as well as you can.”

Hanlon then returned to the Grange, and the female proceeded on her mission to the house, if house it could be called, of the Black Prophet, for the purpose, if possible, of collecting such circumstances as might tend to throw light upon a dark and mysterious murder.

When Sarah left her father, after having poulticed his face, to go a kailley, as she said, to a neighbor’s house, she crossed the ford of the river, and was proceeding in the same directions that had been taken by Hanlon the preceding night, when she met a strange woman, or rather she found her standing, apparently waiting for herself, at the Grey Stone.  From the position of the stone, which was a huge one, under one ledge of which, by the way, there grew a little clump of dwarf elder, it was impossible that Sarah could pass her, without coming in tolerable close contact; for the road was an old and narrow one, though perfectly open and without hedge or ditch on either side of it.

“Maybe you could tell me, young woman, whereabouts here a man lives that they call Donnel Dhu, or the Black Prophet; his real name is M’Gowan, I think.”