“I ought to be able to tell you, at any rate,” replied Sarah; “I’m his daughter.”

The strange woman, on surveying Sarah more closely, looked as if she never intended to remove her eyes from her countenance and figure.  She seemed for a moment, as it were, to forget every other object in life—­her previous conversation with Hanlon—­the message on which she had been sent—­and her anxiety to throw light upon the awful crime that had been committed at the spot whereon she stood.  At length she sighed deeply, and appeared to recover her presence of mind, and to break through the abstraction in which she had been wrapped.  “You’re his daughter, you say?”

“Ay, I do say so.”

“Then you know a young man by name Pierce—­och, what am I sayin’!—­by name Charley Hanlon?”

“To be sure I do—­I’m not ashamed of knowin’ Charles Hanlon.”

“You have a good opinion of him, then?”

“I have a good opinion of him, but not so good as I had thought.”

“Mush a why then, might one ask?”

“I’m afeard he’s a cowardly crathur, and rather unmanly a thrifle.  I like a man to be a man, an’ not to get as white as a sheet, an’ cowld as a tombstone, bekaise he hears what he thinks to be a groan at night, an’ it may be nothin’ but an owld cow behind a ditch.  Ha! ha! ha!”

“An’ where did he hear the groan?”

“Why, here where we’re standin’.  Ha! ha! ha!  I was thinkin’ of it since, an’ I did hear somethin’ very like a groan; but what about it?  Sich a night as last night would make any one groan that had a groan in them.”

“You spoke about ditches, but sure there’s no ditches here.”

“Divil a matther—­who cares what it was?  What did you want wid my father?”

“It was yourself that I wanted to see.”

“Faix, an’ you’ve seen me, then, an’ the full o’ your eye you tuck out o’ me.  You’ll know me again, I hope.”

“Is your mother livin’?”

“No.”

“How long is she dead, do you know?”

“I do not; I hardly remember anything about her.  She died when I was a young slip—­a mere child, I believe.  Still,” she proceeded, rather slowly, musing and putting her beautiful and taper fingers to her chin—­“I think that I do remember—­it’s like a dhrame to me though, an’ I dunna but it is one—­still it’s like a dhrame to me, that I was wanst in her arms, that I was cryin’, an’ that she kissed me—­that she kissed me!  If she had lived, it’s a different life maybe I’d lead an’ a different creature I’d be to-day, maybe, but I never had a mother.”

“Did your father marry a second time?”

“He did.”

“Then you have a step-mother?”

“Ay have I.”

“Is she kind to you, an’ do you like her?”

“Middlin’—­she’s not so bad—­better than I deserve, I doubt; I’m sorry for what I did to her; but then I have the divil’s temper, an’ have no guide o’ myself when it comes on me.  I know whatever she may be to me, I’m not the best step-daughter to her.”