and massive; his nose, which was somewhat hooked, but too much pointed, seemed as if, while in a plastic state, it had been sloped by a trowel towards one side of his face, a circumstance which, while taken in connection with his black whiskers that ran to a point near his mouth, and piercing eyes, that were too deeply and narrowly set, gave him, aided by his heavy eyebrows, an expression at once of great cruelty and extraordinary cunning.  This man, while travelling in the same direction with the other, had suffered himself to be overtaken by him:  in such a manner, however, that their coming in contact could not be attributed to any particular design on his part.

“Why, then, Donnel Dhu,” said the farmer, “sure it’s a sight for sore eyes to see you in this side of the country; an’ now that I do see you, how are you?”

“Jist the ould six-an’-eight-pence, Jerry; an’ how is the Sullivan blood in you, man alive? good an’ ould blood it is, in troth; how is the family?”

“Why we can’t—­hut, what was I goin’ to say?” replied his companion; “we can’t—­complain—­ershi—­mishi!—­why, then, God help us, it’s we that can complain, Donnel, if there was any use in it; but, mavrone, there isn’t; so all I can say is, that we’re jist mixed middlin’, like the praties in a harvest, or hardly that same, indeed, since this woful change that has come on us.”

“Ay, ay,” replied the other; “but if that change has come on you, you know it didn’t come without warnin’ to the counthry; there’s a man livin’ that foretould as much—­that seen it comin’—­ay, ever since the pope was made prisoner, for that was what brought Bonaparte’s fate—­that’s now the cause of the downfall of everything upon him.”

“An’ it was the hard fate for us, as well as for himself,” replied Sullivan, “little he thought, or little he cared, for what he made us suffer, an’ for what he’s makin’ us suffer still, by the come-down that the prices have got.”

“Well, but he’s sufferin’ himself more than any of us,” replied Donnel; “however, that was prophesied too; it’s read of in the ould Chronicles.  ‘An eagle will be sick,’ says St. Columbkill, ’but the bed of the sick eagle is not a tree, but a rock; an’ there, he must suffer till the curse of the Father* is removed from him; an’ then he’ll get well, an’ fly over the world.’”

     * This is—­the Pope, in consequence of Bonaparte having
     imprisoned him.

“Is that in the prophecy, Donnel?”

“It’s St. Columbian’s words I’m spakin’.”

“Throth, at any rate,” replied Sullivan, “I didn’t care we had back the war prices again; aither that, or that the dear rents were let down to meet the poor prices we have now.  This woeful saison, along wid the low prices and the high rents, houlds out a black and terrible look for the counthry, God help us!”

“Ay,” returned the Black Prophet, for it was he, “if you only knew it.”

“Why, was that, too, prophesied?” inquired Sullivan.