“You have this day been kind to me,” replied the woman, “and that’s what I can’t say of many—­dear help me!—­husht!  Every door is shut in my face!  Does not every cheek get pale when I am seen?  If I meet a fellow-creature on the road, they turn into the field to avoid me; if I ask for food, it’s to a deaf ear I speak; if I am thirsty, they send me to the river.  What house would shelter me?  In cold, in hunger, in drought, in storm, and in tempest, I am alone and unfriended, hated, feared, an’ avoided; starving in the winter’s cold, and burning in the summer’s heat.  All this is my fate here; and—­oh! oh! oh!—­have mercy, tormentor—­have mercy!  I will not lift my thoughts there—­I’ll keep the paction—­but spare me now!”

She turned round as she spoke, seeming to follow an invisible object, or, perhaps, attempting to get a more complete view of the mysterious being which exercised such a terrible and painful influence over her.  Mrs Sullivan, also, kept her eye fixed upon the lump, and actually believed that she saw it move.  Fear of incurring the displeasure of what it contained, and a superstitious reluctance harshly to thrust a person from her door who had eaten of her food, prevented her from desiring the woman to depart.

“In the name of Goodness,” she replied, “I will have nothing to do wid your gift.  Providence, blessed be His name, has done well for me an’ mine; an’ it mightn’t be right to go beyant what it has pleased Him to give me.”

“A rational sentiment!—­I mean there’s good sense in what you say,” answered the stranger:  “but you need not be afraid,” and she accompanied the expression by holding up the bottle and kneeling.  “Now,” she added, “listen to me, and judge for yourself, if what I say, when I swear it, can be a lie.”  She then proceeded to utter oaths of the most solemn nature, the purport of which was to assure Mrs Sullivan that drinking of the bottle would be attended with no danger.

“You see this little bottle?  Drink it.  Oh, for my sake and your own, drink it; it will give wealth without end to you and to all belonging to you.  Take one-half of it before sunrise, and the other half when he goes down.  You must stand while drinking it, with your face to the east, in the morning; and at night, to the west.  Will you promise to do thus?”

“How would drinkin’ the bottle get me money?” inquired Mrs Sullivan, who certainly felt a strong tendency of heart to the wealth.

“That I can’t tell you now, nor would you understand it, even if I could; but you will know all when what I say is complied with.”

“Keep your bottle, dacent woman.  I wash my hands out of it:  the saints above guard me from the timptation!  I’m sure it’s not right, for as I’m a sinner, ‘tis gettin’ stronger every minute widin me!  Keep it!  I’m loth to bid any one that ett o’ my bread to go from my hearth, but if you go, I’ll make it worth your while.  Saints above! what’s comin’ over me?  In my whole life I never had such a hankerin’ afther money!  Well, well, but it’s quare entirely!”