sed it, not expected; glory be
to his name!"

"Is Andy ill?" inquired Nell; "and how long?"

"Bedad, going on ten days."

"Well," said the woman, "I knew nothin' about that; but I want to see
Meehaul Neil, and I know he's in the house."

"Faix he's not, Nelly, an' you know I wouldn't tell you a lie about it."

"Did you get the linen that was stolen from your masther?" inquired Nell
significantly, turning at the same time a piercing glance on the waiter;
"an' tell me," she added, "how is Sally Lavery, and where is she?"

"It wasn't got," he replied, in a kind of stammer; "an' as to Sally, the
nerra one o' me knows any thing about her, since she left this."

"Sheemus," replied Nell, "you know that Meehaul Neil is in the house;
but I'll give you two choices, either to bring me to the speech of him,
or else I'll give your masther the name of the thief that stole his
linen; ay! the name of the thief that resaved it. I name nobody at
present; an' for that matther, I know nothin'. Can't all the world tell
you that Nell M'Cullum knows nothin'!"

"_Ghe dhevin_, Nelly," said the waiter, "maybe Meehaul is in the house
unknownst to me. I'll try, any how, an' if he's to the fore, it won't be
my fault or he'll see you."

Nell, while the waiter went to inform Meehaul, took two ribbons out of
her pocket, one white and the other black, both of which she folded into
what would appear to a bystander to be a simple kind of knot. When the
innkeeper's son and the waiter returned to the hall, the former asked
her what the nature of her business with him might be. To this she made
no reply, except by uttering the word husht! and pulling the ends, first
of the white ribbon, and afterwards of the black. The knot of the first
slipped easily from the complication, but that of the black one, after
gliding along from its respective ends, became hard and tight in the
middle.

"_Tha sha marrho!_ life passes and death stays," she exclaimed. "Andy
Connor's dead, Meehaul Neil; an' you may tell your father that he must
get some one else to look afther his sheep. Ay! he's dead!--But that's
past. Meehaul, folly me; it's you I want, an' there's no time to be
lost."

She passed out as she spoke, leaving the waiter in a state of wonder
at the extent of her knowledge, and of the awful means by which, in his
opinion, she must have acquired it.

Meehaul, without uttering a syllable, immediately walked after her. The
pace at which she went was rapid