mond cut diamond between the two. Barney, who had
never had a colic in his life, shrugged his shoulders very dolefully at
the miserable character of the sympathy which was expressed for him; and
Greatrakes, from his great powers of observation, saw that every word
Barney uttered with respect to his besetting malady was a lie.

At length Barney's countenance assumed an expression of such honest
sincerity and feeling that Greatrakes was at once struck by it, and he
kept his eye steadily fixed upon him.

"Sir," said Barney, "I understand you are a distinguished gentleman and
a magistrate besides?"

"I am certainly a magistrate," replied Greatrakes; "but what is your
object in asking the question, my good fellow?"

"I understand you are going to our Masther Charles Lindsay. Now, I wish
to give you a hint or two concerning him. His brother--he of the Evil
Eye--according to my most solemn and serious opinion, is poisoning him
by degrees. I think he has been dosing him upon a small scale, so as to
make him die off by the effects of poison, without any suspicion being
raised against himself; but when his father told him yesterday that you
were to come this day to cure him, his brother insisted that he should
sit up with him, and nurse-tend him himself. I was aware of this, and
from a conversation I heard him have with an old herbalist, named Sol
Donnel, I had suspicions of his design against his brother's life. He
strove to kill Miss Goodwin by the damnable force and power of his Evil
Eye, and would have done so had not you cured her."

"And are you sure," replied Greatrakes, "that it is not his Evil Eye
that is killing his brother?"

"I don't know that," replied Barney; "perhaps it may be so."

"No," replied Greatrakes, "from all I have read and heard of its
influence it cannot act upon persons within a certain degree of
consanguinity."

"I would take my oath," said honest Barney, "that it is the poison that
acts in this instance."

He then gave him a description of Woodward's having poured the
poison--or at least what he suspected to be such--into the drink which
was usually left at the bedside of his brother, and of its effect upon
the dog.

Greatrakes, on hearing this, drew up his horse, and looking Barney
sternly in the face, asked him,--

"Pray, my good fellow, did Mr. Woodward ever injure or offend you?"

"No, sir," replied Barney, "never in any instance; but what I say I say
from my love for his brother,