'm afraid you might fall in love wid one another
in my absence. Be off now, you ould stepdivle, an' get the meal; or if
you're not able to go, I will."

After a lapse of a few minutes, the woman rose, and taking the cloth,
deliberately folded it up, and asked him for money to purchase the meal
she wanted.

"Here," said he, handing her a written paper, "give him that, an' it
will do as well as money. He expects Master Dick's interest for Dalton's
farm, an' I'll engage he'll attend to that."

She received the paper, and looking at it, said--

"I hope this is none of the villainy I suspect."

"Be off," he replied, "get what you want, and that's all you have to
do."

"What's come over you?" asked Sarah of her father, after the other had
gone. "Did you get afeard of her?"

"There's something in her eye," he replied, "that I don't like, and that
I never seen there before."

"But," returned the other, a good deal surprised, "what can there be in
her eye that you need care about? You have nobody's blood on your hands,
an' you stole nothing. What made you look afeard that time?"

"I didn't look afeard."

"But I say you did, an' I was ashamed of you."

"Well, never mind--I may tell you something some o' these days about
that same woman. In the meantime, I'll throw myself on the bed, an' take
a sleep, for I slept but little last night."

"Do so," replied Sarah; "but at any rate, never be cowed by a woman. Lie
down, an' I'll go over awhile to Tom Cassidy's. But first, I had better
make the poultice for your face, to take down the ugly swellin'."

Having made and applied the poultice, she went off, light-hearted as a
lark, leaving her worthy father to seek some rest if he could.

She had no sooner disappeared than the prophet, having closed and
bolted the door, walked backwards and forwards, in a moody and unsettled
manner.

"What," he exclaimed to himself, "can be the matther with that woman,
that made her look at me in sich a way a while agone? I could not
mistake her eye. She surely knows more than I thought, or she would not
fix her eye into mine as she did. Could there be anything in that dhrame
about Dalton an' my coffin? Hut! that's nonsense. Many a dhrame I had
that went for nothin'. The only thing she could stumble on is the Box,
an' I don't think she would be likely to find that out, unless she
went to throw down the house; but, anyhow, it's no harm to thry." He
immediately mounted the old table, and, st