that
we should account for her presence under the roof of that worthy
individual, especially as she is likely to perform a part of some
interest in our tale. We have said already that she started on hearing
Mave Sullivan's name mentioned, and followed her and the Black Prophet's
wife like a person who watched their motions, and seemed to feel some
peculiar interest in either one or both. The reader must return, then,
to the Grey Stone already alluded to, which to some of the characters in
our narrative will probably prove to be a "stone of destiny."

Hanlon, having departed from Sarah M'Gowan in a state of excitement,
wended his way along a lonely and dreary road, to the residence of
his master, Dick o' the Grange. The storm had increased, and was still
increasing at every successive blast, until it rose to what might be
termed a tempest. It is, indeed, a difficult thing to describe the
peculiar state of his feelings as he struggled onwards, sometimes
blown back to a stand-still, and again driven forward by the gloomy and
capricious tyranny of the blast, as if he were its mere plaything.
In spite, however, of the conflict of the external elements as they
careered over the country around him, he could not shake from his
imagination the impression left there by the groan which he had heard at
the Grey Stone. A supernatural terror, therefore, was upon him, and
he felt as if he were in the presence of an accompanying spirit--of a
spirit that seemed anxious to disclose the fact that murder would not
rest; and so strongly did this impression gain upon him, that in the
fitful howling of the storm, and in its wild wailing and dying sobs
among the trees and hedges, as he went along, he thought he could
distinguish sounds that belonged not to this life. Still he proceeded,
his terrors thus translating, as it were, the noisy conflict of the
elements into the voices of the dead, or thanking Heaven that the strong
winds brought him to a calmer sense of his position, by the necessity
that they imposed of preserving himself against their violence. In this
anomalous state he advanced, until he came to a grove of old beeches
that grew at the foot of one of the hill-ranges we have described, and
here the noises he heard were not calculated to diminish his terrors. As
the huge trees were tossed and swung about in the gloomy moonlight, his
ears were assailed by a variety of wild sounds which had never reached
them before. The deep and rep