t was born--a little
above the place--and he says that the Black Prophet, or M'Gowan, did not
come to the neighborhood till afther the murdher. I wasn't myself cool
enough last night to ask his daughter many questions about it; an' I was
afraid, besides, to appear over-anxious in the business. So now that
you have your instructions in that and the other matthers, you'll manage
every thing as well as you can."

Hanlon then returned to the Grange, and the female proceeded on her
mission to the house, if house it could be called, of the Black Prophet,
for the purpose, if possible, of collecting such circumstances as might
tend to throw light upon a dark and mysterious murder.

When Sarah left her father, after having poulticed his face, to go a
kailley, as she said, to a neighbor's house, she crossed the ford of the
river, and was proceeding in the same directions that had been taken by
Hanlon the preceding night, when she met a strange woman, or rather she
found her standing, apparently waiting for herself, at the Grey Stone.
From the position of the stone, which was a huge one, under one ledge
of which, by the way, there grew a little clump of dwarf elder, it was
impossible that Sarah could pass her, without coming in tolerable close
contact; for the road was an old and narrow one, though perfectly open
and without hedge or ditch on either side of it.

"Maybe you could tell me, young woman, whereabouts here a man lives that
they call Donnel Dhu, or the Black Prophet; his real name is M'Gowan, I
think."

"I ought to be able to tell you, at any rate," replied Sarah; "I'm his
daughter."

The strange woman, on surveying Sarah more closely, looked as if she
never intended to remove her eyes from her countenance and figure.
She seemed for a moment, as it were, to forget every other object in
life--her previous conversation with Hanlon--the message on which she
had been sent--and her anxiety to throw light upon the awful crime that
had been committed at the spot whereon she stood. At length she sighed
deeply, and appeared to recover her presence of mind, and to break
through the abstraction in which she had been wrapped. "You're his
daughter, you say?"

"Ay, I do say so."

"Then you know a young man by name Pierce--och, what am I sayin'!--by
name Charley Hanlon?"

"To be sure I do--I'm not ashamed of knowin' Charles Hanlon."

"You have a good opinion of him, then?"

"I have a good opinion of him, but not so good as