hope for better
days--an' put our trust in God's goodness."

"Farewell, dear Mave," he replied, "an may God bless and presarve you
till I see you again!"

"An' may He send down aid to you all," she added, "an' give consolation
to your breakin' hearts!"

An embrace, long, tender, and mournful, accompanied their words, after
which they separated in sorrow and in tears, and with but little hope of
happiness on the path of life that lay before them.

CHAPTER XIX. -- Hanlon Secures the Tobacco-box.--Strange Scene at
Midnight.

The hour so mysteriously appointed by Red Rody for the delivery of the
Tobacco-box to Hanlon, was fast approaching, and the night though by no
means so stormy as that which we have described on the occasion of that
person's first visit to the Grey Stone, was nevertheless dark and
rainy, with an occasional slight gust of wind, that uttered a dreary
and melancholy moan, as it swept over the hedges. Hanlon, whose fear of
supernatural appearances had not been diminished by what he had heard
there before as well as on his way home, now felt alarmed at every gust
of wind that went past him. He hurried on, however, and kept his nerves
as firmly set as his terrors would allow him, until he got upon the
plain old road which led directly to the appointed place. The remarkable
interest which he had felt at an earlier stage of the circumstances
that compose our narrative, was beginning to cool a little, when it was
revived by his recent conversation with Red Rody concerning the Black
Prophet, and the palpable contradictions in which he detected that
person, with reference to the period when the Prophet came to reside in
the neighborhood. His anxiety therefore, about the Tobacco-box began, as
he approached the Grey Stone, to balance his fears; so that by the time
he arrived there, he found himself cooler and firmer a good deal than
when he first crossed the dark fields from home. Hanlon, in fact, had
learned a good deal of the Prophet's real character, from several
of those who had never been duped by his impostures; and the fact of
ascertaining that the very article so essential to the completion of
his purpose, had been found in the Prophet's house or possession, gave a
fresh and still more powerful impulse to his determinations. The night,
we have already observed, was dark, and the heavy gloom which covered
the sky was dismal and monotonous. Several flashes of lightning, it is
true, had shot out f