nit in
sich a way; jist as if you were in agony; your cheeks are so white too,
an' your mouth is down at the corners, that a ghost--ay, the ghost of
the murdhered man himself--would be agreeable compared to you. Go to
bed, father, if you're awake."

To all this he made no reply, but having dressed himself, he
deliberately, and with great caution, raised the latch, and proceeded
out at that dismal and lonely hour. Sarah, for a time, knew not how to
act. She had often heard of sleep-walking, and she feared now, that if
she awakened him, he might imagine that she had heard matters which
he wished no ears whatever to hear; for the truth was, that some vague
suspicions of a dreadful nature had lately entered her mind; suspicions,
which his broken slumbers--his starts, and frequent exclamations during
sleep, had only tended to confirm.

"I will watch him at all events," said she to herself, "and see that
he comes to no ganger." She accordingly shut the door after her, and
followed him pretty closely into the deep gloom of the silent and
solitary glen. With cautious, but steady and unerring steps, he
proceeded in the direction of the loneliest spot of it, which having
reached, he went by a narrow and untrodden circuit--a kind of broken,
but natural pathway--to the identical spot where the body, which Nelly
had discovered, lay.

He then raised his hand, as if in caution, and whispered--"Whisht! here
is where the murdhered man's body lies."

"I'll not do it," said Sarah, "I'll not do it; it would be mane and
ungenerous to ax him a question that might make him betray himself."

At this moment the moon which had been for some time risen, presented
a strange and alarming aspect. She seemed red as blood; and directly
across her centre there went a black bar--a bar so ominously and
intensely black, that it was impossible to look upon it without
experiencing something like what one might be supposed to feel in the
presence of a supernatural appearance; at the performance of some magic
or unnatural rite, where the sorcerer, by the wickedness of his spell,
forced her, as it were, thus to lend a dreadful and reluctant sanction
to his proceedings.

Her father, however, proceeded: "Ay--who murdhered him, my lord? Why,
my lord--hem--it was--Condy Dalton, an' I have another man to prove it
along wid myself--one Rody Duncan; now Rody answer strong; swear home;
mind yourself, Rody."

These words were spoken aside, precisely as one wou