about her body--"'tis here! I have it!"

"Blessed mother!" exclaimed Mrs. Sullivan, tottering over to her chair,
as finished a picture of horror as the eye could witness, "this day's
Friday: the saints stand betwixt me an' all harm! Oh, holy Mary
protect me! _Nhanim an airh_," in the name of the Father, etc., and she
forthwith proceeded to bless herself, which she did thirteen times in
honor of the blessed virgin and the twelve apostles.

"Ay, it's as you see!" replied the stranger, bitterly. "It is
here--husht, now--husht, I say--I will say the thing to her, mayn't I?
Ay, indeed, Mary Sullivan, 'tis with me always--always. Well, well, no,
I won't. I won't--easy. Oh, blessed saints, easy, and I won't."

In the meantime Mrs. Sullivan had uncorked a bottle of holy water, and
plentifully bedewed herself with it, as a preservative against this
mysterious woman and her dreadful secret.

"Blessed mother above!" she ejaculated, "the _Lianhan Shee_" And as
she spoke, with the holy water in the palm of her hand, she advanced
cautiously, and with great terror, to throw it upon the stranger and the
unearthly thing she bore.

"Don't attempt it!" shouted the other, in tones of mingled fierceness
and terror, "do you want to give me pain without keeping yourself
anything at all safer? Don't you know it doesn't care about your holy
water? But I'd suffer for it, an' perhaps so would you."

Mrs. Sullivan, terrified by the agitated looks of the woman, drew back
with affright, and threw the holy water with which she intended to
purify the other on her own person.

"Why thin, you lost crathur, who or what are you at all?--don't,
don't--for the sake of all the saints and angels of heaven, don't come
next or near me--keep your distance--but what are you, or how did you
come to get that 'good thing' you carry about wid you?"

"Ay, indeed!" replied the woman bitterly, "as if I would or could tell
you that! I say, you woman, you're doing what's not right in asking me
a question you ought not let to cross your lips--look to yourself, and
what's over you."

The simple woman, thinking her meaning literal, almost leaped off her
seat with terror, and turned up her eyes to ascertain whether or not any
dreadful appearance had approached her, or hung over her where she sat.

"Woman," said she, "I spoke you kind an' fair, an' I wish you
well--but"--

"But what?" replied the other--and her eyes kindled into deep and
profound excitement, appar