The Black Prophet Part 23

"I'm afeard not, so long as Jemmy's against you."

"Ay, but couldn't you thry and twist that ould scoundrel himself in my favor?"

"Well," replied the other, "there is something in that, and whatever I can do with him, I will, if you'll thry and do me a favor."

"Me! Name it, man--name it, and it's done, if it was only to rob the Grange. Ha! ha! An' by the way, I dunna what puts robbin' the Grange into my head!"

And, as he spoke, his eye was bent with an expression of peculiar significance on Hanlon.

"No!" replied Hanlon with indifference; "it is not to rob the Grange. I believe you know something about the man they call the Black Prophet?"

"Donnel Dhu? Why--ahem!--a little--not much. n.o.body, indeed, knows or cares much about him. However, like most people, he has his friends and his enemies."

"Don't you remember a murdher that was committed here about two-and-twenty-years ago?"

"I do."

"Was that before or afther the Black Prophet came to live in this counthry?"

"Afther it--afther it. No, no!'" he replied, correcting himself; "I am wrong; it was before he came here."

"Then he could have had no hand in it?"

"Him! Is it him! Why, what puts such a thing as that into your head'?"

"Faith, to tell you the truth, Rody, his daughter Sarah an' myself is beginnin' to look at one another; an', to tell you the truth again, I'd wish to know more about the same Prophet before I become his son-in-law, as I have some notion of doin'."

"I hard indeed that you wor pullin' a string wid her, an' now that I think of it, if you give me a lift wid ould Jemmy, I'll give you one there. The bailiff's berth is jist the thing for me; not havin' any family of my own, you see I could have no objection to live in the Grange, as their bailiff always did; but, aren't you afeard to tackle yourself to that divil's clip, Sarah?"

"Well, I don't know," replied the other; "I grant it's a hazard, by all accounts."

"An' yet" continued Rody, "she's a favorite with every one; an' indeed there's not a more generous or kinder-hearted creature alive this day than she is. I advise you, however, not to let her into your saicrets, for if it was the knockin' of a man on the head and that she knew it, and was asked about it, out it would go, rather than she'd tell a lie."

"They say she's handsomer than _Gra Gal_ Sullivan," said Hanlon; "and I think myself she is."

"I don't know; it's a dead tie between them; however, I can give you a lift with her father, but not with herself, for somehow, she doesn't like a bone in my skin."

"She and I made a swop," proceeded Hanlon, "some time ago, that 'ud take a laugh out o' you: I gave her a pocket-hand-kerchy; and she was to give me an ould Tobaccy-Box--but she says she can't find it, altho' I have sent for it, an' axed it myself several times. She thinks the step-mother has thrown it away or hid it somewhere."

Body looked at him inquiringly.

"A Tobaccy-Box," he exclaimed; "would you like to get it?"

"Why," replied Hanlon, "the poor girl has nothing else to give, an' I'd like to have something from her, even if a ring never was to go on us, merely as a keepsake."

"Well, then," replied Duncan, with something approaching to solemnity in his voice, "mark my words--you promise to give me a lift for the drivers.h.i.+p with old Jemmy and the two d.i.c.ks?"

"I do."

"Well, then, listen: If you will be at the Grey Stone to-morrow night at twelve o'clock--midnight--I'll engage that Sarah will give you the box there."

"Why, in troth, Eody, to tell you the truth if she could give it to me at any other time an' place, I'd prefer it. That Grey Stone is a wild place to be in at midnight."

"It is a wild place; still it's there, an' nowhere else, that you must get the box. And now that the bargain's made, do you think it's thrue that this old Hendherson"--here he looked very cautiously about him--"has as much money as they say he has?"

"I b'lieve he's very rich."

"It is thrue that he airs the bank notes in the garden here, and turns the guineas in the sun, for fraid--for fraid--they'd get blue-mowled--is it?"

"It may, for all I know; but it's more than I've seen yet."

"An' now between you and me, Charley--whisper--I say, isn't it a thousand pities--n.o.body could hear us, surely?"

"Nonsense--who could hear us?"

"Well, isn't it a thousand pities, Charley, avia, that dacent fellows, like you and me, should be as we are, an' that mad ould villain havin'

his house full 'o money? eh, now?"

"It's a hard case," replied Hanlon, "but still we must put up with our lot. His father I'm tould was as poor in the beginnin' as either of us."

"Ay, but it's the son we're spakin about--the ould tyrannical villain that dhrives an' harries the poor! He has loads of money in the house, they say--eh?"

"Divil a know myself knows, Rody:--nor--not makin' you an ill answer--divil a hair myself cares, Rody. Let him have much, or let him have little, that's your share an' mine of it."

"Charley, they say America's a fine place; talkin' about money--wid a little money there, they say a man could do wondhers."

"Who says that?"

"Why Donnel Dhu, for one; an' he knows, for he was there."

"I b'lieve that Donnel was many a place;--over half the world, if all's thrue."

"Augh! the same Donnel's a quare fellow--a deep chap--a cute follow; but, I know more about him than you think--ay, do I."

"Why, what do you know?"

"No matther--a thing or two about the same Donnel; an' by the same token, a betther fellow never lived--an' whisper--you're a strong favorite wid him, that I know, for we wor talkin' about you. In the meantime I wish to goodness we had a good scud o' cash among us, an' we safe an' snug in America! Now shake hands an' good bye--an' mark me--if you dhrame of America an' a long purse any o' these nights, come to me an' I'll riddle your dhrame for you."

He then looked Hanlon significantly in the face, wrung his hand, and left him to meditate on the purport of their conversation.

The latter as he went out gazed at him with a good deal of surprise.

"So," thought he, "you were feelin' my pulse, were you? I don't think it's hard to guess whereabouts you are; however I'll think of your advice at any rate, an' see what good may be in it. But, in the name of all that's wondherful, how does it come to pa.s.s that that red ruffian has sich authority over Sarah M'Gowan as to make her fetch me the very thing I want?--that tobacco-box; an' at sich a place, too, an' sich an hour! An' yet he says that she doesn't like a bone in his skin, which I b'lieve! I'm fairly in the dark here; however time will make it all clear, I hope; an' for that we must wait."

He then resumed his employment.

Donnel Dhu, who was a man of much energy and activity, whenever his purposes required it, instead of turning his steps homewards, directed them to the house of our kind friend Jerry Sullivan, with whose daughter, the innocent and unsuspecting Mave, it was his intention to have another private interview. During the interval that had elapsed since his last journey to the house of this virtuous and hospitable family, the gloom that darkened the face of the country had become awful, and such as wofully bore out to the letter the melancholy truth of his own predictions. Typhus fever had now set in, and was filling the land with fearful and unexampled desolation. Famine, in all cases the source and origin of contagion, had done, and was still doing, its work.

The early potato crop, for so far as it had come in, was a pitiable failure; the quant.i.ty being small, and the quality watery and bad. The oats, too, and all early grain of that season's growth, were still more deleterious as food, for it had all fermented and become sour, so that the use of it, and of the bad potatoes, too, was the most certain means of propagating the pestilence which was sweeping away the people in such mult.i.tudes. Scarcely any thing presented itself to him as he went along that had not some melancholy a.s.sociation with death or its emblems. To all this, however, he paid little or no attention. When a funeral met him, he merely turned back three steps in the direction it went, as was usual; but unless he happened to know the family from which death had selected its victim, he never even took the trouble of inquiring who it was they bore to the grave--a circ.u.mstance which strongly proved the utter and heartless selfishness of the man's nature. On arriving at Sullivan's, however, he could not help feeling startled, hard and without sympathy as was his heart, at the wild and emaciated evidences of misery and want which a couple of weeks' severe suffering had impressed upon them. The gentle Mave herself, patient and uncomplaining as she was, had become thin and cheerless; yet of such a character was the sadness that rested upon her, that it only added a mournful and melancholy charm to her beauty--a charm that touched the heart of the beholder at once with love and compa.s.sion. As yet there had been no sickness among them; but who could say to-day that he or she might not be stricken down at once before to-morrow.