'your father is n't in a bad place if he 's in purgatory,'
says he,' he 's not over the broken bridge, where the murderers does
be, but in the meadows, where the stream is shallow, and stepping-stones
in it! and every stone costs ten masses--sorra more! 'God help us! but
blood is a dreadful thing!" And with this reflection, uttered in a voice
of fervent feeling, the hardy peasant laid down his pipe; and I could
see, by his muttering lips and clasped hands, that he was offering up a
prayer for the soul's rest of his unhappy kinsman.

"And what became of Cafferty?" said I, as he finished his devotions.

"'T was never rightly known; for, after he gave evidence on the trial,
the people did n't like him, and he left the place; some say he went to
his mother's relations down in Kerry!"

The deep-drawn breathings of the sleepers around us; the unbroken
stillness of the night; the fast-expiring embers, which only flickered
at intervals,--contributed their aid to make the story more deeply
affecting; and I sat pondering over it, and canvassing within my mind
all the probabilities of the condemned man's guilt or innocence; nor,
I must own it, were all my convictions on the side of the narrator's
belief; but even that very doubt heightened the interest considerably.
As for Cullinane, his thoughts were evidently less with the incidents
of the characters as they lived, than with that long pilgrimage of
expiation, in which his imagination pictured his poor relative still a
wanderer beyond the grave.

The fire now barely flickered, throwing from time to time little jets of
light upon the sleeping figures around us, and then leaving all in dark
indistinctness. My companion also, crouching down, hid his face within
his hands, and either slept or was lost in deep thought, and I alone of
all the party was left awake, my mind dwelling on the tale I had
just heard, with a degree of interest to which the place and the hour
strongly contributed.

I had been for some time thus, when the sound of feet moving heavily
overhead attracted my attention; they were like the sluggish footsteps
of age, but passing to and fro with what seemed haste and eagerness. I
could hear a voice, too, which even in its indistinctness I recognized
as that of the old woman; and once or twice fancied I could detect
another, whose accents sounded like pain and suffering. The shuffling
footsteps still continued, and I heard the old crazy sash of the window
open, an