her natural
curiosity to watch and know the event.

The place at that moment was, indeed, a lonely one, and it was by no
means surprising that, apart from the occurrence of two murders, one on,
and the other near, the spot where they stood, the neighboring peasantry
should feel great reluctance in passing it at night. The light of the
moon was just sufficient to expose the natural wildness of the adjacent
scenery. The glen itself lay in the shadow of the hill, and seemed to
the eye so dark that nothing but the huge outlines of the projecting
crags, whose shapes appeared in the indistinctness like gigantic
spectres, could been seen; while all around, and where the pale light
of! the moon fell, nothing was visible but the muddy gleams of the
yellow flood as it rushed, with its hoarse and incessant roar, through
a flat country on whose features the storm and the hour had impressed
a character of gloom, and the most dismal desolation. Nay, the still
appearance of the Grey Stone, or rock, at which they stood, had, when
contrasted with the moving elements about them, and associated with
the murder committed at its very foot, a solemn appearance that was
of itself calculated to fill the mind with awe and terror. Hanlon felt
this, as, indeed, his whole manner indicated.

"Well," said his companion, alluding to the short prayer he had just
concluded, "I didn't expect to see you at your prayers like a voteen
this night at any rate. Is it fear that makes you so pious upon our
hands? Troth, I doubt there's a white feather,--a cowardly dhrop--in
you, still an' all."

"If you can be one minute serious, Sally, do, I beg of you. I am very
much disturbed, I acknowledge, an' so would you, mabe, if you knew as
much as I do."

"You're the color of death," she replied putting her fingers upon his
cheek; "--an, my God! is it paspiration I feel such a night as this? I
declare to goodness it is. Give me the white pocket-handkerchy that you
say Peggy Murray gave you. Where is it?" she proceeded, taking it out of
his pocket. "Ah, ay, I have it; stoop a little; take care of your hat;
here now," and while speaking she wiped the cold perspiration from
his forehead. "Is this the one she made you a present of, an' put the
letthers on?"

"It is," he replied, "the very same--but she didn't make me a present of
it, she only hemmed it for me."

"That's a lie of you," she replied, fiercely; "she bought it for you out
of her own pocket. I know that