"Oh, wurrah!" exclaimed Nancy, shuddering with terror. "I wouldn't take
anything and be out now on the _Drumfarrar road_*, and nobody with me
but myself."

*A lonely mountain-road, said to have been haunted. It is on
this road that the coffin scenes mentioned in the Party
fight and Funeral is laid.

"I think if you wor," said M'Kinley, "the light weights and short
measures would be comin' acrass your conscience."

"No, in troth, Alick, wouldn't they; but may be if you wor, the promise
you broke to Sally Mitchell might trouble you a bit: at any rate, I've a
prayer, and if I only repated it wanst, I mightn't be afeard of all the
divils in hell."

"Throth, but it's worth havin', Nancy: where did you get it?" asked
M'Kinley.

"Hould your wicked tongue, you thief of a heretic," said Nancy,
laughing, "when will _you_ larn anything that's good? I got it from one
that wouldn't have it if it _wasn't_ good--Darby M'Murt, the pilgrim,
since you must know."

"Whisht!" said Frayne: "upon my word, I blieve the old Square's comin'
to pay tis a visit; does any of yez hear a horse trottin' with a shoe
loose?"

"I sartinly hear it," observed Andy Morrow.

"And I," said Ned himself.

There was now a general pause, and in the silence a horse, proceeding
from the moors in the direction of the house, was distinctly heard;
and nothing could be less problematical than that one of his shoes was
loose.

"Boys, take care of yourselves," said Shane Fadh, "if the Square comes,
he won't be a pleasant customer--he was a terrible fellow in his day:
I'll hould goold to silver that he'll have the smell of brimstone about
him."

"Nancy, where's your prayer now?" said M'Kinley, with a grin: "I think
you had betther out with it, and thry if it keeps this old brimstone
Square on the wrong side of the house."

"Behave yourself, Alick; it's a shame for you to be sich a hardened
crathur: upon my sannies, I blieve your afeard of neither God nor the
divil--the Lord purtect and guard us from the dirty baste!"

"You mane particklarly them that uses short measures and light weights,"
rejoined M'Kinley.

There was another pause, for the horseman was within a few perches of
the crossroads. At this moment an unusual gust of wind, accompanied by
torrents of rain, burst against the house with a violence that made
its ribs creak; and the stranger's horse, the shoe still clanking,
was distinctly heard to turn in from the road to Ned's