Part 29 (2/2)
”An' may He send down aid to you all,” she added, ”an' give consolation to your breakin' hearts!”
An embrace, long, tender, and mournful, accompanied their words, after which they separated in sorrow and in tears, and with but little hope of happiness on the path of life that lay before them.
CHAPTER XIX. -- Hanlon Secures the Tobacco-box.--Strange Scene at Midnight.
The hour so mysteriously appointed by Red Rody for the delivery of the Tobacco-box to Hanlon, was fast approaching, and the night though by no means so stormy as that which we have described on the occasion of that person's first visit to the Grey Stone, was nevertheless dark and rainy, with an occasional slight gust of wind, that uttered a dreary and melancholy moan, as it swept over the hedges. Hanlon, whose fear of supernatural appearances had not been diminished by what he had heard there before as well as on his way home, now felt alarmed at every gust of wind that went past him. He hurried on, however, and kept his nerves as firmly set as his terrors would allow him, until he got upon the plain old road which led directly to the appointed place. The remarkable interest which he had felt at an earlier stage of the circ.u.mstances that compose our narrative, was beginning to cool a little, when it was revived by his recent conversation with Red Rody concerning the Black Prophet, and the palpable contradictions in which he detected that person, with reference to the period when the Prophet came to reside in the neighborhood. His anxiety therefore, about the Tobacco-box began, as he approached the Grey Stone, to balance his fears; so that by the time he arrived there, he found himself cooler and firmer a good deal than when he first crossed the dark fields from home. Hanlon, in fact, had learned a good deal of the Prophet's real character, from several of those who had never been duped by his impostures; and the fact of ascertaining that the very article so essential to the completion of his purpose, had been found in the Prophet's house or possession, gave a fresh and still more powerful impulse to his determinations. The night, we have already observed, was dark, and the heavy gloom which covered the sky was dismal and monotonous. Several flashes of lightning, it is true, had shot out from the impervious ma.s.ses of black clouds, that lay against each other overhead. These, however, only added terror to the depression which such a night and such a sky were calculated to occasion.
”I trust,” thought Hanlon, as he approached the stone, ”that there will be no disappointment, and that I won't have my journey on sich a dark and dismal night for nothing. How this red ruffian can have any authority over a girl like Sarah, is a puzzle that I can't make out.”
It was just as these thoughts occurred to him that he arrived at the Stone, where he stood anxiously waiting and listening, and repeating his pater noster, as well as he could, for several minutes, but without hearing or seeing any one.
”I might have known,” thought he, ”that the rascal could bring about nothing of the kind, an' I am only a fool for heedin' him at all.”
At this moment, however, he heard the noise of a light, quick footstep approaching, and almost immediately afterwards Sarah joined him.
”Well, I am glad you are come,” said he, ”for G.o.d knows when I thought of our last stand here, I was anything but comfortable.”
”Why,” replied Sarah, ”what wor you afeard of? I hate a cowardly man, an' you are cowardly.”
”Not where mere flesh and blood is consarned,” he replied; ”I'm afeard of neither man nor woman--but I wouldn't like to meet a ghost or spirit, may the Lord presarve us!”
”Why, now? What harm could a ghost or spirit do you? Did you ever hear that they laid hands on or killed any one?”
”No; but for all that, it's well known that several persons have died of fright, in consequence.”
”Ay, of cowardliness; but it wasn't the ghost killed them. Sure the poor ghost only comes to get relief for itself--to have ma.s.ses said; or, maybe, to do justice to some one that is wronged in this world. There's Jimmy Beatty, an' he lay three weeks of fright from seein' a ghost, an'
it turned out when all was known, that the ghost was nothing more or less than Tom Martin's white-faced cow--ha! ha! ha!”
”At any rate, let us change the subject,” said Hanlon; ”you heard yourself the last night we wor here, what I'll never forget.”
”We heard some noise like a groan, an' that was all; but who could tell what it was, or who cares either?”
”I, for one, do; but, dear Sarah, have you the box?”
”Why does your voice tremble that way for? Is it fear? bekaise if I thought it was, I wouldn't scruple much to walk home with' out another word, an' bring the box with me.”
”You have it, then?”
”To be sure I have, an' my father an' Nelly is both huntin' the house for it.”
”Why, what could your father want with it?”
”How can I tell?--an' only that I promised it to you, I wouldn't fetch it at all?”
”I thought you had given it up for lost; how did you get it again?”
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