Part 30 (1/2)

”That's nothing to you, an' don't trouble your head about it. There it is now, an' I have kept my word; for while I live, I'll never break it if I can. Dear me, how bright that flash was!”

As Hanlon was taking the box out of her hand, a fearful flash of sheeted lightning opened out of a cloud almost immediately above them, and discovered it so plainly, that the letters P. M. were distinctly legible on the lid of it, and nearly at the same moment a deep groan was heard, as if coming-out of the rock.

”Father of Heaven!” exclaimed Hanlon, ”do you hear that?”

”Yes,” she replied, ”I did hear a groan; but here, do you go--oh, it would be useless to ask you--so I must only do it myself; stand here an'

I'll go round the rock; at any rate let us be sure that it is a ghost.”

”Don't, Sarah,” he exclaimed, seizing her arm; ”for G.o.d's sake, don't--it is a spirit--I know it--don't lave me. I understand it all, an' maybe you will some day, too.”

”Now,” she exclaimed indignantly, and in an incredulous voice; ”in G.o.d's name, what has a spirit to do with an old rusty Tobaccy-box? It's surely a curious box; there's my father would give one of his eyes to find it; an' Nelly, that hid it the other day, found it gone when she went to get it for him.”

”Do you toll me so?” said Hanlon, placing it as he spoke in his safest pocket.

”I do,” she replied; ”an' only that I promised it to you, and would not break my word, I'd give it to my father; but I don't see myself what use it can be of to him or anybody.”

Hanlon, despite of his terrors, heard this intelligence with the deepest interest--indeed, with an interest so deep, that he almost forgot them altogether; and with a view of eliciting from her as much information in connection with it as he could, he asked her to accompany him a part of the way home.

”It's not quite the thing,” she replied, ”for a girl like me to be walkin' with a young fellow at this hour; but as I'm not afeard of you, and as I know you are afeard of the ghost--if there is a ghost--I will go part of the way with you, although it does not say much for your courage to ask me.”

”Thank you, Sarah; you are a perfect treasure.”

”Whatever I was, or whatever I am, Charley, I can never be anything more to you than a mere acquaintance--I don't think ever we were much more--but what I want to tell you is, that if ever you have any serious notion of me, you must put it out of your head.”

”Why so, Sarah?”

”Why so,” she replied, hastily; ”why, bekaise I don't wish it--isn't that enough for you, if you have spirit?”

”Well, but I'd like to know why you changed your mind.”

”Ah,” said she; ”well, afther all, that's only natural--it is but raisonable; an' I'll tell you; in the first place, there's a want of manliness about you that I don't like--I think you've but little heart or feelin'. You toy with the girls--with this one and that one--an' you don't appear to love any one of them--in short, you're not affectionate, I'm afeard. Now, here am I, an' I can scarcely say, that ever you courted me like a man that had feelin'. I think you're revengeful, too; for I have seen you look black an' angry at a woman, before now. You never loved me, I know--I say I know you did not. There, then, is some of my raisons--but I'll tell you one more, that's worth them all. I love another now--ay,” she added, with a convulsive sigh, ”I love another; and, I know, Charley, that he can't love me--there's more lightnin'--what a flas.h.!.+ Oh, I didn't care this minute if it went through my heart.”

”Don't talk so, Sarah.”

”I know what's before me--disappointment--disappointment in everything--the people say I'm wild and very wicked in my temper--an' I am, too; but how could I be otherwise? for what did I ever see or hear undher our own miserable roof, but evil talk and evil deeds? A word of kindness I never got from my father or from Nelly; nothing but the bad word an' the hard blow--until now that she is afeard of me; but little she knew, that many a time when I was fiercest, an' threatened to put a knife into her, there was a quiver of affection in my heart; a yearnin', I may say, afther kindness, that had me often near throwin' my arms about her neck, and askin' her why she mightn't as well be kind as cruel to me; but I couldn't, bekaise I knew that if I did, she'd only tramp on me, an' despise me, an' tyrannize over me more and more.”

She uttered these sentiments under the influence of deep feeling, checkered with an occasional burst of wild distraction, that seemed to originate from much bitterness of heart.

”Is it a fair question,” replied Hanlon, whose character she had altogether misunderstood, having, in point of fact, never had an opportunity of viewing it in it's natural light; ”is it a fair question to ask you who is it that you're in love wid?”

”It's not a fair question,” she replied; ”I know he loves another, an'

for that raison I'll never breathe it to a mortal.”

”Bekaise,” he added, ”if I knew, maybe I might be able to put in a good word for you, now and then, accordin' as I got an opportunity.”

”For me!” she replied indignantly; ”what! to beg him get fond o' me! Oh, its wondherful the maneness that's in a'most every one you meet. No,”

she proceeded, vehemently; ”if he was a king on his throne, sooner than stoop to that, or if he didn't, or couldn't love me on my own account, I'd let the last drop o' my heart's blood out first. Oh, no!--no, no, no--ha! He loves another,” she added, hastily; ”he loves another!”

”An' do you know her?” asked Hanlon.