that the unfortunate man was a stranger.  Well and good, your honor—­in the coorse of a short time, it seems, the murdhered priest began to appear to him, and haunted him almost every night, until the unfortunate Antony began to get out of his rason, and, it is said, that when he appeared to him he always pointed the middoge at him, just as if he wished to put it into his heart.  Antony then, widout tellin’ his own saicret, began to tell everybody that he was doomed to die a bloody death; in short, he became unsettled—­got fairly beside himself, and afther mopin’ about for some months in ordher to avoid the bloody death the priest threatened him wid, he went and hanged himself in the very room where he killed the unfortunate priest before.”

“I remember when he hanged himself, very well,” observed Lindsay, “but d—­n the syllable of the robbery and murder of the priest or any body else ever I heard of till the present moment, although there was an inquest held over himself.  The man got low-spirited and depressed, because his business failed him, or, rather, because he didn’t attend to it; and in one of these moods hanged himself; but by all accounts, Bandy, if he hadn’t done the deed for himself the hangman would have done it for him.  He was said, I think, to have been connected with some of the outlaws, and to have been a bad boy altogether.  I think it is now near fifty years ago since he hanged himself.”

“’Tis said, sir, that this account comes from one of his own relations; but there’s another account, sir, of the Shan-dhinne-dhuv that I don’t believe a word of.”

“Another—­what is that, Bandy?”

“O, bedad, sir,” replied Bandy, “it’s more than I could venture to tell you here.”

“Come, come—­out with it.”

Mrs. Lindsay went over with an inflamed face, and having ordered him to go about his business, slapped down the window with great violence, giving poor Bandy a look of wrath and intimidation that sealed his lips upon the subject of the other tradition he alluded to.  He was, consequently, glad to escape from the threatening storm which he saw brewing in her countenance, and, consequently, made a very hasty retreat.  Barney, who met him in the yard returning to fetch his pack from the kitchen, noticed his perturbation, and asked him what was the matter.

“May the Lord protect me from that woman’s eye!” replied the pedler, “if you’d ‘a’ seen the look she gave me when she thought I was goin’ to tell them the true story of the Shan-dhinne-dhuv.”

“And why should she put a sword in her eye against you for that, Bandy?” asked the other.

Bandy looked cautiously about him, and said in a whisper: 

“Because it’s connected with her family, and follows it.”

He then proceeded to the kitchen, and having secured his pack, he made as rapid a disappearance as possible from about the premises.

CHAPTER VII.  A Council of Two