“What is it, father?” asked Sarah, with animation; “let us know what it is.”

“Time enough yet,” he replied; “it’ll do in a day or two; in the mean time it’s hard to tell but it may turn up somewhere or other; I hope it may; for if it get into any hands but my own—­”

He paused and bent his eyes with singular scrutiny first upon Sarah, who had not the most distant appreciation of his meaning.  Not so Nelly, who felt convinced that the allusion he made was to the Tobacco-box, and her impression being that it was mixed up in some way with an act of murder, she determined to wait until he should explain himself at greater length upon the subject.  Had Sarah been aware of its importance, she would have at once disclosed all she knew concerning it, together with Hanlon’s anxiety to get it into his possession.  But of this she could know nothing, and for that reason there existed no association, in her mind, to connect it with the crime which the Prophet seemed resolved to bring to light.

When Donnel Dhu laid himself down upon the bed that day, he felt that by no effort could he shake a strong impression of evil from off him.  The disappearance of the Box surprised him so much, that he resolved to stroll out and examine a spot with which the reader is already acquainted.  On inspecting the newly-disturbed earth, he felt satisfied that the body had been discovered, and this circumstance, joined with the disappearance of the Tobacco-box, precipitated his determination to act as he was about to do; or, perhaps altogether suggested the notion of taking such steps as might bring Condy Dalton to justice.  At present it is difficult to say why he did not allude to the missing Box openly, but perhaps that may be accounted for at a future and more appropriate stage of our narrative.

CHAPTER XI. —­ Pity and Remorse.

The public mind, though often obtuse and stupid in many matters, is in others sometimes extremely acute and penetrating.  For some years previous to the time laid in our tale, the family of Condy Dalton began to decline very perceptibly in their circumstances.  There had been unpropitious seasons; there had been failure of crops and disease among the cattle—­and, perhaps what was the worst scourge of all, there existed a bad landlord in the person of Dick-o’-the-Grange.  So long, however, as they continued prosperous, their known principles of integrity and strict truth caused them to be well spoken of and respected, in spite of the imputation which had been made against them as touching the murder of Sullivan.  In the course of time, however, when the evidences of struggle succeeded those of comfort and independence, the world began to perceive the just judgments of God as manifested in the disasters which befel them, and which seemed to visit them as with a judicial punishment.  Year after year, as they sank in the scale of poverty, did the almost forgotten murder assume a more prominent and distinct shape in the public mind, until at length it became too certain to be doubted, that the slow but sure finger of God’s justice was laid upon them as an additional proof that crime, however it may escape the laws of men, cannot veil itself from the all-seeing eye of the Almighty.