[The Black Prophet]
William Carleton, the Irish novelist, was born in Co. Tyrone on February 20, 1794. His father was a small farmer, the father of fourteen children, of whom William was the youngest. After getting some education, first from a hedge schoolmaster, and then from Dr. Keenan of Glasslough, Carleton set out for Dublin and obtained a tutorship. In 1830 he collected a number of sketches, and these were published under the title of "Traits and Stories of the Irish Peasantry," and at once enjoyed considerable popularity. In 1834 came "Tales of Ireland," and from that time forward till his death Carleton produced with great industry numerous short stories and novels, though none of his work after 1848 is worthy of his reputation. "The Black Prophet" was published in 1847, and Carleton believed rightly that it was his best work. It was written in a season of unparalleled scarcity and destitution, and the pictures and scenes represented were those which he himself witnessed in 1817 and 1822. Many of Carleton's novels have been translated into French, German, and Italian, and they will always stand for faithful and powerful pictures of Irish life and character. Carleton died in Dublin on January 30, 1869.
I.--The Murders in the Glen
The cabin of Donnel M'Gowan, the Black Prophet, stood at the foot of a hill, near the mouth of a gloomy and desolate glen.
In this glen, not far from the cabin, two murders had been committed twenty years before. The one was that of a carman, and the other a man named Sullivan; and it was supposed they had been robbed. Neither of the bodies had ever been found. Sullivan's hat and part of his coat had been found on the following day in a field near the cabin, and there was a pool of blood where his foot-marks were deeply imprinted. A man named Dalton had been taken up under circumstances of great suspicion for this latter murder, for Dalton was the last person seen in Sullivan's company, and both men had been drinking together in the market. A quarrel had ensued, blows had been exchanged, and Dalton had threatened him in very strong language.
No conviction was possible because of the disappearance of the body, but Dalton had remained under suspicion, and the glen, with its dark and gloomy aspect, was said to be haunted by Sullivan's spirit, and to be accursed as the scene of crime and supernatural appearances.
Within M'Gowan's cabin, which bore every mark of poverty and destitution, a young girl about twenty-one, of tall and slender figure, with hair black as the raven's wing, and eyes dark and brilliant, wrangled fiercely with an older woman, her stepmother. From words they passed to a fearful struggle of murderous passion.
Presently, Sarah, the younger of the two, started to her feet, and fled out of the house to wash her hands and face at the river that flowed past. Then she returned, and spoke with frankness and good nature.
"I'm sorry for what I did. Forgive me, mother! You know I'm a hasty divil--for a divil's limb I am, no doubt of it. Forgive me, I say! Do now; here, I'll get something to stop the blood!"
She sprang at the moment, with the agility of a wild cat upon an old chest that stood in the corner of the hut. By stretching herself up to her full length, she succeeded in pulling down several old cobwebs that had been undisturbed for years, and while doing so, knocked down some metallic substance which fell on the floor.