Sarah M'Gowan herself went to the Daltons, where typhus and starvation were doing their worst, to render what service she could, and Mave Sullivan would have done the same but for the entreaties of her parents, who feared the terrible fever.
The Black Prophet alone went on his way unmoved, scheming to accomplish his vile ends. It was not enough for him that Mave was to be abducted; he had also planned a robbery for the same night, and was further resolved to procure the conviction of old Condy Dalton for the almost forgotten murder of Sullivan in the glen.
M'Gowan was driven to this last step by his own disturbed mind. The disappearance of the tobacco-box troubled him, for on seeking it under the thatch it was no longer there, and the discovery by his wife of a skeleton buried near their cabin caused him still greater uneasiness. Then Sarah had followed him one night, when he was walking in his sleep, to the secret grave of the murdered man, and though the Prophet did not say anything on that occasion to incriminate himself, he was vexed by the occurrence.
So, on the information of Donnel M'Gowan, and a man called Roddy Duncan, who was deep in the Prophet's subtle villainies, the skeleton was dug up, and old Condy Dalton arrested.
"It's the will of God!" replied the old man, when the police-officers entered his unhappy dwelling, and charged him with the murder of Bartholomew Sullivan. "It's God's will, an' I won't consale it any longer. Take me away. I'm guilty--I'm guilty!"
Sarah was ministering to the Daltons at the very time when her father was informing against old Condy, and was present when the police took him away in custody. Shortly afterwards, when she had left the house, she was struck down by typhus.
In a shed that simply consisted of a few sticks laid up against the side of a ditch, with the remnant of some loose straw for bedding, Mave Sullivan found the suffering girl, with no other pillow than a sod of earth.
"Father of mercy!" thought Mave, "how will she live--how can she live here? An' is she to die in this miserable way in a Christian land?"
Sarah lay groaning with pain, and then raving in delirium.
"I won't break my promise, father, but I'll break my heart; an' I can't even give her warning. Ah, but it's treachery, an' I hate that. No, no; I'll have no hand in it--manage it your own way!"