"Never! I will sell my life dearly, but my grave at least shall be where you can sometimes visit it and remember"——
"Unkind, dark, inhuman man! was it all my fault? My poor father, what will he say? give me at least a day or two to think"——
"It is now of no use, the night has half past, my doom is fixed."
"No! again no! you will drive me mad! Oh fly, fly, but this once, and I will, at least I promise—I must see him—my father—before—fly now and return, and I will do all you desire—only, only, save your life at once."
The man replied not for some minutes, he then resumed—"I have here that copy of the Gospels you gave me—will you swear on that gift that when we next meet you will be prepared to share life, be it happiness or horror, with me?"
"Yes, I do—I will—any thing; but fly and save yourself."
"Swear then," he said, as with one arm around her he prepared with the other to place the sacred Book upon her lips, when at that very moment an aspersion of cold water was dashed with such ample profusion in the impassioned faces of the pair as to cause them to spring asunder with a start that had very nearly as much the character of discomfort as alarm.
"Hell and"——half-exclaimed the man, as he tore open his coat and grasped one of several pistols it now appeared he was armed with.
"Dhieu, a's Marudha, a's Phaidhrig, a's"[23]——said a voice, following up the lustration with a blessing, cut short, however, by the Stranger's clutching the throat of the pious intruder, and dragging forward from beneath the trees which had hitherto overshadowed their way a little Bundle of some dark coloured cloth, surmounted by a straw bonnet, so battered in its outlines that to fix it there it must have been flattened down with no ordinary emphasis, and from beneath which guttural shrieks now arose, whose extent of volume was out of all proportion to the diminutive object from which they proceeded.
"Hold! let go, for goodness sake!" cried Miss Tyrrel, "it is only poor Sally-the-tin, the Holy-Water woman."