“In God's name,” she said to herself, “what can this mean? Of late he hasn't had one hour's quiet rest at night; nothin' but startin' and shoutin' out, an' talkin' about murdher an' murdherers! What can it mane? for he's now walkin' in his sleep? Father,” said she, “you're asleep; go back to bed, you had betther.”
“No, I'm not asleep,” he replied; “I'm goin' down to the grave here below, behind the rocks down in Glendhu, where the murdhered man is lyin' buried.”
“An' what brings you there at this time o' the night?”
“Ha! ha!” he replied, uttering an exclamation of caution in a low, guarded voice—“what brings me?—whisht, hould your tongue, an' I'll tell you.”
She really began to doubt her senses, notwithstanding the fact of his eyes being shut.
“Whisht yourself,” she replied; “I don't want to hear anything about it; I have no relish for sich saicrets. I'm ready enough with my own hand, especially when there's a weapon in it—readier then ever I'll be again; but for all that I don't wish to hear sich saicrets. Are you asleep or awake?”
“I'm awake, of coorse,” he replied.
“An' why are your eyes shut then? You're frightful, father, to look at; no corpse ever had sich a face as you have; your heavy brows are knit in sich a way; jist as if you were in agony; your cheeks are so white too, an' your mouth is down at the corners, that a ghost—ay, the ghost of the murdhered man himself—would be agreeable compared to you. Go to bed, father, if you're awake.”
To all this he made no reply, but having dressed himself, he deliberately, and with great caution, raised the latch, and proceeded out at that dismal and lonely hour. Sarah, for a time, knew not how to act. She had often heard of sleep-walking, and she feared now, that if she awakened him, he might imagine that she had heard matters which he wished no ears whatever to hear; for the truth was, that some vague suspicions of a dreadful nature had lately entered her mind; suspicions, which his broken slumbers—his starts, and frequent exclamations during sleep, had only tended to confirm.
“I will watch him at all events,” said she to herself, “and see that he comes to no ganger.” She accordingly shut the door after her, and followed him pretty closely into the deep gloom of the silent and solitary glen. With cautious, but steady and unerring steps, he proceeded in the direction of the loneliest spot of it, which having reached, he went by a narrow and untrodden circuit—a kind of broken, but natural pathway—to the identical spot where the body, which Nelly had discovered, lay.