“Bekase if there is,” she said, pausing—“if there is, one might as well—”
She paused again and her fine features assumed an intellectual meaning—a sorrowful and meditative beauty, that gave a new and more attractive expression to her face than her father had ever witnessed on it before.
“Don't vex me, Sarah,” he replied, snappishly. “Maybe it's goin' to imitate her you are. The clargy knows these things maybe—an' maybe they don't. I only wish she'd come back with the caaharrawan. If all goes right, I'll pocket what'll bring yourself an' me to America. I'm beginnin' somehow to get unaisy; an' I don't wish to stay in this country any longer.”
Whilst he spoke, the sparkling and beautiful expression which had lit up his daughter's countenance passed away, and with it probably the moment in which it was possible to have opened a new and higher destiny to her existence.
Nelly, in the meantime, having taken an old spade with her to dig the roots she went in quest of, turned up Glendhu, and kept searching for some time in vain, until at length she found two or three bunches of the herb growing in a little lonely nook that lay behind a projecting ledge of rock, where one would seldom think of looking for herbage at all. Here she found a little, soft, green spot, covered over with dandelion; and immediately she began to dig it up. The softness of the earth and its looseness surprised her a good deal; and moved by an unaccountable curiosity, she pushed the spade further down, until it was met by some substance that felt rather hard. From this she cleared away the earth as well as she could, and discovered that the spade had been opposed by a bone; and on proceeding to examine still further, she discovered that the spot on which the dandelions had grown, contained the bones of a full grown human body.
CHAPTER V. — The Black Prophet is Startled by a Black Prophecy.
Having satisfied herself that the skeleton was a human one, she cautiously put back the earth, and covered it up with the green sward, as graves usually are covered, and in such a way that there should exist, from the undisturbed appearance of the place, as little risk as possible of discovery. This being-settled, she returned with the herbs, laying aside the spade, from off which she had previously rubbed the red earth, so as to prevent any particular observation; she sat down, and locking her fingers into each other, swayed her body backwards and forwards in silence, as a female does in Ireland when under the influence of deep and absorbing sorrow, whilst from time to time she fixed her eyes on the prophet, and sighed deeply.
“I thought,” said he, “I sent you for the dandelion; where is it?”
“Oh,” she replied, unrolling it from the corner of her apron, “here it is—I forgot it—ay, I forgot it—and no wondher—oh, no wondher, indeed!—Providence! You may blaspheme Providence as much as you like; but he'll take his own out o' you yet; an' indeed, it's comin' to that—it is, Donnel, an' you'll find it so.”