"O, Lord save us, sir," said she, "did you never hear of the
_Shan-dhinne-dhuv?_ A spirit, sir, that appears about the haunted house
in the shape of a black ould man, and they say that nobody lives long
afther seein' him three times."

"Yes; but did he ever take any person's life?"

"They say so, sir."

"When? How long ago?"

"Indeed, I can't tell that, sir; but sure every one says it."

"Well, what every one says must be true," he replied, smiling. "I,
however, am not afraid of him, as I never go unarmed; and if I happen to
meet him, trust me I will know what mettle he's made of before we part,
or whether he belongs to this world or the other."

He then went down the glen, by the bottom of which the road went; and at
a lonely place in a dark angle of it this far-famed spirit was said to
appear.

This vain, but simple girl, the pride of her honest parents and all her
simple relations and friends, took up her pitcher and proceeded with an
elated heart by the pathway house. We say her heart was elated at
the notion of having engaged the affections of a handsome, young, and
elegant gentleman, but at the same time she felt a secret sense of
error, if not of guilt, in having given him a clandestine meeting, and
kept an appointment which she knew her parents and brothers would have
heard with indignation and shame. She was confident, however, in her own