direction from it. One of them was a farmer, of middling, or rather of struggling, circumstances, as was evident from the traces of wear and tear that were visible upon a dress that had once been comfortable and decent, although now it bore the marks of careful, though rather extensive repair. He was a thin placid looking man, with something, however, of a careworn expression in his features, unless when he smiled, and then his face beamed with a look of kindness and goodwill that could not readily be forgotten. The other was a strongly-built man, above the middle size, whose complexion and features were such as no one could look on with indifference, so strongly were they indicative of a twofold character, or, we should rather say, calculated to make a twofold impression. At one moment you might consider him handsome, and at another his countenance filled you with an impression of repugnance, if not of absolute aversion; so stern and inhuman were the characteristics which you read in it. His hair, beard, and eye-brows were an ebon black, as were his eyes; his features were hard and massive; his nose, which was somewhat hooked, but too much pointed, seemed as if, while in a plastic state, it had been sloped by a trowel towards one side of his face, a circumstance which, while taken in connection with his black whiskers that ran to a point near his mouth, and piercing eyes, that were too deeply and narrowly set, gave him, aided by his heavy eyebrows, an expression at once of great cruelty and extraordinary cunning. This man, while travelling in the same direction with the other, had suffered himself to be overtaken by him: in such a manner, however, that their coming in contact could not be attributed to any particular design on his part.

"Why, then, Donnel Dhu," said the farmer, "sure it's a sight for sore eyes to see you in this side of the country; an' now that I do see you, how are you?"

"Jist the ould six-an'-eight-pence, Jerry; an' how is the Sullivan blood in you, man alive? good an' ould blood it is, in troth; how is the family?"

"Why we can't—hut, what was I goin' to say?" replied his companion; "we can't—complain—ershi—mishi!—why, then, God help us, it's we that can complain, Donnel, if there was any use in it; but, mavrone, there isn't; so all I can say is, that we're jist mixed middlin', like the praties in a harvest, or hardly that same, indeed, since this woful change that has come on us."

"Ay, ay," replied the other; "but if that change has come on you, you know it didn't come without warnin' to the counthry; there's a man livin' that foretould as much—that seen it comin'—ay, ever since the pope was made prisoner, for that was what brought Bonaparte's fate—that's now the cause of the downfall of everything upon him."

"An' it was the hard fate for us, as well as for himself," replied Sullivan, "little he thought, or little he cared, for what he made us suffer, an' for what he's makin' us suffer still, by the come-down that the prices have got."

"Well, but he's sufferin' himself more than any of us," replied Donnel; "however, that was prophesied too; it's read of in the ould Chronicles. 'An eagle will be sick,' says St. Columbkill, 'but the bed of the sick eagle is not a tree, but a rock; an' there, he must suffer till the curse of the Father* is removed from him; an' then he'll get well, an' fly over the world.'"

"Is that in the prophecy, Donnel?"

"It's St. Columbian's words I'm spakin'."

"Throth, at any rate," replied Sullivan, "I didn't care we had back the war prices again; aither that, or that the dear rents were let down to meet the poor prices we have now. This woeful saison, along wid the low prices and the high rents, houlds out a black and terrible look for the counthry, God help us!"

"Ay," returned the Black Prophet, for it was he, "if you only knew it."

"Why, was that, too, prophesied?" inquired Sullivan.

"Was it? No; but ax yourself is it. Isn't the Almighty in his wrath, this moment proclaimin' it through the heavens and the airth? Look about you, and say what is it you see that does not foretel famine—famine—famine! Doesn't the dark wet day, an' the rain, rain, rain, foretel it? Doesn't the rotten' crops, the unhealthy air, an' the green damp foretel it? Doesn't the sky without a sun, the heavy clouds, an' the angry fire of the West, foretel it? Isn't the airth a page of prophecy, an' the sky a page of prophecy, where every man may read of famine, pestilence, an' death? The airth is softened for the grave, an' in the black clouds of heaven you may see the death-hearses movin' slowly along—funeral afther funeral—funeral afther funeral—an' nothing to folly them but lamentation an' wo, by the widow an' orphan—the fatherless, the motherless, an' the childless—wo an' lamentation—lamentation an' wo."

Donnel Dhu, like every prophecy man of his kind—a character in Ireland, by the way, that has nearly, if not altogether, disappeared—was provided with a set of prophetic declamations suited to particular occasions and circumstances, and these he recited in a voice of high and monotonous recitative, that caused them to fall with a very impressive effect upon the minds and feeling of his audience. In addition to this, the very nature of his subject rendered a figurative style and suitable language necessary, a circumstance which, aided by a natural flow of words, and a felicitious illustration of imagery—for which, indeed, all prophecy-men were remarkable—had something peculiarly fascinating and persuasive to the class of persons he was in the habit of addressing. The gifts of these men, besides, were exercised with such singular delight, that the constant repetition of their oracular exhibitions by degrees created an involuntary impression on themselves, that ultimately rose to a kind of wild and turbid enthusiasm, partaking at once of imposture and fanaticism. Many of them were, therefore, nearly as much the dupes of the delusions that proceeded from their own heated imaginations as the ignorant people who looked upon them as oracles; for we know that nothing at all events so much generates imposture as credulity.

"Indeed, Donnel," replied Sullivan, "what you say is unfortunately too thrue. Everything we can look upon appears to have the mark of God's displeasure on it; but if we have death and sickness now, what'll become of us this time twelve months, when we'll feel this failure most?"

"I have said it," replied the prophet; "an' if my tongue doesn't tell truth, the tongue that never tells a lie will."

"And what tongue is that?" asked his companion.

"The tongue of the death-bell will tell it day afther day to every parish in the land. However, we know that death's before us, an' the grave, afther all, is our only consolation."

"God help us," exclaimed Sullivan, "if we hadn't betther and brighter consolation than the grave. Only for the hopes in our Divine Redeemer an' his mercy, it's little consolation the grave could give us. But indeed, Donnel, as you say, everything about us is enough to sink the heart within one—an' no hope at all of a change for the betther. However, God is good, and, if it's His will that we should suffer, it's our duty to submit to it."

The prophet looked around him with a gloomy aspect, and, truth to say, the appearance of everything on which the eye could rest, was such as gave unquestionable indications of wide-spread calamity to the country.

The evening, which was now far advanced, had impressed on it a character of such dark and hopeless desolation as weighed down the heart with a feeling of cold and chilling gloom that was communicated by the dreary aspect of every thing around. The sky was obscured by a heavy canopy of low, dull clouds that had about them none of the grandeur of storm, but lay overhead charged with those wintry deluges which we feel to