There was but a patch of window with the grey
dawn behind it, but Coll could see the figures
by the firelight over which they bent: an old
woman sitting forward with her withered hands
extended to the embers, and a girl reclining
against the hearth wall, with her healthy face,
bright eyes, and crimson draperies, glowing by
turns in the flickering blaze.

"I do' know," said the girl, "but it's the
quarest marriage iver I h'ard of. Sure it's not
three weeks since he tould right an' left that he
hated her like poison!"

"Whist, asthoreen!" said the colliagh, bending
forward confidentially; "throth an' we all
know that o' him. But what could he do, the
crature! When she put the burragh-bos on
him!"

"The what?" asked the girl.

"Then the burragh-bos machree-o? That's
the spanchel o' death, avourneen; an' well she
has him tethered to her now, bad luck to
her!"

The old woman rocked herself and stifled
the Irish cry breaking from her wrinkled lips
by burying her face in her cloak.

"But what is it?" asked the girl, eagerly.
"What's the burragh-bos, anyways, an' where
did she get it?"

"Och, och! it's not fit for comin' over to
young ears, but cuggir (whisper), acushla! It's
a sthrip o' the skin o' a corpse, peeled from the
crown o' the head to the heel, without crack or
split, or the charrm's broke; an' that, rowled
up, an' put on a sthring roun' the neck o' the wan
that's cowld by the wan that wants to be loved.
An' sure enough it puts the fire in their hearts,
hot an' sthrong, afore twinty-four hours is
gone."

The girl had started from her lazy attitude,
and gazed at her companion with eyes dilated
by horror.

"Marciful Saviour!" she cried. "Not a sowl
on airth would bring the curse out o' heaven by
sich a black doin'!"

"Aisy, Biddeen alanna! an' there's wan that
does it, an' isn't the divil. Arrah, asthoreen,
did ye niver hear tell o' Pexie na Pishrogie,
that lives betune two hills o' Maam Turk?"

"I h'ard o' her," said the girl, breathlessly.

"Well, sorra bit lie, but it's hersel' that does
it. She'll do it for money any day. Sure they
hunted her from the graveyard o' Salruck,
where she had the dead raised; an' glory be to
God! they would ha' murthered her, only they
missed her thracks, an' couldn't bring it home to
her afther."

"Whist, a-wauher" (my mother), said the
girl; "here's the thraveller gettin' up to set off
on his road again! Och, then, it's the short
rest he tuk, the sowl!"

It was enough for Coll, however. He had
got up, and now went back to the kitchen,
where the old man had caused a dish of potatoes
to be roasted, and earnestly pressed his
visitor to sit down and eat of them. This Coll
did readily; having recruited his strength by a
meal, he betook himself to the mountains again,
just as the rising sun was flashing among the
waterfalls, and sending the night mists drifting
down the glens. By sundown the same evening
he was striding over the hills of Maam Turk,
asking of herds his way to the cabin of one Pexie
na Pishrogie.

In a hovel on a brown desolate heath, with
scared-looking hills flying off into the distance
on every side, he found Pexie: a yellow-faced
hag, dressed in a dark-red blanket, with elf-locks
of coarse black hair protruding from under an
orange kerchief swathed round her wrinkled
jaws. She was bending over a pot upon her
fire, where herbs were simmering, and she looked
up with an evil glance when Coll Dhu darkened
her door.

"The burragh-bos is it her honour wants?"
she asked, when he had made known his errand.
"Ay, ay; but the arighad, the arighad (money)
for Pexie. The burragh-bos is ill to get."

"I will pay," said Coll Dhu, laying a sovereign
on the bench before her.

The witch sprang upon it, and chuckling,
bestowed on her visitor a glance which made even
Coll Dhu shudder.

"Her honour is a fine king," she said, "an'
her is fit to get the burragh-bos. Ha! ha! her
sall get the burragh-bos from Pexie. But the
arighad is not enough. More, more!"

She stretched out her claw-like hand, and
Coll dropped another sovereign into it. Whereupon
she fell into more horrible convulsions of
delight.

"Hark ye!" cried Coll. "I have paid you
well, but if your infernal charm does not work,
I will have you hunted for a witch!"

"Work!" cried Pexie, rolling up her eyes. "If
Pexie's charrm not work, then her honour come
back here an' carry these bits o' mountain away
on her back. Ay, her will work. If the colleen
hate her honour like the old diaoul hersel', still an'
withal her will love her honour like her own
white sowl afore the sun sets or rises. That,
(with a furtive leer,) or the colleen dhas go wild
mad afore wan hour."

"Hag!" returned Coll Dhu; "the last part
is a hellish invention of your own. I heard
nothing of madness. If you want more money,
speak out, but play none of your hideous tricks
on me."

The witch fixed her cunning eyes on him, and
took her cue at once from his passion.

"Her honour guess thrue," she simpered;
"it is only the little bit more arighad poor
Pexie want."

Again the skinny hand was extended. Coll
Dhu shrank from touching it, and threw his
gold upon the table.

"King, king!" chuckled Pexie. "Her honour
is a grand king. Her honour is fit to get the
burragh-bos. The colleen dhas sall love her
like her own white sowl. Ha, ha!"

"When shall I get it?" asked Coll Dhu, impatiently.

"Her honour sall come back to Pexie in so
many days, do-deag (twelve), so many days, fur
that the burragh-bos is hard to get. The lonely