“May the Lord protect me from that woman's eye!” replied the pedler, “if you'd 'a' seen the look she gave me when she thought I was goin' to tell them the true story of the Shan-dhinne-dhuv.” “And why should she put a sword in her eye against you for that, Bandy?” asked the other. Bandy looked cautiously about him, and said in a whisper: “Because it's connected with her family, and follows it.” He then proceeded to the kitchen, and having secured his pack, he made as rapid a disappearance as possible from about the premises. CHAPTER VII. A Council of Two --Visit to Beech Grove.--The Herbalist Woodward now amused himself by walking and riding about the country and viewing its scenery, most of which he had forgotten during his long absence from home. It was not at all singular in that dark state of popular superstition and ignorance, that the shower of blood should, somehow or another, be associated with him and his detested mother. Of course, the association was vague, and the people knew not how to apply it to their circumstances. As they believed, however, that Mrs. Lindsay possessed the power of overlooking cattle, which was considered an evil gift, and in some mysterious manner connected with the evil spirit, and as they remembered--for superstition, like guilt, always possesses a good memory--that even in his young days, when little more than a child, her son Harry was remarkable for having eyes of a different color, from which circumstance he was even then called _Harry na Suil Gloir_, they naturally inferred that his appearance in the country boded nothing good; that, of course, he had the Evil Eye, as every one whose eyes differed, as his did, had; and that the thunder and lightning, the rain which drowned the bonfires, but, above all, the blood-shower, were indications that the mother and son were to be feared and avoided as much as possible, especially the latter. Others denied that the devil had anything to do with the shower of blood, or the storm which extinguished the fires, and stoutly maintained that it was God himself who had sent them to warn the country against having any intercourse that could possibly be avoided, with them. Then there was the Black Spectre that was said to follow her family; and did not every one know that when it appeared three times to any person, it was a certain proof that that person's coffin might be purchased? We all know how rapidly such opinions and colloquies spread, and we need scarcely say that in the course of a fortnight after the night of the bonfires all these matters had been discussed over half the barony. Some, in fact, were for loading him with the heavy burden of his mother's unpopularity; but others, more generous, were for waiting until the people had an opportunity of seeing how he might turn out--whether he would follow in his mother's footsteps, or be guided by the benevolent principles of his step-father and the rest of the family. Owing to these circumstances,