I turned round, transfixed and motionless. If my life depended on it, I could not have stirred a limb. The old woman by this time had knelt down on the road, and was muttering rapidly to herself. “Gome along, I say I,” said Darby, pulling me by the arm. “And now,” cried the hag aloud, “may bad luck be your shadow wherever you walk, with sorrow behind and bad hopes before you! May you never taste happiness nor ease; and, like this turf, may your heart be always burning here, and--” I heard no more, for Darby, tearing me away by main force, dragged me along the road, just as the hissing turf embers had fallen at my feet where the hag had thrown them. CHAPTER IV. MY WANDERINGS. I CANNOT deny it,--the horrible imprecation I had heard uttered against me seemed to fill up the cup of my misery. An outcast, without home, without a friend, this alone was wanting to overwhelm me with very wretchedness; and as I covered my face with both hands, I thought my heart would break. “Come, come. Master Tom!” said Darby, “don't be afeard; it'll never do you harm, all she said. I made the sign of the cross on the road between you and her with the end of my stick, and you 're safe enough this time. Faix, she 's a quare divil when she 's roused,--to destroy an illigint pot of praties that way! But sure she had hard provocation. Well, well! you war n't to blame, anyhow; Tony Basset will have a sore reckoning some day for all this.” The mention of that name recalled me in a moment to the consideration of my own danger if he were to succeed in overtaking me, and I eagerly communicated my fear to Darby. “That's thrue,” said he; “we must leave the highroad, for Basset will be up at the house by this, and will lose no time in following you out. If you had a bit of something to eat.” “As to that. Darby,” said I, with a sickly effort to smile, “Peg's curse took away my appetite, full as well as her potatoes would have done.” “'T is a bad way to breakfast, after all,” said Darby. “Do you ever take a shaugh of the pipe, Master Tom?” “No,” said I, laughing, “I never learned to smoke yet.”