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The Purcell Papers, Volume 1

by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu

April, 1996  [Etext #509]


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THE
PURCELL PAPERS.

BY THE LATE
JOSEPH SHERIDAN LE FANU,
AUTHOR OF 'UNCLE SILAS.'

With a Memoir by
ALFRED PERCEVAL GRAVES

IN THREE VOLUMES.
VOL. I.


CONTENTS OF VOL. I.

MEMOIR OF JOSEPH SHERIDAN LE FANU 
THE GHOST AND THE BONE-SETTER 
THE FORTUNES OF SIR ROBERT ARDAGH 
THE LAST HEIR OF CASTLE CONNOR 
THE DRUNKARD'S DREAM  


MEMOIR
OF
JOSEPH SHERIDAN LE FANU.
------

A noble Huguenot family, owning
considerable property in Normandy, the Le
Fanus of Caen, were, upon the revocation of the
Edict of Nantes, deprived of their ancestral estates
of Mandeville, Sequeville, and Cresseron; but,
owing to their possessing influential relatives at
the court of Louis the Fourteenth, were allowed
to quit their country for England, unmolested,
with their personal property.  We meet with
John Le Fanu de Sequeville and Charles Le Fanu
de Cresseron, as cavalry officers in William the
Third's army; Charles being so distinguished a
member of the King's staff that he was presented
with William's portrait from his master's own
hand.  He afterwards served as a major of
dragoons under Marlborough.

At the beginning of the eighteenth century,
William Le Fanu was the sole survivor of his
family.  He married Henrietta Raboteau de
Puggibaut, the last of another great and noble
Huguenot family, whose escape from France, as
a child, by the aid of a Roman Catholic uncle in
high position at the French court, was effected
after adventures of the most romantic danger.

Joseph Le Fanu, the eldest of the sons of this
marriage who left issue, held the office of Clerk of
the Coast in Ireland.  He married for the second
time Alicia, daughter of Thomas Sheridan and
sister of Richard Brinsley Sheridan; his brother,
Captain Henry Le Fanu, of Leamington, being
united to the only other sister of the great wit
and orator.

Dean Thomas Philip Le Fanu, the eldest son
of Joseph Le Fanu, became by his wife Emma,
daughter of Dr. Dobbin, F.T.C.D., the father of
Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu, the subject of this
memoir, whose name is so familiar to English
and American readers as one of the greatest
masters of the weird and the terrible amongst
our modern novelists.

Born in Dublin on the 28th of August, 1814,
he did not begin to speak until he was more
than two years of age; but when he had once
started, the boy showed an unusual aptitude in
acquiring fresh words, and using them correctly.

The first evidence of literary taste which he
gave was in his sixth year, when he made
several little sketches with explanatory remarks
written beneath them, after the manner of Du
Maurier's, or Charles Keene's humorous illustrations
in 'Punch.'

One of these, preserved long afterwards by
his mother, represented a balloon in mid-air,
and two aeronauts, who had occupied it, falling
headlong to earth, the disaster being explained
by these words: 'See the effects of trying to go
to Heaven.'

As a mere child, he was a remarkably good
actor, both in tragic and comic pieces, and was
hardly twelve years old when he began to write
verses of singular spirit for one so young.  At
fourteen, he produced a long Irish poem, which
he never permitted anyone but his mother and
brother to read.  To that brother, Mr. William
Le Fanu, Commissioner of Public Works,
Ireland, to whom, as the suggester of
Sheridan Le Fanu's 'Phaudrig Croohore' and
'Shamus O'Brien,' Irish ballad literature owes a
delightful debt, and whose richly humorous and
passionately pathetic powers as a raconteur of
these poems have only doubled that obligation in
the hearts of those who have been happy enough
to be his hearers--to Mr. William Le Fanu
we are indebted for the following extracts from
the first of his works, which the boy-author seems
to have set any store by:

'Muse of Green Erin, break thine icy slumbers!
   Strike once again thy wreathed lyre!
 Burst forth once more and wake thy tuneful numbers!
   Kindle again thy long-extinguished fire!

'Why should I bid thee, Muse of Erin, waken?
   Why should I bid thee strike thy harp once more?
 Better to leave thee silent and forsaken
   Than wake thee but thy glories to deplore.

'How could I bid thee tell of Tara's Towers,
   Where once thy sceptred Princes sate in state--
 Where rose thy music, at the festive hours,
   Through the proud halls where listening thousands
        sate?

'Fallen are thy fair palaces, thy country's glory,
   Thy tuneful bards were banished or were slain,
 Some rest in glory on their deathbeds gory,
   And some have lived to feel a foeman's chain.

'Yet for the sake of thy unhappy nation,
   Yet for the sake of Freedom's spirit fled,
 Let thy wild harpstrings, thrilled with indignation,
   Peal a deep requiem o'er thy sons that bled.

'O yes! like the last breath of evening sighing,
   Sweep thy cold hand the silent strings along,
 Flash like the lamp beside the hero dying,
   Then hushed for ever be thy plaintive song.'


To Mr. William Le Fanu we are further
indebted for the accompanying specimens of his
brother's serious and humorous powers in verse,
written when he was quite a lad, as valentines
to a Miss G. K.:


     'Life were too long for me to bear
        If banished from thy view;
      Life were too short, a thousand year,
        If life were passed with you.

     'Wise men have said "Man's lot on earth
        Is grief and melancholy,"
      But where thou art, there joyous mirth
        Proves all their wisdom folly.

     'If fate withhold thy love from me,
        All else in vain were given;
      Heaven were imperfect wanting thee,
        And with thee earth were heaven.'

     A few days after, he sent the following sequel:

'My dear good Madam,
You can't think how very sad I'm.
I sent you, or I mistake myself foully,
A very excellent imitation of the poet Cowley,
Containing three very fair stanzas,
Which number Longinus, a very critical man, says,
And Aristotle, who was a critic ten times more caustic,
To a nicety fits a valentine or an acrostic.
And yet for all my pains to this moving epistle,
I have got no answer, so I suppose I may go whistle.
Perhaps you'd have preferred that like an old monk I had pattered
on
In the style and after the manner of the unfortunate Chatterton;
Or that, unlike my reverend daddy's son,
I had attempted the classicalities of the dull, though immortal
Addison.
I can't endure this silence another week;
What shall I do in order to make you speak?
            Shall I give you a trope
            In the manner of Pope,
Or hammer my brains like an old smith
To get out something like Goldsmith?
Or shall I aspire on
To tune my poetic lyre on
The same key touched by Byron,
And laying my hand its wire on,
With its music your soul set fire on
By themes you ne'er could tire on?
            Or say,
            I pray,
            Would a lay
            Like Gay
            Be more in your way?
       I leave it to you,
       Which am I to do?
       It plain on the surface is
       That any metamorphosis,
       To affect your study
       You may work on my soul or body.
Your frown or your smile makes me Savage or Gay
  In action, as well as in song;
And if 'tis decreed I at length become Gray,
  Express but the word and I'm Young;
And if in the Church I should ever aspire
  With friars and abbots to cope,
By a nod, if you please, you can make me a Prior--
  By a word you render me Pope.
If you'd eat, I'm a Crab; if you'd cut, I'm your Steel,
  As sharp as you'd get from the cutler;
I'm your Cotton whene'er you're in want of a reel,
  And your livery carry, as Butler.
            I'll ever rest your debtor
            If you'll answer my first letter;
            Or must, alas, eternity
            Witness your taciturnity?
            Speak--and oh! speak quickly
            Or else I shall grow sickly,
                      And pine,
                      And whine,
            And grow yellow and brown
              As e'er was mahogany,
            And lie me down
              And die in agony.

   P.S.--You'll allow I have the gift
         To write like the immortal Swift.'


But besides the poetical powers with which he
was endowed, in common with the great Brinsley,
Lady Dufferin, and the Hon. Mrs. Norton,
young Sheridan Le Fanu also possessed an
irresistible humour and oratorical gift that,
as a student of Old Trinity, made him a
formidable rival of the best of the young debaters
of his time at the 'College Historical,' not a
few of whom have since reached the highest
eminence at the Irish Bar, after having long
enlivened and charmed St. Stephen's by their
wit and oratory.

Amongst his compeers he was remarkable for
his sudden fiery eloquence of attack, and ready
and rapid powers of repartee when on his
defence.  But Le Fanu, whose understanding was
elevated by a deep love of the classics, in which
he took university honours, and further heightened
by an admirable knowledge of our own
great authors, was not to be tempted away by
oratory from literature, his first and, as it
proved, his last love.

Very soon after leaving college, and just when
he was called to the Bar, about the year 1838,
he bought the 'Warder,' a Dublin newspaper,
of which he was editor, and took what many
of his best friends and admirers, looking to
his high prospects as a barrister, regarded at
the time as a fatal step in his career to
fame.

Just before this period, Le Fanu had taken
to writing humorous Irish stories, afterwards
published in the 'Dublin University Magazine,'
such as the 'Quare Gander,' 'Jim Sulivan's
Adventure,' 'The Ghost and the Bone-setter,' etc.

These stories his brother William Le Fanu
was in the habit of repeating for his friends'
amusement, and about the year 1837, when he
was about twenty-three years of age, Joseph
Le Fanu said to him that he thought an
Irish story in verse would tell well, and
that if he would choose him a subject suitable
for recitation, he would write him one.
'Write me an Irish "Young Lochinvar," '
said his brother; and in a few days he
handed him 'Phaudrig Croohore'--Anglice,
'Patrick Crohore.'

Of course this poem has the disadvantage not
only of being written after 'Young Lochinvar,'
but also that of having been directly inspired by
it; and yet, although wanting in the rare and
graceful finish of the original, the Irish copy
has, we feel, so much fire and feeling that it at
least tempts us to regret that Scott's poem was
not written in that heart-stirring Northern
dialect without which the noblest of our British
ballads would lose half their spirit.  Indeed, we
may safely say that some of Le Fanu's lines
are finer than any in 'Young Lochinvar,'
simply because they seem to speak straight from
a people's heart, not to be the mere echoes of
medieval romance.

'Phaudrig Croohore' did not appear in
print in the 'Dublin University Magazine'
till 1844, twelve years after its composition,
when it was included amongst the Purcell
Papers.

To return to the year 1837.  Mr. William Le
Fanu, the suggester of this ballad, who was from
home at the time, now received daily instalments
of the second and more remarkable of his brother's
Irish poems--'Shamus O'Brien' (James O'Brien)
--learning them by heart as they reached him,
and, fortunately, never forgetting them, for his
brother Joseph kept no copy of the ballad, and he
had himself to write it out from memory ten
years after, when the poem appeared in the
'University Magazine.'

Few will deny that this poem contains passages
most faithfully, if fearfully, picturesque,
and that it is characterised throughout by a
profound pathos, and an abundant though at
times a too grotesquely incongruous humour.
Can we wonder, then, at the immense popularity
with which Samuel Lover recited it in the United
States?  For to Lover's admiration of the poem,
and his addition of it to his entertainment,
'Shamus O'Brien' owes its introduction into
America, where it is now so popular.  Lover
added some lines of his own to the poem, made
Shamus emigrate to the States, and set up
a public-house.  These added lines appeared
in most of the published versions of the
poem.  But they are indifferent as verse, and
certainly injure the dramatic effect of the
poem.

'Shamus O'Brien' is so generally attributed to
Lover (indeed we remember seeing it advertised
for recitation on the occasion of a benefit at a
leading London theatre as 'by Samuel Lover')
that it is a satisfaction to be able to reproduce
the following letter upon the subject from Lover
to William le Fanu:

               'Astor House,
                 'New York, U.S. America.
                      'Sept. 30, 1846.

  'My dear Le Fanu,

'In reading over your brother's poem
while I crossed the Atlantic, I became more and
more impressed with its great beauty and dramatic
effect--so much so that I determined to
test its effect in public, and have done so here,
on my first appearance, with the greatest success.
Now I have no doubt there will be great praises
of the poem, and people will suppose, most likely,
that the composition is mine, and as you know
(I take for granted) that I would not wish to
wear a borrowed feather, I should be glad to
give your brother's name as the author, should
he not object to have it known; but as his
writings are often of so different a tone, I would
not speak without permission to do so.  It is
true that in my programme my name is attached
to other pieces, and no name appended to the
recitation; so far, you will see, I have done all
I could to avoid "appropriating," the spirit of
which I might have caught here, with Irish
aptitude; but I would like to have the means
of telling all whom it may concern the name of
the author, to whose head and heart it does so
much honour.  Pray, my dear Le Fanu, inquire,
and answer me here by next packet, or as soon
as convenient.  My success here has been quite
triumphant.
               'Yours very truly,
                    'SAMUEL LOVER.'


We have heard it said (though without having
inquired into the truth of the tradition) that
'Shamus O'Brien' was the result of a match at
pseudo-national ballad writing made between Le
Fanu and several of the most brilliant of his
young literary confreres at T. C. D.  But
however this may be, Le Fanu undoubtedly was no
young Irelander; indeed he did the stoutest
service as a press writer in the Conservative
interest, and was no doubt provoked as well as
amused at the unexpected popularity to which
his poem attained amongst the Irish Nationalists.
And here it should be remembered that the ballad
was written some eleven years before the outbreak
of '48, and at a time when a '98 subject might
fairly have been regarded as legitimate literary
property amongst the most loyal.

We left Le Fanu as editor of the 'Warder.'
He afterwards purchased the 'Dublin Evening
Packet,' and much later the half-proprietorship
of the 'Dublin Evening Mail.'  Eleven or twelve
years ago he also became the owner and editor
of the 'Dublin University Magazine,' in which
his later as well as earlier Irish Stories
appeared.  He sold it about a year before his death
in 1873, having previously parted with the
'Warder' and his share in the 'Evening
Mail.'

He had previously published in the 'Dublin
University Magazine' a number of charming
lyrics, generally anonymously, and it is to be
feared that all clue to the identification of
most of these is lost, except that of internal
evidence.

The following poem, undoubtedly his, should
make general our regret at being unable to fix
with certainty upon its fellows:


     'One wild and distant bugle sound
        Breathed o'er Killarney's magic shore
      Will shed sweet floating echoes round
        When that which made them is no more.

     'So slumber in the human heart
        Wild echoes, that will sweetly thrill
      The words of kindness when the voice
        That uttered them for aye is still.

     'Oh! memory, though thy records tell
        Full many a tale of grief and sorrow,
      Of mad excess, of hope decayed,
        Of dark and cheerless melancholy;

     'Still, memory, to me thou art
        The dearest of the gifts of mind,
      For all the joys that touch my heart
        Are joys that I have left behind.


Le Fanu's literary life may be divided into
three distinct periods.  During the first of these,
and till his thirtieth year, he was an Irish
ballad, song, and story writer, his first published
story being the 'Adventures of Sir Robert
Ardagh,' which appeared in the 'Dublin University
Magazine' of 1838.

In 1844 he was united to Miss Susan Bennett,
the beautiful daughter of the late George
Bennett, Q.C.  From this time until her decease,
in 1858, he devoted his energies almost entirely
to press work, making, however, his first essays
in novel writing during that period.  The
'Cock and Anchor,' a chronicle of old Dublin
city, his first and, in the opinion of competent
critics, one of the best of his novels, seeing the
light about the year 1850.  This work, it is to
be feared, is out of print, though there is now a
cheap edition of 'Torlogh O'Brien,' its immediate
successor.  The comparative want of success
of these novels seems to have deterred Le Fanu
from using his pen, except as a press writer,
until 1863, when the 'House by the Churchyard'
was published, and was soon followed by 'Uncle
Silas' and his five other well-known novels.

We have considered Le Fanu as a ballad
writer and poet.  As a press writer he is still
most honourably remembered for his learning
and brilliancy, and the power and point of his
sarcasm, which long made the 'Dublin Evening
Mail' one of the most formidable of Irish press
critics; but let us now pass to the consideration
of him in the capacity of a novelist, and in
particular as the author of 'Uncle Silas.'

There are evidences in 'Shamus O'Brien,' and
even in 'Phaudrig Croohore,' of a power over
the mysterious, the grotesque, and the horrible,
which so singularly distinguish him as a writer
of prose fiction.

'Uncle Silas,' the fairest as well as most
familiar instance of this enthralling spell over
his readers, is too well known a story to tell in
detail.  But how intensely and painfully distinct
is the opening description of the silent, inflexible
Austin Ruthyn of Knowl, and his shy, sweet
daughter Maude, the one so resolutely confident
in his brother's honour, the other so romantically
and yet anxiously interested in her uncle--the
sudden arrival of Dr. Bryerly, the strange
Swedenborgian, followed by the equally unexpected
apparition of Madame de la Rougiere,
Austin Ruthyn's painful death, and the reading of his strange
will consigning poor Maude to
the protection of her unknown Uncle Silas--her
cousin, good, bright devoted Monica Knollys, and
her dreadful distrust of Silas--Bartram Haugh
and its uncanny occupants, and foremost amongst
them Uncle Silas.

This is his portrait:

'A face like marble, with a fearful monumental
look, and for an old man, singularly
vivid, strange eyes, the singularity of which
rather grew upon me as I looked; for his
eyebrows were still black, though his hair
descended from his temples in long locks of the
purest silver and fine as silk, nearly to his
shoulders.

'He rose, tall and slight, a little stooped, all
in black, with an ample black velvet tunic,
which was rather a gown than a coat. . . .

'I know I can't convey in words an idea of
this apparition, drawn, as it seemed, in black
and white, venerable, bloodless, fiery-eyed, with
its singular look of power, and an expression so
bewildering--was it derision, or anguish, or
cruelty, or patience?

'The wild eyes of this strange old man were
fixed on me as he rose; an habitual contraction,
which in certain lights took the character of a
scowl, did not relax as he advanced towards me
with a thin-lipped smile.'

Old Dicken and his daughter Beauty, old
L'Amour and Dudley Ruthyn, now enter upon
the scene, each a fresh shadow to deepen its
already sombre hue, while the gloom gathers in
spite of the glimpse of sunshine shot through it
by the visit to Elverston.  Dudley's brutal
encounter with Captain Oakley, and vile persecution
of poor Maude till his love marriage comes to
light, lead us on to the ghastly catastrophe, the
hideous conspiracy of Silas and his son against
the life of the innocent girl.

It is interesting to know that the germ of
Uncle Silas first appeared in the 'Dublin
University Magazine' of 1837 or 1838, as the
short tale, entitled, 'A Passage from the Secret
History of an Irish Countess,' which is printed
in this collection of Stories.  It next was published
as 'The Murdered Cousin' in a collection of
Christmas stories, and finally developed into the
three-volume novel we have just noticed.

There are about Le Fanu's narratives touches
of nature which reconcile us to their always
remarkable and often supernatural incidents.
His characters are well conceived and distinctly
drawn, and strong soliloquy and easy dialogue
spring unaffectedly from their lips.  He is a close
observer of Nature, and reproduces her wilder
effects of storm and gloom with singular
vividness; while he is equally at home in his
descriptions of still life, some of which remind
us of the faithfully minute detail of old Dutch
pictures.

Mr. Wilkie Collins, amongst our living
novelists, best compares with Le Fanu.  Both of
these writers are remarkable for the ingenious
mystery with which they develop their plots, and
for the absorbing, if often over-sensational, nature
of their incidents; but whilst Mr. Collins excites
and fascinates our attention by an intense power
of realism which carries us with unreasoning
haste from cover to cover of his works, Le
Fanu is an idealist, full of high imagination,
and an artist who devotes deep attention to the
most delicate detail in his portraiture of men
and women, and his descriptions of the outdoor
and indoor worlds--a writer, therefore,
through whose pages it would be often an
indignity to hasten.  And this more leisurely,
and certainly more classical, conduct of his
stories makes us remember them more fully and
faithfully than those of the author of the
'Woman in White.'  Mr. Collins is generally
dramatic, and sometimes stagy, in his effects.
Le Fanu, while less careful to arrange his plots,
so as to admit of their being readily adapted
for the stage, often surprises us by scenes of so
much greater tragic intensity that we cannot
but lament that he did not, as Mr. Collins has
done, attempt the drama, and so furnish another
ground of comparison with his fellow-countryman,
Maturin (also, if we mistake not, of French
origin), whom, in his writings, Le Fanu far
more closely resembles than Mr. Collins, as a
master of the darker and stronger emotions of
human character.  But, to institute a broader
ground of comparison between Le Fanu and
Mr. Collins, whilst the idiosyncrasies of the
former's characters, however immaterial those
characters may be, seem always to suggest the
minutest detail of his story, the latter would
appear to consider plot as the prime, character
as a subsidiary element in the art of novel
writing.

Those who possessed the rare privilege of Le
Fanu's friendship, and only they, can form any
idea of the true character of the man; for after
the death of his wife, to whom he was most
deeply devoted, he quite forsook general society,
in which his fine features, distinguished bearing,
and charm of conversation marked him out as
the beau-ideal of an Irish wit and scholar of
the old school.

From this society he vanished so entirely that
Dublin, always ready with a nickname, dubbed
him 'The Invisible Prince;' and indeed he was
for long almost invisible, except to his family
and most familiar friends, unless at odd hours
of the evening, when he might occasionally be
seen stealing, like the ghost of his former self,
between his newspaper office and his home in
Merrion Square; sometimes, too, he was to be
encountered in an old out-of-the-way bookshop
poring over some rare black letter Astrology or
Demonology.

To one of these old bookshops he was at one
time a pretty frequent visitor, and the bookseller
relates how he used to come in and ask with
his peculiarly pleasant voice and smile, 'Any
more ghost stories for me, Mr. -----?' and
how, on a fresh one being handed to him, he
would seldom leave the shop until he had looked
it through.  This taste for the supernatural
seems to have grown upon him after his wife's
death, and influenced him so deeply that, had he
not been possessed of a deal of shrewd common
sense, there might have been danger of his
embracing some of the visionary doctrines in which
he was so learned.  But no! even Spiritualism,
to which not a few of his brother novelists
succumbed, whilst affording congenial material for
our artist of the superhuman to work upon, did
not escape his severest satire.

Shortly after completing his last novel, strange
to say, bearing the title 'Willing to Die,' Le
Fanu breathed his last at his home No. 18,
Merrion Square South, at the age of fifty-nine.

'He was a man,' writes the author of a brief
memoir of him in the 'Dublin University
Magazine,' 'who thought deeply, especially on
religious subjects.  To those who knew him he
was very dear; they admired him for his
learning, his sparkling wit, and pleasant
conversation, and loved him for his manly virtues, for
his noble and generous qualities, his gentleness,
and his loving, affectionate nature.'  And all
who knew the man must feel how deeply deserved
are these simple words of sincere regard for
Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu.

Le Fanu's novels are accessible to all; but
his Purcell Papers are now for the first time
collected and published, by the permission of his
eldest son (the late Mr. Philip Le Fanu), and
very much owing to the friendly and active
assistance of his brother, Mr. William Le Fanu.



THE PURCELL PAPERS.

THE GHOST AND THE BONE SETTER.


In looking over the papers of my
late valued and respected friend,
Francis Purcell, who for nearly
fifty years discharged the arduous duties of
a parish priest in the south of Ireland, I
met with the following document. It is
one of many such; for he was a curious
and industrious collector of old local 
traditions--a commodity in
which the quarter
where he resided mightily abounded. The
collection and arrangement of such legends
was, as long as I can remember him, his
hobby; but I had never learned that his
love of the marvellous and whimsical had
carried him so far as to prompt him to
commit the results of his inquiries to
writing, until, in the character of residuary
legatee, his will put me in possession of all
his manuscript papers. To such as may
think the composing of such productions
as these inconsistent with the character
and habits of a country priest, it is necessary
to observe, that there did exist a race
of priests--those of the old school, a race
now nearly extinct--whose education
abroad tended to produce in them tastes
more literary than have yet been evinced
by the alumni of Maynooth.

It is perhaps necessary to add that the
superstition illustrated by the following
story, namely, that the corpse last buried
is obliged, during his juniority of interment,
to supply his brother tenants of the
churchyard in which he lies, with fresh
water to allay the burning thirst of
purgatory, is prevalent throughout the south of
Ireland.

The writer can vouch for a case in
which a respectable and wealthy farmer,
on the borders of Tipperary, in tenderness
to the corns of his departed helpmate,
enclosed in her coffin two pair of brogues, a
light and a heavy, the one for dry, the
other for sloppy weather; seeking thus to
mitigate the fatigues of her inevitable
perambulations in procuring water and
administering it to the thirsty souls of
purgatory. Fierce and desperate conflicts
have ensued in the case of two funeral
parties approaching the same churchyard
together, each endeavouring to secure to
his own dead priority of sepulture, and a
consequent immunity from the tax levied
upon the pedestrian powers of the last-
comer. An instance not long since
occurred, in which one of two such parties,
through fear of losing to their deceased
friend this inestimable advantage, made
their way to the churchyard by a short cut,
and, in violation of one of their strongest
prejudices, actually threw the coffin over
the wall, lest time should be lost in making
their entrance through the gate. Innumerable
instances of the same kind might be
quoted, all tending to show how strongly
among the peasantry of the south this
superstition is entertained. However, I
shall not detain the reader further by
any prefatory remarks, but shall proceed
to lay before him the following:

Extract from the MS. Papers of the late
Rev. Francis Purcell, of Drumcoolagh.


I tell the following particulars, as
nearly as I can recollect them, in the
words of the narrator. It may be necessary
to observe that he was what is termed
a well-spoken man, having for a considerable
time instructed the ingenious youth
of his native parish in such of the liberal
arts and sciences as he found it convenient
to profess--a circumstance which may account
for the occurrence of several big
words in the course of this narrative, more
distinguished for euphonious effect than
for correctness of application. I proceed
then, without further preface, to lay
before you the wonderful adventures of
Terry Neil.


'Why, thin, 'tis a quare story, an' as
thrue as you're sittin' there; and I'd make
bould to say there isn't a boy in the seven
parishes could tell it better nor crickther
than myself, for 'twas my father himself it
happened to, an' many's the time I heerd
it out iv his own mouth; an' I can say, an'
I'm proud av that same, my father's word
was as incredible as any squire's oath in the
counthry; and so signs an' if a poor man
got into any unlucky throuble, he was
the boy id go into the court an' prove; but
that doesn't signify--he was as honest and
as sober a man, barrin' he was a little bit
too partial to the glass, as you'd find in a
day's walk; an' there wasn't the likes of
him in the counthry round for nate labourin'
an' baan diggin'; and he was mighty handy
entirely for carpenther's work, and men
din' ould spudethrees, an' the likes i' that.
An' so he tuk up with bone-settin', as
was most nathural, for none of them could
come up to him in mendin' the leg iv a stool
or a table; an' sure, there never was a bone-
setter got so much custom-man an' child,
young an' ould--there never was such
breakin' and mendin' of bones known in
the memory of man. Well, Terry Neil--
for that was my father's name--began to
feel his heart growin' light, and his purse
heavy; an' he took a bit iv a farm in Squire
Phelim's ground, just undher the ould castle,
an' a pleasant little spot it was; an' day an'
mornin' poor crathurs not able to put a foot
to the ground, with broken arms and broken
legs, id be comin' ramblin' in from all quarters
to have their bones spliced up. Well,
yer honour, all this was as well as well could
be; but it was customary when Sir Phelim
id go anywhere out iv the country, for some
iv the tinants to sit up to watch in the ould
castle, just for a kind of compliment to the
ould family--an' a mighty unplisant compliment
it was for the tinants, for there
wasn't a man of them but knew there was
something quare about the ould castle. The
neighbours had it, that the squire's ould
grandfather, as good a gintlenlan--God be
with him--as I heer'd, as ever stood in
shoe-leather, used to keep walkin' about in
the middle iv the night, ever sinst he
bursted a blood vessel pullin' out a cork
out iv a bottle, as you or I might be doin',
and will too, plase God--but that doesn't
signify. So, as I was sayin', the ould
squire used to come down out of the
frame, where his picthur was hung up, and
to break the bottles and glasses--God be
marciful to us all--an' dthrink all he could
come at--an' small blame to him for that
same; and then if any of the family id be
comin' in, he id be up again in his place,
looking as quite an' as innocent as if he
didn't know anything about it--the
mischievous ould chap

'Well, your honour, as I was sayin', one
time the family up at the castle was stayin'
in Dublin for a week or two; and so, as
usual, some of the tinants had to sit up in
the castle, and the third night it kem to
my father's turn. "Oh, tare an' ouns!"
says he unto himself, "an' must I sit up
all night, and that ould vagabone of a
sperit, glory be to God," says he,
"serenadin' through the house, an' doin' all
sorts iv mischief?" However, there was
no gettin' aff, and so he put a bould face
on it, an' he went up at nightfall with a
bottle of pottieen, and another of holy
wather.

'It was rainin' smart enough, an' the
evenin' was darksome and gloomy, when
my father got in; and what with the rain
he got, and the holy wather he sprinkled
on himself, it wasn't long till he had to
swally a cup iv the pottieen, to keep the
cowld out iv his heart. It was the ould
steward, Lawrence Connor, that opened
the door--and he an' my father wor
always very great. So when he seen who
it was, an' my father tould him how it
was his turn to watch in the castle, he
offered to sit up along with him; and you
may be sure my father wasn't sorry for
that same. So says Larry:

' "We'll have a bit iv fire in the
parlour," says he.

' "An' why not in the hall?" says my
father, for he knew that the squire's
picthur was hung in the parlour.

' "No fire can be lit in the hall," says
Lawrence, "for there's an ould jackdaw's
nest in the chimney."

' "Oh thin," says my father, "let us
stop in the kitchen, for it's very unproper
for the likes iv me to be sittin' in the
parlour," says he.

' "Oh, Terry, that can't be," says
Lawrence; "if we keep up the ould
custom at all, we may as well keep it up
properly," says he.

' "Divil sweep the ould custom!" says
my father--to himself, do ye mind, for he
didn't like to let Lawrence see that he was
more afeard himself.

' "Oh, very well," says he. "I'm
agreeable, Lawrence," says he; and so
down they both wint to the kitchen, until
the fire id be lit in the parlour--an' that
same wasn't long doin'.

'Well, your honour, they soon wint up
again, an' sat down mighty comfortable by
the parlour fire, and they beginned to talk,
an' to smoke, an' to dhrink a small taste iv
the pottieen; and, moreover, they had a
good rousin' fire o' bogwood and turf, to
warm their shins over.

'Well, sir, as I was sayin' they kep'
convarsin' and smokin' together most
agreeable, until Lawrence beginn'd to get
sleepy, as was but nathural for him, for he
was an ould sarvint man, and was used to
a great dale iv sleep.

' "Sure it's impossible," says my father,
"it's gettin' sleepy you are?"

' "Oh, divil a taste," says Larry; "I'm
only shuttin' my eyes," says he, "to keep
out the parfume o' the tibacky smoke,
that's makin' them wather," says he.
"So don't you mind other people's
business," says he, stiff enough, for he had
a mighty high stomach av his own (rest
his sowl), "and go on," says he, "with
your story, for I'm listenin'," says he,
shuttin' down his eyes.

'Well, when my father seen spakin'
was no use, he went on with his story.
By the same token, it was the story of
Jim Soolivan and his ould goat he was
tellin'--an' a plisant story it is--an'
there was so much divarsion in it, that
it was enough to waken a dormouse, let
alone to pervint a Christian goin' asleep.
But, faix, the way my father tould it, I
believe there never was the likes heerd
sinst nor before, for he bawled out every
word av it, as if the life was fairly
lavin' him, thrying to keep ould Larry
awake; but, faix, it was no use, for the
hoorsness came an him, an' before he kem
to the end of his story Larry O'Connor
beginned to snore like a bagpipes.

' "Oh, blur an' agres," says my father,
"isn't this a hard case," says he, "that
ould villain, lettin' on to be my friend, and
to go asleep this way, an' us both in the
very room with a sperit," says he. "The
crass o' Christ about us!" says he; and
with that he was goin' to shake Lawrence
to waken him, but he just remimbered if
he roused him, that he'd surely go off to
his bed, an' lave him complately alone, an'
that id be by far worse.

' "Oh thin," says my father, "I'll not
disturb the poor boy. It id be neither
friendly nor good-nathured," says he, "to
tormint him while he is asleep," says he;
"only I wish I was the same way,
myself," says he.

'An' with that he beginned to walk up
an' down, an' sayin' his prayers, until he
worked himself into a sweat, savin' your
presence. But it was all no good; so he
dthrunk about a pint of sperits, to compose
his mind.

' "Oh," says he, "I wish to the Lord I
was as asy in my mind as Larry there.
Maybe," says he, "if I thried I could go
asleep;" an' with that he pulled a big arm-
chair close beside Lawrence, an' settled
himself in it as well as he could.

'But there was one quare thing I forgot
to tell you. He couldn't help, in spite
av himself, lookin' now an' thin at the
picthur, an' he immediately obsarved that
the eyes av it was follyin' him about, an'
starin' at him, an' winkin' at him, wher-
iver he wint. "Oh," says he, when he
seen that, "it's a poor chance I have,"
says he; "an' bad luck was with me the
day I kem into this unforthunate place,"
says he. "But any way there's no use in
bein' freckened now," says he; "for if I
am to die, I may as well parspire
undaunted," says he.

'Well, your honour, he thried to keep
himself quite an' asy, an' he thought two
or three times he might have wint asleep,
but for the way the storm was groanin'
and creakin' through the great heavy
branches outside, an' whistlin' through the
ould chimleys iv the castle. Well, afther
one great roarin' blast iv the wind, you'd
think the walls iv the castle was just goin'
to fall, quite an' clane, with the shakin' iv
it. All av a suddint the storm stopt, as
silent an' as quite as if it was a July
evenin'. Well, your honour, it wasn't
stopped blowin' for three minnites, before
he thought he hard a sort iv a noise over
the chimley-piece; an' with that my
father just opened his eyes the smallest
taste in life, an' sure enough he seen the
ould squire gettin' out iv the picthur, for
all the world as if he was throwin' aff his
ridin' coat, until he stept out clane an'
complate, out av the chimley-piece, an'
thrun himself down an the floor. Well,
the slieveen ould chap--an' my father
thought it was the dirtiest turn iv all--
before he beginned to do anything out iv
the way, he stopped for a while to listen
wor they both asleep; an' as soon as he
thought all was quite, he put out his hand
and tuk hould iv the whisky bottle, an
dhrank at laste a pint iv it. Well, your
honour, when he tuk his turn out iv it, he
settled it back mighty cute entirely, in the
very same spot it was in before. An' he
beginned to walk up an' down the room,
lookin' as sober an' as solid as if he never
done the likes at all. An' whinever he
went apast my father, he thought he felt a
great scent of brimstone, an' it was that
that freckened him entirely; for he knew
it was brimstone that was burned in hell,
savin' your presence. At any rate, he
often heerd it from Father Murphy, an'
he had a right to know what belonged to
it--he's dead since, God rest him. Well,
your honour, my father was asy enough
until the sperit kem past him; so close,
God be marciful to us all, that the smell iv
the sulphur tuk the breath clane out iv
him; an' with that he tuk such a fit iv
coughin', that it al-a-most shuk him out
iv the chair he was sittin' in.

' "Ho, ho!" says the squire, stoppin'
short about two steps aff, and turnin'
round facin' my father, "is it you that's
in it?--an' how's all with you, Terry
Neil?"

' "At your honour's sarvice," says my
father (as well as the fright id let him,
for he was more dead than alive), "an'
it's proud I am to see your honour to-
night," says he.

' "Terence," says the squire, "you're
a respectable man" (an' it was thrue for
him), "an industhrious, sober man, an' an
example of inebriety to the whole parish,"
says he.

' "Thank your honour," says my father,
gettin' courage, "you were always a civil
spoken gintleman, God rest your honour."

' "REST my honour?" says the sperit
(fairly gettin' red in the face with the
madness), "Rest my honour?" says he.
"Why, you ignorant spalpeen," says he,
"you mane, niggarly ignoramush," says
he, "where did you lave your manners?"
says he. "If I AM dead, it's no fault iv
mine," says he; "an' it's not to be thrun
in my teeth at every hand's turn, by the
likes iv you," says he, stampin' his foot an
the flure, that you'd think the boords id
smash undther him.

' "Oh," says my father, "I'm only a
foolish, ignorant poor man," says he.

' "You're nothing else," says the squire:
"but any way," says he, "it's not to be
listenin' to your gosther, nor convarsin'
with the likes iv you, that I came UP--
down I mane," says he--(an' as little as
the mistake was, my father tuk notice iv
it). "Listen to me now, Terence Neil,"
says he: "I was always a good masther
to Pathrick Neil, your grandfather," says
he.

' " 'Tis thrue for your honour," says my
father.

' "And, moreover, I think I was always
a sober, riglar gintleman," says the squire.

' "That's your name, sure enough," says
my father (though it was a big lie for him,
but he could not help it).

' "Well," says the sperit, "although I
was as sober as most men--at laste as
most gintlemin," says he; "an' though I
was at different pariods a most extempory
Christian, and most charitable and inhuman
to the poor," says he; "for all that
I'm not as asy where I am now," says
he, "as I had a right to expect," says he.

' "An' more's the pity," says my father.
"Maybe your honour id wish to have a
word with Father Murphy?"

' "Hould your tongue, you misherable
bliggard," says the squire; "it's not iv
my sowl I'm thinkin'--an' I wondther you'd
have the impitence to talk to a gintleman
consarnin' his sowl; and when I want
THAT fixed," says he, slappin' his thigh,
"I'll go to them that knows what belongs
to the likes," says he. "It's not my sowl,"
says he, sittin' down opossite my father;
"it's not my sowl that's annoyin' me most
--I'm unasy on my right leg," says he,
"that I bruk at Glenvarloch cover the
day I killed black Barney."

'My father found out afther, it was a
favourite horse that fell undher him, afther
leapin' the big fence that runs along by the
glin.

' "I hope," says my father, "your
honour's not unasy about the killin' iv
him?"

' "Hould your tongue, ye fool," said the
squire, "an' I'll tell you why I'm unasy on
my leg," says he. "In the place, where I
spend most iv my time," says he, "except
the little leisure I have for lookin' about me
here," says he, "I have to walk a great dale
more than I was ever used to," says he,
"and by far more than is good for me either,"
says he; "for I must tell you," says he,
"the people where I am is ancommonly
fond iv cowld wather, for there is nothin'
betther to be had; an', moreover, the
weather is hotter than is altogether plisant,"
says he; "and I'm appinted," says he,
"to assist in carryin' the wather, an' gets
a mighty poor share iv it myself," says he,
"an' a mighty throublesome, wearin' job it
is, I can tell you," says he; "for they're
all iv them surprisinly dthry, an' dthrinks
it as fast as my legs can carry it," says he;
"but what kills me intirely," says he, "is
the wakeness in my leg," says he, "an' I
want you to give it a pull or two to bring
it to shape," says he, "and that's the long
an' the short iv it," says he.

' "Oh, plase your honour," says my
father (for he didn't like to handle the
sperit at all), "I wouldn't have the
impidence to do the likes to your honour,"
says he; "it's only to poor crathurs like
myself I'd do it to," says he.

' "None iv your blarney," says the
squire. "Here's my leg," says he, cockin'
it up to him--"pull it for the bare life,"
says he; an' "if you don't, by the immortial
powers I'll not lave a bone in your carcish
I'll not powdher," says he.

'When my father heerd that, he seen
there was no use in purtendin', so he tuk
hould iv the leg, an' he kep' pullin' an'
pullin', till the sweat, God bless us, beginned
to pour down his face.

' "Pull, you divil!" says the squire.

' "At your sarvice, your honour," says
my father.

" 'Pull harder," says the squire.

'My father pulled like the divil.

' "I'll take a little sup," says the squire,
rachin' over his hand to the bottle, "to
keep up my courage," says he, lettin' an
to be very wake in himself intirely. But,
as cute as he was, he was out here, for he
tuk the wrong one. "Here's to your
good health, Terence," says he; "an' now
pull like the very divil." An' with that he
lifted the bottle of holy wather, but it was
hardly to his mouth, whin he let a screech
out, you'd think the room id fairly split
with it, an' made one chuck that sent the
leg clane aff his body in my father's hands.
Down wint the squire over the table, an'
bang wint my father half-way across the
room on his back, upon the flure. Whin
he kem to himself the cheerful mornin' sun
was shinin' through the windy shutthers,
an' he was lying flat an his back, with the
leg iv one of the great ould chairs pulled
clane out iv the socket an' tight in his
hand, pintin' up to the ceilin', an' ould
Larry fast asleep, an' snorin' as loud as
ever. My father wint that mornin' to
Father Murphy, an' from that to the day
of his death, he never neglected confission
nor mass, an' what he tould was betther
believed that he spake av it but seldom.
An', as for the squire, that is the sperit,
whether it was that he did not like his
liquor, or by rason iv the loss iv his leg, he
was never known to walk agin.'




THE FORTUNES OF SIR ROBERT ARDAGH.

Being a second Extract from the Papers of the late
Father Purcell.

     'The earth hath bubbles as the water hath--
       And these are of them.'

In the south of Ireland, and on
the borders of the county of
Limerick, there lies a district of
two or three miles in length, which is
rendered interesting by the fact that it is
one of the very few spots throughout this
country, in which some vestiges of
aboriginal forest still remain. It has
little or none of the lordly character of
the American forest, for the axe has felled
its oldest and its grandest trees; but in
the close wood which survives, live all the
wild and pleasing peculiarities of nature:
its complete irregularity, its vistas, in
whose perspective the quiet cattle are
peacefully browsing; its refreshing glades,
where the grey rocks arise from amid the
nodding fern; the silvery shafts of the old
birch trees; the knotted trunks of the
hoary oak, the grotesque but graceful
branches which never shed their honours
under the tyrant pruning-hook; the soft
green sward; the chequered light and
shade; the wild luxuriant weeds; the lichen
and the moss--all, all are beautiful alike in
the green freshness of spring, or in the
sadness and sere of autumn. Their beauty
is of that kind which makes the heart full
with joy--appealing to the affections with
a power which belongs to nature only.
This wood runs up, from below the base,
to the ridge of a long line of irregular
hills, having perhaps, in primitive times,
formed but the skirting of some mighty
forest which occupied the level below.

But now, alas! whither have we drifted?
whither has the tide of civilisation borne
us? It has passed over a land unprepared
for it--it has left nakedness behind
it; we have lost our forests, but our
marauders remain; we have destroyed
all that is picturesque, while we have
retained everything that is revolting in
barbarism. Through the midst of this
woodland there runs a deep gully or glen,
where the stillness of the scene is broken in
upon by the brawling of a mountain-stream,
which, however, in the winter season,
swells into a rapid and formidable torrent.

There is one point at which the glen
becomes extremely deep and narrow; the
sides descend to the depth of some
hundred feet, and are so steep as to be
nearly perpendicular. The wild trees
which have taken root in the crannies and
chasms of the rock have so intersected
and entangled, that one can with difficulty
catch a glimpse of the stream, which
wheels, flashes, and foams below, as if
exulting in the surrounding silence and
solitude.

This spot was not unwisely chosen, as a
point of no ordinary strength, for the
erection of a massive square tower or keep,
one side of which rises as if in continuation
of the precipitous cliff on which it is based.
Originally, the only mode of ingress was
by a narrow portal in the very wall which
overtopped the precipice, opening upon a
ledge of rock which afforded a precarious
pathway, cautiously intersected, however,
by a deep trench cut with great labour
in the living rock; so that, in its original
state, and before the introduction of
artillery into the art of war, this tower
might have been pronounced, and that not
presumptuously, almost impregnable.

The progress of improvement and the
increasing security of the times had,
however, tempted its successive proprietors, if
not to adorn, at least to enlarge their
premises, and at about the middle of the
last century, when the castle was last
inhabited, the original square tower formed
but a small part of the edifice.

The castle, and a wide tract of the sur-
rounding country, had from time immemorial
belonged to a family which, for
distinctness, we shall call by the name of
Ardagh; and owing to the associations
which, in Ireland, almost always attach to
scenes which have long witnessed alike the
exercise of stern feudal authority, and of
that savage hospitality which distinguished
the good old times, this building has
become the subject and the scene of many wild
and extraordinary traditions. One of them
I have been enabled, by a personal acquaintance
with an eye-witness of the events, to
trace to its origin; and yet it is hard to say
whether the events which I am about to
record appear more strange or improbable
as seen through the distorting medium of
tradition, or in the appalling dimness
of uncertainty which surrounds the
reality.

Tradition says that, sometime in the
last century, Sir Robert Ardagh, a young
man, and the last heir of that family, went
abroad and served in foreign armies; and
that, having acquired considerable honour
and emolument, he settled at Castle
Ardagh, the building we have just now
attempted to describe. He was what the
country people call a DARK man; that is,
he was considered morose, reserved, and
ill-tempered; and, as it was supposed from
the utter solitude of his life, was upon no
terms of cordiality with the other members
of his family.

The only occasion upon which he broke
through the solitary monotony of his life
was during the continuance of the racing
season, and immediately subsequent to it;
at which time he was to be seen among
the busiest upon the course, betting deeply
and unhesitatingly, and invariably with
success. Sir Robert was, however, too
well known as a man of honour, and of too
high a family, to be suspected of any unfair
dealing. He was, moreover, a soldier,
and a man of an intrepid as well as of a
haughty character; and no one cared to
hazard a surmise, the consequences of
which would be felt most probably by its
originator only.

Gossip, however, was not silent; it was
remarked that Sir Robert never appeared
at the race-ground, which was the only
place of public resort which he frequented,
except in company with a certain strange-
looking person, who was never seen
elsewhere, or under other circumstances. It
was remarked, too, that this man, whose
relation to Sir Robert was never distinctly
ascertained, was the only person to whom
he seemed to speak unnecessarily; it was
observed that while with the country
gentry he exchanged no further communication
than what was unavoidable in
arranging his sporting transactions, with
this person he would converse earnestly
and frequently. Tradition asserts that, to
enhance the curiosity which this unaccountable
and exclusive preference excited, the
stranger possessed some striking and
unpleasant peculiarities of person and of garb
--she does not say, however, what these
were--but they, in conjunction with Sir
Robert's secluded habits and extraordinary
run of luck--a success which was supposed
to result from the suggestions and
immediate advice of the unknown--were
sufficient to warrant report in pronouncing
that there was something QUEER in the
wind, and in surmising that Sir Robert
was playing a fearful and a hazardous game,
and that, in short, his strange companion
was little better than the devil himself

Years, however, rolled quietly away,
and nothing novel occurred in the arrangements
of Castle Ardagh, excepting that
Sir Robert parted with his odd companion,
but as nobody could tell whence he
came, so nobody could say whither he had
gone. Sir Robert's habits, however,
underwent no consequent change; he
continued regularly to frequent the race
meetings, without mixing at all in the
convivialities of the gentry, and
immediately afterwards to relapse into the
secluded monotony of his ordinary life.

It was said that he had accumulated
vast sums of money--and, as his bets were
always successful, and always large, such
must have been the case. He did not
suffer the acquisition of wealth, however,
to influence his hospitality or his
housekeeping--he neither purchased land, nor
extended his establishment; and his mode
of enjoying his money must have been
altogether that of the miser--consisting
merely in the pleasure of touching and
telling his gold, and in the consciousness
of wealth.

Sir Robert's temper, so far from
improving, became more than ever gloomy and
morose. He sometimes carried the indulgence
of his evil dispositions to such a
height that it bordered upon insanity.
During these paroxysms he would neither
eat, drink, nor sleep. On such occasions
he insisted on perfect privacy, even from
the intrusion of his most trusted servants;
his voice was frequently heard, sometimes
in earnest supplication, sometime
as if in loud and angry altercation with
some unknown visitant; sometimes he
would, for hours together, walk to and fro
throughout the long oak wainscoted
apartment, which he generally occupied,
with wild gesticulations and agitated pace,
in the manner of one who has been roused
to a state of unnatural excitement by some
sudden and appalling intimation.

These paroxysms of apparent lunacy
were so frightful, that during their
continuance even his oldest and most-faithful
domestics dared not approach him;
consequently, his hours of agony were never
intruded upon, and the mysterious causes
of his sufferings appeared likely to remain
hidden for ever.

On one occasion a fit of this kind
continued for an unusual time, the ordinary
term of their duration--about two
days--had been long past, and the old
servant who generally waited upon Sir
Robert after these visitations, having in
vain listened for the well-known tinkle of
his master's hand-bell, began to feel
extremely anxious; he feared that his master
might have died from sheer exhaustion, or
perhaps put an end to his own existence
during his miserable depression. These
fears at length became so strong, that
having in vain urged some of his brother
servants to accompany him, he determined
to go up alone, and himself see whether
any accident had befallen Sir Robert.

He traversed the several passages which
conducted from the new to the more
ancient parts of the mansion, and having
arrived in the old hall of the castle, the
utter silence of the hour, for it was very
late in the night, the idea of the nature of
the enterprise in which he was engaging
himself, a sensation of remoteness from
anything like human companionship, but,
more than all, the vivid but undefined
anticipation of something horrible, came
upon him with such oppressive weight that
he hesitated as to whether he should
proceed. Real uneasiness, however, respecting
the fate of his master, for whom he felt
that kind of attachment which the force of
habitual intercourse not unfrequently
engenders respecting objects not in themselves
amiable, and also a latent unwillingness
to expose his weakness to the ridicule
of his fellow-servants, combined to overcome
his reluctance; and he had just placed
his foot upon the first step of the staircase
which conducted to his master's chamber,
when his attention was arrested by a low
but distinct knocking at the hall-door.
Not, perhaps, very sorry at finding thus
an excuse even for deferring his intended
expedition, he placed the candle upon a
stone block which lay in the hall, and
approached the door, uncertain whether his
ears had not deceived him. This doubt
was justified by the circumstance that the
hall entrance had been for nearly fifty years
disused as a mode of ingress to the castle.
The situation of this gate also, which we
have endeavoured to describe, opening
upon a narrow ledge of rock which overhangs
a perilous cliff, rendered it at all
times, but particularly at night, a dangerous
entrance. This shelving platform of
rock, which formed the only avenue to the
door, was divided, as I have already stated,
by a broad chasm, the planks across which
had long disappeared by decay or otherwise,
so that it seemed at least highly im-
probable that any man could have found
his way across the passage in safety to the
door, more particularly on a night like
that, of singular darkness. The old man,
therefore, listened attentively, to ascertain
whether the first application should be
followed by another. He had not long to
wait; the same low but singularly distinct
knocking was repeated; so low that it
seemed as if the applicant had employed
no harder or heavier instrument than his
hand, and yet, despite the immense thickness
of the door, with such strength that
the sound was distinctly audible.

The knock was repeated a third time,
without any increase of loudness; and the old
man, obeying an impulse for which to his
dying hour he could never account, proceeded
to remove, one by one, the three great oaken
bars which secured the door. Time and
damp had effectually corroded the iron
chambers of the lock, so that it afforded
little resistance. With some effort, as he
believed, assisted from without, the old
servant succeeded in opening the door;
and a low, square-built figure, apparently
that of a man wrapped in a large black
cloak, entered the hall. The servant could
not see much of this visitant with any
distinctness; his dress appeared foreign, the
skirt of his ample cloak was thrown over
one shoulder; he wore a large felt hat,
with a very heavy leaf, from under which
escaped what appeared to be a mass of
long sooty-black hair; his feet were cased
in heavy riding-boots. Such were the few
particulars which the servant had time and
light to observe. The stranger desired
him to let his master know instantly that
a friend had come, by appointment, to
settle some business with him. The servant
hesitated, but a slight motion on the
part of his visitor, as if to possess himself
of the candle, determined him; so, taking
it in his hand, he ascended the castle stairs,
leaving his guest in the hall.

On reaching the apartment which opened
upon the oak-chamber he was surprised to
observe the door of that room partly open,
and the room itself lit up. He paused, but
there was no sound; he looked in, and saw
Sir Robert, his head and the upper part
of his body reclining on a table, upon
which burned a lamp; his arms were
stretched forward on either side, and
perfectly motionless; it appeared that, having
been sitting at the table, he had thus sunk
forward, either dead or in a swoon. There
was no sound of breathing; all was silent,
except the sharp ticking of a watch, which
lay beside the lamp. The servant coughed
twice or thrice, but with no effect; his
fears now almost amounted to certainty,
and he was approaching the table on which
his master partly lay, to satisfy himself of
his death, when Sir Robert slowly raised
his head, and throwing himself back in his
chair, fixed his eyes in a ghastly and
uncertain gaze upon his attendant. At length
he said, slowly and painfully, as if he
dreaded the answer:

'In God's name, what are you?"

'Sir,' said the servant, 'a strange gentleman
wants to see you below.'

At this intimation Sir Robert, starting
on his feet and tossing his arms wildly
upwards, uttered a shriek of such appalling
and despairing terror that it was almost
too fearful for human endurance; and long
after the sound had ceased it seemed to
the terrified imagination of the old servant
to roll through the deserted passages in
bursts of unnatural laughter. After a few
moments Sir Robert said:

'Can't you send him away? Why does
he come so soon? O God! O God! let
him leave me for an hour; a little time.
I can't see him now; try to get him away.
You see I can't go down now; I have not
strength. O God! O God! let him come
back in an hour; it is not long to wait.
He cannot lose anything by it; nothing,
nothing, nothing. Tell him that; say
anything to him.'

The servant went down. In his own
words, he did not feel the stairs under him
till he got to the hall. The figure stood
exactly as he had left it. He delivered his
master's message as coherently as he could.
The stranger replied in a careless tone:

'If Sir Robert will not come down to
me, I must go up to him.'

The man returned, and to his surprise
he found his master much more composed
in manner. He listened to the message,
and though the cold perspiration rose in
drops upon his forehead faster than he
could wipe it away, his manner had lost
the dreadful agitation which had marked
it before. He rose feebly, and casting a
last look of agony behind him, passed from
the room to the lobby, where he signed to
his attendant not to follow him. The man
moved as far as the head of the staircase,
from whence he had a tolerably distinct
view of the hall, which was imperfectly
lighted by the candle he had left there.

He saw his master reel, rather than
walk down the stairs, clinging all the way
to the banisters. He walked on, as if
about to sink every moment from weakness.
The figure advanced as if to meet
him, and in passing struck down the light.
The servant could see no more; but there
was a sound of struggling, renewed at
intervals with silent but fearful energy. It
was evident, however, that the parties
were approaching the door, for he heard
the solid oak sound twice or thrice, as the
feet of the combatants, in shuffling hither
and thither over the floor, struck upon it.
After a slight pause he heard the door
thrown open with such violence that the
leaf seemed to strike the side-wall of the
hall, for it was so dark without that this
could only be surmised by the sound.
The struggle was renewed with an agony
and intenseness of energy that betrayed
itself in deep-drawn gasps. One desperate
effort, which terminated in the breaking of
some part of the door, producing a sound
as if the door-post was wrenched from its
position, was followed by another wrestle,
evidently upon the narrow ledge which ran
outside the door, overtopping the precipice.
This proved to be the final struggle, for it
was followed by a crashing sound as if some
heavy body had fallen over, and was rushing
down the precipice, through the light
boughs that crossed near the top. All
then became still as the grave, except when
the moan of the night wind sighed up the
wooded glen.

The old servant had not nerve to return
through the hall, and to him the darkness
seemed all but endless; but morning at
length came, and with it the disclosure of
the events of the night. Near the door,
upon the ground, lay Sir Robert's sword-
belt, which had given way in the scuffle.
A huge splinter from the massive door-
post had been wrenched off by an almost
superhuman effort--one which nothing but
the gripe of a despairing man could have
severed--and on the rock outside were left
the marks of the slipping and sliding of
feet.

At the foot of the precipice, not
immediately under the castle, but dragged some
way up the glen, were found the remains
of Sir Robert, with hardly a vestige of a
limb or feature left distinguishable. The
right hand, however, was uninjured, and
in its fingers were clutched, with the
fixedness of death, a long lock of coarse
sooty hair--the only direct circumstantial
evidence of the presence of a second person.
So says tradition.

This story, as I have mentioned, was
current among the dealers in such lore;
but the original facts are so dissimilar in
all but the name of the principal person
mentioned and his mode of life, and the
fact that his death was accompanied with
circumstances of extraordinary mystery,
that the two narratives are totally
irreconcilable (even allowing the utmost for
the exaggerating influence of tradition),
except by supposing report to have combined
and blended together the fabulous
histories of several distinct bearers of
the family name. However this may be,
I shall lay before the reader a distinct
recital of the events from which the foregoing
tradition arose. With respect to
these there can be no mistake; they are
authenticated as fully as anything can be
by human testimony; and I state them
principally upon the evidence of a lady
who herself bore a prominent part in the
strange events which she related, and
which I now record as being among the
few well-attested tales of the marvellous
which it has been my fate to hear. I
shall, as far as I am able, arrange in one
combined narrative the evidence of several
distinct persons who were eye-witnesses of
what they related, and with the truth of
whose testimony I am solemnly and deeply
impressed.

Sir Robert Ardagh, as we choose to call
him, was the heir and representative of the
family whose name he bore; but owing to the
prodigality of his father, the estates descended
to him in a very impaired condition. Urged
by the restless spirit of youth, or more
probably by a feeling of pride which could not
submit to witness, in the paternal mansion,
what he considered a humiliating alteration
in the style and hospitality which up to
that time had distinguished his family,
Sir Robert left Ireland and went abroad.
How he occupied himself, or what countries
he visited during his absence, was never
known, nor did he afterwards make any
allusion or encourage any inquiries touching
his foreign sojourn. He left Ireland
in the year 1742, being then just of age,
and was not heard of until the year 1760
--about eighteen years afterwards--at
which time he returned. His personal
appearance was, as might have been
expected, very greatly altered, more altered,
indeed, than the time of his absence might
have warranted one in supposing likely.
But to counterbalance the unfavourable
change which time had wrought in his
form and features, he had acquired all the
advantages of polish of manner and refinement
of taste which foreign travel is sup-
posed to bestow. But what was truly
surprising was that it soon became evident
that Sir Robert was very wealthy--
wealthy to an extraordinary and unaccountable
degree; and this fact was made
manifest, not only by his expensive style
of living, but by his proceeding to dis-
embarrass his property, and to purchase
extensive estates in addition. Moreover,
there could be nothing deceptive in these
appearances, for he paid ready money for
everything, from the most important purchase
to the most trifling.

Sir Robert was a remarkably agreeable
man, and possessing the combined advantages
of birth and property, he was, as a
matter of course, gladly received into the
highest society which the metropolis then
commanded. It was thus that he became
acquainted with the two beautiful Miss
F----ds, then among the brightest ornaments
of the highest circle of Dublin
fashion. Their family was in more than
one direction allied to nobility; and Lady
D----, their elder sister by many years,
and sometime married to a once well-
known nobleman, was now their protectress.
These considerations, beside the
fact that the young ladies were what is
usually termed heiresses, though not to a
very great amount, secured to them a high
position in the best society which Ireland
then produced. The two young ladies
differed strongly, alike in appearance and
in character. The elder of the two, Emily,
was generally considered the handsomer--
for her beauty was of that impressive kind
which never failed to strike even at the first
glance, possessing as it did all the advantages
of a fine person and a commanding
carriage. The beauty of her features
strikingly assorted in character with that
of her figure and deportment. Her hair
was raven-black and richly luxuriant,
beautifully contrasting with the perfect
whiteness of her forehead--her finely
pencilled brows were black as the ringlets that
clustered near them--and her blue eyes, full,
lustrous, and animated, possessed all the
power and brilliancy of brown ones, with
more than their softness and variety of
expression. She was not, however, merely
the tragedy queen. When she smiled,
and that was not seldom, the dimpling
of cheek and chin, the laughing display
of the small and beautiful teeth--but,
more than all, the roguish archness of her
deep, bright eye, showed that nature had
not neglected in her the lighter and the
softer characteristics of woman.

Her younger sister Mary was, as I
believe not unfrequently occurs in the case
of sisters, quite in the opposite style of
beauty. She was light-haired, had more
colour, had nearly equal grace, with much
more liveliness of manner. Her eyes were
of that dark grey which poets so much
admire--full of expression and vivacity.
She was altogether a very beautiful and
animated girl--though as unlike her sister
as the presence of those two qualities
would permit her to be. Their dissimilarity
did not stop here--it was deeper
than mere appearance--the character of
their minds differed almost as strikingly
as did their complexion. The fair-haired
beauty had a large proportion of that
softness and pliability of temper which
physiognomists assign as the characteristics of
such complexions. She was much more
the creature of impulse than of feeling,
and consequently more the victim of
extrinsic circumstances than was her sister.
Emily, on the contrary, possessed considerable
firmness and decision. She was less
excitable, but when excited her feelings
were more intense and enduring. She
wanted much of the gaiety, but with it
the volatility of her younger sister. Her
opinions were adopted, and her friendships
formed more reflectively, and her affections
seemed to move, as it were, more slowly,
but more determinedly. This firmness of
character did not amount to anything
masculine, and did not at all impair the
feminine grace of her manners.

Sir Robert Ardagh was for a long time
apparently equally attentive to the two
sisters, and many were the conjectures and
the surmises as to which would be the lady
of his choice. At length, however, these
doubts were determined; he proposed for
and was accepted by the dark beauty,
Emily F----d.

The bridals were celebrated in a manner
becoming the wealth and connections of
the parties; and Sir Robert and Lady
Ardagh left Dublin to pass the honeymoon
at the family mansion, Castle
Ardagh, which had lately been fitted up
in a style bordering upon magnificent.
Whether in compliance with the wishes
of his lady, or owing to some whim of his
own, his habits were henceforward strikingly
altered; and from having moved
among the gayest if not the most
profligate of the votaries of fashion, he
suddenly settled down into a quiet, domestic,
country gentleman, and seldom, if ever,
visited the capital, and then his sojourns
were as brief as the nature of his business
would permit.

Lady Ardagh, however, did not suffer
from this change further than in being
secluded from general society; for Sir
Robert's wealth, and the hospitality which
he had established in the family mansion,
commanded that of such of his lady's
friends and relatives as had leisure or
inclination to visit the castle; and as their
style of living was very handsome, and its
internal resources of amusement considerable,
few invitations from Sir Robert or
his lady were neglected.

Many years passed quietly away, during
which Sir Robert's and Lady Ardagh's
hopes of issue were several times
disappointed. In the lapse of all this time
there occurred but one event worth
recording. Sir Robert had brought with
him from abroad a valet, who sometimes
professed himself to be French, at
others Italian, and at others again
German. He spoke all these languages
with equal fluency, and seemed to take a
kind of pleasure in puzzling the sagacity
and balking the curiosity of such of the
visitors at the castle as at any time
happened to enter into conversation with him,
or who, struck by his singularities, became
inquisitive respecting his country and
origin. Sir Robert called him by the
French name, JACQUE, and among the
lower orders he was familiarly known by
the title of 'Jack, the devil,' an appellation
which originated in a supposed malignity
of disposition and a real reluctance to
mix in the society of those who were
believed to be his equals. This morose
reserve, coupled with the mystery which
enveloped all about him, rendered him an
object of suspicion and inquiry to his
fellow-servants, amongst whom it was
whispered that this man in secret
governed the actions of Sir Robert with
a despotic dictation, and that, as if to
indemnify himself for his public and
apparent servitude and self-denial, he in
private exacted a degree of respectful
homage from his so-called master, totally
inconsistent with the relation generally
supposed to exist between them.

This man's personal appearance was, to
say the least of it, extremely odd; he was
low in stature; and this defect was
enhanced by a distortion of the spine, so
considerable as almost to amount to a hunch;
his features, too, had all that sharpness and
sickliness of hue which generally accompany
deformity; he wore his hair, which
was black as soot, in heavy neglected ringlets
about his shoulders, and always without
powder--a peculiarity in those days. There
was something unpleasant, too, in the
circumstance that he never raised his
eyes to meet those of another; this fact
was often cited as a proof of his being
something not quite right, and said to
result not from the timidity which is
supposed in most cases to induce this habit,
but from a consciousness that his eye
possessed a power which, if exhibited, would
betray a supernatural origin. Once, and
once only, had he violated this sinister
observance: it was on the occasion of Sir
Robert's hopes having been most bitterly
disappointed; his lady, after a severe and
dangerous confinement, gave birth to a
dead child. Immediately after the intelligence
had been made known, a servant,
having upon some business passed outside
the gate of the castle-yard, was met by
Jacque, who, contrary to his wont, accosted
him, observing, 'So, after all the pother,
the son and heir is still-born.' This
remark was accompanied by a chuckling
laugh, the only approach to merriment
which he was ever known to exhibit.
The servant, who was really disappointed,
having hoped for holiday times, feasting and
debauchery with impunity during the
rejoicings which would have accompanied a
christening, turned tartly upon the little
valet, telling him that he should let Sir
Robert know how he had received the
tidings which should have filled any faithful
servant with sorrow; and having once
broken the ice, he was proceeding with
increasing fluency, when his harangue was
cut short and his temerity punished, by
the little man raising his head and treating
him to a scowl so fearful, half-demoniac,
half-insane, that it haunted his imagination
in nightmares and nervous tremors
for months after.

To this man Lady Ardagh had, at first
sight, conceived an antipathy amounting to
horror, a mixture of loathing and dread so
very powerful that she had made it a
particular and urgent request to Sir Robert,
that he would dismiss him, offering herself,
from that property which Sir Robert had
by the marriage settlements left at her own
disposal, to provide handsomely for him,
provided only she might be relieved from
the continual anxiety and discomfort
which the fear of encountering him induced.

Sir Robert, however, would not hear of
it; the request seemed at first to agitate
and distress him; but when still urged in
defiance of his peremptory refusal, he burst
into a violent fit of fury; he spoke darkly
of great sacrifices which he had made, and
threatened that if the request were at any
time renewed he would leave both her and
the country for ever. This was, however,
a solitary instance of violence; his general
conduct towards Lady Ardagh, though at
no time uxorious, was certainly kind and
respectful, and he was more than repaid
in the fervent attachment which she bore
him in return.

Some short time after this strange
interview between Sir Robert and Lady
Ardagh; one night after the family had
retired to bed, and when everything had
been quiet for some time, the bell of Sir
Robert's dressing-room rang suddenly and
violently; the ringing was repeated again
and again at still shorter intervals, and
with increasing violence, as if the person
who pulled the bell was agitated by the
presence of some terrifying and imminent
danger. A servant named Donovan was
the first to answer it; he threw on his
clothes, and hurried to the room.

Sir Robert had selected for his private
room an apartment remote from the bed-
chambers of the castle, most of which lay
in the more modern parts of the mansion,
and secured at its entrance by a double
door. As the servant opened the first of
these, Sir Robert's bell again sounded with
a longer and louder peal; the inner door
resisted his efforts to open it; but after
a few violent struggles, not having been
perfectly secured, or owing to the inadequacy
of the bolt itself, it gave way, and
the servant rushed into the apartment,
advancing several paces before he could
recover himself. As he entered, he heard
Sir Robert's voice exclaiming loudly--
'Wait without, do not come in yet;'
but the prohibition came too late. Near
a low truckle-bed, upon which Sir Robert
sometimes slept, for he was a whimsical
man, in a large armchair, sat, or rather
lounged, the form of the valet Jacque, his
arms folded, and his heels stretched
forward on the floor, so as fully to exhibit his
misshapen legs, his head thrown back, and
his eyes fixed upon his master with a look
of indescribable defiance and derision, while,
as if to add to the strange insolence of his
attitude and expression, he had placed upon
his head the black cloth cap which it was
his habit to wear.

Sir Robert was standing before him, at
the distance of several yards, in a posture
expressive of despair, terror, and what
might be called an agony of humility.
He waved his hand twice or thrice, as if
to dismiss the servant, who, however,
remained fixed on the spot where he had
first stood; and then, as if forgetting
everything but the agony within him, he pressed
his clenched hands on his cold damp brow,
and dashed away the heavy drops that
gathered chill and thickly there.

Jacque broke the silence.

'Donovan,' said he, 'shake up that
drone and drunkard, Carlton; tell him
that his master directs that the travelling
carriage shall be at the door within half-
an-hour.'

The servant paused, as if in doubt as to
what he should do; but his scruples were
resolved by Sir Robert's saying hurriedly,
'Go--go, do whatever he directs; his
commands are mine; tell Carlton the
same.'

The servant hurried to obey, and in
about half-an-hour the carriage was at the
door, and Jacque, having directed the
coachman to drive to B----n, a small
town at about the distance of twelve
miles--the nearest point, however, at
which post-horses could be obtained--
stepped into the vehicle, which accordingly
quitted the castle immediately.

Although it was a fine moonlight night,
the carriage made its way but very slowly,
and after the lapse of two hours the travellers
had arrived at a point about eight miles
from the castle, at which the road strikes
through a desolate and heathy flat, sloping
up distantly at either side into bleak
undulatory hills, in whose monotonous sweep
the imagination beholds the heaving of
some dark sluggish sea, arrested in its
first commotion by some preternatural
power. It is a gloomy and divested spot;
there is neither tree nor habitation near it;
its monotony is unbroken, except by here
and there the grey front of a rock peering
above the heath, and the effect is rendered
yet more dreary and spectral by the
exaggerated and misty shadows which the
moon casts along the sloping sides of the
hills.

When they had gained about the
centre of this tract, Carlton, the coachman,
was surprised to see a figure standing
at some distance in advance, immediately
beside the road, and still more so when,
on coming up, he observed that it was no
other than Jacque whom he believed to
be at that moment quietly seated in the
carriage; the coachman drew up, and
nodding to him, the little valet exclaimed:

'Carlton, I have got the start of you;
the roads are heavy, so I shall even take
care of myself the rest of the way. Do
you make your way back as best you can,
and I shall follow my own nose.'

So saying, he chucked a purse into the
lap of the coachman, and turning off at a
right angle with the road, he began to
move rapidly away in the direction of the
dark ridge that lowered in the distance.

The servant watched him until he was
lost in the shadowy haze of night; and
neither he nor any of the inmates of the
castle saw Jacque again. His disappearance,
as might have been expected, did not cause
any regret among the servants and dependants
at the castle; and Lady Ardagh
did not attempt to conceal her delight;
but with Sir Robert matters were different,
for two or three days subsequent to this
event he confined himself to his room, and
when he did return to his ordinary
occupations, it was with a gloomy indifference,
which showed that he did so more from
habit than from any interest he felt in
them. He appeared from that moment
unaccountably and strikingly changed, and
thenceforward walked through life as a
thing from which he could derive neither
profit nor pleasure. His temper, however,
so far from growing wayward or
morose, became, though gloomy, very--
almost unnaturally--placid and cold; but
his spirits totally failed, and he grew silent
and abstracted.

These sombre habits of mind, as might
have been anticipated, very materially
affected the gay house-keeping of the
castle; and the dark and melancholy
spirit of its master seemed to have
communicated itself to the very domestics,
almost to the very walls of the mansion.

Several years rolled on in this way, and
the sounds of mirth and wassail had long
been strangers to the castle, when Sir
Robert requested his lady, to her great
astonishment, to invite some twenty or
thirty of their friends to spend the Christmas,
which was fast approaching, at the
castle. Lady Ardagh gladly complied,
and her sister Mary, who still continued
unmarried, and Lady D---- were of
course included in the invitations. Lady
Ardagh had requested her sisters to set
forward as early as possible, in order that
she might enjoy a little of their society
before the arrival of the other guests;
and in compliance with this request they
left Dublin almost immediately upon
receiving the invitation, a little more than
a week before the arrival of the festival
which was to be the period at which the
whole party were to muster.

For expedition's sake it was arranged
that they should post, while Lady D----'s
groom was to follow with her horses,
she taking with herself her own maid and
one male servant. They left the city
when the day was considerably spent, and
consequently made but three stages in
the first day; upon the second, at about
eight in the evening, they had reached the
town of K----k, distant about fifteen
miles from Castle Ardagh. Here, owing
to Miss F----d's great fatigue, she having
been for a considerable time in a very
delicate state of health, it was determined
to put up for the night. They, accord-
ingly, took possession of the best sitting-
room which the inn commanded, and Lady
D----remained in it to direct and urge
the preparations for some refreshment,
which the fatigues of the day had rendered
necessary, while her younger sister
retired to her bed-chamber to rest there
for a little time, as the parlour commanded
no such luxury as a sofa.

Miss F----d was, as I have already
stated, at this time in very delicate health;
and upon this occasion the exhaustion of
fatigue, and the dreary badness of the
weather, combined to depress her spirits.
Lady D---- had not been left long to
herself, when the door communicating
with the passage was abruptly opened,
and her sister Mary entered in a state of
great agitation; she sat down pale and
trembling upon one of the chairs, and it
was not until a copious flood of tears had
relieved her, that she became sufficiently
calm to relate the cause of her excitement
and distress. It was simply this. Almost
immediately upon lying down upon the
bed she sank into a feverish and unrefreshing
slumber; images of all grotesque
shapes and startling colours flitted before
her sleeping fancy with all the rapidity and
variety of the changes in a kaleidoscope.
At length, as she described it, a mist
seemed to interpose itself between her
sight and the ever-shifting scenery which
sported before her imagination, and out
of this cloudy shadow gradually emerged
a figure whose back seemed turned
towards the sleeper; it was that of a lady,
who, in perfect silence, was expressing
as far as pantomimic gesture could, by
wringing her hands, and throwing her
head from side to side, in the manner of
one who is exhausted by the over indulgence,
by the very sickness and impatience
of grief; the extremity of misery. For a
long time she sought in vain to catch a
glimpse of the face of the apparition, who
thus seemed to stir and live before her.
But at length the figure seemed to move
with an air of authority, as if about to
give directions to some inferior, and in
doing so, it turned its head so as to
display, with a ghastly distinctness, the
features of Lady Ardagh, pale as death,
with her dark hair all dishevelled, and
her eyes dim and sunken with weeping.
The revulsion of feeling which Miss
F----d experienced at this disclosure--
for up to that point she had contemplated
the appearance rather with a sense of
curiosity and of interest, than of anything
deeper--was so horrible, that the shock
awoke her perfectly. She sat up in the
bed, and looked fearfully around the
room, which was imperfectly lighted by a
single candle burning dimly, as if she
almost expected to see the reality of her
dreadful vision lurking in some corner of
the chamber. Her fears were, however,
verified, though not in the way she
expected; yet in a manner sufficiently
horrible--for she had hardly time to
breathe and to collect her thoughts, when
she heard, or thought she heard, the
voice of her sister, Lady Ardagh, sometimes
sobbing violently, and sometimes
almost shrieking as if in terror, and
calling upon her and Lady D----, with the
most imploring earnestness of despair, for
God's sake to lose no time in coming to
her. All this was so horribly distinct,
that it seemed as if the mourner was
standing within a few yards of the spot
where Miss F----d lay. She sprang from
the bed, and leaving the candle in the
room behind her, she made her way in the
dark through the passage, the voice still
following her, until as she arrived at the
door of the sitting-room it seemed to die
away in low sobbing.

As soon as Miss F----d was tolerably
recovered, she declared her determination
to proceed directly, and without further
loss of time, to Castle Ardagh. It was
not without much difficulty that Lady
D---- at length prevailed upon her to
consent to remain where they then were,
until morning should arrive, when it was
to be expected that the young lady would
be much refreshed by at least remaining
quiet for the night, even though sleep
were out of the question. Lady D----
was convinced, from the nervous and
feverish symptoms which her sister
exhibited, that she had already done too
much, and was more than ever satisfied of
the necessity of prosecuting the journey
no further upon that day. After some
time she persuaded her sister to return to
her room, where she remained with her
until she had gone to bed, and appeared
comparatively composed. Lady D----
then returned to the parlour, and not
finding herself sleepy, she remained sitting
by the fire. Her solitude was a second
time broken in upon, by the entrance of
her sister, who now appeared, if possible,
more agitated than before. She said that
Lady D---- had not long left the room,
when she was roused by a repetition of
the same wailing and lamentations, accom-
panied by the wildest and most agonized
supplications that no time should be lost
in coming to Castle Ardagh, and all in her
sister's voice, and uttered at the same
proximity as before. This time the voice
had followed her to the very door of the
sitting-room, and until she closed it,
seemed to pour forth its cries and sobs at
the very threshold.

Miss F----d now most positively
declared that nothing should prevent her
proceeding instantly to the castle, adding
that if Lady D---- would not accompany
her, she would go on by herself.
Superstitious feelings are at all times more or
less contagious, and the last century
afforded a soil much more congenial to
their growth than the present. Lady
D---- was so far affected by her sister's
terrors, that she became, at least, uneasy;
and seeing that her sister was immovably
determined upon setting forward immediately,
she consented to accompany her
forthwith. After a slight delay, fresh
horses were procured, and the two ladies
and their attendants renewed their journey,
with strong injunctions to the driver to
quicken their rate of travelling as much as
possible, and promises of reward in case of
his doing so.

Roads were then in much worse condition
throughout the south, even than
they now are; and the fifteen miles which
modern posting would have passed in little
more than an hour and a half, were not
completed even with every possible exertion
in twice the time. Miss F----d had
been nervously restless during the journey.
Her head had been constantly out of
the carriage window; and as they ap-
proached the entrance to the castle
demesne, which lay about a mile from the
building, her anxiety began to communicate
itself to her sister. The postillion
had just dismounted, and was endeavouring
to open the gate--at that time a
necessary trouble; for in the middle of
the last century porter's lodges were not
common in the south of Ireland, and locks
and keys almost unknown. He had just
succeeded in rolling back the heavy oaken
gate so as to admit the vehicle, when a
mounted servant rode rapidly down the
avenue, and drawing up at the carriage,
asked of the postillion who the party were;
and on hearing, he rode round to the
carriage window and handed in a note,
which Lady D---- received. By the
assistance of one of the coach-lamps they
succeeded in deciphering it. It was
scrawled in great agitation, and ran
thus:


'MY DEAR SISTER--MY DEAR SISTERS
BOTH,--In God's name lose no time, I am
frightened and miserable; I cannot explain
all till you come. I am too much terrified
to write coherently; but understand
me--hasten--do not waste a minute. I
am afraid you will come too late.
                              'E. A.'


The servant could tell nothing more
than that the castle was in great confusion,
and that Lady Ardagh had been crying
bitterly all the night. Sir Robert was
perfectly well. Altogether at a loss as to
the cause of Lady Ardagh's great distress,
they urged their way up the steep and
broken avenue which wound through the
crowding trees, whose wild and grotesque
branches, now left stripped and naked by the
blasts of winter, stretched drearily across
the road. As the carriage drew up in the
area before the door, the anxiety of the
ladies almost amounted to agony; and
scarcely waiting for the assistance of their
attendant, they sprang to the ground, and
in an instant stood at the castle door.
From within were distinctly audible the
sounds of lamentation and weeping, and
the suppressed hum of voices as if of those
endeavouring to soothe the mourner.
The door was speedily opened, and when
the ladies entered, the first object which
met their view was their sister, Lady
Ardagh, sitting on a form in the hall,
weeping and wringing her hands in deep
agony. Beside her stood two old, withered
crones, who were each endeavouring in
their own way to administer consolation,
without even knowing or caring what the
subject of her grief might be.

Immediately on Lady Ardagh's seeing
her sisters, she started up, fell on their
necks, and kissed them again and again
without speaking, and then taking them
each by a hand, still weeping bitterly, she
led them into a small room adjoining the
hall, in which burned a light, and, having
closed the door, she sat down between
them. After thanking them for the haste
they had made, she proceeded to tell them,
in words incoherent from agitation, that
Sir Robert had in private, and in the most
solemn manner, told her that he should die
upon that night, and that he had occupied
himself during the evening in giving minute
directions respecting the arrangements of
his funeral. Lady D---- here suggested
the possibility of his labouring under the
hallucinations of a fever; but to this Lady
Ardagh quickly replied:

'Oh! no, no! Would to God I could
think it. Oh! no, no! Wait till you
have seen him. There is a frightful calmness
about all he says and does; and his
directions are all so clear, and his mind so
perfectly collected, it is impossible, quite
impossible.' And she wept yet more
bitterly.

At that moment Sir Robert's voice was
heard in issuing some directions, as he
came downstairs; and Lady Ardagh
exclaimed, hurriedly:

'Go now and see him yourself. He is
in the hall.'

Lady D---- accordingly went out into
the hall, where Sir Robert met her; and,
saluting her with kind politeness, he said,
after a pause:

'You are come upon a melancholy mission--
the house is in great confusion, and
some of its inmates in considerable grief.'
He took her hand, and looking fixedly in
her face, continued: 'I shall not live to
see to-morrow's sun shine.'

'You are ill, sir, I have no doubt,'
replied she; 'but I am very certain we shall
see you much better to-morrow, and still
better the day following.'

'I am NOT ill, sister,' replied he. 'Feel
my temples, they are cool; lay your finger
to my pulse, its throb is slow and
temperate. I never was more perfectly in
health, and yet do I know that ere three
hours be past, I shall be no more.'

'Sir, sir,' said she, a good deal startled,
but wishing to conceal the impression which
the calm solemnity of his manner had, in
her own despite, made upon her, 'Sir, you
should not jest; you should not even speak
lightly upon such subjects. You trifle
with what is sacred--you are sporting with
the best affections of your wife----'

'Stay, my good lady,' said he; 'if when
this clock shall strike the hour of three, I
shall be anything but a helpless clod, then
upbraid me. Pray return now to your
sister. Lady Ardagh is, indeed, much to
be pitied; but what is past cannot now be
helped. I have now a few papers to
arrange, and some to destroy. I shall see
you and Lady Ardagh before my death;
try to compose her--her sufferings distress
me much; but what is past cannot now be
mended.'

Thus saying, he went upstairs, and Lady
D---- returned to the room where her
sisters were sitting.

'Well,' exclaimed Lady Ardagh, as she
re-entered, 'is it not so?--do you still
doubt?--do you think there is any hope?"

Lady D---- was silent.

'Oh! none, none, none,' continued she;
'I see, I see you are convinced.' And she
wrung her hands in bitter agony.

'My dear sister,' said Lady D----,
'there is, no doubt, something strange in
all that has appeared in this matter; but
still I cannot but hope that there may be
something deceptive in all the apparent
calmness of Sir Robert. I still must
believe that some latent fever has affected
his mind, or that, owing to the state of
nervous depression into which he has been
sinking, some trivial occurrence has been
converted, in his disordered imagination,
into an augury foreboding his immediate
dissolution.'

In such suggestions, unsatisfactory even
to those who originated them, and doubly
so to her whom they were intended to
comfort, more than two hours passed; and
Lady D---- was beginning to hope that
the fated term might elapse without the
occurrence of any tragical event, when Sir
Robert entered the room. On coming in,
he placed his finger with a warning gesture
upon his lips, as if to enjoin silence; and
then having successively pressed the hands
of his two sisters-in-law, he stooped sadly
over the fainting form of his lady, and
twice pressed her cold, pale forehead, with
his lips, and then passed silently out of
the room.

Lady D----, starting up, followed to the
door, and saw him take a candle in the hall,
and walk deliberately up the stairs. Stimulated
by a feeling of horrible curiosity, she
continued to follow him at a distance. She
saw him enter his own private room, and
heard him close and lock the door after him.
Continuing to follow him as far as she
could, she placed herself at the door of the
chamber, as noiselessly as possible, where
after a little time she was joined by her
two sisters, Lady Ardagh and Miss F----d.
In breathless silence they listened to what
should pass within. They distinctly heard
Sir Robert pacing up and down the room
for some time; and then, after a pause, a
sound as if some one had thrown himself
heavily upon the bed. At this moment
Lady D----, forgetting that the door had
been secured within, turned the handle for
the purpose of entering; when some one from
the inside, close to the door, said, 'Hush!
hush!' The same lady, now much alarmed,
knocked violently at the door; there was
no answer. She knocked again more vio-
lently, with no further success. Lady
Ardagh, now uttering a piercing shriek,
sank in a swoon upon the floor. Three or
four servants, alarmed by the noise, now
hurried upstairs, and Lady Ardagh was
carried apparently lifeless to her own
chamber. They then, after having knocked
long and loudly in vain, applied themselves
to forcing an entrance into Sir Robert's
room. After resisting some violent efforts,
the door at length gave way, and all
entered the room nearly together. There
was a single candle burning upon a table at
the far end of the apartment; and stretched
upon the bed lay Sir Robert Ardagh. He
was a corpse--the eyes were open--no
convulsion had passed over the features, or
distorted the limbs--it seemed as if the
soul had sped from the body without a
struggle to remain there. On touching
the body it was found to be cold as clay--
all lingering of the vital heat had left it.
They closed the ghastly eyes of the corpse,
and leaving it to the care of those who
seem to consider it a privilege of their age
and sex to gloat over the revolting spectacle
of death in all its stages, they
returned to Lady Ardagh, now a widow.
The party assembled at the castle, but the
atmosphere was tainted with death. Grief
there was not much, but awe and panic
were expressed in every face. The guests
talked in whispers, and the servants walked
on tiptoe, as if afraid of the very noise of
their own footsteps.

The funeral was conducted almost with
splendour. The body, having been conveyed,
in compliance with Sir Robert's last
directions, to Dublin, was there laid within
the ancient walls of St. Audoen's Church
--where I have read the epitaph, telling
the age and titles of the departed dust.
Neither painted escutcheon, nor marble
slab, have served to rescue from oblivion
the story of the dead, whose very name
will ere long moulder from their tracery

          'Et sunt sua fata sepulchris.'[1]


[1] This prophecy has since been realised; for the
aisle in which Sir Robert's remains were laid has been
suffered to fall completely to decay; and the tomb
which marked his grave, and other monuments more
curious, form now one indistinguishable mass of rubbish.


The events which I have recorded are
not imaginary. They are FACTS; and
there lives one whose authority none would
venture to question, who could vindicate
the accuracy of every statement which I
have set down, and that, too, with
all the circumstantiality of an eye-
witness.[2]


[2] This paper, from a memorandum, I find to have
been written in 1803. The lady to whom allusion is
made, I believe to be Miss Mary F----d. She never
married, and survived both her sisters, living to a very
advanced age.




THE LAST HEIR OF CASTLE CONNOR.

Being a third Extract from the legacy of the late Francis
Purcell, P. P. of Drumcoolagh.

There is something in the decay
of ancient grandeur to interest
even the most unconcerned
spectator--the evidences of greatness, of
power, and of pride that survive the wreck
of time, proving, in mournful contrast with
present desolation and decay, what WAS in
other days, appeal, with a resistless power,
to the sympathies of our nature. And
when, as we gaze on the scion of some
ruined family, the first impulse of nature
that bids us regard his fate with interest
and respect is justified by the recollection
of great exertions and self-devotion and
sacrifices in the cause of a lost country and
of a despised religion--sacrifices and
efforts made with all the motives of faithfulness
and of honour, and terminating in
ruin--in such a case respect becomes
veneration, and the interest we feel amounts
almost to a passion.

It is this feeling which has thrown
the magic veil of romance over every
roofless castle and ruined turret throughout
our country; it is this feeling that,
so long as a tower remains above
the level of the soil, so long as one scion
of a prostrate and impoverished family
survives, will never suffer Ireland 
to yield to the stranger more than the
'mouth honour' which fear compels.[3] I
who have conversed viva voce et propria
persona with those whose recollections
could run back so far as the times previous
to the confiscations which followed the
Revolution of 1688--whose memory could
repeople halls long roofless and desolate,
and point out the places where greatness
once had been, may feel all this more
strongly, and with a more vivid interest,
than can those whose sympathies are
awakened by the feebler influence of what
may be called the PICTURESQUE effects of
ruin and decay.


[3] This passage serves (mirabile dictu) to corroborate a
statement of Mr. O'Connell's, which occurs in his
evidence given before the House of Commons, wherein
he affirms that the principles of the Irish priesthood
'ARE democratic, and were those of Jacobinism.'--See
digest of the evidence upon the state of Ireland, given
before the House of Commons.


There do, indeed, still exist some
fragments of the ancient Catholic families of
Ireland; but, alas! what VERY fragments!
They linger like the remnants of her
aboriginal forests, reft indeed of their
strength and greatness, but proud even in
decay. Every winter thins their ranks,
and strews the ground with the wreck of
their loftiest branches; they are at best
but tolerated in the land which gave them
birth--objects of curiosity, perhaps of
pity, to one class, but of veneration to
another.

The O'Connors, of Castle Connor, were
an ancient Irish family. The name recurs
frequently in our history, and is generally
to be found in a prominent place whenever
periods of tumult or of peril called forth
the courage and the enterprise of this
country. After the accession of William
III., the storm of confiscation which
swept over the land made woeful havoc
in their broad domains. Some fragments
of property, however, did remain to them,
and with it the building which had for
ages formed the family residence.

About the year 17--, my uncle, a
Catholic priest, became acquainted with the
inmates of Castle Connor, and after a time
introduced me, then a lad of about fifteen,
full of spirits, and little dreaming that a
profession so grave as his should ever
become mine.

The family at that time consisted of but
two members, a widow lady and her only
son, a young man aged about eighteen. In
our early days the progress from acquaintance
to intimacy, and from intimacy to
friendship is proverbially rapid; and young
O'Connor and I became, in less than a
month, close and confidential companions--
an intercourse which ripened gradually into
an attachment ardent, deep, and devoted--
such as I believe young hearts only are
capable of forming.

He had been left early fatherless, and
the representative and heir of his family.
His mother's affection for him was intense
in proportion as there existed no other
object to divide it--indeed--such love as
that she bore him I have never seen
elsewhere. Her love was better bestowed
than that of mothers generally is, for
young O'Connor, not without some of the
faults, had certainly many of the most
engaging qualities of youth. He had all the
frankness and gaiety which attract, and
the generosity of heart which confirms
friendship; indeed, I never saw a person
so universally popular; his very faults
seemed to recommend him; he was wild,
extravagant, thoughtless, and fearlessly
adventurous--defects of character which,
among the peasantry of Ireland, are
honoured as virtues. The combination of
these qualities, and the position which
O'Connor occupied as representative of an
ancient Irish Catholic family--a peculiarly
interesting one to me, one of the old faith--
endeared him to me so much that I have
never felt the pangs of parting more keenly
than when it became necessary, for the
finishing of his education, that he should
go abroad.

Three years had passed away before I
saw him again. During the interval,
however, I had frequently heard from him,
so that absence had not abated the warmth
of our attachment. Who could tell of the
rejoicings that marked the evening of his
return? The horses were removed from
the chaise at the distance of a mile from
the castle, while it and its contents were
borne rapidly onward almost by the pressure
of the multitude, like a log upon a
torrent. Bonfires blared far and near--
bagpipes roared and fiddles squeaked; and,
amid the thundering shouts of thousands,
the carriage drew up before the
castle.

In an instant young O'Connor was upon
the ground, crying, 'Thank you, boys--
thank you, boys;' while a thousand hands
were stretched out from all sides to grasp
even a finger of his. Still, amid shouts of
'God bless your honour--long may you
reign!' and 'Make room there, boys! clear
the road for the masther!' he reached the
threshold of the castle, where stood his
mother weeping for joy.

Oh! who could describe that embrace,
or the enthusiasm with which it was
witnessed? 'God bless him to you, my lady--
glory to ye both!' and 'Oh, but he is a fine
young gentleman, God bless him!'
resounded on all sides, while hats flew up in
volleys that darkened the moon; and
when at length, amid the broad delighted
grins of the thronging domestics, whose
sense of decorum precluded any more
boisterous evidence of joy, they reached
the parlour, then giving way to the fulness
of her joy the widowed mother kissed and
blessed him and wept in turn. Well
might any parent be proud to claim as son
the handsome stripling who now represented
the Castle Connor family; but to
her his beauty had a peculiar charm, for it
bore a striking resemblance to that of her
husband, the last O'Connor.

I know not whether partiality blinded
me, or that I did no more than justice to
my friend in believing that I had never
seen so handsome a young man. I am
inclined to think the latter. He was rather
tall, very slightly and elegantly made; his
face was oval, and his features decidedly
Spanish in cast and complexion, but with
far more vivacity of expression than
generally belongs to the beauty of that nation.
The extreme delicacy of his features and
the varied animation of his countenance
made him appear even younger than his
years--an illusion which the total absence
of everything studied in his manners
seemed to confirm. Time had wrought no
small change in me, alike in mind and
spirits; but in the case of O'Connor it
seemed to have lost its power to alter.
His gaiety was undamped, his generosity
unchilled; and though the space which
had intervened between our parting and
reunion was but brief, yet at the period of
life at which we were, even a shorter
interval than that of three years has
frequently served to form or DEform a
character.

Weeks had passed away since the return
of O'Connor, and scarce a day had elapsed
without my seeing him, when the
neighbourhood was thrown into an unusual state
of excitement by the announcement of a
race-ball to be celebrated at the assembly-
room of the town of T----, distant scarcely
two miles from Castle Connor.

Young O'Connor, as I had expected,
determined at once to attend it; and
having directed in vain all the powers of
his rhetoric to persuade his mother to
accompany him, he turned the whole
battery of his logic upon me, who, at that
time, felt a reluctance stronger than that
of mere apathy to mixing in any of these
scenes of noisy pleasure for which for
many reasons I felt myself unfitted. He
was so urgent and persevering, however,
that I could not refuse; and I found myself
reluctantly obliged to make up my
mind to attend him upon the important
night to the spacious but ill-finished building,
which the fashion and beauty of the
county were pleased to term an assembly-
room.

When we entered the apartment, we
found a select few, surrounded by a crowd
of spectators, busily performing a minuet,
with all the congees and flourishes which
belonged to that courtly dance; and my
companion, infected by the contagion of
example, was soon, as I had anticipated,
waving his chapeau bras, and gracefully
bowing before one of the prettiest girls in
the room. I had neither skill nor spirits to
qualify me to follow his example; and as
the fulness of the room rendered it easy to
do so without its appearing singular, I
determined to be merely a spectator of
the scene which surrounded me, without
taking an active part in its amusements.

The room was indeed very much
crowded, so that its various groups, formed
as design or accident had thrown the
parties together, afforded no small fund
of entertainment to the contemplative
observer. There were the dancers, all
gaiety and good-humour; a little further
off were the tables at which sat the card-
players, some plying their vocation with
deep and silent anxiety--for in those days
gaming often ran very high in such places
--and others disputing with all the
vociferous pertinacity of undisguised ill-
temper. There, again, were the sallow,
blue-nosed, grey-eyed dealers in whispered
scandal; and, in short, there is scarcely a
group or combination to be met with in
the court of kings which might not have
found a humble parallel in the assembly-
room of T----.

I was allowed to indulge in undisturbed
contemplation, for I suppose I was not
known to more than five or six in the
room. I thus had leisure not only to
observe the different classes into which the
company had divided itself, but to amuse
myself by speculating as to the rank and
character of many of the individual actors
in the drama.

Among many who have long since
passed from my memory, one person for
some time engaged my attention, and that
person, for many reasons, I shall not soon
forget. He was a tall, square-shouldered
man, who stood in a careless attitude,
leaning with his back to the wall; he
seemed to have secluded himself from the
busy multitudes which moved noisily and
gaily around him, and nobody seemed to
observe or to converse with him. He was
fashionably dressed, but perhaps rather
extravagantly; his face was full and
heavy, expressive of sullenness and
stupidity, and marked with the lines of
strong vulgarity; his age might be somewhere
between forty and fifty. Such as I
have endeavoured to describe him, he
remained motionless, his arms doggedly
folded across his broad chest, and turning
his sullen eyes from corner to corner of
the room, as if eager to detect some object
on which to vent his ill-humour.

It is strange, and yet it is true, that one
sometimes finds even in the most commonplace
countenance an undefinable something,
which fascinates the attention, and
forces it to recur again and again, while it
is impossible to tell whether the peculiarity
which thus attracts us lies in feature or
in expression. or in both combined, and
why it is that our observation should be
engrossed by an object which, when
analysed, seems to possess no claim to
interest or even to notice. This
unaccountable feeling I have often experienced,
and I believe I am not singular. but never
in so remarkable a degree as upon this
occasion. My friend O'Connor, having
disposed of his fair partner, was crossing
the room for the purpose of joining me, in
doing which I was surprised to see him
exchange a familiar, almost a cordial,
greeting with the object of my curiosity.
I say I was surprised, for independent of
his very questionable appearance, it struck
me as strange that though so constantly
associated with O'Connor, and, as I
thought, personally acquainted with all
his intimates, I had never before even
seen this individual. I did not fail
immediately to ask him who this gentleman
was. I thought he seemed slightly
embarrassed, but after a moment's pause he
laughingly said that his friend over the
way was too mysterious a personage to
have his name announced in so giddy a
scene as the present; but that on the
morrow he would furnish me with all the
information which I could desire. There
was, I thought, in his affected jocularity a
real awkwardness which appeared to me
unaccountable, and consequently increased
my curiosity; its gratification, however, I
was obliged to defer. At length, wearied
with witnessing amusements in which I
could not sympathise, I left the room, and
did not see O'Connor until late in the next
day.

I had ridden down towards the castle
for the purpose of visiting the O'Connors,
and had nearly reached the avenue leading
to the mansion, when I met my friend.
He was also mounted; and having
answered my inquiries respecting his mother,
he easily persuaded me to accompany him
in his ramble. We had chatted as usual
for some time, when, after a pause,
O'Connor said:

'By the way, Purcell, you expressed
some curiosity respecting the tall,
handsome fellow to whom I spoke last
night.'

'I certainly did question you about a
TALL gentleman, but was not aware of his
claims to beauty,' replied I.

'Well, that is as it may be,' said he;
'the ladies think him handsome, and their
opinion upon that score is more valuable
than yours or mine. Do you know,' he
continued, 'I sometimes feel half sorry
that I ever made the fellow's acquaintance:
he is quite a marked man here, and they
tell stories of him that are anything but
reputable, though I am sure without
foundation. I think I know enough about
him to warrant me in saying so.'

'May I ask his name?' inquired I.

'Oh! did not I tell you his name?'
rejoined he. 'You should have heard
that first; he and his name are equally
well known. You will recognise the
individual at once when I tell you that
his name is--Fitzgerald.'

'Fitzgerald!' I repeated. 'Fitzgerald!
--can it be Fitzgerald the duellist?'

'Upon my word you have hit it,' replied
he, laughing; 'but you have accompanied
the discovery with a look of horror more
tragic than appropriate. He is not the
monster you take him for--he has a good
deal of old Irish pride; his temper is
hasty, and he has been unfortunately
thrown in the way of men who have not
made allowance for these things. I am
convinced that in every case in which
Fitzgerald has fought, if the truth could
be discovered, he would be found to have
acted throughout upon the defensive. No
man is mad enough to risk his own life,
except when the doing so is an alternative
to submitting tamely to what he considers
an insult. I am certain that no man ever
engaged in a duel under the consciousness
that he had acted an intentionally aggressive
part.'

'When did you make his acquaintance?'
said I.

'About two years ago,' he replied. 'I
met him in France, and you know when
one is abroad it is an ungracious task
to reject the advances of one's countryman,
otherwise I think I should have
avoided his society--less upon my own
account than because I am sure the
acquaintance would be a source of
continual though groundless uneasiness to
my mother. I know, therefore, that you
will not unnecessarily mention its existence
to her.'

I gave him the desired assurance, and
added:

'May I ask you. O'Connor, if, indeed, it
be a fair question, whether this Fitzgerald
at any time attempted to engage you in
anything like gaming?'

This question was suggested by my
having frequently heard Fitzgerald
mentioned as a noted gambler, and sometimes
even as a blackleg. O'Connor seemed, I
thought, slightly embarrassed. He answered:

'No, no--I cannot say that he ever
attempted anything of the kind. I
certainly have played with him, but never
lost to any serious amount; nor can I
recollect that he ever solicited me--indeed
he knows that I have a strong objection to
deep play. YOU must be aware that my
finances could not bear much pruning
down. I never lost more to him at a
sitting than about five pounds, which you
know is nothing. No, you wrong him if
you imagine that he attached himself to
me merely for the sake of such contemptible
winnings as those which a broken-down
Irish gentleman could afford him. Come,
Purcell, you are too hard upon him--you
judge only by report; you must see
him, and decide for yourself.--Suppose we
call upon him now; he is at the inn, in the
High Street, not a mile off.'

I declined the proposal drily.

'Your caution is too easily alarmed,'
said he. 'I do not wish you to make this
man your bosom friend: I merely desire
that you should see and speak to him, and
if you form any acquaintance with him, it
must be of that slight nature which can
be dropped or continued at pleasure.'

From the time that O'Connor had
announced the fact that his friend was no
other than the notorious Fitzgerald, a
foreboding of something calamitous had
come upon me, and it now occurred to me
that if any unpleasantness were to be
feared as likely to result to O'Connor from
their connection, I might find my attempts
to extricate him much facilitated by my
being acquainted, however slightly, with
Fitzgerald. I know not whether the idea
was reasonable--it was certainly natural;
and I told O'Connor that upon second
thoughts I would ride down with him to
the town, and wait upon Mr. Fitzgerald.

We found him at home; and chatted
with him for a considerable time. To my
surprise his manners were perfectly those
of a gentleman, and his conversation, if
not peculiarly engaging, was certainly
amusing. The politeness of his demeanour,
and the easy fluency with which he
told his stories and his anecdotes, many of
them curious, and all more or less
entertaining, accounted to my mind at once for
the facility with which he had improved
his acquaintance with O'Connor; and
when he pressed upon us an invitation to
sup with him that night, I had almost
joined O'Connor in accepting it. I determined,
however, against doing so, for I
had no wish to be on terms of familiarity
with Mr. Fitzgerald; and I knew that
one evening spent together as he proposed
would go further towards establishing an
intimacy between us than fifty morning
visits could do. When I arose to depart,
it was with feelings almost favourable to
Fitzgerald; indeed I was more than half
ashamed to acknowledge to my companion
how complete a revolution in my opinion
respecting his friend half an hour's
conversation with him had wrought. His
appearance certainly WAS against him; but
then, under the influence of his manner,
one lost sight of much of its ungainliness,
and of nearly all its vulgarity; and, on
the whole, I felt convinced that report
had done him grievous wrong, inasmuch
as anybody, by an observance of the
common courtesies of society, might easily
avoid coming into personal collision with
a gentleman so studiously polite as
Fitzgerald. At parting, O'Connor requested
me to call upon him the next day, as he
intended to make trial of the merits of a
pair of greyhounds, which he had thoughts
of purchasing; adding, that if he could
escape in anything like tolerable time
from Fitzgerald's supper-party, he would
take the field soon after ten on the next
morning. At the appointed hour, or
perhaps a little later, I dismounted at
Castle Connor; and, on entering the hall,
I observed a gentleman issuing from
O'Connor's private room. I recognised
him, as he approached, as a Mr.
M'Donough, and, being but slightly
acquainted with him, was about to pass
him with a bow, when he stopped me.
There was something in his manner which
struck me as odd; he seemed a good
deal flurried if not agitated, and said, in a
hurried tone:

'This is a very foolish business, Mr.
Purcell. You have some influence with
my friend O'Connor; I hope you can
induce him to adopt some more moderate
line of conduct than that he has decided
upon. If you will allow me, I will return
for a moment with you, and talk over the
matter again with O'Connor.'

As M'Donough uttered these words, I
felt that sudden sinking of the heart which
accompanies the immediate anticipation of
something dreaded and dreadful. I was
instantly convinced that O'Connor had
quarrelled with Fitzgerald, and I knew
that if such were the case, nothing short
of a miracle could extricate him from the
consequences. I signed to M'Donough to
lead the way, and we entered the little
study together. O'Connor was standing
with his back to the fire; on the table lay
the breakfast-things in the disorder in
which a hurried meal had left them; and
on another smaller table, placed near the
hearth, lay pen, ink, and paper. As soon
as O'Connor saw me, he came forward and
shook me cordially by the hand.

'My dear Purcell,' said he, 'you are the
very man I wanted. I have got into an
ugly scrape, and I trust to my friends to
get me out of it.'

'You have had no dispute with that
man--that Fitzgerald, I hope,' said I,
giving utterance to the conjecture whose
truth I most dreaded.

'Faith, I cannot say exactly what
passed between us,' said he, 'inasmuch
as I was at the time nearly half seas
over; but of this much I am certain, that
we exchanged angry words last night. I
lost my temper most confoundedly; but,
as well as I can recollect, he appeared
perfectly cool and collected. What he said
was, therefore, deliberately said, and on
that account must be resented.'

'My dear O'Connor, are you mad?' I
exclaimed. 'Why will you seek to drive
to a deadly issue a few hasty words,
uttered under the influence of wine, and
forgotten almost as soon as uttered? A
quarrel with Fitzgerald it is twenty
chances to one would terminate fatally
to you.'

'It is exactly because Fitzgerald IS such
an accomplished shot,' said he, 'that I
become liable to the most injurious and
intolerable suspicions if I submit to
anything from him which could be construed
into an affront; and for that reason
Fitzgerald is the very last man to whom I
would concede an inch in a case of
honour.'

'I do not require you to make any, the
slightest sacrifice of what you term your
honour,' I replied; 'but if you have
actually written a challenge to Fitzgerald,
as I suspect you have done, I conjure you
to reconsider the matter before you
despatch it. From all that I have heard
you say, Fitzgerald has more to complain
of in the altercation which has taken place
than you. You owe it to your only surviving
parent not to thrust yourself thus
wantonly upon--I will say it, the most
appalling danger. Nobody, my dear
O'Connor, can have a doubt of your
courage; and if at any time, which God
forbid, you shall be called upon thus to
risk your life, you should have it in your
power to enter the field under the
consciousness that you have acted throughout
temperately and like a man, and not, as I
fear you now would do, having rashly and
most causelessly endangered your own life
and that of your friend.'

'I believe, Purcell, your are right,' said
he. 'I believe I HAVE viewed the matter
in too decided a light; my note, I think,
scarcely allows him an honourable alternative,
and that is certainly going a step
too far--further than I intended. Mr.
M'Donough, I'll thank you to hand me
the note.'

He broke the seal, and, casting his eye
hastily over it, he continued:

'It is, indeed, a monument of folly. I
am very glad, Purcell, you happened to
come in, otherwise it would have reached
its destination by this time.'

He threw it into the fire; and, after a
moment's pause, resumed:

'You must not mistake me, however.
I am perfectly satisfied as to the propriety,
nay, the necessity, of communicating with
Fitzgerald. The difficulty is in what tone
I should address him. I cannot say that
the man directly affronted me--I cannot
recollect any one expression which I could
lay hold upon as offensive--but his
language was ambiguous, and admitted
frequently of the most insulting construction,
and his manner throughout was
insupportably domineering. I know it
impressed me with the idea that he presumed
upon his reputation as a DEAD SHOT, and
that would be utterly unendurable'

'I would now recommend, as I have
already done,' said M'Donough, 'that if
you write to Fitzgerald, it should be in
such a strain as to leave him at perfect
liberty, without a compromise of honour,
in a friendly way, to satisfy your doubts as
to his conduct.'

I seconded the proposal warmly, and
O'Connor, in a few minutes, finished a
note, which he desired us to read. It was
to this effect:


'O'Connor, of Castle Connor, feeling
that some expressions employed by Mr.
Fitzgerald upon last night, admitted of a
construction offensive to him, and injurious
to his character, requests to know whether
Mr. Fitzgerald intended to convey such a
meaning.
     'Castle Connor, Thursday morning.'


This note was consigned to the care of
Mr. M'Donough, who forthwith departed
to execute his mission. The sound of his
horse's hoofs, as he rode rapidly away,
struck heavily at my heart; but I found
some satisfaction in the reflection that
M'Donough appeared as averse from extreme
measures as I was myself, for I
well knew, with respect to the final result
of the affair, that as much depended upon
the tone adopted by the SECOND, as upon
the nature of the written communication.

I have seldom passed a more anxious
hour than that which intervened between
the departure and the return of that
gentleman. Every instant I imagined I heard
the tramp of a horse approaching, and
every time that a door opened I fancied
it was to give entrance to the eagerly
expected courier. At length I did hear the
hollow and rapid tread of a horse's hoof
upon the avenue. It approached--it
stopped--a hurried step traversed the
hall--the room door opened, and
M'Donough entered.

'You have made great haste,' said
O'Connor; 'did you find him at home?'

'I did,' replied M'Donough, 'and made
the greater haste as Fitzgerald did not let
me know the contents of his reply.'

At the same time he handed a note to
O'Connor, who instantly broke the seal.
The words were as follow:


'Mr. Fitzgerald regrets that anything
which has fallen from him should have
appeared to Mr. O'Connor to be intended
to convey a reflection upon his honour
(none such having been meant), and begs
leave to disavow any wish to quarrel
unnecessarily with Mr. O'Connor.
     'T---- Inn, Thursday morning.'


I cannot describe how much I felt
relieved on reading the above communication.
I took O'Connor's hand and pressed
it warmly, but my emotions were deeper
and stronger than I cared to show, for I
was convinced that he had escaped a most
imminent danger. Nobody whose notions
upon the subject are derived from the
duelling of modern times, in which matters
are conducted without any very sanguinary
determination upon either side, and with
equal want of skill and coolness by both
parties, can form a just estimate of the
danger incurred by one who ventured to
encounter a duellist of the old school.
Perfect coolness in the field, and a steadiness
and accuracy (which to the unpractised
appeared almost miraculous) in the
use of the pistol, formed the characteristics
of this class; and in addition to this there
generally existed a kind of professional
pride, which prompted the duellist, in
default of any more malignant feeling,
from motives of mere vanity, to seek the
life of his antagonist. Fitzgerald's career
had been a remarkably successful one, and
I knew that out of thirteen duels which
he had fought in Ireland, in nine cases he
had KILLED his man. In those days one
never heard of the parties leaving the field,
as not unfrequently now occurs, without
blood having been spilt; and the odds
were, of course, in all cases tremendously
against a young and unpractised
man, when matched with an experienced
antagonist. My impression respecting the
magnitude of the danger which my friend
had incurred was therefore by no means
unwarranted.

I now questioned O'Connor more
accurately respecting the circumstances of
his quarrel with Fitzgerald. It arose
from some dispute respecting the application
of a rule of piquet, at which game
they had been playing, each interpreting
it favourably to himself, and O'Connor,
having lost considerably, was in no mood
to conduct an argument with temper--an
altercation ensued, and that of rather a
pungent nature, and the result was that
he left Fitzgerald's room rather abruptly,
determined to demand an explanation in
the most peremptory tone. For this
purpose he had sent for M'Donough, and had
commissioned him to deliver the note,
which my arrival had fortunately intercepted.

As it was now past noon, O'Connor
made me promise to remain with him to
dinner; and we sat down a party of three,
all in high spirits at the termination of
our anxieties. It is necessary to mention,
for the purpose of accounting for what
follows, that Mrs. O'Connor, or, as she was
more euphoniously styled, the lady of
Castle Connor, was precluded by ill-health
from taking her place at the dinner-table,
and, indeed, seldom left her room before
four o'clock.[4] We were sitting after
dinner sipping our claret, and talking,
and laughing, and enjoying ourselves
exceedingly, when a servant, stepping into
the room, informed his master that a
gentleman wanted to speak with him.


[4] It is scarcely necessary to remind the reader, that
at the period spoken of, the important hour of dinner
occurred very nearly at noon.


'Request him, with my compliments, to
walk in,' said O'Connor; and in a few
moments a gentleman entered the room.

His appearance was anything but
prepossessing. He was a little above the
middle size, spare, and raw-boned; his
face very red, his features sharp and bluish,
and his age might be about sixty. His
attire savoured a good deal of the SHABBY-
GENTEEL; his clothes, which had much of
tarnished and faded pretension about
them, did not fit him, and had not
improbably fluttered in the stalls of
Plunket Street. We had risen on his
entrance, and O'Connor had twice requested
of him to take a chair at the table, without
his hearing, or at least noticing, the
invitation; while with a slow pace, and
with an air of mingled importance and
effrontery, he advanced into the centre of
the apartment, and regarding our small
party with a supercilious air, he said:

'I take the liberty of introducing
myself--I am Captain M'Creagh, formerly
of the--infantry. My business here is
with a Mr. O'Connor, and the sooner it is
despatched the better.'

'I am the gentleman you name,' said
O'Connor; 'and as you appear impatient,
we had better proceed to your commission
without delay.'

'Then, Mr. O'Connor, you will please
to read that note,' said the captain, placing
a sealed paper in his hand.

O'Connor read it through, and then
observed:

'This is very extraordinary indeed.
This note appears to me perfectly unaccountable.'

'You are very young, Mr. O'Connor,'
said the captain, with vulgar familiarity;
'but, without much experience in these
matters, I think you might have anticipated
something like this. You know
the old saying, "Second thoughts are
best;" and so they are like to prove, by
G--!'

'You will have no objection, Captain
M'Creagh, on the part of your friend, to
my reading this note to these gentlemen;
they are both confidential friends of mine,
and one of them has already acted for me
in this business.'

'I can have no objection,' replied the
captain, 'to your doing what you please
with your own. I have nothing more to
do with that note once I put it safe into
your hand; and when that is once done, it
is all one to me, if you read it to half the
world--that's YOUR concern, and no affair
of mine.'

O'Connor then read the following:


'Mr. Fitzgerald begs leave to state, that
upon re-perusing Mr. O'Connor's communication
of this morning carefully, with
an experienced friend, he is forced to
consider himself as challenged. His
friend, Captain M'Creagh, has been empowered
by him to make all the necessary
arrangements.
     'T---- Inn, Thursday.'


I can hardly describe the astonishment
with which I heard this note. I turned to
the captain, and said:

'Surely, sir, there is some mistake in all
this?'

'Not the slightest, I'll assure you, sir.'
said he, coolly; 'the case is a very clear
one, and I think my friend has pretty well
made up his mind upon it. May I
request your answer?' he continued, turning
to O'Connor; 'time is precious, you
know.'

O'Connor expressed his willingness to
comply with the suggestion, and in a few
minutes had folded and directed the following
rejoinder:


'Mr. O'Connor having received a
satisfactory explanation from Mr.
Fitzgerald, of the language used by that
gentleman, feels that there no longer exists
any grounds for misunderstanding, and
wishes further to state, that the note of
which Mr. Fitzgerald speaks was not
intended as a challenge.'


With this note the captain departed; and
as we did not doubt that the message which
he had delivered had been suggested by
some unintentional misconstruction of
O'Connor's first billet, we felt assured that
the conclusion of his last note would set
the matter at rest. In this belief, however,
we were mistaken; before we had left the
table, and in an incredibly short time, the
captain returned. He entered the room
with a countenance evidently tasked to
avoid expressing the satisfaction which a
consciousness of the nature of his mission
had conferred; but in spite of all his efforts
to look gravely unconcerned, there was a
twinkle in the small grey eye, and an
almost imperceptible motion in the corner
of the mouth, which sufficiently betrayed
his internal glee, as he placed a note in
the hand of O'Connor. As the young
man cast his eye over it, he coloured
deeply, and turning to M'Donough, he
said:

'You will have the goodness to make
all the necessary arrangements for a meeting.
Something has occurred to render
one between me and Mr. Fitzgerald
inevitable. Understand me literally, when
I say that it is now totally impossible that
this affair should be amicably arranged.
You will have the goodness, M'Donough,
to let me know as soon as all the particulars
are arranged. Purcell,' he continued,
'will you have the kindness to accompany
me?' and having bowed to M'Creagh, we
left the room.

As I closed the door after me, I heard
the captain laugh, and thought I could
distinguish the words--'By ---- I knew
Fitzgerald would bring him to his way of
thinking before he stopped.'

I followed O'Connor into his study, and
on entering, the door being closed, he
showed me the communication which had
determined him upon hostilities. Its
language was grossly impertinent, and it
concluded by actually threatening to 'POST'
him, in case he further attempted 'to be
OFF.' I cannot describe the agony of
indignation in which O'Connor writhed under
this insult. He said repeatedly that 'he
was a degraded and dishohoured man,'
that 'he was dragged into the field,' that
'there was ignominy in the very thought
that such a letter should have been directed
to him.' It was in vain that I reasoned
against this impression; the conviction
that he had been disgraced had taken
possession of his mind. He said again and
again that nothing but his DEATH could
remove the stain which his indecision had
cast upon the name of his family. I
hurried to the hall, on hearing M'Donough
and the captain passing, and reached the
door just in time to hear the latter say, as
he mounted his horse:

'All the rest can be arranged on the
spot; and so farewell, Mr. M'Donough--
we'll meet at Philippi, you know;' and
with this classical allusion, which was
accompanied with a grin and a bow, and
probably served many such occasions, the
captain took his departure.

M'Donough briefly stated the few
particulars which had been arranged. The
parties were to meet at the stand-house,
in the race-ground, which lay at about an
equal distance between Castle Connor and
the town of T----. The hour appointed
was half-past five on the next morning,
at which time the twilight would be
sufficiently advanced to afford a distinct view;
and the weapons to be employed were
PISTOLS--M'Creagh having claimed, on the
part of his friend, all the advantages of the
CHALLENGED party, and having, consequently,
insisted upon the choice of 'TOOLS,' as he
expressed himself; and it was further
stipulated that the utmost secrecy should
be observed, as Fitzgerald would incur
great risk from the violence of the
peasantry, in case the affair took wind.
These conditions were, of course, agreed
upon by O'Connor, and M'Donough left
the castle, having appointed four o'clock
upon the next morning as the hour of his
return, by which time it would be his
business to provide everything necessary
for the meeting. On his departure,
O'Connor requested me to remain with
him upon that evening, saying that 'he
could not bear to be alone with his
mother.' It was to me a most painful
request, but at the same time one which I
could not think of refusing. I felt,
however, that the difficulty at least of the
task which I had to perform would be in
some measure mitigated by the arrival
of two relations of O'Connor upon that
evening.

'It is very fortunate,' said O'Connor,
whose thoughts had been running upon
the same subject, 'that the O'Gradys will
be with us to-night; their gaiety and
good-humour will relieve us from a heavy
task. I trust that nothing may occur to
prevent their coming.' Fervently concurring
in the same wish, I accompanied
O'Connor into the parlour, there to await
the arrival of his mother.

God grant that I may never spend such
another evening! The O'Gradys DID come,
but their high and noisy spirits, so far from
relieving me, did but give additional gloom
to the despondency, I might say the despair,
which filled my heart with misery--
the terrible forebodings which I could not
for an instant silence, turned their laughter
into discord, and seemed to mock the smiles
and jests of the unconscious party. When
I turned my eyes upon the mother, I
thought I never had seen her look so
proudly and so lovingly upon her son
before--it cut me to the heart--oh, how
cruelly I was deceiving her! I was a
hundred times on the very point of start-
ing up, and, at all hazards, declaring to
her how matters were; but other feelings
subdued my better emotions. Oh, what
monsters are we made of by the fashions of
the world! how are our kindlier and nobler
feelings warped or destroyed by their baleful
influences! I felt that it would not be
HONOURABLE, that it would not be ETIQUETTE,
to betray O'Connor's secret. I sacrificed a
higher and a nobler duty than I have since
been called upon to perform, to the dastardly
fear of bearing the unmerited censure
of a world from which I was about to
retire. O Fashion! thou gaudy idol,
whose feet are red with the blood of human
sacrifice, would I had always felt towards
thee as I now do!

O'Connor was not dejected; on the
contrary, he joined with loud and lively
alacrity in the hilarity of the little party;
but I could see in the flush of his cheek,
and in the unusual brightness of his eye,
all the excitement of fever--he was making
an effort almost beyond his strength, but
he succeeded--and when his mother rose
to leave the room, it was with the impression
that her son was the gayest and most
light-hearted of the company. Twice or
thrice she had risen with the intention of
retiring, but O'Connor, with an eagerness
which I alone could understand, had
persuaded her to remain until the usual hour
of her departure had long passed; and
when at length she arose, declaring that
she could not possibly stay longer, I alone
could comprehend the desolate change
which passed over his manner; and when
I saw them part, it was with the sickening
conviction that those two beings, so dear
to one another, so loved, so cherished,
should meet no more.

O'Connor briefly informed his cousins of
the position in which he was placed,
requesting them at the same time to accompany
him to the field, and this having
been settled, we separated, each to his own
apartment. I had wished to sit up with
O'Connor, who had matters to arrange
sufficient to employ him until the hour
appointed for M'Donough's visit; but he
would not hear of it, and I was forced,
though sorely against my will, to leave him
without a companion. I went to my room,
and, in a state of excitement which I cannot
describe, I paced for hours up and
down its narrow precincts. I could not--
who could?--analyse the strange, contradictory,
torturing feelings which, while I
recoiled in shrinking horror from the scene
which the morning was to bring, yet forced
me to wish the intervening time annihilated;
each hour that the clock told seemed
to vibrate and tinkle through every nerve;
my agitation was dreadful; fancy conjured
up the forms of those who filled my
thoughts with more than the vividness of
reality; things seemed to glide through
the dusky shadows of the room. I saw
the dreaded form of Fitzgerald--I heard
the hated laugh of the captain--and again
the features of O'Connor would appear
before me, with ghastly distinctness, pale
and writhed in death, the gouts of gore
clotted in the mouth, and the eye-balls
glared and staring. Scared with the
visions which seemed to throng with
unceasing rapidity and vividness, I threw
open the window and looked out upon the
quiet scene around. I turned my eyes in
the direction of the town; a heavy cloud
was lowering darkly about it, and I, in
impious frenzy, prayed to God that it
might burst in avenging fires upon the
murderous wretch who lay beneath. At
length, sick and giddy with excess of
excitement, I threw myself upon the bed
without removing my clothes, and endeavoured
to compose myself so far as to
remain quiet until the hour for our
assembling should arrive.

A few minutes before four o'clock I stole
noiselessly downstairs, and made my way
to the small study already mentioned. A
candle was burning within; and, when I
opened the door, O'Connor was reading a
book, which, on seeing me, he hastily
closed, colouring slightly as he did so.
We exchanged a cordial but mournful
greeting; and after a slight pause he said,
laying his hand upon the volume which he
had shut a moment before:

'Purcell, I feel perfectly calm, though I
cannot say that I have much hope as to
the issue of this morning's rencounter. I
shall avoid half the danger. If I must
fall, I am determined I shall not go down
to the grave with his blood upon my
hands. I have resolved not to fire at
Fitzgerald--that is, to fire in such a direction
as to assure myself against hitting him.
Do not say a word of this to the O'Gradys.
Your doing so would only produce fruitless
altercation; they could not understand my
motives. I feel convinced that I shall not
leave the field alive. If I must die to-
day, I shall avoid an awful aggravation of
wretchedness. Purcell,' he continued, after
a little space, 'I was so weak as to feel
almost ashamed of the manner in which I
was occupied as you entered the room.
Yes, _I--I_ who will be, before this evening,
a cold and lifeless clod, was ashamed to
have spent my last moment of reflection in
prayer. God pardon me! God pardon
me!' he repeated.

I took his hand and pressed it, but I
could not speak. I sought for words of
comfort, but they would not come. To
have uttered one cheering sentence I must
have contradicted every impression of my
own mind. I felt too much awed to
attempt it. Shortly afterwards, M'Donough
arrived. No wretched patient ever underwent
a more thrilling revulsion at the first
sight of the case of surgical instruments
under which he had to suffer, than did I
upon beholding a certain oblong flat
mahogany box, bound with brass, and of
about two feet in length, laid upon the
table in the hall. O'Connor, thanking him
for his punctuality, requested him to come
into his study for a moment, when, with a
melancholy collectedness, he proceeded to
make arrangements for our witnessing his
will. The document was a brief one, and
the whole matter was just arranged, when
the two O'Gradys crept softly into the
room.

'So! last will and testament,' said the
elder. 'Why, you have a very BLUE notion
of these matters. I tell you, you need not
be uneasy. I remember very well, when
young Ryan of Ballykealey met M'Neil
the duellist, bets ran twenty to one against
him. I stole away from school, and had a
peep at the fun as well as the best of them.
They fired together. Ryan received the
ball through the collar of his coat, and
M'Neil in the temple; he spun like a top:
it was a most unexpected thing, and
disappointed his friends damnably. It was
admitted, however, to have been very
pretty shooting upon both sides. To be
sure,' he continued, pointing to the will,
'you are in the right to keep upon the
safe side of fortune; but then, there is no
occasion to be altogether so devilish down
in the mouth as you appear to be.'

'You will allow,' said O'Connor, 'that
the chances are heavily against me.'

'Why, let me see,' he replied, 'not so
hollow a thin,, either. Let me see, we'll say
about four to one against you; you may
chance to throw doublets like him I told
you of, and then what becomes of the odds
I'd like to know? But let things go as
they will, I'll give and take four to one,
in pounds and tens of pounds. There,
M'Donough, there's a GET for you; b--t
me, if it is not. Poh! the fellow is stolen
away,' he continued, observing that the
object of his proposal had left the room;
'but d---- it, Purcell, you are fond of a SOFT
THING, too, in a quiet way--I'm sure you are
--so curse me if I do not make you the
same offer-is it a go?'

I was too much disgusted to make any
reply, but I believe my looks expressed
my feelings sufficiently, for in a moment he
said:

'Well, I see there is nothing to be done,
so we may as well be stirring. M'Donough,
myself, and my brother will saddle the horses
in a jiffy, while you and Purcell settle
anything which remains to be arranged.'

So saying, he left the room with as much
alacrity as if it were to prepare for a fox-
hunt. Selfish, heartless fool! I have
often since heard him spoken of as A CURSED
GOOD-NATURED DOG and a D---- GOOD FELLOW;
but such eulogies as these are not calculated
to mitigate the abhorrence with
which his conduct upon that morning inspired me.

The chill mists of night were still hovering
on the landscape as our party left the
castle. It was a raw, comfortless morning
--a kind of drizzling fog hung heavily over
the scene, dimming the light of the sun,
which had now risen, into a pale and even
a grey glimmer. As the appointed hour
was fast approaching, it was proposed that
we should enter the race-ground at a point
close to the stand-house--a measure which
would save us a ride of nearly two miles,
over a broken road; at which distance
there was an open entrance into the race-
ground. Here, accordingly, we dismounted,
and leaving our horses in the care of a
country fellow who happened to be stirring
at that early hour, we proceeded up a narrow
lane, over a side wall of which we were
to climb into the open ground where stood
the now deserted building, under which the
meeting was to take place. Our progress
was intercepted by the unexpected appearance
of an old woman, who, in the scarlet
cloak which is the picturesque characteristic
of the female peasantry of the south, was
moving slowly down the avenue to meet us,
uttering that peculiarly wild and piteous
lamentation well known by the name of
'the Irish cry,' accompanied throughout
by all the customary gesticulation of
passionate grief. This rencounter was more
awkward than we had at first anticipated;
for, upon a nearer approach, the person
proved to be no other than an old attached
dependent of the family, and who had her-
self nursed O'Connor. She quickened her
pace as we advanced almost to a run; and,
throwing her arms round O'Connor's neck,
she poured forth such a torrent of lamentation,
reproach, and endearment, as showed
that she was aware of the nature of our
purpose, whence and by what means I
knew not. It was in vain that he sought
to satisfy her by evasion, and gently to
extricate himself from her embrace. She
knelt upon the ground, and clasped her
arms round his legs, uttering all the while
such touching supplications, such cutting
and passionate expressions of woe, as went
to my very heart.

At length, with much difficulty, we
passed this most painful interruption;
and, crossing the boundary wall, were
placed beyond her reach. The O'Gradys
damned her for a troublesome hag, and
passed on with O'Connor, but I remained
behind for a moment. The poor woman
looked hopelessly at the high wall which
separated her from him she had loved
from infancy, and to be with whom at
that minute she would have given worlds,
she took her seat upon a solitary stone
under the opposite wall, and there, in a
low, subdued key, she continued to utter
her sorrow in words so desolate, yet
expressing such a tenderness of devotion as
wrung my heart.

'My poor woman,' I said, laying my
hand gently upon her shoulder, 'you will
make yourself ill; the morning is very cold,
and your cloak is but a thin defence
against the damp and chill. Pray return
home and take this; it may be useful to
you.'

So saying, I dropped a purse, with what
money I had about me, into her lap, but
it lay there unheeded; she did not hear
me.

'Oh I my child, my child, my darlin','
she sobbed, 'are you gone from me? are
you gone from me? Ah, mavourneen,
mavourneen, you'll never come back alive
to me again. The crathur that slept on my
bosom--the lovin' crathur that I was so
proud of--they'll kill him, they'll kill him.
Oh, voh! voh!'

The affecting tone, the feeling, the
abandonment with which all this was uttered,
none can conceive who have not heard the
lamentations of the Irish peasantry. It
brought tears to my eyes. I saw that no
consolation of mine could soothe her grief,
so I turned and departed; but as I rapidly
traversed the level sward which separated
me from my companions, now considerably
in advance, I could still hear the wailings
of the solitary mourner.

As we approached the stand-house, it
was evident that our antagonists had
already arrived. Our path lay by the side
of a high fence constructed of loose stones,
and on turning a sharp angle at its extremity,
we found ourselves close to the appointed
spot, and within a few yards of a
crowd of persons, some mounted and some
on foot, evidently awaiting our arrival.
The affair had unaccountably taken wind,
as the number of the expectants clearly
showed; but for this there was now no
remedy.

As our little party advanced we were
met and saluted by several acquaintances,
whom curiosity, if no deeper feeling, had
brought to the place. Fitzgerald and the
Captain had arrived, and having dismounted,
were standing upon the sod. The former,
as we approached, bowed slightly and sullenly--
while the latter, evidently in high
good humour, made his most courteous
obeisance. No time was to be lost; and
the two seconds immediately withdrew to
a slight distance, for the purpose of
completing the last minute arrangements. It
was a brief but horrible interval--each
returned to his principal to communicate
the result, which was soon caught up and
repeated from mouth to mouth throughout
the crowd. I felt a strange and insurmountable
reluctance to hear the sickening
particulars detailed; and as I stood
irresolute at some distance from the principal
parties, a top-booted squireen, with a hunting
whip in his hand, bustling up to a
companion of his, exclaimed:

"Not fire together!--did you ever hear
the like? If Fitzgerald gets the first shot
all is over. M'Donough sold the pass,
by----, and that is the long and the short
of it.'

The parties now moved down a little to
a small level space, suited to the purpose;
and the captain, addressing M'Donough,
said:

'Mr. M'Donough, you'll now have the
goodness to toss for choice of ground; as
the light comes from the east the line must
of course run north and south. Will you
be so obliging as to toss up a crown-piece,
while I call?'

A coin was instantly chucked into the
air. The captain cried, 'Harp.' The
HEAD was uppermost, and M'Donough
immediately made choice of the southern
point at which to place his friend--a
position which it will be easily seen had
the advantage of turning his back upon
the light--no trifling superiority of
location. The captain turned with a kind of
laugh, and said:

'By ----, sir, you are as cunning as a
dead pig; but you forgot one thing. My
friend is a left-handed gunner, though
never a bit the worse for that; so you
see there is no odds as far as the choice of
light goes.'

He then proceeded to measure nine paces
in a direction running north and south, and
the principals took their ground.

'I must be troublesome to you once
again, Mr. M'Donough. One toss more,
and everything is complete. We must
settle who is to have the FIRST SLAP.'

A piece of money was again thrown
into the air; again the captain lost the toss
and M'Donough proceeded to load the
pistols. I happened to stand near Fitzgerald,
and I overheard the captain, with
a chuckle, say something to him in which
the word 'cravat' was repeated. It
instantly occurred to me that the captain's
attention was directed to a bright-coloured
muffler which O'Connor wore round his
neck, and which would afford his antagonist
a distinct and favourable mark. I
instantly urged him to remove it, and at
length, with difficulty, succeeded. He
seemed perfectly careless as to any
precaution. Everything was now ready; the
pistol was placed in O'Connor's hand, and
he only awaited the word from the captain.

M'Creagh then said:

'Mr. M'Donough, is your principal
ready?'

M'Donough replied in the affirmative;
and, after a slight pause, the captain, as
had been arranged, uttered the words:

'Ready--fire.'

O'Connor fired, but so wide of the mark
that some one in the crowd exclaimed:

'Fired in the air.'

'Who says he fired in the air?' thundered
Fitzgerald. 'By ---- he lies, whoever
he is.' There was a silence. 'But
even if he was fool enough to fire in the
air, it is not in HIS power to put an end to
the quarrel by THAT. D---- my soul, if I
am come here to be played with like a
child, and by the Almighty ---- you shall
hear more of this, each and everyone of
you, before I'm satisfied.'

A kind of low murmur, or rather groan,
was now raised, and a slight motion was
observable in the crowd, as if to intercept
Fitzgerald's passage to his horse.
M'Creagh, drawing the horse close to the
spot where Fitzgerald stood, threatened,
with the most awful imprecations, 'to
blow the brains out of the first man who
should dare to press on them.'

O'Connor now interfered, requesting the
crowd to forbear, and some degree of order
was restored. He then said, 'that in
firing as he did, he had no intention whatever
of waiving his right of firing upon
Fitzgerald, and of depriving that gentleman
of his right of prosecuting the affair
to the utmost--that if any person present
imagined that he intended to fire in the
air, he begged to set him right; since,
so far from seeking to exort an unwilling
reconciliation, he was determined that no
power on earth should induce him to
concede one inch of ground to Mr. Fitzgerald.'

This announcement was received with a
shout by the crowd, who now resumed
their places at either side of the plot of
ground which had been measured. The
principals took their places once more, and
M'Creagh proceeded, with the nicest and
most anxious care, to load the pistols; and
this task being accomplished, Fitzgerald
whispered something in the Captain's ear,
who instantly drew his friend's horse so as
to place him within a step of his rider,
and then tightened the girths. This
accomplished, Fitzgerald proceeded
deliberately to remove his coat, which he
threw across his horse in front of the
saddle; and then, with the assistance of
M'Creagh, he rolled the shirt sleeve up to
the shoulder, so as to leave the whole of
his muscular arm perfectly naked. A
cry of 'Coward, coward! butcher,
butcher!' arose from the crowd. Fitzgerald
paused.

'Do you object, Mr. M'Donough? and
upon what grounds, if you please?' said he.

'Certainly he does not,' replied
O'Connor; and, turning to M'Donough,
he added, 'pray let there be no unnecessary delay.'

'There is no objection, then,' said
Fitzgerald.

'_I_ object,' said the younger of the
O'Gradys, 'if nobody else will.'

' And who the devil are you, that DARES
to object?' shouted Fitzgerald; 'and what
d--d presumption prompts you to DARE to
wag your tongue here?'

'I am Mr. O'Grady, of Castle Blake,'
replied the young man, now much
enraged; 'and by ----, you shall answer
for your language to me.'

'Shall I, by ----? Shall I?' cried he,
with a laugh of brutal scorn; 'the more
the merrier, d--n the doubt of it--so now
hold your tongue, for I promise you you
shall have business enough of your own to
think about, and that before long.'

There was an appalling ferocity in his tone
and manner which no words could convey.
He seemed transformed; he was actually
like a man possessed. Was it possible, I
thought, that I beheld the courteous
gentleman, the gay, good-humoured
retailer of amusing anecdote with whom,
scarce two days ago, I had laughed and
chatted, in the blasphemous and murderous
ruffian who glared and stormed
before me!

O'Connor interposed, and requested
that time should not be unnecessarily lost.

'You have not got a second coat on?'
inquired the Captain. 'I beg pardon,
but my duty to my friend requires that I
should ascertain the point.'

O'Connor replied in the negative. The
Captain expressed himself as satisfied,
adding, in what he meant to be a
complimentary strain, 'that he knew Mr.
O'Connor would scorn to employ padding
or any unfair mode of protection.'

There was now a breathless silence.
O'Connor stood perfectly motionless; and,
excepting the death-like paleness of his
features, he exhibited no sign of agitation.
His eye was steady--his lip did not
tremble--his attitude was calm. The
Captain, having re-examined the priming
of the pistols, placed one of them in the
hand of Fitzgerald.--M'Donough inquired
whether the parties were prepared, and
having been answered in the affirmative,
he proceeded to give the word, 'Ready.'
Fitzgerald raised his hand, but almost
instantly lowered it again. The crowd had
pressed too much forward as it appeared,
and his eye had been unsteadied by the
flapping of the skirt of a frieze riding-coat
worn by one of the spectators.

'In the name of my principal,' said the
Captain, 'I must and do insist upon these
gentlemen moving back a little. We ask
but little; fair play, and no favour.'

The crowd moved as requested.
M'Donough repeated his former question,
and was answered as before. There was a
breathless silence. Fitzgerald fixed his
eye upon O'Connor. The appointed
signal, 'Ready, fire!' was given. There
was a pause while one might slowly reckon
three--Fitzgerald fired--and O'Connor
fell helplessly upon the ground.

'There is no time to be lost,' said
M'Creagrh; 'for, by ----, you have done
for him.'

So saying, he threw himself upon his
horse, and was instantly followed at a
hard gallop by Fitzgerald.

'Cold-blooded murder, if ever murder
was committed,' said O'Grady. 'He shall
hang for it; d--n me, but he shall.'

A hopeless attempt was made to
overtake the fugitives; but they were better
mounted than any of their pursuers, and
escaped with ease. Curses and actual yells
of execration followed their course; and as,
in crossing the brow of a neighbouring
hill, they turned round in the saddle to
observe if they were pursued, every
gesture which could express fury and
defiance was exhausted by the enraged and
defeated multitude.

'Clear the way, boys,' said young
O'Grady, who with me was kneeling
beside O'Connor, while we supported him
in our arms; 'do not press so close, and
be d--d; can't you let the fresh air to
him; don't you see he's dying?'

On opening his waistcoat we easily
detected the wound: it was a little below
the chest--a small blue mark, from which
oozed a single heavy drop of blood.

'He is bleeding but little--that is a
comfort at all events,' said one of the gentlemen
who surrounded the wounded man.

Another suggested the expediency of
his being removed homeward with as
little delay as possible, and recommended,
for this purpose, that a door should be
removed from its hinges, and the patient,
laid upon this, should be conveyed from
the field. Upon this rude bier my poor
friend was carried from that fatal ground
towards Castle Connor. I walked close
by his side, and observed every motion of
his. He seldom opened his eyes, and was
perfectly still, excepting a nervous WORKING
of the fingers, and a slight, almost
imperceptible twitching of the features,
which took place, however, only at
intervals. The first word he uttered was
spoken as we approached the entrance of
the castle itself, when he said; repeatedly,
'The back way, the back way.' He feared
lest his mother should meet him abruptly
and without preparation; but although
this fear was groundless, since she never
left her room until late in the day, yet it
was thought advisable, and, indeed, necessary,
to caution all the servants most
strongly against breathing a hint to their
mistress of the events which had befallen.

Two or three gentlemen had ridden
from the field one after another, promising
that they should overtake our party before
it reached the castle, bringing with them
medical aid from one quarter or another;
and we determined that Mrs. O'Connor
should not know anything of the occurrence
until the opinion of some professional
man should have determined the extent of
the injury which her son had sustained
--a course of conduct which would at
least have the effect of relieving her from
the horrors of suspense. When O'Connor
found himself in his own room, and laid
upon his own bed, he appeared much
revived--so much so, that I could not help
admitting a strong hope that all might yet
be well.

'After all, Purcell,' said he, with a
melancholy smile, and speaking with
evident difficulty, 'I believe I have got off
with a trifling wound. I am sure it cannot
be fatal I feel so little pain--almost
none.'

I cautioned him against fatiguing
himself by endeavouring to speak; and he
remained quiet for a little time. At
length he said:

'Purcell, I trust this lesson shall not
have been given in vain. God has been
very merciful to me; I feel--I have an
internal confidence that I am not wounded
mortally. Had I been fatally wounded--
had I been killed upon the spot, only think
on it'--and he closed his eyes as if the
very thought made him dizzy--'struck
down into the grave, unprepared as I am,
in the very blossom of my sins, without a
moment of repentance or of reflection; I
must have been lost--lost for ever and ever.'

I prevailed upon him, with some
difficulty, to abstain from such agitating
reflections, and at length induced him to
court such repose as his condition admitted
of, by remaining perfectly silent, and as
much as possible without motion.

O'Connor and I only were in the room;
he had lain for some time in tolerable
quiet, when I thought I distinguished the
bustle attendant upon the arrival of some
one at the castle, and went eagerly to the
window, believing, or at least hoping, that
the sounds might announce the approach
of the medical man, whom we all longed
most impatiently to see.

My conjecture was right; I had the
satisfaction of seeing him dismount and
prepare to enter the castle, when my
observations were interrupted, and my
attention was attracted by a smothered,
gurgling sound proceeding from the bed in
which lay the wounded man. I instantly
turned round, and in doing so the spectacle
which met my eyes was sufficiently
shocking.

I had left O'Connor lying in the bed,
supported by pillows, perfectly calm, and
with his eyes closed: he was now lying
nearly in the same position, his eyes open
and almost starting from their sockets,
with every feature pale and distorted as
death, and vomiting blood in quantities
that were frightful. I rushed to the door
and called for assistance; the paroxysm,
though violent, was brief, and O'Connor
sank into a swoon so deep and death-like,
that I feared he should waken no more.

The surgeon, a little, fussy man, but I
believe with some skill to justify his
pretensions, now entered the room, carry-
ing his case of instruments, and followed
by servants bearing basins and water and
bandages of linen. He relieved our
doubts by instantly assuring us that 'the
patient' was still living; and at the same
time professed his determination to take
advantage of the muscular relaxation
which the faint had induced to examine
the wound--adding that a patient was
more easily 'handled' when in a swoon
than under other circumstances.

After examining the wound in front
where the ball had entered, he passed his
hand round beneath the shoulder, and
after a little pause he shook his head,
observing that he feared very much that
one of the vertebrae was fatally injured,
but that he could not say decidedly until
his patient should revive a little. 'Though
his language was very technical, and
consequently to me nearly unintelligible,
I could perceive plainly by his manner
that he considered the case as almost
hopeless.

O'Connor gradually gave some signs of
returning animation, and at length was so
far restored as to be enabled to speak.
After some few general questions as to
how he felt affected, etc., etc., the surgeon,
placing his hand upon his leg and pressing
it slightly, asked him if he felt any pressure
upon the limb? O'Connor answered in
the negative--he pressed harder, and
repeated the question; still the answer was
the same, till at length, by repeated
experiments, he ascertained that all that part
of the body which lay behind the wound
was paralysed, proving that the spine must
have received some fatal injury.

'Well, doctor,' said O'Connor, after the
examination of the wound was over; 'well,
I shall do, shan't I?'

The physician was silent for a moment,
and then, as if with an effort, he replied:

'Indeed, my dear sir, it would not be
honest to flatter you with much hope.'

'Eh?' said O'Connor with more alacrity
than I had seen him exhibit since the
morning; 'surely I did not hear you
aright; I spoke of my recovery--surely
there is no doubt; there can be none--
speak frankly, doctor, for God's sake--am
I dying?'

The surgeon was evidently no stoic, and
his manner had extinguished in me every
hope, even before he had uttered a word
in reply.

'You are--you are indeed dying. There
is no hope; I should but deceive you if I
held out any.'

As the surgeon uttered these terrible
words, the hands which O'Connor had
stretched towards him while awaiting his
reply fell powerless by his side; his head
sank forward; it seemed as if horror and
despair had unstrung every nerve and
sinew; he appeared to collapse and shrink
together as a plant might under the
influence of a withering spell.

It has often been my fate, since then, to
visit the chambers of death and of suffering;
I have witnessed fearful agonies of
body and of soul; the mysterious shudderings
of the departing spirit, and the heart-
rending desolation of the survivors; the
severing of the tenderest ties, the piteous
yearnings of unavailing love--of all these
things the sad duties of my profession have
made me a witness. But, generally speaking,
I have observed in such scenes some
thing to mitigate, if not the sorrows, at
least the terrors, of death; the dying man
seldom seems to feel the reality of his
situation; a dull consciousness of approaching
dissolution, a dim anticipation of
unconsciousness and insensibility, are the
feelings which most nearly border upon an
appreciation of his state; the film of death
seems to have overspread the mind's eye,
objects lose their distinctness, and float
cloudily before it, and the apathy and
apparent indifference with which men
recognise the sure advances of immediate
death, rob that awful hour of much of its
terrors, and the death-bed of its otherwise
inevitable agonies.

This is a merciful dispensation; but the
rule has its exceptions--its terrible
exceptions. When a man is brought in an
instant, by some sudden accident, to the
very verge of the fathomless pit of death,
with all his recollections awake, and his
perceptions keenly and vividly alive, without
previous illness to subdue the tone of
the mind as to dull its apprehensions--
then, and then only, the death-bed is truly
terrible.

Oh, what a contrast did O'Connor afford
as he lay in all the abject helplessness of
undisguised terror upon his death-bed, to
the proud composure with which he had
taken the field that morning. I had
always before thought of death as of a
quiet sleep stealing gradually upon
exhausted nature, made welcome by suffering,
or, at least, softened by resignation;
I had never before stood by the side of
one upon whom the hand of death had
been thus suddenly laid; I had never seen
the tyrant arrayed in his terror till then.
Never before or since have I seen horror
so intensely depicted. It seemed actually
as if O'Connor's mind had been unsettled
by the shock; the few words he uttered
were marked with all the incoherence of
distraction; but it was not words that
marked his despair most strongly, the
appalling and heart-sickening groans
that came from the terror-stricken and
dying man must haunt me while I
live; the expression, too, of hopeless,
imploring agony with which he turned
his eyes from object to object, I can
never forget. At length, appearing
suddenly to recollect himself, he said, with
startling alertness, but in a voice so
altered that I scarce could recognise the
tones:

'Purcell, Purcell, go and tell my poor
mother; she must know all, and then,
quick, quick, quick, call your uncle, bring
him here; I must have a chance.' He
made a violent but fruitless effort to rise,
and after a slight pause continued, with
deep and urgent solemnity: 'Doctor, how
long shall I live? Don't flatter me.
Compliments at a death-bed are out of
place; doctor, for God's sake, as you would
not have my soul perish with my body, do
not mock a dying man; have I an hour to
live?'

'Certainly,' replied the surgeon; 'if you
will but endeavour to keep yourself tranquil;
otherwise I cannot answer for a
moment.'

'Well, doctor,' said the patient, 'I will
obey you; now, Purcell, my first and
dearest friend, will you inform my poor
mother of--of what you see, and return
with your uncle; I know you will.'

I took the dear fellow's hand and kissed
it, it was the only answer I could give,
and left the room. I asked the first
female servant I chanced to meet, if her
mistress were yet up, and was answered in
the affirmative. Without giving myself
time to hesitate, I requested her to lead
me to her lady's room, which she accordingly
did; she entered first, I supposed to
announce my name, and I followed closely;
the poor mother said something, and held
out her hands to welcome me; I strove
for words; I could not speak, but nature
found expression; I threw myself at her
feet and covered her hands with kisses and
tears. My manner was enough; with a
quickness almost preternatural she understood
it all; she simply said the words:
'O'Connor is killed;' she uttered no
more.

How I left the room I know not; I
rode madly to my uncle's residence, and
brought him back with me--all the rest
is a blank. I remember standing by
O'Connor's bedside, and kissing the cold
pallid forehead again and again; I remember
the pale serenity of the beautiful
features; I remember that I looked upon
the dead face of my friend, and I remember
no more.

For many months I lay writhing and
raving in the frenzy of brain fever; a
hundred times I stood tottering at the
brink of death, and long after my restoration
to bodily health was assured, it appeared
doubtful whether I should ever be
restored to reason. But God dealt very
mercifully with me; His mighty hand
rescued me from death and from madness
when one or other appeared inevitable.
As soon as I was permitted pen and ink,
I wrote to the bereaved mother in a tone
bordering upon frenzy. I accused myself
of having made her childless; I called
myself a murderer; I believed myself
accursed; I could not find terms strong
enough to express my abhorrence of my
own conduct. But, oh! what an answer I
received, so mild, so sweet, from the
desolate, childless mother! its words spoke all
that is beautiful in Christianity--it was
forgiveness--it was resignation. I am
convinced that to that letter, operating as
it did upon a mind already predisposed, is
owing my final determination to devote
myself to that profession in which, for
more than half a century, I have been a
humble minister.

Years roll away, and we count them not
as they pass, but their influence is not the
less certain that it is silent; the deepest
wounds are gradually healed, the keenest
griefs are mitigated, and we, in character,
feelings, tastes, and pursuits, become such
altered beings, that but for some few
indelible marks which past events must
leave behind them, which time may
soften, but can never efface; our very
identity would be dubious. Who has not
felt all this at one time or other? Who
has not mournfully felt it? This trite, but
natural train of reflection filled my mind as
I approached the domain of Castle Connor
some ten years after the occurrence of the
events above narrated. Everything looked
the same as when I had left it; the old
trees stood as graceful and as grand as
ever; no plough had violated the soft
green sward; no utilitarian hand had
constrained the wanderings of the clear and
sportive stream, or disturbed the lichen-
covered rocks through which it gushed, or
the wild coppice that over-shadowed its
sequestered nooks--but the eye that
looked upon these things was altered, and
memory was busy with other days,
shrouding in sadness every beauty that
met my sight.

As I approached the castle my emotions
became so acutely painful that I had
almost returned the way I came, without
accomplishing the purpose for which I had
gone thus far; and nothing but the conviction
that my having been in the neighbourhood
of Castle Connor without visiting
its desolate mistress would render me
justly liable to the severest censure, could
overcome my reluctance to encountering
the heavy task which was before me. I
recognised the old servant who opened the
door, but he did not know me. I was
completely changed; suffering of body and
mind had altered me in feature and in
bearing, as much as in character. I asked
the man whether his mistress ever saw
visitors. He answered:

'But seldom; perhaps, however, if she
knew that an old friend wished to see her
for a few minutes, she would gratify him
so far.'

At the same time I placed my card in
his hand, and requested him to deliver it
to his mistress. He returned in a few
moments, saying that his lady would be
happy to see me in the parlour, and I
accordingly followed him to the door, which
he opened. I entered the room, and was
in a moment at the side of my early friend
and benefactress. I was too much agitated
to speak; I could only hold the hands
which she gave me, while, spite of every
effort, the tears flowed fast and bitterly.

'It was kind, very, very kind of you to
come to see me,' she said, with far more
composure than I could have commanded;
'I see it is very painful to you.'

I endeavoured to compose myself, and
for a little time we remained silent; she
was the first to speak:

'You will be surprised, Mr. Purcell,
when you observe the calmness with
which I can speak of him who was dearest
to me, who is gone; but my thoughts are
always with him, and the recollections of
his love'--her voice faltered a little--'and
the hope of meeting him hereafter enables
me to bear existence.'

I said I know not what; something
about resignation, I believe.

'I hope I am resigned; God made me
more: so,' she said. 'Oh, Mr. Purcell, I
have often thought I loved my lost child
TOO well. It was natural--he was my only
child--he was----' She could not proceed
for a few moments: 'It was very natural
that I should love him as I did; but it
may have been sinful; I have often thought
so. I doated upon him--I idolised him--I
thought too little of other holier affections;
and God may have taken him from me,
only to teach me, by this severe lesson,
that I owed to heaven a larger share of
my heart than to anything earthly. I
cannot think of him now without more
solemn feelings than if he were with me.
There is something holy in our thoughts
of the dead; I feel it so.' After a pause,
she continued--'Mr. Purcell, do you
remember his features well? they were very
beautiful.' I assured her that I did.
'Then you can tell me if you think this a
faithful likeness.' She took from a drawer
a case in which lay a miniature. I took it
reverently from her hands; it was indeed
very like--touchingly like. I told her so;
and she seemed gratified.

As the evening was wearing fast, and I
had far to go, I hastened to terminate my
visit, as I had intended, by placing in her
hand a letter from her son to me, written
during his sojourn upon the Continent. I
requested her to keep it; it was one in
which he spoke much of her, and in terms
of the tenderest affection. As she read its
contents the heavy tears gathered in her
eyes, and fell, one by one, upon the page;
she wiped them away, but they still
flowed fast and silently. It was in vain
that she tried to read it; her eyes were
filled with tears: so she folded the letter,
and placed it in her bosom. I rose to
depart, and she also rose.

'I will not ask you to delay your
departure,' said she; 'your visit here
must have been a painful one to you. I
cannot find words to thank you for the
letter as I would wish, or for all your
kindness. It has given me a pleasure greater
than I thought could have fallen to the lot
of a creature so very desolate as I am;
may God bless you for it!' And thus we
parted; I never saw Castle Connor or its
solitary inmate more.


THE DRUNKARD'S DREAM.

Being a Fourth Extract from the Legacy of the late F.
Purcell, P. P. of Drumcoolagh.

 'All this HE told with some confusion and
 Dismay, the usual consequence of dreams
 Of the unpleasant kind, with none at hand
 To expound their vain and visionary gleams,
 I've known some odd ones which seemed really planned
 Prophetically, as that which one deems
 "A strange coincidence," to use a phrase
 By which such things are settled nowadays.'
                                        BYRON.


Dreams! What age, or what
country of the world, has not
and acknowledged the mystery
of their origin and end? I have
thought not a little upon the subject,
seeing it is one which has been often
forced upon my attention, and sometimes
strangely enough; and yet I have never
arrived at anything which at all appeared
a satisfactory conclusion. It does appear
that a mental phenomenon so extraordinary
cannot be wholly without its use. We
know, indeed, that in the olden times it
has been made the organ of communication
between the Deity and His creatures; and
when, as I have seen, a dream produces
upon a mind, to all appearance hopelessly
reprobate and depraved, an effect so powerful
and so lasting as to break down the
inveterate habits, and to reform the life
of an abandoned sinner, we see in the
result, in the reformation of morals which
appeared incorrigible, in the reclamation of
a human soul which seemed to be irre-
trievably lost, something more than could
be produced by a mere chimera of the
slumbering fancy, something more than
could arise from the capricious images of a
terrified imagination; but once presented,
we behold in all these things, and in their
tremendous and mysterious results, the
operation of the hand of God. And
while Reason rejects as absurd the
superstition which will read a prophecy in every
dream, she may, without violence to herself,
recognise, even in the wildest and
most incongruous of the wanderings of a
slumbering intellect, the evidences and the
fragments of a language which may be
spoken, which HAS been spoken, to terrify,
to warn, and to command. We have
reason to believe too, by the promptness
of action which in the age of the prophets
followed all intimations of this kind, and
by the strength of conviction and strange
permanence of the effects resulting from
certain dreams in latter times, which effects
we ourselves may have witnessed, that
when this medium of communication has
been employed by the Deity, the evidences
of His presence have been unequivocal.
My thoughts were directed to this subject,
in a manner to leave a lasting impression
upon my mind, by the events which I
shall now relate, the statement of which,
however extraordinary, is nevertheless
ACCURATELY CORRECT.

About the year 17--, having been
appointed to the living of C---h, I
rented a small house in the town, which
bears the same name: one morning in the
month of November, I was awakened
before my usual time by my servant, who
bustled into my bedroom for the purpose
of announcing a sick call. As the Catholic
Church holds her last rites to be totally
indispensable to the safety of the departing
sinner, no conscientious clergyman can
afford a moment's unnecessary delay, and
in little more than five minutes I stood
ready cloaked and booted for the road, in
the small front parlour, in which the
messenger, who was to act as my guide,
awaited my coming. I found a poor
little girl crying piteously near the door,
and after some slight difficulty I ascertained
that her father was either dead or
just dying.

'And what may be your father's name,
my poor child?' said I. She held down
her head, as if ashamed. I repeated the
question, and the wretched little creature
burst into floods of tears still more bitter
than she had shed before. At length,
almost provoked by conduct which
appeared to me so unreasonable, I began to
lose patience, spite of the pity which I
could not help feeling towards her, and I
said rather harshly:

'If you will not tell me the name of the
person to whom you would lead me, your
silence can arise from no good motive, and
I might be justified in refusing to go with
you at all.'

'Oh, don't say that--don't say that!'
cried she. 'Oh, sir, it was that I was
afeard of when I would not tell you--I
was afeard, when you heard his name, you
would not come with me; but it is no use
hidin' it now--it's Pat Connell, the
carpenter, your honour.'

She looked in my face with the most
earnest anxiety, as if her very existence
depended upon what she should read there;
but I relieved her at once. The name,
indeed, was most unpleasantly familiar to
me; but, however fruitless my visits and
advice might have been at another time,
the present was too fearful an occasion to
suffer my doubts of their utility or my
reluctance to re-attempting what appeared
a hopeless task to weigh even against the
lightest chance that a consciousness of
his imminent danger might produce in him
a more docile and tractable disposition.
Accordingly I told the child to lead the
way, and followed her in silence. She
hurried rapidly through the long narrow
street which forms the great thoroughfare
of the town. The darkness of the hour,
rendered still deeper by the close approach
of the old-fashioned houses, which lowered
in tall obscurity on either side of the way;
the damp, dreary chill which renders the
advance of morning peculiarly cheerless,
combined with the object of my walk, to
visit the death-bed of a presumptuous
sinner, to endeavour, almost against my
own conviction, to infuse a hope into the
heart of a dying reprobate--a drunkard
but too probably perishing under the
consequences of some mad fit of intoxication;
all these circumstances united served to
enhance the gloom and solemnity of my
feelings, as I silently followed my little
guide, who with quick steps traversed the
uneven pavement of the main street.
After a walk of about five minutes she
turned off into a narrow lane, of that
obscure and comfortless class which is
to be found in almost all small old-
fashioned towns, chill, without ventilation,
reeking with all manner of offensive
effluviae, and lined by dingy, smoky, sickly
and pent-up buildings, frequently not only
in a wretched but in a dangerous condition.

'Your father has changed his abode
since I last visited him, and, I am afraid,
much for the worse,' said I.

'Indeed he has, sir; but we must not
complain,' replied she. 'We have to thank
God that we have lodging and food,
though it's poor enough, it is, your
honour.'

Poor child! thought I, how many an
older head might learn wisdom from thee
--how many a luxurious philosopher, who
is skilled to preach but not to suffer,
might not thy patient words put to the
blush! The manner and language of this
child were alike above her years and
station; and, indeed, in all cases in which
the cares and sorrows of life have anticipated
their usual date, and have fallen, as they
sometimes do, with melancholy prematurity
to the lot of childhood, I have observed
the result to have proved uniformly the
same. A young mind, to which joy and
indulgence have been strangers, and to
which suffering and self-denial have been
familiarised from the first, acquires a
solidity and an elevation which no other
discipline could have bestowed, and which,
in the present case, communicated a striking
but mournful peculiarity to the manners,
even to the voice, of the child. We
paused before a narrow, crazy door, which
she opened by means of a latch, and we
forthwith began to ascend the steep and
broken stairs which led upwards to the
sick man's room.

As we mounted flight after flight
towards the garret-floor, I heard more and
more distinctly the hurried talking of many
voices. I could also distinguish the low
sobbing of a female. On arriving upon
the uppermost lobby these sounds became
fully audible.

'This way, your honour,' said my little
conductress; at the same time, pushing
open a door of patched and half-rotten
plank, she admitted me into the squalid
chamber of death and misery. But one
candle, held in the fingers of a scared and
haggard-looking child, was burning in the
room, and that so dim that all was twilight
or darkness except within its immediate
influence. The general obscurity,
however, served to throw into prominent
and startling relief the death-bed and its
occupant. The light was nearly approximated
to, and fell with horrible clearness
upon, the blue and swollen features of the
drunkard. I did not think it possible that
a human countenance could look so terrific.
The lips were black and drawn apart; the
teeth were firmly set; the eyes a little
unclosed, and nothing but the whites appearing.
Every feature was fixed and livid, and
the whole face wore a ghastly and rigid
expression of despairing terror such as I
never saw equalled. His hands were crossed
upon his breast, and firmly clenched; while,
as if to add to the corpse-like effect of the
whole, some white cloths, dipped in water,
were wound about the forehead and
temples.

As soon as I could remove my eyes from
this horrible spectacle, I observed my friend
Dr. D----, one of the most humane of a
humane profession, standing by the bedside.
He had been attempting, but unsuccessfully,
to bleed the patient, and had now
applied his finger to the pulse.

'Is there any hope?' I inquired in a
whisper.

A shake of the head was the reply.
There was a pause while he continued
to hold the wrist; but he waited in vain
for the throb of life--it was not there: and
when he let go the hand, it fell stiffly back
into its former position upon the other.

'The man is dead,' said the physician, as
he turned from the bed where the terrible
figure lay.

Dead! thought I, scarcely venturing to
look upon the tremendous and revolting
spectacle. Dead! without an hour for
repentance, even a moment for reflection;
dead I without the rites which even the
best should have. Is there a hope for
him? The glaring eyeball, the grinning
mouth, the distorted brow--that unutterable
look in which a painter would have
sought to embody the fixed despair of the
nethermost hell. These were my answer.

The poor wife sat at a little distance,
crying as if her heart would break--the
younger children clustered round the bed,
looking with wondering curiosity upon the
form of death never seen before.

When the first tumult of uncontrollable
sorrow had passed away, availing myself
of the solemnity and impressiveness of the
scene, I desired the heart-stricken family
to accompany me in prayer, and all knelt
down while I solemnly and fervently
repeated some of those prayers which
appeared most applicable to the occasion. I
employed myself thus in a manner which,
I trusted, was not unprofitable, at least to
the living, for about ten minutes; and
having accomplished my task, I was the
first to arise.

I looked upon the poor, sobbing,
helpless creatures who knelt so humbly around
me, and my heart bled for them. With
a natural transition I turned my eyes from
them to the bed in which the body lay;
and, great God! what was the revulsion,
the horror which I experienced on seeing
the corpse-like terrific thing seated half
upright before me; the white cloths which
had been wound about the head had now
partly slipped from their position, and
were hanging in grotesque festoons about
the face and shoulders, while the distorted
eyes leered from amid them--

          'A sight to dream of, not to tell.'

I stood actually riveted to the spot. The
figure nodded its head and lifted its arm,
I thought, with a menacing gesture. A
thousand confused and horrible thoughts
at once rushed upon my mind. I had
often read that the body of a presumptuous
sinner, who, during life, had been
the willing creature of every satanic
impulse, after the human tenant had deserted
it, had been known to become the horrible
sport of demoniac possession.

I was roused from the stupefaction of
terror in which I stood, by the piercing
scream of the mother, who now, for the
first time, perceived the change which had
taken place. She rushed towards the bed,
but stunned by the shock, and overcome by
the conflict of violent emotions, before she
reached it she fell prostrate upon the
floor.

I am perfectly convinced that had I not
been startled from the torpidity of horror
in which I was bound by some powerful
and arousing stimulant, I should have
gazed upon this unearthly apparition until
I had fairly lost my senses. As it was,
however, the spell was broken--superstition
gave way to reason: the man whom all
believed to have been actually dead was
living!

Dr. D---- was instantly standing by
the bedside, and upon examination he
found that a sudden and copious flow of
blood had taken place from the wound
which the lancet had left; and this, no
doubt, had effected his sudden and almost
preternatural restoration to an existence
from which all thought he had been for ever
removed. The man was still speechless,
but he seemed to understand the physician
when he forbid his repeating the painful
and fruitless attempts which he made to
articulate, and he at once resigned himself
quietly into his hands.

I left the patient with leeches upon his
temples, and bleeding freely, apparently
with little of the drowsiness which accompanies
apoplexy; indeed, Dr. D---- told
me that he had never before witnessed a
seizure which seemed to combine the
symptoms of so many kinds, and yet
which belonged to none of the recognised
classes; it certainly was not apoplexy,
catalepsy, nor delirium tremens, and yet it
seemed, in some degree, to partake of the
properties of all. It was strange, but
stranger things are coming.

During two or three days Dr. D----
would not allow his patient to converse in
a manner which could excite or exhaust
him, with anyone; he suffered him merely
as briefly as possible to express his
immediate wants. And it was not until the fourth
day after my early visit, the particulars of
which I have just detailed, that it was thought
expedient that I should see him, and then
only because it appeared that his extreme
importunity and impatience to meet me
were likely to retard his recovery more than
the mere exhaustion attendant upon a short
conversation could possibly do; perhaps,
too, my friend entertained some hope that
if by holy confession his patient's bosom
were eased of the perilous stuff which no
doubt oppressed it, his recovery would be
more assured and rapid. It was then, as I
have said, upon the fourth day after my
first professional call, that I found myself
once more in the dreary chamber of want
and sickness.

The man was in bed, and appeared low
and restless. On my entering the room he
raised himself in the bed, and muttered,
twice or thrice:

'Thank God! thank God!'

I signed to those of his family who
stood by to leave the room, and took a
chair beside the bed. So soon as we were
alone, he said, rather doggedly:

'There's no use in telling me of the
sinfulness of bad ways--I know it all. I
know where they lead to--I seen everything
about it with my own eyesight, as
plain as I see you.' He rolled himself in
the bed, as if to hide his face in the
clothes; and then suddenly raising himself,
he exclaimed with startling vehemence:
'Look, sir! there is no use in mincing the
matter: I'm blasted with the fires of hell;
I have been in hell. What do you think
of that? In hell--I'm lost for ever--I
have not a chance. I am damned already
--damned--damned!'

The end of this sentence he actually
shouted. His vehemence was perfectly
terrific; he threw himself back, and
laughed, and sobbed hysterically. I
poured some water into a tea-cup, and
gave it to him. After he had swallowed
it, I told him if he had anything to
communicate, to do so as briefly as he could,
and in a manner as little agitating to
himself as possible; threatening at the same
time, though I had no intention of doing
so, to leave him at once, in case he again
gave way to such passionate excitement.

'It's only foolishness,' he continued, 'for
me to try to thank you for coming to such
a villain as myself at all. It's no use for me
to wish good to you, or to bless you;
for such as me has no blessings to
give.'

I told him that I had but done my duty,
and urged him to proceed to the matter
which weighed upon his mind. He then
spoke nearly as follows:

'I came in drunk on Friday night last,
and got to my bed here; I don't remember
how. Sometime in the night it seemed
to me I wakened, and feeling unasy in
myself, I got up out of the bed. I wanted
the fresh air; but I would not make a
noise to open the window, for fear I'd
waken the crathurs. It was very dark
and throublesome to find the door; but
at last I did get it, and I groped my way
out, and went down as asy as I could. I
felt quite sober, and I counted the steps
one after another, as I was going down,
that I might not stumble at the bottom.

'When I came to the first landing-place
--God be about us always!--the floor of it
sunk under me, and I went down--down--
down, till the senses almost left me. I do
not know how long I was falling, but it
seemed to me a great while. When I
came rightly to myself at last, I was
sitting near the top of a great table;
and I could not see the end of it, if it
had any, it was so far off. And there
was men beyond reckoning, sitting down
all along by it, at each side, as far as I
could see at all. I did not know at first
was it in the open air; but there was a
close smothering feel in it that was not
natural. And there was a kind of light that
my eyesight never saw before, red and
unsteady; and I did not see for a long time
where it was coming from, until I looked
straight up, and then I seen that it came
from great balls of blood-coloured fire that
were rolling high over head with a sort of
rushing, trembling sound, and I perceived
that they shone on the ribs of a great roof
of rock that was arched overhead instead
of the sky. When I seen this, scarce
knowing what I did, I got up, and I said,
"I have no right to be here; I must go."
And the man that was sitting at my left
hand only smiled, and said, "Sit down
again; you can NEVER leave this place." And
his voice was weaker than any child's voice
I ever heerd; and when he was done speaking
he smiled again.

'Then I spoke out very loud and bold,
and I said, "In the name of God, let me
out of this bad place." And there was a
great man that I did not see before, sitting
at the end of the table that I was near; and
he was taller than twelve men, and his face
was very proud and terrible to look at.
And he stood up and stretched out his hand
before him; and when he stood up, all that
was there, great and small, bowed down 
with a sighing sound, and a dread came on
my heart, and he looked at me, and I
could not speak. I felt I was his own,
to do what he liked with, for I knew at
once who he was; and he said, "If you
promise to return, you may depart for a
season;" and the voice he spoke with was
terrible and mournful, and the echoes of it
went rolling and swelling down the endless
cave, and mixing with the trembling of the
fire overhead; so that when he sat down
there was a sound after him, all through
the place, like the roaring of a furnace, and
I said, with all the strength I had, "I
promise to come back--in God's name let
me go!"

'And with that I lost the sight and
the hearing of all that was there, and
when my senses came to me again, I
was sitting in the bed with the blood all
over me, and you and the rest praying
around the room.'

Here he paused and wiped away the
chill drops of horror which hung upon his
forehead.

I remained silent for some moments.
The vision which he had just described
struck my imagination not a little, for
this was long before Vathek and the
'Hall of Eblis' had delighted the world;
and the description which he gave had, as
I received it, all the attractions of novelty
beside the impressiveness which always
belongs to the narration of an EYE-WITNESS,
whether in the body or in the spirit, of the
scenes which he describes. There was
something, too, in the stern horror with
which the man related these things, and
in the incongruity of his description, with
the vulgarly received notions of the great
place of punishment, and of its presiding
spirit, which struck my mind with awe,
almost with fear. At length he said, with
an expression of horrible, imploring
earnestness, which I shall never forget--
'Well, sir, is there any hope; is there any
chance at all? or, is my soul pledged and
promised away for ever? is it gone
out of my power? must I go back to the
place?'

In answering him, I had no easy task to
perform; for however clear might be my
internal conviction of the groundlessness
of his tears, and however strong my scepticism
respecting the reality of what he had
described, I nevertheless felt that his
impression to the contrary, and his humility
and terror resulting from it, might be made
available as no mean engines in the work
of his conversion from prodigacy, and of
his restoration to decent habits, and to
religious feeling.

I therefore told him that he was to
regard his dream rather in the light of a
warning than in that of a prophecy; that
our salvation depended not upon the word
or deed of a moment, but upon the habits
of a life; that, in fine, if he at once
discarded his idle companions and evil habits,
and firmly adhered to a sober, industrious,
and religious course of life, the powers of
darkness might claim his soul in vain, for
that there were higher and firmer pledges
than human tongue could utter, which
promised salvation to him who should
repent and lead a new life.

I left him much comforted, and with a
promise to return upon the next day. I
did so, and found him much more cheerful
and without any remains of the dogged
sullenness which I suppose had arisen from
his despair. His promises of amendment
were given in that tone of deliberate
earnestness, which belongs to deep and
solemn determination; and it was with no
small delight that I observed, after
repeated visits, that his good resolutions, so
far from failing, did but gather strength
by time; and when I saw that man shake
off the idle and debauched companions,
whose society had for years formed alike
his amusement and his ruin, and revive
his long discarded habits of industry and
sobriety, I said within myself, there is
something more in all this than the operation
of an idle dream.

One day, sometime after his perfect
restoration to health, I was surprised on
ascending the stairs, for the purpose of
visiting this man, to find him busily
employed in nailing down some planks
upon the landing-place, through which, at
the commencement of his mysterious vision,
it seemed to him that he had sunk. I
perceived at once that he was strengthening
the floor with a view to securing
himself against such a catastrophe, and
could scarcely forbear a smile as I bid
'God bless his work.'

He perceived my thoughts, I suppose,
for he immediately said:

'I can never pass over that floor without
trembling. I'd leave this house if I
could, but I can't find another lodging in
the town so cheap, and I'll not take a
better till I've paid off all my debts, please
God; but I could not be asy in my mind
till I made it as safe as I could. You'll
hardly believe me, your honour, that while
I'm working, maybe a mile away, my heart
is in a flutter the whole way back, with
the bare thoughts of the two little steps I
have to walk upon this bit of a floor. So
it's no wonder, sir, I'd thry to make it
sound and firm with any idle timber I
have.'

I applauded his resolution to pay off his
debts, and the steadiness with which he
perused his plans of conscientious economy,
and passed on.

Many months elapsed, and still there
appeared no alteration in his resolutions of
amendment. He was a good workman,
and with his better habits he recovered his
former extensive and profitable employment.
Everything seemed to promise comfort and
respectability. I have little more to add,
and that shall be told quickly. I had one
evening met Pat Connell, as he returned
from his work, and as usual, after a mutual,
and on his side respectful salutation, I
spoke a few words of encouragement and
approval. I left him industrious, active,
healthy--when next I saw him, not three
days after, he was a corpse.

The circumstances which marked the
event of his death were somewhat strange
--I might say fearful. The unfortunate
man had accidentally met an early friend
just returned, after a long absence, and in
a moment of excitement, forgetting everything
in the warmth of his joy, he yielded
to his urgent invitation to accompany him
into a public-house, which lay close by the
spot where the encounter had taken place.
Connell, however, previously to entering
the room, had announced his determination
to take nothing more than the strictest
temperance would warrant.

But oh! who can describe the inveterate
tenacity with which a drunkard's habits
cling to him through life? He may repent
--he may reform--he may look with
actual abhorrence upon his past profligacy;
but amid all this reformation and
compunction, who can tell the moment in
which the base and ruinous propensity may
not recur, triumphing over resolution,
remorse, shame, everything, and prostrating
its victim once more in all that is
destructive and revolting in that fatal vice?

The wretched man left the place in a
state of utter intoxication. He was
brought home nearly insensible. and
placed in his bed, where he lay in the deep
calm lethargy of drunkenness. The
younger part of the family retired to rest
much after their usual hour; but the poor
wife remained up sitting by the fire, too
much grieved and shocked at the occur-
rence of what she had so little expected,
to settle to rest; fatigue, however, at
length overcame her, and she sank
gradually into an uneasy slumber. She
could not tell how long she had remained
in this state, when she awakened, and
immediately on opening her eyes, she
perceived by the faint red light of the
smouldering turf embers, two persons, one
of whom she recognised as her husband,
noiselessly gliding out of the room.

'Pat, darling, where are you going?'
said she. There was no answer--the door
closed after them; but in a moment she
was startled and terrified by a loud and
heavy crash, as if some ponderous body had
been hurled down the stair. Much alarmed,
she started up, and going to the head of
the staircase, she called repeatedly upon her
husband, but in vain. She returned to
the room, and with the assistance of her
daughter, whom I had occasion to mention
before, she succeeded in finding and lighting
a candle, with which she hurried again
to the head of the staircase.

At the bottom lay what seemed to be a
bundle of clothes, heaped together, motionless,
lifeless--it was her husband. In
going down the stair, for what purpose
can never now be known, he had fallen
helplessly and violently to the bottom, and
coming head foremost, the spine at the
neck had been dislocated by the shock, and
instant death must have ensued. The
body lay upon that landing-place to which
his dream had referred. It is scarcely
worth endeavouring to clear up a single
point in a narrative where all is mystery;
yet I could not help suspecting that the
second figure which had been seen in the
room by Connell's wife on the night of his
death, might have been no other than his
own shadow. I suggested this solution of
the difficulty; but she told me that the
unknown person had been considerably in
advance of the other, and on reaching the
door, had turned back as if to communicate
something to his companion. It was then
a mystery.

Was the dream verified?--whither had
the disembodied spirit sped?--who can
say? We know not. But I left the house
of death that day in a state of horror
which I could not describe. It seemed to
me that I was scarce awake. I heard and
saw everything as if under the spell of a
night-mare. The coincidence was terrible.





End of The Project Gutenberg Etext of The Purcell Papers, Volume 1