ook of matters; but as he was
never hard put to what to do, he managed to get the coffin into the vestry,
and then when he had unharnessed the horses, he sent the deaf fellow with
them down to the village to tell the priest that the corpse was there, and
to come up early in the morning and perform Mass. The next thing to do was
to make himself comfortable for the night; and then he made a roaring fire
on the ould hearth,--for there was plenty of bog-fir there,--closed the
windows with the black cloaks, and wrapping two round himself, he sat down
to cook a little supper he brought with him in case of need.

"Well, you may think it was melancholy enough to pass the night up there
alone with a corpse, in an ould ruined church in the middle of the
mountains, the wind howling about on every side, and the snowdrift beating
against the walls; but as the fire burned brightly, and the little plate of
rashers and eggs smoked temptingly before him, my father mixed a jug of the
strongest punch, and sat down as happy as a king. As long as he was eating
away he had no time to be thinking of anything else; but when all was done,
and he looked about him, he began to feel very low and melancholy in his
heart. There was the great black coffin on three chairs in one corner; and
then the mourning cloaks that he had stuck up against the windows moved
backward and forward like living things; and outside, the wild cry of the
plover as he flew past, and the night-owl sitting in a nook of the old
church. 'I wish it was morning, anyhow,' said my father, 'for this is a
lonesome place to be in; and faix, he'll be a cunning fellow that catches
me passing the night this way again.' Now there was one thing distressed
him most of all,--my father used always to make fun of the ghosts and
sperits the neighbors would tell of, pretending there was no such thing;
and now the thought came to him, 'May be they'll revenge themselves on me
to-night when they have me up here alone;' and with that he made another
jug stronger than the first, and tried to remember a few prayers in case of
need, but somehow his mind was not too clear, and he said afterwards he
was always mixing up ould songs and toasts with the prayers, and when he
thought he had just got hold of a beautiful psalm, it would turn out to be
'Tatter Jack Walsh' or 'Limping James' or something like that. The storm,
meanwhile, was rising every moment, and parts of the old abbey were falling
as the wind s