stood at the door, and my mother in a flowered sack,
with patches on her face. Some day, I wonder, will everything we have
seen and thought and done come and flash across our minds in this way?
I had rather not. I felt so as I sat upon the bench at Castle Brady, and
thought of the bygone times.

The hall-door was open--it was always so at that house; the moon was
flaring in at the long old windows, and throwing ghastly chequers upon
the floors; and the stars were looking in on the other side, in the blue
of the yawning window over the great stair: from it you could see the
old stable-clock, with the letters glistening on it still. There had
been jolly horses in those stables once; and I could see my uncle's
honest face, and hear him talking to his dogs as they came jumping and
whining and barking round about him of a gay winter morning. We used to
mount there; and the girls looked out at us from the hall-window, where
I stood and looked at the sad, mouldy, lonely old place. There was a
red light shining through the crevices of a door at one corner of the
building, and a dog presently came out baying loudly, and a limping man
followed with a fowling-piece.

'Who's there?' said the old man.

'PHIL PURCELL, don't you know me?' shouted I; 'it's Redmond Barry.'

I thought the old man would have fired his piece at me at first, for he
pointed it at the window; but I called to him to hold his hand, and came
down and embraced him.... Psha! I don't care to tell the rest: Phil and
I had a long night, and talked over a thousand foolish old things that
have no interest for any soul alive now: for what soul is there alive
that cares for Barry Lyndon?

I settled a hundred guineas on the old man when I got to Dublin, and
made him an annuity which enabled him to pass his old days in comfort.

Poor Phil Purcell was amusing himself at a game of exceedingly dirty
cards with an old acquaintance of mine; no other than Tim, who was
called my 'valet' in the days of yore, and whom the reader may remember
as clad in my father's old liveries. They used to hang about him in
those times, and lap over his wrists and down to his heels; but Tim,
though he protested he had nigh killed himself with grief when I went
away, had managed to grow enormously fat in my absence, and would have
fitted almost into Daniel Lambert's coat, or that of the vicar of Castle
Brady, whom he served in the capacity of clerk. I would have engaged
the fellow in my servi