morning. Antony--

"Ay," said Lindsay, interrupting him, "that accounts for the nature of
the villain's death. I remember him well, Bandy, although I was only
a boy at the time; go on--he was always a dishonest scoundrel it was
said--proceed."

"Well it seems, Antony, sir, mistook him for a Protestant parson; and
as he had a hankerin' afther the goold, he opened a gusset in the man's
throat that same night, when the unsuspectin' traveller was sound in
that sleep that he never woke from in this world. When the deed was done
Antony stripped him of his clothes, and in doing so discovered a silver
crucifix upon his breast, and a bravery (breviary) under his head, by
which he found that he had murdhered a priest of his own religion in
mistake. They say he stabbed him in the jigler vein wid a _middoge_. At
all events, the body disappeared, and there never was any inquiry made
about it--a good proof that the unfortunate man was a stranger. Well and
good, your honor--in the coorse of a short time, it seems, the murdhered
priest began to appear to him, and haunted him almost every night, until
the unfortunate Antony began to get out of his rason, and, it is said,
that when he appeared to him he always pointed the _middoge_ at him,
just as if he wished to put it into his heart. Antony then, widout
tellin' his own saicret, began to tell everybody that he was doomed to
die a bloody death; in short, he became unsettled--got fairly beside
himself, and afther mopin' about for some months in ordher to avoid the
bloody death the priest threatened him wid, he went and hanged himself
in the very room where he killed the unfortunate priest before."

"I remember when he hanged himself, very well," observed Lindsay, "but
d--n the syllable of the robbery and murder of the priest or any body
else ever I heard of till the present moment, although there was an
inquest held over himself. The man got low-spirited and depressed,
because his business failed him, or, rather, because he didn't attend
to it; and in one of these moods hanged himself; but by all accounts,
Bandy, if he hadn't done the deed for himself the hangman would have
done it for him. He was said, I think, to have been connected with some
of the outlaws, and to have been a bad boy altogether. I think it is now
near fifty years ago since he hanged himself."

"'Tis said, sir, that this account comes from one of his own relations;
but there's another account, sir, of the _Shan-dhinn