ome likelihood of effecting my design.

"Ned," said one of them to a little man, "go down and speak to it, as it
can't harm you."

"Why sure," said Ned, with a tremor in his voice, "I can speak to it
where I am, widout going within rache of it. Boys, stand close to me:
hem--In the name of--but don't you think I had betther spake to it in
the Latin I sarve mass* wid; it can't but answer that, for the sowl of
it, seeing it's a blest language?"

* The person who serves mass, as it is called, is he
who makes the responses to the priest during that
ceremony. As the mass is said in Latin the serving of
it must necessarily fall upon many who are ignorant of
that language, and whose pronunciation of it is, of
course, extremely ludicrous.

"Very well," the rest replied; "try that Ned; give it the best and
ginteelest grammar you have, and maybe it may thrate us dacent."

Now it so happened that, in my schoolboy days, I had joined a class of
young fellows who were learning what is called the "_Sarvin' of Mass_"
and had impressed it so accurately on a pretty retentive memory, that
I never forgot it. At length, Ned pulled, out his beads, and bedewed
himself most copiously with the holy water. He then shouted out, with
a voice which resembled that of a man in an ague fit, "Dom-i-n-us
vo-bis-cum?" "Et cum spiritu tuo," I replied, in a husky sepulchral
tone, from behind the coffin. As soon as I uttered these words, the
whole crowd ran back instinctively with fright; and Ned got so weak,
that they were obliged to support him.

"Lord have marcy on us!" said Ned; "hoys, isn't it an awful thing to
speak to a spirit? my hair is like I dunna what, it's sticking up so
stiff upon my head."

"Spake to it in English, Ned," said they, till we hear what it will say.
Ax it does anything trouble it; or whether its sowl's in Purgatory."

"Wouldn't it be betther," observed another, "to ax it who murthered it;
maybe it wants to discover that?"

"In the--na-me of Go-o-d-ness," said Ned, down to me, "what are you?"

"I'm the soul," I replied in the same voice, "of the pedlar that was
murdered on the bridge below."

"And--who--was---it, sur, wid--submission, that--murdhered--you?"

To this I made no reply.

"I say," continued Ned, "in--the--name--of--G-o-o-d-ness--who was
it--that took the liberty of murdhering you, dacent man?"

"Ned Corrigan," I answered, giving his own name.

"Hem! God presarve us! Ned C