ghadoe, and I
noticed things as an over-wise child, accustomed to the society of its
elders, will.

I often wondered about it in later years. I had no memory of a wake and
a funeral, and I think if these things had been I should have known. But
there was a period of trouble in which I was packed away to my nursery
and the companionship of Maureen Kelly, our old nurse.

When I emerged from that it was to find my grandfather stern and sad,
and my grandmother with a scared look and the roses of her cheeks
faded.

And for long the shadow lay over Aghadoe. But in course of time people
grew used to it as they will to all things, and my grandfather took
snuff and played whist with his cronies, and drank his French claret,
and rode to hounds, as he had been used; and my grandmother played on
the harp to him of evenings when we were alone, and walked with him and
talked to him, and saw to the affairs of her household, as though the
machinery of life had not for a period run slow and heavy.

CHAPTER II

THE GHOSTS

We were very old-fashioned at Aghadoe Abbey and satisfied with
old-fashioned ways. There was a great deal of talk about opening up the
country, and even the gentry were full of it, but my grandfather would
take snuff and look scornful.

"And when you have opened it up," he said, "you will let in the devil
and all his angels."

It was certainly true that the people had hitherto been kind and
innocent, so that any change might be for the worse, yet I was a little
curious about what lay out in the world beyond our hills. And now it was
no great journey to see, for they had opened a light railway, and from
the front of the house we could see beyond the lake and the park,
through the opening where the Purple Hill rises, that weird thing which
rushes round the base of the hill half a dozen times a day before it
climbs with no effort to the gorge between the hills and makes its way
into the world. It does not even go by steam, so the thing was a great
marvel to us and our people, to whom steam was quite marvel enough.

My grandfather at first would not even look on it. I have seen him turn
away sharply from the window to avoid seeing it. When we went out to
drive we turned our backs upon it, my grandfather saying that he would
not insult his horses by letting them look at it, and indeed I think
that, old as they were, yet having blood in them they would curvet a bit
if they saw anything so strange to them.