his eyes, and the sea-mist curling in from sea. His
challenge spoken, he swayed dizzily a moment. Then his eyes saw. The
place seemed full of the sea-mist silvered through with the moon. As
he looked to right and left substantial things vanished, but he saw
all about him in a ring long rows of shadowy faces watching him. Many
of them he knew. They were the boys and girls, the men and women, of
his own village who had died in many years. Others were strange, but
he guessed them ghosts from Kilsallagh, beyond Roscarbery, the village
where Jack used to live. He looked eagerly among the folk he
remembered for Ellen's face. There was one who might be she, the ghost
of a woman veiled in her shadowy hair, whose eyes he could not see.
And then Jack was upon him.

That was a great wrestling in Kilbride churchyard. The dead man wound
about the living with his clay-cold limbs, caught him in icy grips
that froze the terrified blood from his heart, and breathed upon him
soundlessly a chill breath of the grave that seemed to wither him.
Yet Mike fought furiously, as one who fights not only to satisfy a
hate, but as one who fights to gain a love. He had a dim knowledge of
the fight he was making, a dim premonition that the dead man was more
than his match. The ghostly spectators pressed round more eagerly,
their shadowy faces peered, their shadowy forms swayed in the mist.
The ghost had Mike Sheehan in a death-grip. His arms were imprisoned,
his breath failed, his flesh crept, and his hair stood up. He felt
himself dying of the horror of this unnatural combat, when there was a
whisper at his ear. Dimly he seemed to hear Ellen's voice; dimly
turning his failing eyes he seemed to recognise her eyes under the
veil of ashen fair hair. 'Draw him to the left on the grass,' said the
voice, 'and trip him.' His old love and his old jealousy surged up in
Mike Sheehan. With a tremendous effort he threw off those paralysing
arms. Forgetting his horror he furiously embraced the dead, drew him
to the left on the grass, slippery as glass after the summer heats,
for a second or two swayed with him to and fro; then the two went down
together with a great violence, but Mike Sheehan was uppermost, his
knee on the dead man's breast.

When he came to himself in the moonlight, all was calm and peaceful.
An owl hooted from the ruined gable, and from far away came the bark
of a watch-dog, but the graveyard kept its everlasting slumber. Mike
Sheehan was dr