ld not be a bad plan to require of each of our company, in
rotation, some tale of wonder or personal adventure. Hughie has just
referred to what must be an interesting and little known local legend of
his mother isle. I move that we adjourn to the kitchen, and pass an hour
in listening to it."

The proposition met with general favor, and rising, the company passed
into the unplastered kitchen, through whose thin walls and poorly
seasoned sashes came occasional little puffs of the furious wind, which
whistled and howled like a demon without. The gunners seated themselves
around the huge fireplace, in which a pile of dried gnarled roots
filled the room with light and warmth, and lighting pipe or cigar, as
fancy dictated, gave a respectful attention to the promised story.

As will be gathered from the preceding conversation, Creamer spoke
excellent English, but as is often the case when excited, he lapsed at
times into a rich brogue. This he did to a considerable degree in
relating what he was pleased to call the story of

MATTHEW COLLINS'S GHOST.

"I was only a babe in arms when my father crossed the ocean to settle
down on the Fane estate as one of the number of settlers, called for by
the terms of the original grant. His father was a _warm_ houlder in
Errigle-Trough, and had my father been patient and industhrious, he
would in a few years have rinted as good an hundhred acres as there was
in that section. But the agent tould of land at a shillin' an acre, with
wood in plenty, and trees that grew sugar, and game and fish for every
one, and my father thought that he was provided for for life, when, with
his lease in his pocket and a free passage, he stepped on board the ould
ship that bore us to this little island.

"He wasn't far wrong, for he died when I was fifteen, worn out with
clearin' woodland, and working all winter in the deep snow at lumbering,
to keep us in bread and herrin'. He was a disappointed, worn-out old man
at forty, and it was only when he told of the good old times of his
youth that I ever seen him smile at all, at all.

"Matthew Collins was a well-to-do farmer of the neighboring parish of
Errigle-Keeran, and had a snug cottage and barn, with a good team of
plough-horses, a cow, two goats, and a pig, beside poulthry enough to
keep him in egg-milk, and even an occasional fowl or two on a birthday,
or holy feast. He married Katty Bane, one of the prettiest girls and
greatest coquettes in the who