the world; you may see their figures in the gloom. Those who are soaring
upwards are wrapt in the flood of light flowing perpetually from that
single spot, and you cannot see them. The silver path on which we enter
is the Limbo. Here I part with you. You are to give your letter to the
first person you meet. Do your best;--be courageous, but observe
particularly that you profane no holy name, or I will not answer for the
consequences."

His guide had scarcely vanished, when Larry heard the tinkling of a bell
in the distance, and turning his eyes in the quarter whence it proceeded,
he saw a grave-looking man in black, with eyes of fire, driving before
him a flock of ghosts with a switch, as you see turkeys driven on the
western road, at the approach of Christmas. They were on the highway to
Purgatory. The ghosts were shivering in the thin air, which pinched them
severely, now that they had lost the covering of their bodies. Among the
group, Larry recognised his old master, by the same means that Ulysses,
Aeneas, and others, recognised the bodiless forms of their friends in the
regions of Acheron. "What brings a living person," said the man in black,
"on this pathway? I shall make legal capture of you, Larry Sweeney, for
trespassing. You have no business here." "I have come," said Larry,
plucking up courage, "to bring your honour's glory a letter from a
company of gintlemin with whom I had the pleasure of spending the evening,
underneath the ould church of Inistubber." "A letter," said the man in
black, "where is it?" "Here, my lord," said Larry. "Ho!" cried the black
gentleman, on opening it, "I know the handwriting. It won't do, however,
my lad,--I see they want to throw dust in my eyes." "Whew," thought Larry,
"that's the very thing. 'Tis for that the ould Dublin boy gave me the box.
I'd lay a tinpenny to a brass farthing that it's filled with Lundy Foot."
Opening the box, therefore, he flung its contents right into the fiery
eyes of the man in black, while he was still occupied with reading the