during the evening, in the village. His hours of return had been so very
regular, that his absence excited considerable surprise, though, of
course, no actual alarm; and, at the usual hour, the house was closed for
the night, and the absent lodger consigned to the mercy of the elements,
and the care of his presiding star. Early in the morning, however, he was
found lying in a state of utter helplessness upon the slope immediately
overlooking the Chapelizod gate. He had been smitten with a paralytic
stroke: his right side was dead; and it was many weeks before he had
recovered his speech sufficiently to make himself at all understood.

He then made the following relation:--He had been detained, it appeared,
later than usual, and darkness had closed before he commenced his
homeward walk across the Park. It was a moonlit night, but masses of
ragged clouds were slowly drifting across the heavens. He had not
encountered a human figure, and no sounds but the softened rush of the
wind sweeping through bushes and hollows met his ear. These wild and
monotonous sounds, and the utter solitude which surrounded him, did not,
however, excite any of those uneasy sensations which are ascribed to
superstition, although he said he did feel depressed, or, in his own
phraseology, "lonesome." Just as he crossed the brow of the hill which
shelters the town of Chapelizod, the moon shone out for some moments
with unclouded lustre, and his eye, which happened to wander by the
shadowy enclosures which lay at the foot of the slope, was arrested by
the sight of a human figure climbing, with all the haste of one pursued,
over the churchyard wall, and running up the steep ascent directly
towards him. Stories of "resurrectionists" crossed his recollection, as
he observed this suspicious-looking figure. But he began, momentarily,
to be aware with a sort of fearful instinct which he could not explain,
that the running figure was directing his steps, with a sinister
purpose, towards himself.