don't, we shall make free to break it open, Patrick, dear."

All this while the light of a fire, or of candles, streamed through the
joints of the door. The threat at length appeared to have the desired
effect. A poor decrepid old man undid the bolt and let us in. "Ohon a reel
Ohon a reel What make you all this boder for--come you to help us to wake
poor ould Kate there, and bring you the whisky wid you?"

"Old man, where is Pat Doolan?" said the lieutenant.

"Gone to borrow whisky, to wake ould Kate, there--the howling will begin
whenever Mother Doncannon and Mistress Conolly come over from Middleton,
and I look for dem every minute."

There was no vestige of any living thing in the miserable hovel, except the
old fellow. On two low trestles, in the middle of the floor, lay a coffin
with the lid on, on the top of which was stretched the dead body of an old
emaciated woman in her grave--clothes, the quality of which was much finer
than one could have expected to have seen in the midst of the surrounding
squalidness. The face of the corpse was uncovered, the hands were crossed
on the breast, and there was a plate of salt on the stomach.

An iron cresset, charged with coarse rancid oil, hung from the roof, the
dull smoky red light flickering on the dead corpse, as the breeze streamed
in through the door and numberless chinks in the walls, making the cold,
rigid, sharp features appear to move, and glimmer, and gibber as it were,
from the changing shades. Close to the head, there was a small door
opening into an apartment of some kind, but the coffin was placed so near
it, that one could not pass between the body and the door.