always so full of ould men and ould women sitting around the big fire in
the kitchen that the cook could hardly get near it. There they were, eating
their meals and burning their shins till they were speckled like a trout's
back, and grumbling all the time; but Father Dwyer liked them, and he would
have them.

"'Where have they to go,' he'd say, 'av it wasn't to me? Give Molly
Kinshela a lock of that bacon. Tim, it's a could morning; will ye have a
taste of the "dew?"'

"Ah, that's the way he'd spake to them; but sure goodness is no warrant
for living, any more than devilment, and so he got could in his feet at a
station, and he rode home in the heavy snow without his big coat,--for he
gave it away to a blind man on the road; in three days he was dead.

"I see you're getting impatient, so I'll not stop to say what grief was
in the parish when it was known; but troth, there never was seen the like
before,--not a crayture would lift a spade for two days, and there was more
whiskey sold in that time than at the whole spring fair. Well, on the third
day the funeral set out, and never was the equal of it in them parts:
first, there was my father,--he came special from Cork with the six horses
all in new black, and plumes like little poplar-trees,--then came Father
Dwyer, followed by the two coadjutors in beautiful surplices, walking
bare-headed, with the little boys of the Priory school, two-and-two."

"Well, Mike, I'm sure it was very fine; but for Heaven's sake, spare me all
these descriptions, and get on to the ghost!"

"'Faith, yer honor's in a great hurry for the ghost,--may be ye won't like
him when ye have him; but I'll go faster, if ye please. Well, Father Dwyer,