and he looked about him, he began to feel very low and melancholy in his
heart. There was the great black coffin on three chairs in one corner; and
then the mourning cloaks that he had stuck up against the windows moved
backward and forward like living things; and outside, the wild cry of the
plover as he flew past, and the night-owl sitting in a nook of the old
church. 'I wish it was morning, anyhow,' said my father, 'for this is a
lonesome place to be in; and faix, he'll be a cunning fellow that catches
me passing the night this way again.' Now there was one thing distressed
him most of all,--my father used always to make fun of the ghosts and
sperits the neighbors would tell of, pretending there was no such thing;
and now the thought came to him, 'May be they'll revenge themselves on me
to-night when they have me up here alone;' and with that he made another
jug stronger than the first, and tried to remember a few prayers in case of
need, but somehow his mind was not too clear, and he said afterwards he
was always mixing up ould songs and toasts with the prayers, and when he
thought he had just got hold of a beautiful psalm, it would turn out to be
'Tatter Jack Walsh' or 'Limping James' or something like that. The storm,
meanwhile, was rising every moment, and parts of the old abbey were falling
as the wind shook the ruin; and my father's spirits, notwithstanding the
punch, wore lower than ever.

"'I made it too weak,' said he, as he set to work on a new jorum; and
troth, this time that was not the fault of it, for the first sup nearly
choked him.

"'Ah,' said he, now, 'I knew what it was; this is like the thing; and Mr.
Free, you are beginning to feel easy and comfortable. Pass the jar. Your
very good health and song. I'm a little hoarse, it's true, but if the
company will excuse--'