Larry Sweeney, to watch me three days and three nights after they plant me under the sod. There's Dr. Dickenson there

I see the fellow looking at me. Fill your glass, Doctor: here's your health! And shoot him, Larry (do you hear?), shoot the doctor like a cock if he ever comes stirring up my poor old bones from their roost of Inistubber."

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Why, then," Larry answered, accepting the glass which followed this command, "long life to both your honors; and it's I that would like to be putting a bullet into Dr. Dickenson -Heaven between him and harm! for wanting your honor away, as if you was a horse's head, to a bonfire. There's nothing, I 'shure you, gintlemin, poor as I am, that would give me greater pleasure."

"We feel obliged, Larry," said Sir Theodore, "for your good wishes."

"Is it I pull you out of the grave, indeed?" continued the whipper-in (for such he was); "I'd let nobody pull your honor out of any place, saving 'twas Purgatory; and out of that I'd pull you myself, if I saw you going there."

"I am of opinion, Larry," said Dr. Dickenson, “you'd turn tail if you saw Sir Theodore on that road. You might go farther and fair worse, you know."

"Turn tail!" replied Larry. "It's I that wouldn't-I appale to St. Patrick himself over beyond"-pointing to a picture of the Prime Saint of Ireland which hung in gilt daubery behind his master's chair, right opposite to him.

To Larry's horror and astonishment the picture, fixing its eyes upon him, winked with the most knowing air, as if acknowledging the appeal.

"What makes you turn so white, then, at the very thought? said the doctor, interpreting the visible consternation of our hero in his own way.

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Nothing particular," answered Larry; "but a wakeness has come strong over me, gintlemin; and, if you have no objection, I'd like to go into the air for a bit."

Leave was of course granted, and Larry retired amid the laughter of the guests: but, as he retreated, he could not avoid casting a glance on the awful picture; and again the Saint winked, with a most malicious smile. It was impossible to endure the repeated infliction, and Larry rushed down the stairs in an agony of fright and amazement.

"Maybe," thought he, "it might be my own eyes that

VOL. XXIII. -4

wasn't quite steady—or the flame of the candle. But no! He winked at me as plain as ever I winked at Judy Donaghue of a May morning. What he manes by it I can't say; but there's no use of thinking about it; no, nor of talking neither, for who'd believe me if I tould them of it?"

The next evening Sir Theodore died, as has been mentioned, and in due time thereafter was buried, according to the custom of the family, by torchlight in the churchyard of Inistubber. All was fitly performed; and although Dickenson had no design upon the jovial knight — and, if he had not, there was nobody within fifteen miles that could be suspected of such an outrage yet Larry Sweeney was determined to make good his promise of watching his master. "I'd think little of telling a lie to him, by the way of no harm, when he was alive," said he, wiping his eyes as soon as the last of the train had departed, leaving him with a single companion in the lonely cemetery; "but now that he's dead - God rest his soul! - I'd scorn it. So Jack Kinaley, as behooves my first cousin's son, stay you with me here this blessed night, for betune you and I it ain't lucky to stay by one's self in this ruinated old rookery, where ghosts (God help us!) is as thick as bottles in Sir Theodore's cellar."

"Never you mind that, Larry," said Kinaley, a discharged soldier who had been through all the campaigns of the Peninsula "never mind, I say, such botherations. Hain't I lain. in bivouac on the field at Salamanca, and Tallawora, and the Pyrumnees, and many another place beside, when there was dead corpses lying about in piles, and there was no more ghosts than kneebuckles in a ridgemint of Highlanders. Here! Let me prime them pieces, and hand us over the bottle. We'll stay snug under this east window, for the wind's coming down the hill, and I defy

"None of that bould talk, Jack," said his cousin. "As for what ye saw in foreign parts, of dead men killed a-fighting, sure that's nothing to the dead-God rest 'em!-that's here. There, you see, they had company, one with the other, and, being killed freshlike that morning, had no heart to stir; but here, faith! 'tis a horse of another color."

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Maybe it is," said Jack; "but the night's coming on; so I'll turn in. Wake me if you see anything; and, after I've got my two hours' rest, I'll relieve you."

With these words the soldier turned on his side under shelter of a grave, and, as his libations had been rather copious during

the day, it was not long before he gave audible testimony that the dread of supernatural visitants had had no effect in disturbing the even current of his fancy.

Although Larry had not opposed the proposition of his kinsman, yet he felt by no means at ease. He put in practice all the usually recommended nostrums for keeping away unpleasant thoughts. He whistled; but the echo sounded so sad and dismal that he did not venture to repeat the experiment. He sang; but, when no more than five notes had passed his lips, he found it impossible to get out a sixth, for the chorus reverberated from the ruinous walls was destruction to all earthly harmony. He cleared his throat; he hummed; he stamped; he endeavored to walk. All would not do. He wished sincerely that Sir Theodore had gone to Heaven - he dared not suggest even to himself, just then, the existence of any other region without leaving on him the perilous task of guarding his mortal remains in so desperate a place. Flesh and blood could hardly resist it! Even the preternatural snoring of Jack Kinaley added to the horrors of his position; and, if his application to the spirituous soother of grief beside him was frequent, it is more to be deplored on the score of morality than wondered at on the score of metaphysics. He who censures our hero too severely has never watched the body of a dead baronet in the churchyard of Inistubber at midnight. "If it was a common, dacent, quite, well-behaved churchyard a'self," thought Larry, half aloud; "but when 'tis a place like this forsaken ould berrin' ground, which is noted for villainy

"For what, Larry?" inquired a gentleman stepping out of a niche which contained the only statue time had spared. It was the figure of St. Colman, to whom the church was dedicated. Larry had been looking at the figure as it shone forth in ebon and ivory in the light and shadow of the now highcareering moon.

"For what, Larry?" said the gentleman; "for what do you say the churchyard is noted?"

"For nothing at all, please your honor,” replied Larry, “except the height of gentility."

The stranger was about four feet high, dressed in what might be called glowing garments if, in spite of their form, their rigidity did not deprive them of all claim to such an appellation. He wore an antique miter upon his head; his hands were folded upon his breast; and over his right shoulder rested a pastoral

crook. There was a solemn expression in his countenance, and his eye might truly be called stony. His beard could not well be said to wave upon his bosom; but it lay upon it in ample profusion, stiffer than that of a Jew on a frosty morning after mist. In short, as Larry soon discovered to his horror on looking up at the niche, it was no other than St. Colman himself, who had stepped forth indignant, in all probability, at the stigma cast by the watcher of the dead on the churchyard of which his Saintship was patron.

He smiled with a grisly solemnity-just such a smile as you might imagine would play round the lips of a milestone (if it had any) — at the recantation so quickly volunteered by Larry. "Well," said he, "Lawrence Sweeney

"How well the old rogue," thought Larry, "knows my

name!"

"Since you profess yourself such an admirer of the merits of the churchyard of Inistubber, get up and follow me, till I show you the civilities of the place, for I'm master here, and must do the honors."

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Willingly would I go with your worship," replied our friend; "but you see here I am engaged to Sir Theodore, who, though a good master, was a mighty passionate man when everything was not done as he ordered it; and I am feared to stir.' "Sir Theodore," said the saint, "will not blame you for following me. I assure you he will not."

"But then" said Larry.

"Follow me!" cried the saint in a hollow voice; and, casting upon him his stony eye, drew poor Larry after him, as the bridal guest was drawn by the lapidary glance of the Ancient Mariner, or, as Larry himself afterwards expressed it, "as a jaw tooth is wrinched out of an ould woman with a pair of pinchers.

The saint strode before him in silence, not in the least incommoded by the stones and rubbish which at every step sadly contributed to the discomfiture of Larry's shins, who followed his marble conductor into a low vault situated at the west end of the church. In accomplishing this, poor Larry contrived to bestow upon his head an additional organ, the utility of which he was not craniologist enough to discover.

The path lay through coffins piled up on each side of the way in various degrees of decomposition; and excepting that the solid footsteps of the saintly guide, as they smote heavily

on the floor of stone, broke the deadly silence, all was still. Stumbling and staggering along, directed only by the casual glimpses of light afforded by the moon where it broke through the dilapidated roof of the vault and served to discover only sights of woe, Larry followed. He soon felt that he was descending, and could not help wondering at the length of the journey. He began to entertain the most unpleasant suspicions as to the character of his conductor; but what could he do? Flight was out of the question, and to think of resistance was absurd. "Needs must, they say," thought he to himself, "when the Devil drives. I see it's much the same when a Saint leads." At last the dolorous march had an end; and, not a little to Larry's amazement, he found that his guide had brought him to the gate of a lofty hall before which a silver lamp, filled with naphtha," yielded light as from a sky." From within loud sounds of merriment were ringing; and it was evident, from the jocular harmony and the tinkling of glasses, that some subterranean catch club were not idly employed over the bottle.

"Who's there?" said a porter, roughly responding to the knock of St. Colman.

"Be so good," said the saint, mildly, "my very good fellow, as to open the door without further questions, or I'll break your head. I'm bringing a gentleman here on a visit, whose business is pressing.'

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Maybe so," thought Larry; "but what that business may be is more than I can tell."

The porter sulkily complied with the order, after having apparently communicated the intelligence that a stranger was at hand; for a deep silence immediately followed the tipsy clamor, and Larry, sticking close to his guide, whom he now looked upon almost as a friend when compared with these underground revelers to whom he was about to be introduced, followed him through a spacious vestibule, which gradually sloped into a low arched room where the company was assembled.

And a strange-looking company it was. Seated round a long table were three and twenty grave and venerable personages, bearded, mitered, stoled, and crosiered, all living statues of stone, like the saint who had walked out of his niche. On the drapery before them were figured the images of the sun, moon, and stars the inexplicable bear the mystic temple built by the hand of Hiramand other symbols of which the uninitiated know nothing. The square, the line, the trowel were