If Peter had taken less whisky by a single thimbleful, it is probable that he would have lost heart altogether before these figures, which seemed every moment to assume a more marked and fearful, though hardly definable, contrast to ordinary human shapes.
“What is it you want with me?” he stammered.
“To bring my lost treasure to the churchyard,” replied the lady, in a silvery voice of more than mortal desolation.
The word “treasure” revived the resolution of Peter, although a cold sweat was covering him, and his hair was bristling with horror; he believed, however, that he was on the brink of fortune, if he could but command nerve to brave the interview to its close.
“And where,” he gasped, “is it hid—where will I find it?”
They both pointed to the sill of the window, through which the moon was shining at the far end of the room, and the soldier said—
“Under that stone.”
Peter drew a long breath, and wiped the cold dew from his face, preparatory to passing to the window, where he expected to secure the reward of his protracted terrors. But looking steadfastly at the window, he saw the faint image of a newborn child sitting upon the sill in the moonlight, with its little arms stretched toward him, and a smile so heavenly as he never beheld before.
At sight of this, strange to say, his heart entirely failed him, he looked on the figures that stood near, and beheld them gazing on the infantine form with a smile so guilty and distorted, that he felt as if he were entering alive among the scenery of hell, and shuddering, he cried in an irrepressible agony of horror—
“I’ll have nothing to say with you, and nothing to do with you; I don’t know what yez are or what yez want iv me, but let me go this minute, every one of yez, in the name of God.”
With these words there came a strange rumbling and sighing about Peter’s ears; he lost sight of everything, and felt that peculiar and not unpleasant sensation of falling softly, that sometimes supervenes in sleep, ending in a dull shock. After that he had neither dream nor consciousness till he wakened, chill and stiff, stretched between two piles of old rubbish, among the black and roofless walls of the ruined house.
We need hardly mention that the village had put on its wonted air of neglect and decay, or that Peter looked around him in vain for traces of those novelties which had so puzzled and distracted him upon the previous night.
“Ay, ay,” said his grandmother, removing her pipe, as he ended his description of the view from the bridge, “sure enough I remember myself, when I was a slip of a girl, these little white cabins among the gardens by the river side. The artillery sogers that was married, or had not room in the barracks, used to be in them, but they’re all gone long ago.
“The Lord be merciful to us!” she resumed, when he had described the military procession, “It’s often I seen the regiment marchin’ into the town, jist as you saw it last night, acushla. Oh, voch, but it makes my heart sore to think iv them days; they were pleasant times, sure enough; but is not it terrible, avick, to think it’s what it was the ghost of the rigiment you seen? The Lord betune us an’ harm, for it was nothing else, as sure as I’m sittin’ here.”
When he mentioned the peculiar physiognomy and figure of the old officer who rode at the head of the regiment—
“That,” said the old crone, dogmatically, “was ould Colonel Grimshaw, the Lord presarve us! he’s buried in the churchyard iv Chapelizod, and well I remember him, when I was a young thing, an’ a cross ould floggin’ fellow he was wid the men, an’ a devil’s boy among the girls—rest his soul!”
“Amen!” said Peter; “it’s often I read his tombstone myself; but he’s a long time dead.”
“Sure, I tell you he died when I was no more nor a slip iv a girl—the Lord betune us and harm!”
“I’m afeard it is what I’m not long for this world myself, afther seeing such a sight as that,” said Peter, fearfully.
“Nonsinse, avourneen,” retorted his grandmother, indignantly, though she had herself misgivings on the subject; “sure there was Phil Doolan, the ferryman, that seen black Ann Scanlan in his own boat, and what harm ever kem of it?”
Peter proceeded with his narrative, but when he came to the description of the house, in which his adventure had had so sinister a conclusion, the old woman was at fault.
“I know the house and the ould walls well, an’ I can remember the time there was a roof on it, and the doors an’ windows in it, but it had a bad name about being haunted, but by who, or for what, I forget intirely.”
“Did you ever hear was there goold or silver there?” he inquired.
“No, no, avick, don’t be thinking about the likes; take a fool’s advice, and never go next to near them ugly black walls again the longest day you have to live; an’ I’d take my davy, it’s what it’s the same word the priest himself id be afther sayin’ to you if you wor to ax his raverence consarnin’ it, for it’s plain to be seen it was nothing good you seen there, and there’s neither luck nor grace about it.”
Peter’s adventure made no little noise in the neighbourhood, as the reader may well suppose; and a few evenings after it, being on an errand to old Major Vandeleur, who lived in a snug old-fashioned house, close by the river, under a perfect bower of ancient trees, he was called on to relate the story in the parlour.
The Major
