But there was a Bob Martin once; the old Bob of all, who served the office of sexton when the population of Ireland scarcely amounted to three millions of interrable bodies. That man could have enwrinkled you all over with grave statistics. It was he that buried Luttrell, and saw the blue light flickering out of the coffin, when the first shovelful of black earth was cast upon it; and formidable were the stories which he related of the same Luttrell. Bob was for a long while “the oldest inhabitant,” but, unlike that personage in general, he could remember many things; and he would tell them with a gusto, when engaged knee-deep, or deeper still, in his professional avocation. To him is the world indebted for a few fragments of Satanic History, collected from the transactions of “The Hellfire Club,” every tittle of which he was prepared to verify before any tribunal.
The building of “The Devil’s Mills,” on the Lower Road to Lucan, was one of those incontestable facts. They were built in one night, at the requisition of the redoubtable Luttrell, who being hard pressed to devise a task beyond the ability of the architect to perform (otherwise he could not get rid of his society, which began to be rather ennuyant), he commanded the mill to be erected. But that was no trouble. He looked out of the window, and saw it done.
“Throw a weir and dam across the river.” Presto, there it was!
“Make me a rope of sand.”
“Ah, there you have me,” said the old gentleman, “for the devil himself cannot do that;” and so he was quit for that time. The ruined mill at Woodlands, on the Liffey bank, still attests the reality of this wonder.
Again, at an annual meeting of the club, at which whoever happened to be last in a certain saltatory movement of the whole assembly, became the lawful prey of the “grand master,” it was Luttrell’s luck to be left behind. But his good genius did not forsake him.
“What are your eyes for?” he cried, nothing daunted. “Take the fellow that is coming after me.”
The devil let go his prey and seized—a shadow; whence the remarkable fact, that, to the hour of his death, Luttrell never had a shadow. Bob Martin had seen him a dozen times, without a shadow. He could not swear, indeed, that the sun shone on such occasions; but of the material fact, that Luttrell belonged to the ascii of the earth, there could not be a possible doubt.
On a third occasion, when immersed in study—it would be curious to know the name of the volume—the old one peeping over his shoulder, gave him a familiar tap, and said:—
“Come down, and finish it at my fireside.”
“Stay,” said Luttrell, whose ready wit was never at a “nonplush,” “I have a codicil to add to my will. Give me a delay till this inch of candle is burned out.”
The request seemed so moderate, that it was granted without hesitation.
“Upon your honour?”
“As I’m a gentleman.”
“Then, perhaps, you’ll have no objection to sit a short time in the dark?” So said, so done. He blew out the candle, locked it up in his desk, marked the sign of the cross over the keyhole, and requested his friend to ring the bell for fresh lights.
Now, though Bob was a staunch Protestant, and held mutterings in as much contempt as Lord John Russell, he believed most firmly that nothing could have hindered the old gentleman from following that inch of candle into the desk, and annihilating it with one puff of his breath, if the sign of the cross had not been so timely interposed to bar him out.
But Bob’s conversation was rich in remembrances of better men. His father had been married by “the Dane,” whereby he meant Dean Swift, and a considerable proportion of his store of traditionary anecdote was connected, more or less, with that great name; nor was he singular in that. All the old men of his time preserved a lively sense of the wit and patriotism of the eccentric Drapier. They could tell all that is written, and a great deal that is not written, illustrative of his peculiar humour. As for Bob, he was able to point out the particular spot on the Castleknock road, where he stopped his horse to bargain with a cowboy for a secret whereby he was enabled to prognosticate the weather. The dean had passed by, lightly clad, in full confidence that the weather would continue fair.
“Go back for your cloak, sir,” said the urchin; “it will rain.”
Without heeding the warning, he passed on; and in an hour’s time was wet to the skin. He returned to the spot, and demanded how the boy could foresee the shower? The youngster required half-a-crown for the information, which having obtained after some chaffering, he said:—
“You see that big stone, your reverence, in the middle of the field. Well, whenever you want to know if it is going to rain, come to that place, and if you find the bull scratching himself against that big stone, you
