THE GHOST.
“Well, I believe your honor heard me tell long ago how my father left the army, and the way that he took to another line of life that was more to his liking. And so it was, he was happy as the day was long; he drove a hearse for Mr. Callaghan of Cork for many years, and a pleasant place it was; for ye see, my father was a ‘cute man, and knew something of the world; and though he was a droll devil, and could sing a funny song when he was among the boys, no sooner had he the big black cloak on him and the weepers, and he seated on the high box with the six long-tailed blacks before him, you’d really think it was his own mother was inside, he looked so melancholy and miserable. The sexton and gravedigger was nothing to my father; and he had a look about his eye—to be sure there was a reason for it—that you’d think he was up all night crying; though it’s little indulgence he took that way.
“Well, of all Mr. Callaghan’s men, there was none so great a favorite as my father. The neighbors were all fond of him.
“‘A kind crayture, every inch of him!’ the women would say. ‘Did ye see his face at Mrs. Delany’s funeral?’
“‘True for you,’ another would remark; ‘he mistook the road with grief, and stopped at a shebeen house instead of Kilmurry church.’
“I need say no more, only one thing,—that it was principally among the farmers and the country people my father was liked so much. The great people and the quality—ax your pardon; but sure isn’t it true, Mister Charles?—they don’t fret so much after their fathers and brothers, and they care little who’s driving them, whether it was a decent, respectable man like my father, or a chap with a grin on him like a rat-trap. And so it happened that my father used to travel half the county; going here and there wherever there was trade stirring; and faix, a man didn’t think himself rightly buried if my father wasn’t there; for ye see, he knew all about it: he could tell to a quart of spirits what would be wanting for a wake; he knew all the good criers for miles round; and I’ve heard it was a beautiful sight to see him standing on a hill, arranging the procession as they walked into the churchyard, and giving the word like a captain,—
“‘Come on, the stiff; now the friends of the stiff; now the pop’lace.’
“That’s what he used to say, and troth he was always repeating it, when he was a little gone in drink,—for that’s the time his spirits would rise, and he’d think he was burying half Munster.
“And sure it was a real pleasure and a pride to be buried in them times; for av it was only a small farmer with a potato garden, my father would come down with the black cloak on him, and three yards of crape behind his hat, and set all the children crying and yelling for half a mile round; and then the way he’d walk before them with a spade on his shoulder, and sticking it down in the ground, clap his hat on the top of it, to make it look like a chief mourner. It was a beautiful sight!”
“But Mike, if you indulge much longer in this flattering recollection of your father, I’m afraid we shall lose sight of the ghost entirely.”