The proposition met with general favor, and rising, the company passed into the unplastered kitchen, through whose thin walls and poorly seasoned sashes came occasional little puffs of the furious wind, which whistled and howled like a demon without. The gunners seated themselves around the huge fireplace, in which a pile of dried gnarled roots filled the room with light and warmth, and lighting pipe or cigar, as fancy dictated, gave a respectful attention to the promised story.
As will be gathered from the preceding conversation, Creamer spoke excellent English, but as is often the case when excited, he lapsed at times into a rich brogue. This he did to a considerable degree in relating what he was pleased to call the story of
Matthew Collins's Ghost.
"I was only a babe in arms when my father crossed the ocean to settle down on the Fane estate as one of the number of settlers, called for by the terms of the original grant. His father was a warm houlder in Errigle-Trough, and had my father been patient and industhrious, he would in a few years have rinted as good an hundhred acres as there was in that section. But the agent tould of land at a shillin' an acre, with wood in plenty, and trees that grew sugar, and game and fish for every one, and my father thought that he was provided for for life, when, with his lease in his pocket and a free passage, he stepped on board the ould ship that bore us to this little island.
"He wasn't far wrong, for he died when I was fifteen, worn out with clearin' woodland, and working all winter in the deep snow at lumbering, to keep us in bread and herrin'. He was a disappointed, worn-out old man at forty, and it was only when he told of the good old times of his youth that I ever seen him smile at all, at all.
"Matthew Collins was a well-to-do farmer of the neighboring parish of Errigle-Keeran, and had a snug cottage and barn, with a good team of plough-horses, a cow, two goats, and a pig, beside poulthry enough to keep him in egg-milk, and even an occasional fowl or two on a birthday, or holy feast. He married Katty Bane, one of the prettiest girls and greatest coquettes in the whole parish. She, however, made him a good wife and careful manager, until the events of my sthory.
"One day, late in the fall, Matthew harnessed his horses in a hay-riggin', and drove off to the bog, five miles away, to haul in his winter's firin'. He wrought all day, getting the dried turfs into a pile, and had just half loaded his team, when a stranger, decently dressed, came up to him, and asked if his name was Matthew Collins.
"'That, indeed, is the name that's on me,' said Matthew; 'and what might you be wantin' of me?'
"'I've sorrowful news for you, Mat,' said the stranger. 'Your sister Rose, that married my poor cousin Tim Mulloy, beyant the mountains, is dead, and I'm sint to bid ye to the berryin' to-morrow.'
"For a few moments Matthew gave way to a natural feeling of grief at the loss of his sister; but he soon bethought himself that he was five miles from home, and that a circuitous road of at least twenty miles lay between his house and the parish of his sister's husband.