“Troth and maybe I did,” repeated Tim, “see more nor any of ye ever saw, and maybe more than wud be good for any of ye to see, ayther.”
“Oh, we don’t doubt you, Tim,” said I, putting in a word to mollify him; “But that was a long time ago, for none of them things are going about now.”
“Ar’n’t they!” said Tim. “How mighty clever some people thinks they are.” And he took three or four strong whiffs of his dhudeen and sent a blue cloud of pungent smoke through the room.
“Did ye ever hear of the black dog?” said he.
“No,” said we in chorus.
“No; and I suppose none of ye would believe in it?”
“Oh, indeed, Tim, we’d believe anything you’d tell us.”
“Well, I know ye are all dacent boys,” said Tim, “an’, seein’ the night that it is, I don’t mind tellin’ ye, but I hope that none of ye will meet the likes of it. And, be the same token, ’twas a Christmas Eve, too, it happened, before any of ye was born. I was only a gorsoon myself then, but I remember it as if ’twas only last night. Ould Hegarty lived up in the big house on the hill with the grove around it. ’Tis little better nor a ruin now, with the jackdaws nesting in the chimneys and the swallows buildin’ in the drawin’-room, where the quality used to be. Ould Hegarty, when I first saw him, was a fine, splendid-lookin’ man, as straight as a pikestaff. He had a free hand and an open house to them that he thought was good enough for him, but he was as hard as flint to the poor. There was a poor widow that lived in a cabin where the railway is now, bad luck to it, and she had an only son, a poor angashore of a fellow that didn’t rightly know what he was doin’, and one fine day me bould Hegarty caught him stealin’ a few turnips for his ould mother, an’ nothin’ wud do Hegarty but to put the law agin’ him, and the poor boy was transported, and sure the luck was that he wasn’t hanged, bekase they’d hang you then for stealin’ a tinpenny bit. And sure the night the assizes was over myself seen the poor lone widow up at ould Hegarty’s doorstep, an’ she cursin’ him, and, says she, ‘May the black dog follow ye night and day till the hour of yer death,’ and she was down on her two knees, and her poor grey hairs was streamin’ in the wind. And out kem Hegarty with his ridin’ whip in his hand, and he lashed her wud it until the welts on her shoulders wor as thick as yer fingers. ‘Do yer worst, Hegarty,’ sez she, ‘but the curse of the widow and the orphan is on ye, and the black dog will follow ye to your dyin’ day,’ and the poor crather got up and she staggered away, an’ sure before a fortnight was over they buried her in the churchyard beyant. He murdhered her, as sure as ye’re sittin’ there, but there was no one to take the law agin him; an’, sure, if there was ’twud be no use, for the likes of him could do what they liked in them times wud the poor people. But, for all that, they say he hadn’t an easy day nor night from that out, and in daylight or dark he always thought he saw a black dog following him. He wouldn’t sleep by himself if he got the world full of goold, and he always had his servant-man—one, Jim Cassidy—to sleep wud him. An’, sure, Jim himself tould me that Hegarty wud often start up out of his sleep and cry out, ‘Cassidy, Cassidy, Cassidy, turn out the dog!’ But Cassidy let on to me that he never seed the dog, though he used to make believe as if he wor huntin’ him out of the room, but he said whenever he did that he used to hear a dog howlin’ outside for all the world like a banshee.”
“Well, this went on for a year or two, and me bould Hegarty that used to have a face, from eatin’ and dhrinkin’, as red as a turkey-cock’s gills, grew as white an’ as thin as a first coat of whitewash, and he’d never go home in the night, after playin’ cards up at the club-house, without havin’ one or two friends along with him, and he used to keep them playin’ and dhrinkin’ in his own house till cock-crow, and then he used to get a bit easy in his mind, and Cassidy tould me he could get a few hours’ sleep.”