Max sat up, rubbed his eyes, and looked about him: “Where am I,” said he; “and how did I come here?” Then, as memory returned, he asked, anxiously, “Where is she?”
“She’s here!” and before him stood Grana of Carrigogunnel, who, tearing off her long grey horsehair locks and the rest of her costume, appeared in the proper character of his decidedly gaunt, but not at all horrible, cousin Ned.
“Here I am, Max; I’ll wash off the walnut juice by-and-bye.”
“Serve you right if it won’t come off,” said his mother. “It was too bad of you all to frighten this poor fellow nearly out of his life. It is well for you your father is not at home.”
“’Tis so,” said the butler, who all the while had been privy to the joke; “they a’most kilt him intirely with fright. Niver mind ’em in there; ’twas only the skull of the ould white cow that ye tuck up! Ha, ha, ha! he, he, he!” and in spite of all their pity for the victim, Mrs. Connor and the girls could not help laughing at the absurdity of the whole thing.
“You see, mother,” said Dennis (to whom Mrs. Connor was administering a private lecture on practical jokes), “we’d never have done it, only he was such an awfully conceited chap. We told him some stories the other day, and he tossed up his nose and talked about Irish ignorance and superstition. I knew he was a hollow sham all the while; and you see, directly he heard the hag’s story he was carried away by his fright, and never stopped to reason about anything. He’ll never lord it over Major and Minor again, that’s one comfort; the former has twice his sense, and Harry’s a plucky little fellow, and will be sure, if he tries it, to give him a reminder about Con Condon the headless, and the white cow’s skull.”
[3] Oilioll Olum was king of Munster in the second century. He was a ferocious and powerful monarch. The story here told of him is recorded in the ancient annals of Ireland.
