“Show a light in here, can’t ye?” called out The O’Mahony from the black obscurity beyond the broken door. “Sounds as if the hull darned castle ’d been blown down over our heads.”
Jerry timorously advanced, candle well out in front of him. Its small radiance served dimly to disclose what seemed to be a large chamber, or even hall, high-roofed and spacious. Its floor of stone flags was covered with dry mold. The walls were smoothed over with a gray coat of plastering, whole patches of which had here and there fallen, and more of which tumbled even now as they looked. They saw that this plastering had been decorated by zigzag, saw-toothed lines in three or four colors, now dulled and in places scarcely discernible. The room was irregularly shaped. At its narrower end was a big, roughly built fireplace, on the hearth of which lay ashes and some charred bits of wood, covered, like the stone itself, by a dry film of mold. The O’Mahony held the candle under the flue. The way in which the flame swayed and pointed itself showed that the chimney was open.
Cooking utensils, some of metal, some of pottery, but all alike of strange form, were bestowed on the floor on either side of the hearth. There was a single wooden chair, with a high, pointed back, standing against the wall, and in front of this lay a rug of cowskin, the reddish hair of which came off at the touch. Beside this chair was a low, oblong wooden chest, with a lifting-lid curiously carved, and apparently containing nothing but rolls of parchment and leather-bound volumes.
At the other and wider end of the room was an archway built in the stone, and curtained by hangings of thick, mildewed cloth. The O’Mahony drew these aside, and Jerry advanced with the light.
In a little recess, and reaching from side to side of the arched walls, was built a bed of oaken beams, its top the height of a man’s middle. Withered and faded straw lay piled on the wood, and above this both thick cloth similar to the curtains and finer fabrics which looked like silk. The candle shook in Jerry’s hand, and came near to falling, at the discovery which followed.
On the bed lay stretched the body of a bearded and tonsured man, clad in a long, heavy, dark woolen gown, girt at the waist with a leathern thong—as strangely dried and mummified as are the dead preserved in St. Michan’s vaults at Dublin or in the Bleikeller of the Dom at Bremen. The shriveled, tan-colored face bore a weird resemblance to that of the hereditary bard.
The O’Mahony looked wonderingly down upon this grim spectacle, the while Jerry crossed himself.
“Guess there won’t be much use of callin’ a doctor for him,” said the master, at last.
Then he backed away, to let the curtains fall, and yawned.
“I’m about tuckered out,” he said, stretching his arms. “Let’s go up now an’ take somethin’ warm, and git to bed. We’ll keep mum about this place. P’rhaps—I shouldn’t wonder—it might come in handy for O’Daly.”