“Not above twelve miles off.”
“Is he alive?”
“Ay, if he been’t dead since Candlemas.”
At first I thought of writing to this man; but afterwards, being afraid of committing myself by writing, I went to him: he had long before this time left off business, and had retired to enjoy his fortune in the decline of life. He was a whimsical sort of character; he had some remains of his former taste for anatomy, and was a collector of curiosities. I found him just returned from a lake which he had been dragging for a moose-deer’s horns, to complete the skeleton of a moose-deer, which he had mounted in his hall. I introduced myself, desiring to see his museum, and mentioned to him the thigh-bone of a giant found in ray neighbourhood; then by favour of this bone I introduced the able cure that he had made of a cut in my head, when I was a child.
“A cut in your head, sir? Yes, my lord, I recollect perfectly well, it was a very ugly cut, especially in an infant’s head; but I am glad to find you feel no bad effects from it. Have you any cicatrice on the place?—Eleven feet high, did you say? and is the giant’s skeleton in your neighbourhood?”
I humoured his fancy, and by degrees he gave me all the information I wanted without in the least suspecting my secret motives. He described the length, breadth, and depth, of the wound to me; showed me just where it was on the head, and observed that it must have left an indelible mark, but that my fine hair covered it. When he seemed disposed to search for it, I defended myself with the giant’s thigh-bone, and warded off his attacks most successfully. To satisfy myself upon this point, I affected to think that he had not been paid: he said he had been amply paid, and he showed me his books to prove it. I examined the dates, and found that they agreed with Ellinor’s precisely. On my return home, the first thing I did was to make Christy a present of a new wig, which I was certain would induce him to shave his head; for the lower Irish agree with the beaux and belles of London and Paris, in preferring wigs to their own hair. Ellinor told me, that I might safely let his head be shaved, because to her certain knowledge, he had scars of so many cuts which he had received at fairs upon his skull, that there would appear nothing particular in one more or less. As soon as the head was shaved, and the wig was worn, I took an opportunity one day of stopping at the forge to have one of my horse’s shoes changed; and whilst this was doing, I took notice of his new wig, and how well it fitted him. As I expected, he took it off to show it me better, and to pay his own compliments to it.
“Sure enough, you are a very fine wig,” said he, apostrophising it as he held it up on the end of his hammer; “and God bless him that give it me, and it fits me as if it was nailed to my head.”
“You seem to have had a good many nails in your head already, Christy,” said I, “if one may judge by all these scars.”
“Oh yes, please your honour, my lord,” said he, “there’s no harm in them neither; they are scratches got when I was no wiser than I should be, at fairs, fighting with the boys of Shrawd-na-scoob.”
Whilst he fought his battles o’er again, I had leisure to study his head; and I traced precisely all the boundary lines. The situation, size, and figure of the cicatrice, which the surgeon and Ellinor had described to me, were so visible and exact, that no doubt could remain in my mind of Christy’s being the real son of the late Lord and Lady Glenthorn. This conviction was still more impressed upon my mind a few days afterwards. I recollected having seen a file of family pictures in a lumber-room in the castle; and I rummaged them out to see if I could discover amongst them any likeness to Christy: I found one; the picture of my grandfather,—I should say, of his grandfather, to which Christy bore a striking resemblance, when I saw him with his face washed, and in his Sunday clothes.