"'A pipe it larns us all this thing—
'T is fair without and foul within,
Just like a sowl begrim'd with sin.
Think o' this when you're smoking tiba-akky!'"
Larry puffed away silently for a few minutes, and when Oonah had placed a few sods of turf round the pot in an upright position, that the flame might curl upward round them, and so hasten the boiling, she drew a stool near the fire, and asked Larry to explain about the fright.
"Why I was coming up by the cross-road there, when what should I see but a ghost——"
"A ghost!!!" exclaimed the widow and Oonah, with suppressed voices and distended mouth and eyes.
"To all appearance," said Larry; "but it was only a thing was stuck in the hedge to freken whoever was passin' by; and as I kem up to it there was a groan, so I started, and looked at it for a minit, or thereaway; but I seen what it was, and threwn a stone at it, for fear I'd be mistaken: and I heer'd tittherin' inside the hedge, and then I knew 't was only devilment of some one."
"And what was it?" asked Oonah.
"'T was a horse's head, in throth, with an owld hat on the top of it, and two buck-briars stuck out at each side, and some rags hanging on them, and an owld breeches shakin' undher the head; 't was just altogether like a long pale-faced man, with high shouldhers and no body, and very long arms and short legs:—faith, it frightened me at first."