“Ah, Gentlemen!” exclaimed the poor culprit, “speak low: have mercy on me, Master Davy; you know it was I taught you your Latin.—I’m starving to death!”
“You shall not die in that way, you villanous schoolmaster!” said Davy, pushing toward him a loaf of bread and a bottle of wine that stood on the table,—but standing aloof himself, as though not yet quite decided as to the nature of the intruder.
The miserable creature having eaten the bread with avidity, and drunk two or three glasses of wine, the lamp of life once more seemed to brighten up. After a pause, he communicated every circumstance relating to his sudden appearance before us. He confessed having bought the arsenic at the desire of Mrs. O’Flaherty, and that he was aware of the application of it, but solemnly protested that it was she who had seduced him; he then proceeded to inform us that after having been duly hanged, the sheriff had delivered his body to his mother, but not until the executioner had given a slight cut on each limb, just to save the law; which cuts bled profusely, and were probably the means of preserving his life. His mother, conceiving that the vital spark was not extinct, had put him into bed, dressed his wounded limbs, and rubbed his neck with hot vinegar. Having steadily pursued this process, and accompanied it by pouring warm brandy and water down his throat, in the course of an hour he was quite sensible, but experienced horrid pains for several weeks before his final recovery. His mother filled the coffin he was brought home in with bricks, and got some men to bury it the same night in Kilmainham burial-ground, as if ashamed to inter him in open day. For a long time he was unable to depart, being every moment in dread of discovery:—at length, however, he got off by night in a smuggling boat, which landed him on the Isle of Man, and from thence he contrived to reach London, bearing a letter from a priest at Kerry to another priest who had lived in the Borough, the purport of which was to get him admitted into a monastery in France. But finding the Southwark priest was dead, he then went to Scotland, using various disguises; and returning to town, was afraid, though possessing some little money sent him by his mother, even to buy food, for fear of detection! but recollecting that Mr. Lauder, his old scholar, lived somewhere in the Temple, he had got directed by a porter to the lodging the night before.
My friend Davy, though he did not half like it, suffered this poor devil to sit in the chamber till the following evening. He then procured him a place in the night coach to Rye, from whence he got to St. Vallery, and was received, as I afterward learnt from a very grateful letter which he sent to Lauder, into the monastery of La Trappe, near Abbeville, where he lived in strict seclusion, and died, as I heard, some years since.
This incident is not related as a mere isolated anecdote, unconnected with any serious general considerations; but rather with a view to show how many deceptions a man’s imagination may hastily subject him to; and to impress the consideration that nothing should be regarded as supernatural, which can by possibility be the result of human interference.
In the present case, if Lanegan had withdrawn before Lauder had arisen and spoken to him, no reasoning upon earth could ever have convinced the Templar of the materiality of the vision. As Lanegan’s restoration to life after execution had not at that time been spoken of, nor even suspected, Lauder would have willingly deposed, upon the Holy Evangelists, that he had seen the actual ghost of the schoolmaster who had been hanged and quartered in Dublin a considerable time before; his identification of the man’s person being rendered unequivocal from the circumstance of his having been formerly Lanegan’s pupil. And I must confess that I should myself have seen no reason to doubt Lauder’s assertions, had the man withdrawn from the chamber before he spoke to me—to do which, under the circumstances, it was by no means improbable fear might have induced him.
Thus one of the “best authenticated ghost stories ever related” has been lost to the history of supernatural occurrences. The circumstance, however, did not cure Davy Lauder in the least of his dread of apparitions, which was excessive.
Nor have I much right to reproach my friend’s weakness in this particular. I have, on the other hand, throughout my observations admitted—nay, I fear, occasionally boasted—that I was myself superstitious. The species of reading I adopted and ardently pursued from my infancy upward may, I admit, have impressed my mind indelibly; and the consciousness of this fact should have served to render me rather sceptical than credulous upon any subject that bore a mysterious character.
My relations, whilst I was a boy, took it into their heads that I was a decided coward in this way, which though I in round terms denied, I freely admitted at the same time my coyness with regard to trying any unnecessary experiments or making any superstitious invocations, particularly on Allhallow-eve,[[28]] or other mysterious days, whereupon a sort of bastard witchcraft is always practised in Ireland.