“Just then, there, I heard the low cry of the good people wafting upon the wind. ‘How early you are at your work, my little fellows!’ says I to myself; and, dark as it was, having no wish for such company, I thought it best to get out of their way; so I turned the horse a little up to the left, thinking to get down by the boreen, that is that way, and so round to Falvey’s; but there I heard the voice plainer and plainer close behind, and I could hear these words:—
‘Ned! Ned!
By my cap so red!
You’re as good, Ned,
As a man that is dead.’
‘A clean pair of spurs is all that’s for it now,’ said I; so off I set, as hard as I could lick, and in my hurry knew no more where I was going than I do the road to the hill of Tarah. Away I galloped on for some time, until I came to the noise of a stream, roaring away by itself in the darkness. ‘What river is this?’ said I to myself—for there was nobody else to ask—‘I thought,’ says I, ‘I knew every inch of ground, and of water too, within twenty miles, and never the river surely is there in this direction.’ So I stopped to look about; but I might have spared myself that trouble, for I could not see as much as my hand. I didn’t know what to do; but I thought in myself, it’s a queer river, surely, if somebody does not live near it; and I shouted out as loud as I could, Murder! murder!—fire!—robbery!—any thing that would be natural in such a place—but not a sound did I hear except my own voice echoed back to me, like a hundred packs of hounds in full cry above and below, right and left. This didn’t do at all; so I dismounted, and guided myself along the stream, directed by the noise of the water, as cautious as if I was treading upon eggs, holding poor Modderaroo by the bridle, who shook, the poor brute, all over in a tremble, like my old grandmother, rest her soul any how! in the ague. Well, sir, the heart was sinking in me, and I was giving myself up, when, as good luck would have it, I saw a light. ‘May be,’ said I, ‘my good fellow, you are only a jacky lantern, and want to bog me and Modderaroo.’ But I looked at the light hard, and I thought it was too study (steady) for a jacky lantern. ‘I’ll try you,’ says I—‘so here goes; and, walking as quick as a thief, I came towards it, being very near plumping into the river once or twice, and being stuck up to my middle, as your honour may perceive cleanly the marks of, two or three times in the slob.[29] At last I made the light out, and it coming from a bit of a house by the road-side; so I went to the door and gave three kicks at it, as strong as I could.
“‘Open the door for Ned Sheehy,’ said a voice inside. Now, besides that I could not, for the life of me, make out how any one inside should know me before I spoke a word at all, I did not like the sound of that voice, ’twas so hoarse and so hollow, just like a dead man’s!—so I said nothing immediately. The same voice spoke again, and said, ‘Why don’t you open the door to Ned Sheehy?’ ‘How pat my name is to you,’ said I, without speaking out, ‘on tip of your tongue, like butter;’ and I was between two minds about staying or going, when what should the door do but open, and out came a man holding a candle in his hand, and he had upon him a face as white as a sheet.
“‘Why, then, Ned Sheehy,’ says he, ‘how grand you’re grown, that you won’t come in and see a friend, as you’re passing by?’
“‘Pray, sir,’ says I, looking at him—though that face of his was enough to dumbfounder any honest man like myself—‘Pray, sir,’ says I, ‘may I make so bold as to ask if you are not Jack Myers that was drowned seven years ago, next Martinmas, in the ford of Ah-na-fourish?’
“‘Suppose I was,’ says he: ‘has not a man a right to be drowned in the ford facing his own cabin-door any day of the week that he likes, from Sunday morning to Saturday night?’
“‘I’m not denying that same, Mr. Myers, sir,’ says I, ‘if ’tis yourself is to the fore speaking to me.’
“‘Well,’ says he, ‘no more words about that matter now: sure you and I, Ned, were friends of old; come in, and take a glass; and here’s a good fire before you, and nobody shall hurt or harm you, and I to the fore, and myself able to do it.’