“I won’t leave this,” said Leeam, “till I get a writing from you that I’m paid up clean till next May.”
The lord gave him the writing, and he came home and knocked at his own door, but the wife would not let him in. She said that Leeam O’Rooney was dead and buried, and that the man at the door was only a deceiver.
“I’m no deceiver,” said William; “I’m after paying my master three years’ rent, and I’ll have possession of my own house, or else I’ll know why.”
He went to the barn and got a big bar of iron, and it wasn’t long till he broke in the door. There was great fear on the wife, and the newly married husband. They thought they were in the time of the General Resurrection, and that the end of the world was coming.
“Why did you think I was dead?” said Leeam.
“Doesn’t everybody in the parish know you’re dead?” said the wife.
“Your body from the devil,” said Leeam, “you’re humbugging me long enough, and get me something to eat.”
The poor woman was greatly afraid, and she dressed him some meat, and when she saw him eating and drinking, she said: “It’s a miracle.”
Then Leeam told her his story from first to last, and she told him each thing that happened, and then he said: “I’ll go to the grave to-morrow, till I see the behoonuch ye buried in my place.”