In the September of 1834, I was wandering by the side of a country churchyard, situated near the banks of the Tyne. The sun had gone down, and the twilight was falling grey upon the graves. I saw a poor-looking man, whose garments fluttered in tatters with the evening breeze, and who, by his appearance, seemed to be an Irish reaper, rise from among the tombs. He repeatedly drew the sleeve of his coat across his eyes, and I could hear him sobbing heavily, as though his heart would burst. As we approached each other, I discovered that he was my old canal-boat companion, the then merry and kind-hearted Larry M'Carthy; but no more like the Larry I had then seen him than a funeral to a bridal.
His frame was wasted to a skeleton, and hunger and misery glistened in his eyes together.
"Ha!" said I, accosting him, "is it possible that sorrow can have laid its heavy hand upon the light heart of Larry M'Carthy?"
"Shure," said he, drying away the tears that ran down his wan and wantworn cheeks, "and it is true, and too true, and heavy is the hand, shure enough; but not so heavy as it should be, or it would be weighing me into that grave." He pointed to the grave I had seen him leave, and added, "But how do you know me, sir—and who tould ye my name?—as I don't know yours—for, shure, and mine is Larry M'Carthy, as my father and mother, and his rivirence, wid my natarel sponsors, to boot, all, every one of thim, say and affirm."
I reminded him of the canal-boat and the raffle, and inquired the cause of his distress, and his visit to the grave.
"Arrah, master," said he, "and you touch a sore place when you ask me to tell it. Perhaps you don't know—for how should you—that, not long after the time you spake of in the canal-boat, I came down to what ye call the Borders here, to a bit o' navigating work that was to be a long job. I lodged wid a widow—a dacent ould woman, that had a daughter they called Mary—and, och! you may be thinking that ever Mary had an equal, but it's wrong that ye are, if ye think so. Her eyes were like drops of dew upon the shamrock; and, although she was not Irish but Scotch, it was all one; for, ye know, the Scotch and Irish are one man's childer. But, at any rate, she had a true Irish heart; and, but for the sae or the Channel, as they call it, she would have been Irish as well as me. The more I saw of Mary, I loved her the more—better than a bird loves the green tree. She loved me, too; and we were married. The ould woman died a few weeks before Mary presented me with two little Larrys. I might have called them both Larry; for they were as like each other as your two eyes, and both of them as like me, too, as any two stars in the blessed firmament are like each other, where nobody can see a difference.
"Mary made the best wife in Christendom; and, when our little cherubs began to run about our knees, and to lisp and spake to us, a thousand times have I clasped Mary to my breast, and blessed her as though my heart would burst with joy. 'Sure,' I used to say, 'what would my own mother have said, had her ould eyes been witness to the happiness of her son, Larry M'Carthy?'
"But often the thought came staleing over me, that my happiness was too like a drame to last long; and sure and it was a drame, and a short one, too. A cruel, mortal fever came to the village, and who should it seize upon but my little darlints. It was hard to see them dying together, and my Mary wept her bright eyes blind over them. But bad luck was upon me. The 'pothecary tould us as how our lovely childer would die; and on the very day that he said so, the wife that was dearer to me than Ould Ireland to Saint Patrick, lay down on the bed beside them—and och, sir! before another sun looked in at our window, a dying mother lay between her dead childer. I wished that I might die, too; and, within three days, I followed my wife and my little ones together to the same grave. It was this arm that lowered them into the cold earth—into the narrow house—and, sure, it has been weak as a child's since. My strength is buried in their grave. I have wrought but little since; for I cannot. I have no home now; and I take a light job anywhere when it comes in my way. Every year, at reaping time, I visit their grave, and bring with me a bit of shamrock to place over it, and that it may be a mark where to bury me, should I die here, as I hope I will."
Within ten days after this, I beheld the body of the once lively and generous-hearted Larry M'Carthy consigned to the grave, by the side of his wife and children.