Leaning on a more aspiring tombstone near, I read again and again these simple words, all the while imagination doing its work of making a history for the mother and her child, when from this my second reverie of the morning, I was again aroused by the voice of my aged friend.
"I see you have been reading that inscription, sir," he said. "I have," I, replied, "and it has stirred my curiosity rather strangely. It seems to me that there is much which the tombstone does not tell."
"Very much indeed, sir," returned the sexton; "look around me as I may at these familiar forms, there is not one amongst them tells as sad a tale as this one."
"Your reply does not lessen my curiosity," I said; "and even if it be the saddest of your sad experiences, and that I did not fear to trespass too much upon your feelings or your time, I should ask you to tell me the story of those whose resting-place is thus beautifully, yet strangely marked."
"No trespass, sir, no trespass," the old man replied. "If the story be one to recall a scene which will make my old eyes weep, it will just be such a one as suits my heart this morning. So having yet an hour to spare before the remains of my old friend can reach the ground, we shall sit down upon this grave here whilst I tell you the story of Mary Donovan and her boy."
Glancing around to see that no unexpected duty called him, he seated himself on the mound proposed. I sat down beside him, an eager listener to that which follows, given to you in words as near his own as may be, but wanting in that richness of accent and figurative expression peculiar to his class and to his country.
Had business or pleasure called you to Castlewellan some six years ago, began the sexton, you could hardly have failed to meet a good-natured innocent, [Footnote 211] some seventeen or eighteen years old, ever to be seen the first at Blaney's when a traveller pulled up his horse for refreshments or coach or car, to set down or to receive a passenger. Ere the rattle of hoof or wheel had ceased in the courtyard before the inn, the voice of poor Ned Donovan was sure to fall upon the stranger's ear in a greeting, wild, yet musical, and with that peculiarity of expression which told the story plainly, that he was one of those to whom, for his own wise purpose doubtless, God had been but sparing in the gift of mind. And yet there was a childish joyousness in his every look and tone that compensated in some measure for his misfortune, evidence as it was that he was saved from the cares and anxieties common even to those of his early years.
[Footnote 211: Synonymous with "Idiot" among the Irish peasantry when used in this way; they rarely use the word idiot unless in derision.]
Ned loved the horses and the cars, and knew every professional driver that came that way to fair or market for miles and miles around. He reserved, however, especial affection for the regular roadsters, man and beast; these I mean that drove daily to Blaney's from Newry, Rathfriland, or Dromore. The men, well acquainted with his ways, never spoke a hasty or unkind word to him, although he was occasionally self·willed in the matter of the horse-feed and the watering. The horses naturally returned the affection of one whose attendance upon them was untiring. He talked to them incessantly in public or in private; their comfort occupied the first place in his thought. He curried, whisked them down, patted and praised their best points with all the enthusiasm of a connoisseur, or, when the like happened, mourned over a broken knee or a windgall as over some serious domestic trouble, as indeed to him it was. All this and more of the kind was done without fee or reward, save the privilege at all hours of the kitchen fireside and the stables, with an occasional ride down to the river, "wid the creatures for a drink," as he would say or "to wash the mud from their legs, and bad scran to it."