The Supernatural Omnibus Part 43

His curiosity was not long at fault; the sunbeam glanced partially upon some object ruddier even than itself -- it was a scarlet waisteoat, the wearer of which, overcome perchance by Christmas compotation. seemed to have selected for his 'thrice driven bed of down,' the thickest clump of the tallest and most imposing nettles, thereon to doze away the narcotic effects of superabundant juniper.

This, at least, was Mr. Moneypenny's belief, or he wonld scarcely have uttered, at the highest pitch of his contralto, 'What are you doing there, you drunken rascal? frightening my horse!'-- We have already hinted, if not absolutely a.s.serted, that Peggy was a mare; but this was no time for verbal criticism. --'Get up, I say,-- get up, and go home, you scoundrel!'-- But the 'scoundrel' and 'drunken rascal' snswered not; he moved not, nor could the prolonged shouting of the appellant. aided by significant explosions from a double-thonged whip, succeed in eliciting a reply. No motion indicated that the rec.u.mbent figure, whose outline alone was visible, was a living and a breathing man!

The clear, shrill tones of a plougbboy's whistle sounded at this moment from the bottom of the hill, where the broad and green expanse of Romncy Marsh stretches away from its foot for many a mile, and now gleamed through the mists of morning, dotted and enamelled with its thousand flocks. In a few minutes his tiny figure was seen 'slouching' up the ascent, casting a most disproportionate and ogre-like shadow before him.

'Come here, Jack,' quoth the doctor,--'come here, boy, lay hold of this bridle, and mind that my horse does not run away.'

Peggy threw up her head, and snorted disdain of the insinuation,-- she had not the slightest intention of doing any such thing.

Mr. Moneypenny meanwhile, disenc.u.mbered of his restive nag, proceeded by manual application to arouse the sleeper.

Alas! the Seven of Ephesus might sooner have been awakened from their century of somnolency. His was that 'dreamless sleep that knows no waking;' his cares in this world were over. Vainly did Moneypenny practise his own constant precept, 'To be well shaken!'-- there lay before him the lifeless body of a MURDERED MAN!

The corpse lay stretched upon its back, partially concealed, as we have before said, by the nettles which had sprung up among the stumps of the half-grubbed underwood; the throat was fearfully lacerated, and the dark, deep, arterial dye of the coagulated blood showed that the carotid had been severed. There was little to denote the existence of any struggle; but as the day brightened, the sandy soil of the road exhibited an impression as of a body that had fallen on its plastic surface, and had been dragged to its present position, while fresh horse-shoe prints seemed to intimate that either the a.s.sa.s.sin or his victim had been mounted. The pockets of the deceased were turned out, and empty; a hat and heavy-loaded whip lay at no great distance from the body.

'But what have we here?' quoth Doctor Moneypenny; 'what is it that the poor fellow holds so tightly in his hand?'

That hand had manifestly clutched some article with all the spasmodic energy of a dying grasp -- IT WAS AN OLD WIG!

Those who are fqrtunate enough to have seen a Cinque Port Court-house may possibly divine what that useful and most necessary edifice was some eighty years ago. Many of them seem to have undergone little alteration, and are in general of a composite order of architecture, a fanciful arrangement of brick and timber, with what Johnson would have styled 'interstices, reticulated, and decussated between intersections' of lath and plaster. Its less euphonious designation in the 'Weald' is a 'noggin.' One half the bas.e.m.e.nt story usually of the more solid material, the other, open to the street,-- from which it is separated only by a row of dingy columns, supporting a portion of the superstructure,-- is paved with tiles, and sometimes does duty as a market-place, while, in its centre, flanking the board staircase that leads to the sessions-house above, stands an ominous-looking machine, of heavy perforated wood, clasped within whose stern embrace 'the rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep' oil occasionally the drowsiness produced by convivial excess, in a most undignified positions an inconvenience much increased at times by some mischievous urchin, who, after abstracting the shoes of the helpless detenu, amuses himself by tickling the soles of his feet.

It was in such a place, or rather in the Court-room above, that in the year 1761 a hale, robust man, somewhat past the middle age, with a very bald pate, save where a continued tuft of coa.r.s.e, wiry hair, stretching from above each ear, swelled out into a greyish-looking bush upon the occiput, held up his hand before a grave and enlightened a.s.semblage of Dymchurch jurymen. He stood arraigned for that offence most heinous in the sight of G.o.d and man, the deliberate and cold-blooded butchery of an unoffending, unprepared fellow-creature,-- homicidium quod nullo vidente, nullo auscultante, clam perpetratur.

The victim was one Humphry Bourne, a reputable grazier of Ivychurch, worthy and well-to-do, though, perchance, a thought too apt to indulge on a market- day, when 'a score of ewes' had brought in a reasonable profit. Some such cause had detained him longer than usual at an Ashford cattle-show; he had left the town late, and alone; early in the following morning his horse was found standing at his own stable-door, the saddle turned round beneath its belly, and much about the time that the corpse of its unfortunate master was discovered some four miles off, by our friend the pharmacopolist.

That poor Bourne had been robbed and murdered there could be no question.

Who, then, was the perpetrator of the atrocious deed?-- The unwilling hand almost refuses to trace the name of -- Joseph Washford.

Yet so it was. Mr. Jeremiah Jarvis was himself the coroner for that division of the county of Kent known by the name of 'The Lath of Scraye.' He had not sat two minutes on the body before he recognized his quondam property, and started at beholding in the grasp of the victim, as torn in the death-struggle from the murderer's head, his own OLD WIG,-- his own perky little pigtail, tied up with a piece of shabby shalloon, now wriggling and quivering, as in salutation of its ancient master. The silver buckles of the murdered man were found in Joe Washford's shoes,-- broad pieces were found in Joe Washford's pockets,-- Joe Washford had himself been found, when the hue-and-cry was up, hid in a corn-rig at no great distance from the scene of slaughter, his pruning-knife red with the evidence of his crime --'the grey hairs yet stuck to the heft!'

For their humane administration of the laws, the lieges of this portion of the realm have long been celebrated. Here it was that merciful verdict was recorded in the case of the old lady accused of larceny, 'We find her Not Guilty, and hope she will never do so any more!' Here it was that the more experienced culprit, when called upon to plead with the customary, though somewhat superfluous, inquiry, as to 'how he would be tried?' subst.i.tuted for the usual reply 'By G.o.d and my country,' that of 'By your wors.h.i.+p and a Dymchurch Jury.' Here it was -- but enough! -- not even a Dymchurch jury could resist such evidence, even though the gallows (i.e. the expense of erecting one) stared them, as well as the criminal, in the face. The very pig-tail alone!-- ever at his ear!-- a clearer cease of suadente Diabolo never was made out.

Had there been a doubt, its very conduct in the Court-house would have settled the question. The Rev. Joel Ingoldsby, umquhile chaplain to the Romney Bench, has left upon record that when exhibited in evidence, together with the blood-stained knife, its twistings, its caperings, its gleeful evolutions quite 'flabbergasted' the jury, and threw all beholders into a consternation. It was remarked, too, by many in the Court, that the Forensic Wig of the Recorder himself was, on that trying occasion, palpably agitated, and that its three depending, learned-looking tails lost curl at once, and slunk beneath the obscurity of the powdered collar, just as the boldest dog recoils from a rabid animal of its own species, how ever small and insignificant.

Why prolong the painful scene?-- Joe Washford was tried -- Joe Washford was convicted -- Joe Washford was hanged!

The fearful black gibbet, on which his body clanked in its chains to the midnight winds, frowns no more upon Orlestone Hill; it has sunk beneath the encroaching hand of civilization; but there it might be seen late in the last century, an awful warning to all bald-pated gentlemen how they wear, or accept, the old wig of a Special Attorney, Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes!

Such gifts, as we have seen, may lead to a 'Morbid Delusion, the climax of which is Murder!'

The fate of the Wig itself is somewhat doubtful; n.o.body seems to have recollected, with any degree of precision, what became of it. Mr. Ingoldsby 'had heard' that, when thrown into the fire by the Court-keeper, after whizzing, and fizzling, and performing all sorts of supernatural antics and contortions, it at length whirled up the chimney with bang that was taken for the explosion of one of the Feversham powder-mills, twenty miles off; while others insinuate that in the 'Great Storm' which took place on the night when Mr. Jeremiah Jarvis went to his 'long home,'-- wherever that may happen to be,-- and the whole of'The Marsh' appeared as one broad sheet of flame, something that looked very like a Fiery Wig -- perhaps a miniature Comet -- it had unquestionably a tail -- was seen careering in the blaze,-- and seeming to 'ride on the whirlwind and direct the storm.'

John Guinan: The Watcher o' the Dead

from the CORNHILL MAGAZINE magazine, 1929 ***

It is now the fall of the night. The last of the neighbours are hitting the road for home. The time they went out through that door together, for the sake of the company on the way, as they said, did they give e'er a thought at all to myself, left alone here in this desolate house? To be sure, they asked me more than once why I refuse to leave the place, and the day is in it, by the same token. But I have no call to answer them, though what I am about to set down here in black and white will settle the question, at least for myself.

A few hours ago, and the corpse of Tim McGowan was taken from under this roof and buried deep in the clay. They laid the spade and the shovel like a rude cross on the fresh sod of his grave, and they went down on their knees and said a few hasty prayers for the good of his soul. One or two, and their faces hidden in their hats, took good care not to rise from the wet ground till they got sight of others already on their two feet. Letting on that their thoughts were on higher things, they kept in mind the old belief that the first one to leave the churchyard warm in life would not be the last to come back cold in death.

The little groups moving out began to talk of the man who was gone. Their talk ran in whispers, for fear they might trouble his long sleep. They all knew, though none had the rights of it, that he was after earning his rest dearly. An old man, whose face was hard, even for his years, took a white clay pipe from the pocket of his body coat.

'G.o.d rest your soul, Tim McGowan,' he cried. It was the custom to pray for the dead before taking a 'draw' from a wake pipe. 'G.o.d rest you in the grave,' he added, 'for it's little peace or ease you had and you in the world that we know! '

The bulk of those who heard his words caught, a little gladly, a mocking undertone which stole through the kindly feeling that had at first shaken his voice. A young man, with eager eyes and a desire to know and talk of things that should be left hidden, took courge and spoke out bluntly: 'For him to be haunting the graveyard like a ghost, and he a living man! That was a strange vagary, for sure.'

'It was the death of the good woman a year ago,' the old man went on, speaking more openly, in his turn. 'It was her loss turned his poor head.'

'There's no denying there was a queer strain in him already,' the young man said to that. 'Sure they say all of that family were a bit touched!'

They did not scruple to speak like this before myself, and I of the one blood with the man who was dead, if any of them could know or suspect that. They were after doing their duty towards his mortal remains: if there was a kink in his nature or a mystery about his life why, they might fairly ask, should it not fill the gossip of an idle hour? But it was myself only, the stranger amongst them, who knew the true reason of Tim McGowan's nightly vigils in Gort na Marbh, why he, a living man, as was said, chose to become the Watcher o' the Dead in the lonesome graveyard. It was ere yesterday morning he told me his secret. Tim was lying there in the settle-bed from which his stark body was carried feet foremost this day. I was trying to get ready a little food by the fire on the hearth, for Tim had not been able to rise, let alone to do a hand's turn for himself. Our wants were simple, and it was not for the first time that I had turned my poor endeavours to homely use.

'There are times,' I made bold to remark, 'there are times I feel this house to be haunted;' for every night during the short spell since I came to see my kinsman, I was sure I heard the fall of footsteps on the floor after the pair of us had gone to our beds. The rattling of the door, if it was not a troubled dream, had also startled me in my sleep. I had begun to ask myself was it one of these houses where the door must be left on the latch and the hearth swept clean for Those who come back. Always at a certain hour Tim was in a hurry to rake the fire and get shut of me out of the kitchen. A pang now shot through my breast. With the poor man hardly able to raise hand or foot, it was not kind to draw down such a thing. But he looked glad that I had given him the chance to speak out.

'As you make mention of it,' he said eagerly, 'I want to let you know the house is haunted, surely! But it is not by any spirit of good or evil from beyond the grave. That is a strange thing, you will be saying.'

'It is a strange thing,' I agreed. I had no doubt what he was going to disclose. He had already given me the story of a house built, and not without warning, on a 'fairy pa.s.s', through which the Sluagh Sidhe in their hosting and revels swept gaily every night. This was the house for sure: The Gentle Folk had never pa.s.sed the gates of death and know nothing of the grave.

'But,' he went on, 'there is one other thing as strange again. It is that same you will now be hearing, if you pay heed to me.' 'You mean that this is the house' - I began, intending to say that it was the house of the story, but I checked myself - ' that it is a case of a fallen angel, hanging between heaven and h.e.l.l, who never had to pay the penalty of death ? '

'If you let me,' he made answer, 'I will tell you the truth. The place is haunted by a mortal man!'

'One still in the world, one who goes about in his clothes, one to be seen by daylight?' I asked, without drawing breath.

'In troth,' he declared, 'it is haunted by the man who tells it, and no other, if I am still in the flesh itself!'

I lifted him slightly in the bed, not knowing what to say or think. Was this his way of speaking about some common habit, or was his reason leaving him?

'Whisper!' he said, and his face was flushed. 'You came here to gather old stories out of the past, over and above seeing your last living relative in the world, leaving out Michael, my son, who should be here by this. I might do worse than give you the true version of my own trouble.'

This made a double reason why I should hear him out. There is no man but carries in his breast the makings of a story, which, though never told, comes more home to him, than any the mind of another man can find and fas.h.i.+on in words.

'What harm if my story should turn out a poor thing in the telling?' he sighed. 'It will ease my mind, if it does only that.

And who knows: but we will talk of that when the times comes.' He turned aside from the food I was coaxing him to take, and started: 'It is now a year since herself was laid to rest. Laid to rest!' He laughed, a little bitterly. 'That is what they call it. A week after that again, call it what you like, the graveyard was closed by orders. There are people still to the fore who have their rights under the law; but it is hardly likely that many, if any of them, will try to make good their claim to be buried in Gort na Marbh.' Gurthnamorrav, the Field of the Dead, that is what those around and about call the lonely patch to this day. Though this generation of them are 'dull of' the ancient tongue, such names, of native savour, help to keep them one in soul with the proud children of Banbha who are in eternity. Vivid imagery, symbols drawn, in a manner of speaking, from the brown earth, words of strength and beauty that stud like gems of light and grace the common speech hold not merely an abiding charm in themselves. Such heritages of the mind of the Gael evoke through active fancy the fuller life of the race of kings no less surely than those relics of skill and handicraft found by chance in tilth or red bog, the shrine of bell or battle book, the bronze spear head, the torque of gold.

'But, surely,' I objected, 'those who are able would like to have their bones laid beside their own when their day of nature is past! Surely they would choose such a ground as the place of their resurrection, as the holy men of old used to say!'

'Time and time again,' he made answer, 'people have left it to their deaths not to be buried in Gort na Marbh. Man and wife have been parted, mother and child. What call have I to tell you the reason? You know it rightly. You know it is the lot of the last body brought to its long home to be from that time forth the Watcher o' the Dead?'

'I have heard tell of that queer - of that belief,' I replied. 'That the poor soul cannot go to its rest, if it took years itself, till another comes to fill its place; that it must wander about in the dead of the night amongst the graves where the mortal body is crumbling to dust; and, as one might say in a plain way, keep an eye over the place!'

'And who would care to be buried in ground that was shut up for ever?' he asked. 'Even at the best of times people try their best endeavours to be the first through the gate with the corpse of their own friend and when two funerals happen to fall on the one day.'

And then he went on to tell me, and his voice failing at that, of all he was after going through thinking of his woman, his share of the world, making the weary, dreary, rounds of the graveyard during the best part of the changing year. And, bitter agony! he felt that she could not share in the Communion of Saints, that all his good works for her sake would not hasten her release. But the thing that made it the hardest for him to bear was this: It was through his veneration for the old customs, through his great respect even for the dead, that this awful tribulation had come to the pair of them.

'Let you not be laughing at what I'm going to tell you now,' he warned me: 'for I won't deny there have been times when I made merry over the like myself. It was a seldom thing two funerals to be on the one day; nor would it have come to happen at the time it did if the other people had the proper spirit, like myself, or the right regard for the things good Christians hold highly. Listen! They knew the order to close the graveyard, the other people knew it was on the road, for the man who was dead and going to be buried on the same day as herself was himself on the Board of Guardians. That was why they waked him for one night only, and they people of means, and rushed with him in unseemly haste to Gort na Marbh. But we got wind of it, and would have been the first, for all that, only we followed the old road, the long road, and in a decent and becoming way walked in through the open gate while they took a short cut and got in over the stile. We did more than that, and so did they. While the savages, for they were little else, while they were trampling above the relics of the dead, we went round about the ground in the track of the sun till we came in the proper course to the side of the open grave.'

This set me thinking of the ancient ritual by which the corpse is brought round to pay its respects, as a body might say, to those who have gone before. I began to ask myself was it a fragment of Druid wors.h.i.+p that had come down even to our own day. But this is what I said to my kinsman: 'You did what was right, and no one would be better pleased than the woman who was gone!'

'That is the way I felt myself at the first going off,' he agreed: 'but soon I began to question myself: When I did the right thing, that the neighbours gave me full credit for, was I thinking more of what was expected from the living or what was due to the dead? Was I thinking of myself, and the great name I'd be getting from the self-same neighbours, or of the woman going into the clay, who only wanted their prayers? Many's the long night this thought kept me on the rack till I was nigh gone astray in the head. In my mind I saw her, and her brown habit down to her feet, and she looking to me for help, and it my sin of human respect, as I felt, that kept her so long from walking on the sunny hills of Glory! Funeral after funeral went the way, for people have to die; but not a one pa.s.sed the rusty gate of Gort na Marbh as a poor woman of the roads might give the go-by to a stricken house.

'At length and at last, I could stand it no longer, and one night I got up from my bed and made my way to the graveyard. 'Twas in the dark hour before the crowing of the c.o.c.ks, when wandering spirits are warned home to their house of clay.'

'And did you half expect to see the Watcher o' the Dead?' I asked.

'Did I? And why not?' he asked in turn, by way of reply.

'With your mind disturbed that way,' I went on, 'the wonder is you didn't see her, if only in fancy.'

I meant to be kind. He faced me testily.

'I did see her, as sure as I'm a living man! ' he declared.

I had not the heart to urge my view that it was only a brain- born figure.

'I no sooner crossed the stile,' he said softly, 'than I got clear sight of herself. She was moving through the graves she guarded, and a kindly look in her two eyes. The dead image I thought her of the Nuns you see in the sick ward of the poorhouse in Bally- brosna, and she taking a look at the beds in their little rows, and fearing to waken the tired sleepers in her charge. There she was, in truth, as I had seen her a thousand times in my own mind.' 'In your own mind!' I said after him. 'It was on your eyes, so to speak, and you merely saw what was in your mind already. Was it not more natural to see the figment that never left your sight than not to see it at all?'

It was all very clear to me, and I felt this was sound talk; and isn't it a caution the way the rage of battle will rise in a body and set the tongue loose! But Tim's reply put a stop to any dispute or war of words.

'It was in my mind, for sure,' he said. 'But tell me, you who have the book learning, why was it in my mind? When a man's brain begins to work, what gives it the start, or sets it going - or does it start to go of itself?'

I had to give in that I always left such vexed questions to wiser heads, adding, whimsically enough as it seems to me now, that I was not such a great fool as to attempt an answer where they failed. In a way I was put out by the reflection that this old man, who 'didn't know his letters', was making a mockery of me on the head of my few books and my small store of book learning.

'There is nothing hard about the case I am after putting before you,' he said. 'It was on my mind because the thing was taking place in Gort na Marbh night after night, was taking place in the Field of the Dead, though there was no living eye to see it!'

I had no reply to that, whether it was a head-made ghost or not. Where was the use of starting to argue that nothing really takes place if not within the knowledge of man? I told myself weakly that such visions were due to the queer strain in the old man the neighbours spoke about this day. It might be that, in his present state, all this had only come into his head as the two of us talked together. It did not occur to me then, and I have too much respect for the dead to credit it now, that he was 'taking a rise' out of me, as the plain saying is.

Tim became a little rambling in his speech and asked me to let him lie flat in the bed. I gathered from the words he mumbled and jumbled that he made a promise to the departed spirit to take her place till his own time came in real earnest: that he had bid her go to her rest, in the Name of G.o.d, much, I could not help but think, as one might banish an evil spirit to the 'red sea' to make ropes of the sand; that he had kept his word, which brought great peace to his breast: and that he never set eyes on her again from that hour, there or there else.

I had no doubt he had but laid the ghost of his own troubled thoughts. It is not every poor mortal can do that same, even by dint of hard sacrifice. Tim was growing worse. I tried hard to cheer him. It was all to no use. I talked of his son, Michael, who was far away on the fis.h.i.+ng grounds. We had already sent word for him to come home, and he might be here any stroke, if it was a long ways off, itself.

'Michael will never be here in time !' the father groaned. 'That is my great trouble. I never could ask another to do it. It would be again' reason.'

'There is nothing you could name I would not gladly do! ' I declared; and, in all fair speaking, I meant it.

'There are things no man should ask of his friend,' he said to that, with a slight shake of the head.

'And who else should he ask but his friend?' I laughed, trying to rouse him. 'But, first, I'll send for the Doctor 'The Doctor, how are ye! ' he broke in on me. 'That is not what I want. What can the like of himself do for a body who has seen the Watcher o' the Dead?'

'What harm if you did itself?' I asked. 'The sign of a long life it is, as likely as not. It would be another story, entirely, one's "fetch" to be seen in the late hours of the day. An early death that would signify.'

'The man,' he made answer, 'the man who lays eyes on the Watcher o' the Dead, late or early, if the like could come to pa.s.s at all before dark, that man will soon be only a shadow himself. I am saying, he will soon be among the silent company. The time I took the woman's place, the woman who held my heart for years, I knew rightly, it would not be for long. It is for that reason and no other I am after telling you my secret sorrow. I will never be able to put out this night, if I live through this night of the nights, or any night for the future; and if it was a thing I failed her, sure herself would be disturbed in her rest.'

I took a grip of his hand and looked down steadily into his eyes.

'Put your trust in me!' I said. 'I'll take your place till such time as you are laid in the clay!'

Who is it, though he might throw doubt on the very stars above his head, would not try to humour an old man or a little child?

'G.o.d sent you for a friend,' he said, 'praised be His holy Name! For all I know, I may not want you to do so much: I may want you to do a little more, but in another way. I want you to take my place till Michael comes, and not an hour more; I want you, as well as that, to tell him all I have told you and to give him my dying wish, if it is a thing he does not come before I go for ever. Whisper! You'll tell Michael, in case I'm too far through myself, that I am dying happy knowing he will not refuse a last favour to the father who reared him. It is this: That he will become the Watcher o' the Dead, though a living man, like myself, and let me, after so much fret and torment, go straight to herself, to his mother, in Heaven. Tell him I know he will do this, for the rest of his mortal days, if it comes to that. Tell him I know that, after that again, if he gets no release he will have his bones laid in Gort na Marbh and wait his own turn. I have done my share of watching, G.o.d knows!'

Some kind neighbours gathered during the course of the day, and the priest of the parish was sent for. Father Malachy was a man of the world, without being worldly. It is not for the knowing, and never will be in this world, whether Tim told him about the Watcher o' the Dead. As a man, his reverence knew all the customs and beliefs of the people, for he was one of them himself. Deep in his nature a body might expect to find a kindly toleration for the harmless 'superst.i.tions', as some would call them, lingering from the pagan days of Firbolg or Tuatha de Danaan. As a priest, he had, no doubt, full knowledge of the rites of the Church for dealing with 'appearances' from the other world, which shows it to be no harm to give heed to such things.

Tim kept quiet till the night wore on. Then he got restless and began to mutter to himself. The use of his speech was well-nigh gone. I caught such words as 'Gort na Marbh', and 'Herself', and 'the Watcher o' the Dead'. His grip was tight on my fist when I said in his ear that I would not fail him, dead or alive, till Michael came. The kind neighbours did not let on to hear the pair of us, and I left him in their charge while I set out for the strange duty I had taken on myself so lightly, taken on, indeed, with a certain zest, in the vague hope of enlarging my experience. It was clear from Tim's behaviour that the hour of the night had come when he felt the 'call' to the graveyard, and still there was no sign of Michael. The moon was in the sky. The night was cold. There was no stir. The place held no terrors for me. I set little store by Tim's story, except as a 'study' in delusion. The old man was much in my thoughts, for he was pa.s.sing rapidly away. I saw him in my mind, as he usd to say, and he walking here and there through the graves that now held nothing but cold clay, pa.s.sing by fallen stones, broken and moss-grown. I tried hard to banish such airy pictures, for I did not want to begin seeing sights.

What was that story Tim told me a few days ago as we stood before a headstone in Gort na Marbh? It was a true tale of revenge, revenge both on the living and the dead, and it was a poor sort of revenge at that. Before long I would be seeing again the spot where the dead man he spoke about was laid in the clay. His relations, in blood and law, hoped to benefit largely by his death. But he left all to his son. The boy was an only child whose mother died the hour he came into the world. He came home, a likely youth, to be at the father's funeral. For the first time in his young life he saw the place that was now to be his own. It was natural for him to ask why the usual black plumes did not wave above the hea.r.s.e instead of white. The errors of the past, if any, should have been covered by charity. Feuds are forgiven, if not forgotten, in the hour of death. It is what they told him, with wild malice, that black plumes were only for people who were lawfully joined in wedlock.

Here I found the elements of tragedy, but the story only helped to keep the figure of Tim before me. I was stepping over the stile and thinking of the nights he spent walking about in the dreary waste, for, after so much neglect, that is what it had by now sunk to. I felt the nettles rank and dank as I set foot on the ground; and then - it was not wild phantasy! -I got sight of Tim moving in the moonlight among the shadows of the headstones and the trees.

'In the Name of G.o.d!' I cried, profanely, I am half afraid, 'leave the place at once, and let me keep my promise in peace.'

I was furious with the neighbours for letting him rise and he in a fever. But were they to be blamed? I crossed hastily and found myself alone! This gave me a start, and I began to wonder whether in that strange ground - for, surely, the place was not 'right'! - I, in my turn, saw what was on my eyes only! Had Tim been there in the flesh or was it that I, in my turn, had laid but the ghost of a deranged imagination? Could it be that the queer strain of the family, if there is such a thing, runs in my own blood? Or does a sane man put such a question to himself? Without waiting for the crowing of the c.o.c.ks, I made haste back to the house. My heart was beating loudly.

'We were going to call after you,' the neighbours said to me. 'Hardly was your back turned when the end came! '

Tim was stretched there in his long sleep, his features set free by the kindly touch of death!

Last night at the same hour we dug his grave. I was heartened by the presence of the neighbours and lingered over the work till the dawn broke, walking about from time to time, 'by way of no harm', trying to keep my promise to the dead man. More than once the shadows, moving with the s.h.i.+fting lanthorn, took a start out of me. There were a few of the neighbours would not put out with us. One was a strong young man who was so free of the tongue this day.

'Why do you want to choose such an unreasonable hour?' they grumbled. 'It is not lucky to turn up the sod in the dead of the night.'

'As likely as not,' I heard another make answer, 'he was waiting to see would Michael come on the long car.'

I did not put him right. If we were waiting for Michael only the work could have been left over till morning. It is the long wait we would have, for the same Michael, G.o.d rest the poor boy! G.o.d rest him! I say, for before Tim was taken out this day word came that the hardy young fisherman had been lost a week ago in the depths of the salt water. The hungry, angry sea did not give up its dead. And now his death comes home to me! Michael's bones will never be laid in Gort na Marbh. Michael will never, never, either in life or death, become the Watcher o' the Dead! And I have pledged my word to the man who is gone, the father, to take his place till such time as Michael should come home! That will be never, never!

What way can I break my word to the dead, whether I credit his story or doubt it? It was part of his own belief, part of himself. What odds does it make even if he was out of his mind, or if I am a madman myself? A promise, a promise to one pa.s.sed away, is sacred.

Where is the good of talking of common sense? Half the world is stupid with common sense, if there is any such quality. But I see a dismal prospect before me, till the end of my days, as likely as not, let alone, for all I know, till the Day of Judgement itself! Already I feel there is a stir in my blood, the time has come for me to get up and make my lonely vigil: for I have been putting this down in black and white for many hours. It is a true word for Tim; every man has his own story, his own agony. But I set out to tell of his troubles, which, for sure, are at an end, and not of my own, which, for all a body can see, are only in their birth throes.

E. and H. Heron: The Story of Konnor Old House