harm! sure enough he was found dead one
morning, half out of the bed, with his head as black as a sloe, and
swelled like a puddin', hanging down near the floor. It was a fit, they
said. He was as dead as a mackerel, and so _he_ could not say what it
was; but the ould people was all sure that it was nothing at all but the
ould Judge, God bless us! that frightened him out of his senses and his
life together.

"Some time after there was a rich old maiden lady took the house. I
don't know which room _she_ slept in, but she lived alone; and at any
rate, one morning, the servants going down early to their work, found
her sitting on the passage-stairs, shivering and talkin' to herself,
quite mad; and never a word more could any of _them_ or her friends get
from her ever afterwards but, 'Don't ask me to go, for I promised to
wait for him.' They never made out from her who it was she meant by
_him_, but of course those that knew all about the ould house were at no
loss for the meaning of all that happened to her.

"Then afterwards, when the house was let out in lodgings, there was
Micky Byrne that took the same room, with his wife and three little
children; and sure I heard Mrs. Byrne myself telling how the children
used to be lifted up in the bed at night, she could not see by what
mains; and how they were starting and screeching every hour, just all as
one as the housekeeper's little girl that died, till at last one night
poor Micky had a dhrop in him, the way he used now and again; and what
do you think in the middle of the night he thought he heard a noise on
the stairs, and being in liquor, nothing less id do him but out he must
go himself to see what was wrong. Well, after that, all she ever heard
of him was himself sayin', 'Oh, God!' and a tumble that shook the very
house; and there, sure enough, he was lying on the lower stairs, under
the lobby, with his neck smashed double undher him, where he was flung
over the banisters."

Then the handmaiden added----

"I'll go down to the lane, and send up Joe Gavvey to pack up the rest of
the taythings, and bring all the things across to your new lodgings."

And so we all sallied out together, each of us breathing more freely, I
have no doubt, as we crossed that ill-omened threshold for the last
time.

Now, I may add thus much, in compliance with the immemorial usage of the
realm of fiction, which sees the hero not only through his adventures,
but fairly out of the world. Yo