figures, and a dismal
scenery that seldom shifted.

The three gentlemen at the table called for more liquor, and the stout
personage, sitting opposite to Irons, dropped into their talk, having
smoked out his pipe, and their conversation became more general and
hilarious; but Irons scarce heard it. Curiosity is an idle minx, and a
soul laden like the clerk's has no entertainment for her. But when one
of the three gentlemen who sat together--an honest but sad-looking
person with a flaxen wig, and a fat, florid face--placing his hand in
the breast of his red plush waistcoat, and throwing himself back in his
chair, struck up a dismal tune, with a certain character of psalmody in
it, the clerk's ear was charmed for a moment, and he glanced on the
singer and sipped some punch; and the ballad, rude and almost rhymeless,
which he chanted had an undefined and unpleasant fascination for Irons.
It was thus:--

'A man there was near Ballymooney,
Was guilty of a deed o' blood,
For thravellin' alongside iv ould Tim Rooney.
He kilt him in a lonesome wood.

'He took his purse, and his hat and cravat.
And stole his buckles and his prayer-book, too;
And neck-and-heels, like a cruel savage,
His corpus through the wood he drew.

'He pult him over to a big bog-hole,
And sunk him undher four-foot o' wather,
And built him down wid many a thumpin' stone.
And slipt the bank out on the corpus afther.'

Here the singer made a little pause, and took a great pull at the
beer-can, and Irons looked over his shoulder at the minstrel; but his
uneasy and malignant glance encountered only the bottom of the vessel;
and so he listened for more, which soon came thus:--

'An' says he, "Tim Rooney, you're there, my boy,
Kep' down in the bog-hole wid the force iv suction,
An' tisn't myself you'll throuble or annoy,
To the best o' my opinion, to the resurrection."

'With that, on he walks to the town o' Drumgoole,
And sot by the fire in an inn was there;
And sittin' beside him, says the ghost--"You fool!
'Tis myself's beside ye, Shamus, everywhere."'

At this point the clerk stood up, and looked once more at the songster,
who was taking a short pull again, with a suspicious, and somewhat angry
glance. But the unconscious musician resumed--

'"Up through the wather your secret rises;
The stones won't keep it, and it lifts the mould,
An' it tracks your footsteps, and yoar fun surp