ht and confidently as he could have done to the communion-table.

My uncle, therefore, fiated the sexton's presentment, and the work
commenced forthwith. I don't know whether all boys have the same liking
for horrors which I am conscious of having possessed--I only know that I
liked the churchyard, and deciphering tombstones, and watching the
labours of the sexton, and hearing the old world village talk that often
got up over the relics.

When this particular grave was pretty nearly finished--it lay from east
to west--a lot of earth fell out at the northern side, where an old
coffin had lain, and good store of brown dust and grimy bones, and the
yellow skull itself came tumbling about the sexton's feet. These
fossils, after his wont, he lifted decently with the point of his
shovel, and pitched into a little nook beside the great mound of mould
at top.

'Be the powers o' war! here's a battered head-piece for yez,' said young
Tim Moran, who had picked up the cranium, and was eyeing it curiously,
turning it round the while.

'Show it here, Tim;' 'let _me_ look,' cried two or three neighbours,
getting round as quickly as they could.

'Oh! murdher;' said one.

'Oh! be the powers o' Moll Kelly!' cried another.

'Oh! bloody wars!' exclaimed a third.

'That poor fellow got no chance for his life at all, at all!' said Tim.

'That was a bullet,' said one of them, putting his finger into a clean
circular aperture as large as a half-penny.

'An' look at them two cracks. Och, murther!'

'There's only one. Oh, I see you're right, _two_, begorra!'

'Aich o' them a wipe iv a poker.'

Mattocks had climbed nimbly to the upper level, and taking the skull in
his fist, turned it about this way and that, curiously. But though he
was no chicken, his memory did not go far enough back to throw any light
upon the matter.

'Could it be the Mattross that was shot in the year '90, as I often
heerd, for sthrikin' his captain?' suggested a by-stander.

'Oh! that poor fellow's buried round by the north side of the church,'
said Mattocks, still eyeing the skull. 'It could not be Counsellor
Gallagher, that was kilt in the jewel with Colonel Ruck--he was hot in
the head--bud it could not be--augh! not at all.'

'Why not, Misther Mattocks?'

'No, nor the Mattross neither. This, ye see, is a dhry bit o' the yard
here; there's ould Darby's coffin, at the bottom, down there, sound
enough to stand on, as you see, wid a plank; an' he was b