other was hid under a black patch--and there was a deep red
scar across his forehead, slanting from the patch that covered the
extinguished orb. His face was purplish, the tinge deepening towards the
lumpish top of his nose, on the side of which stood a big wart, and he
carried a great walking-cane over his shoulder, and bore, as it seemed
to me, an intimidating, but caricatured resemblance to an old portrait
of Oliver Cromwell in my Whig grandfather's parlour.

'You don't think it a bullet wound, Sir?' said my uncle, mildly, and
touching his hat--for coming of a military stock himself, he always
treated an old soldier with uncommon respect.

'Why, please your raverence,' replied the man, reciprocating his
courtesy; 'I _know_ it's not.'

'And what _is_ it, then, my good man?' interrogated the sexton, as one
in authority, and standing on his own dunghill.

'The trepan,' said the fogey, in the tone in which he'd have cried
'attention' to a raw recruit, without turning his head, and with a
scornful momentary skew-glance from his gray eye.

'And do you know whose skull that was, Sir?' asked the curate.

'Ay do I, Sir, _well_,' with the same queer smile, he answered. 'Come,
now, you're a grave-digger, my fine fellow,' he continued, accosting the
sexton cynically; 'how long do you suppose that skull's been under
ground?'

'Long enough; but not so long, _my_ fine fellow, as yours has been above
ground.'

'Well, you're right there, for _I_ seen him buried,' and he took the
skull from the sexton's hands; 'and I'll tell you more, there was some
dry eyes, too, at his funeral--ha, ha, ha!'

'You were a resident in the town, then?' said my uncle, who did not like
the turn his recollections were taking.

'Ay, Sir, that I was,' he replied; 'see that broken tooth, there--I
forgot 'twas there--and the minute I seen it, I remembered it like this
morning--I could swear to it--when he laughed; ay, and that sharp corner
to it--hang him,' and he twirled the loose tooth, the last but two of
all its fellows, from' its socket, and chucked it into the grave.

'And were you--you weren't in the army, _then_?' enquired the curate,
who could not understand the sort of scoffing dislike he seemed to bear
it.

'Be my faith I was _so_, Sir--the Royal Irish Artillery,' replied he,
promptly.

'And in what capacity?' pursued his reverence.

'Drummer,' answered the mulberry-faced veteran.

'Ho!--Drummer? That's a good time ago, I dare sa