his narrative; on my coming into
possession of the diary, curiously minute, and the voluminous
correspondence of Rebecca, sister to General Chattesworth, with whose
family I had the honour to be connected. And this journal, to me, with
my queer cat-like affection for this old village, a perfect
treasure--and the interminable _bundles_ of letters, sorted and arranged
so neatly, with little abstracts of their contents in red ink, in her
own firm thin hand upon the covers, from all and to all manner of
persons--for the industrious lady made fair copies of all the letters
she wrote--formed for many years my occasional, and always pleasant
winter night's reading.

I wish I could infuse their spirit into what I am going to tell, and
above all that I could inspire my readers with ever so little of the
peculiar interest with which the old town has always been tinted and
saddened to my eye. My boyish imagination, perhaps, kindled all the more
at the story, by reason of it being a good deal connected with the
identical old house in which we three--my dear uncle, my idle self, and
the queer old soldier--were then sitting. But wishes are as vain as
regrets; so I'll just do my best, bespeaking your attention, and
submissively abiding your judgment.

CHAPTER I.

THE RECTOR'S NIGHT-WALK TO HIS CHURCH.

A.D. 1767--in the beginning of the month of May--I mention it because,
as I said, I write from memoranda, an awfully dark night came down on
Chapelizod and all the country round.

I believe there was no moon, and the stars had been quite put out under
the wet 'blanket of the night,' which impenetrable muffler overspread
the sky with a funereal darkness.

There was a little of that sheet-lightning early in the evening, which
betokens sultry weather. The clouds, column after column, came up
sullenly over the Dublin mountains, rolling themselves from one horizon
to the other into one black dome of vapour, their slow but steady motion
contrasting with the awful stillness of the air. There was a weight in
the atmosphere, and a sort of undefined menace brooding over the little
town, as if unseen crime or danger--some mystery of iniquity--was
stealing into the heart of it, and the disapproving heavens scowled a
melancholy warning.

That morning old Sally, the rector's housekeeper, was disquieted. She
had dreamed of making the great four-post, state bed, with the dark
green damask curtains--a dream that betokened some coming t