close by the cupboard, where the
brandy-bottle lived. Then she lay down on her bed with her clo's on,
and pulled the coverlid over her, and pretinded to go to slape. In less
nor half-an-hour I hears a fut on the doorstep; then a tap at the door,
which opened, it seemed to me, of its own accord, and in walks the
ghost, sure enough! It was covered all over from head to fut in a white
sheet, and I seed by the way it walked that it wos the worse of drink.
I wos in a mortal fright, ye may be sure, an' me knees shuk to that
extint ye might have heard them rattle. The ghost walks straight up to
the cupboard, takes out the brandy-bottle, and fills out a whole tumbler
quite full, and drinks it off; it did, the baste, ivery dhrop. I seed
it with me two eyes, as sure as I'm a-standin' here. It came into the
house drunk, an' it wint out drunker nor it came in."

"Is that all?" exclaimed several of Briant's auditors.

"All! av coorse it is. Wot more would ye have? Didn't I say that I'd
tell ye a story as would prove to ye that ghosts drink, more especially
Irish ghosts? To be sure it turned out afterwards that the ghost was
the sexton o' the parish as took advantage o' the poor widdy's fears;
but I can tell ye, boys, that ghost niver came back after the widdy
became Mrs Briant."

"Oh! then ye married the widder, did ye?" said Jim Scroggles.

"I did; an' she's alive and hearty this day av she's not--"

Briant was interrupted by a sudden roar of laughter from the men, who at
that moment caught sight of Jacko, the small monkey, in a condition of
mind and body that, to say the least of it, did him no credit. We are
sorry to be compelled to state that Jacko was evidently and undoubtedly
tipsy. Gurney said he was "as drunk as a fiddler."

We cannot take upon ourself to say whether he was or was not as drunk as
that. We are rather inclined to think that fiddlers, as a class, are
maligned, and that they are no worse than their neighbours in this
respect, perhaps not so bad. Certainly, if any fiddler really deserves
the imputation, it must be a violoncello player, because he is, properly
speaking, a base-fiddler.

Be this, however, as it may, Jacko was unmistakably drunk--in a maudlin
state of intoxication--drunker, probably, than ever a monkey was before
or since. He appeared, as he came slowly staggering forward to the
place where the men were at work on the boat, to have just wakened out
of his first drunken sleep, fo