e it larns us all this thing--
'T is fair without and foul within,
Just like a sowl begrim'd with sin.
Think o' this when you're smoking tiba-akky!'"

Larry puffed away silently for a few minutes, and when Oonah had placed
a few sods of turf round the pot in an upright position, that the flame
might curl upward round them, and so hasten the boiling, she drew a
stool near the fire, and asked Larry to explain about the fright.

"Why I was coming up by the cross-road there, when what should I see
but a ghost----"

"A ghost!!!" exclaimed the widow and Oonah, with suppressed voices and
distended mouth and eyes.

"To all appearance," said Larry; "but it was only a thing was stuck in
the hedge to freken whoever was passin' by; and as I kem up to it there
was a groan, so I started, and looked at it for a minit, or thereaway;
but I seen what it was, and threwn a stone at it, for fear I'd be
mistaken: and I heer'd tittherin' inside the hedge, and then I knew
't was only devilment of some one."

"And what was it?" asked Oonah.

"'T was a horse's head, in throth, with an owld hat on the top of it,
and two buck-briars stuck out at each side, and some rags hanging on
them, and an owld breeches shakin' undher the head; 't was just
altogether like a long pale-faced man, with high shouldhers and no
body, and very long arms and short legs:--faith, it frightened me at
first."

"And no wondher," said Oonah. "Dear, but I think I'd lose my life if I
seen the like?"

"But sure," said the widow, "wouldn't you know that ghosts never
appears by day?"

"Ay, but I hadn't time to think o' that, bein' taken short wid the
fright--more betoken, 't was the place the murdher happened in long
ago."

"Sure enough," said the widow. "God betune us and harm!" and she marked
herself with the sign of the cross as she spoke; "and a terrible
murdher it was," added she.

"How was it?" inquired Oonah, drawing her seat closer to her aunt and
Larry.

"'T was a schoolmaster, dear, that was found dead on the road one
mornin', with his head full of fractions," said the widow.

"All in jommethry,"[3] said Larry.

[3] Anything very badly broken is said by the Irish peasantry to be
in "jommethry."

"And some said he fell off the horse," said the widow.

"And more say the horse fell on him," said Larry.

"And again, there was some said the horse kicked him in the head," said
the widow.

"And there was talk of s