"_Ohon
a ree_! _Ohon a ree_! What make you all this boder for--come you to
help us to wake poor ould Kate there, and bring you the whisky wid you?"
"Old man, where is Pat Doolan?" said the lieutenant.
"Gone to borrow whisky, to wake ould Kate, there;--the howling will
begin whenever Mother Doncannon and Misthress Conolly come over from
Middleton, and I look for dem every minute."
There was no vestige of any living thing in the miserable hovel, except
the old fellow. On two low trestles, in the middle of the floor, lay a
coffin with the lid on, on the top of which was stretched the dead body
of an old emaciated woman in her graveclothes, the quality of which was
much finer than one could have expected to have seen in the midst of
the surrounding squalidness. The face of the corpse was uncovered, the
hands were crossed on the breast, and there was a plate of salt on the
stomach.
An iron cresset, charged with coarse rancid oil, hung from the roof,
the dull smoky red light flickering on the dead corpse, as the breeze
streamed in through the door and numberless chinks in the walls, making
the cold, rigid, sharp features appear to move, and glimmer, and gibber
as it were, from the changing shades.
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