Well, now, Misther Harry, often as I'd passed by the place before,
that night it seemed sthrange to me, an' like a place ye might see in
a dhrame; an' as I come up to it I began to feel a could wind blowin'
through the hollow o' me heart. "Musha Thomas," sez I to meself, "is
it yerself that's in it?" sez I; "or, if it is, what's the matter wid
ye at all, at all?" sez I; so I put a bould face on it, an' I made a
sthruggle to set one leg afore the other, ontil I came to the rise o'
the brudge. And there, God be good to us! in a cantle o' the wall I
seen an ould woman, as I thought, sittin' on her hunkers, all crouched
together, an' her head bowed down, seemin'ly in the greatest affliction.
Well, sir, I pitied the ould craythur, an' thought I wasn't worth a
thraneen, for the mortial fright I was in, I up an' sez to her,
"That's a cowld lodgin' for ye, ma'am." Well, the sorra ha'porth she
sez to that, nor tuk no more notice o' me than if I hadn't let a word
out o' me, but kep' rockin' herself to an' fro, as if her heart was
breakin'; so I sez to her again, "Eh, ma'am, is there anythin' the
matther wid ye?" An' I made for to touch her on the shouldher, on'y
somethin' stopt me, for as I looked closer at her I saw she was no
more an ould woman nor she was an ould cat. The first thing I tuk
notice to, Misther Harry, was her hair, that was sthreelin' down
over his showldhers, an' a good yard on the ground on aich side of
her. O, be the hoky farmer, but that was the hair! The likes of it I
never seen on mortial woman, young or ould, before nor sense. It grew
as sthrong out of her as out of e'er a young slip of a girl ye could
see; but the colour of it was a misthery to describe. The first squint
I got of it I thought it was silvery grey, like an ould crone's; but
when I got up beside her I saw, be the glance o' the sky, it was a
soart iv an Iscariot colour, an' a shine out of it like floss silk. It
ran over her showldhers and the two shapely arms she was lanin' her
head on, for all the world like Mary Magdalen's in a picther; and then
I persaved that the grey cloak and the green gownd undhernaith it was
made of no earthly matarial I ever laid eyes on. Now, I needn't tell
ye, sir, that I seen all this in the twinkle of a bed-post--long as I
take to make the narration of it. So I made a step back from her, an'
"The Lord be betune us an' harm!" sez I, out loud, an' wid that I
blessed meself. Well, Misther Harry, the word wasn't out o' me mouth
afore she turned her face on me. Aw, Misther Harry, but 'twas that was
the awfullest apparation ever I seen, the face of her as she looked up
at me! God forgive me for sayin' it, but 'twas more like the face of
the "Axy Homo" beyand in Marlboro' Sthreet Chapel nor like any face I
could mintion--as pale as a corpse, an' a most o' freckles on it, like
the freckles on a turkey's egg; an' the two eyes sewn in wid red
thread, from the terrible power o' crying the' had to do; an' such a
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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