She thought his mind still wandering, but in a moment he went on with more calmness: "I'll tell it to ye all, Louizy. Give me a sup till I get strength. I'm no more strong than a blind kitten that's just born." She gave him nourishment and stimulant, and Tim feebly and with many pauses told his dream. The force of a natural dramatic narrator still shaped his speech, and as he became excited, he spoke with more and more strength, until he was sitting up in bed, and speaking with a voice more clear than he had used for many a day. "But it was a fearsome dream's had holt on me the night. 'T is meself's been palarvering with the blessed St. Peter face to face and tongue to tongue; and if I'd ought to be some used to it through having been dead once already by drowning, this time I was broke up by being dead in good earnest, by the same token that when St. Peter set his two piercing black eyes on me, I could tell by the look of 'em that it was straight through me whole body he was seeing. "And the first thing I knew in my dream I was going all sole alone on a frightsome road all sprinkled over with ashes and bones, and I that crawly in my back I could feel the backbone of me wiggling up and down like a caterpillar, so my heart was choking in my throat with the fear of it. And I went on and I went on; and all the time it was in the head of me there was that coming behind was more fearsome than all the bones and skelingtons forninst. And I went on and I went on, seeming to be pushed along like, and not able to help meself; and all the time something was creeping, and creeping, and creeping behind, till all the blood in my body was that chilled the teeth of me chattered. And I went on and I went on till I could n't stand it one mortal minute more; but I had to turn if the life went out of me for it. And there behind was a mite of a girl, a wee bit thing, thin and starved looking, and seeming that weak it was pitiful to see. 'Poor thing,' sez I to my own ghost, 'it's pitying her the day is Tim Calligan, if I be him,' sez I, 'and not some other body, for having no body perhaps I ain't anybody at all, but just a spook in this place that ain't nowhere.' And all the time I was that scared of the wee bit child, being as it were where it could n't be, and me dead before it and it dead behind me, and always following and following; so without thinking deeply what was to be done, I starts up and runs as hard as my legs that was turned into ghost shanks would let me. And I run through them ashes, stumbling on bones and seeing shadows that would get in the way and I had to run through 'em, and the weight of the horror of it words would n't tell.