I had been playing marbles with my cousin and playfellows; we quarrelled, and were proceeding to blows, when Mr M----, who was sitting, unobserved by us, on a stone bench, and had witnessed our dispute, called to us both to approach him. He took one on each knee, and looking alternately at us, said, in a tone so mild and different from his usual harsh commanding voice, that we could scarcely think it was the same man who spoke, "Boys, beware of sudden ungovernable passion; under its influence you might commit, in one moment, an act which would embitter, with remorse and vain regret, all your subsequent life. "When a young man, I once suffered so keenly the consequence of my ungovernable temper, that were I to live a thousand years, I could not forget it. I see that your curiosity is excited, and you would like to hear the circumstance; but it is connected with a ghost story, and I must tell you all." "Oh! do, Mr M----," said I, "for papa says there are no such things as ghosts or fairies, and nurse says there are; and nurse never tells lies, and certainly papa would not, and I do not know what to think between them." "Well," said he, "I shall tell you the story, and it will help you to form your judgment. From the high road between Cork and Cloyne, and about three miles from the latter, a small by-road, or 'borheen,' branches off. It is of very ancient date, belonging to times when men were guided by the position of the sun during the day, and the stars at night, and when, consequently, their track lay over mountain and hollow, through wood and bog, as the avoidance of impediments (except to a very short distance) would have thrown them quite out of their reckoning, and toil was much less regarded then than in these degenerate days. The road by Laght-e-Ouria is decidedly a shorter way to Cloyne than the high road from which it diverges; but a saying has arisen since it was made, 'the longest way round is the shortest way home,' that has been so often used as a conclusion to a debate upon 'which of the roads should be taken,' that the wisdom of our ancestors is voted folly, and their ways are no longer trodden. Other reasons than the unevenness of its surface are however not wanting, and many a headstrong drunken farmer, upon whom all other argument had been tried in vain, has been induced to turn his horse's head to the new road, by the soft voice of the 'Vanitha' whispering in his ear that 'it would be midnight ere they passed Laght-e-Ouria.' Laght, in Irish, signifies a heap of stones, and it is customary in Ireland, wherever a murder has been committed, for every passer-by to throw a stone upon the spot. A heap, or 'laght,' is thus soon formed, and it receives the cognomen of the unfortunate individual whose untimely end it commemorates.