“My gough, the very place! You've been thatching, though--yes, you have. The street! Holy sailor, there it is! Brownie at you still? Her heifer, is it? Get up, Molly! A taste of the whip'll do the mare no harm, sir. My sakes, here's ould Flora hobbling out to meet us. Got the rheumatics, has she? Set me down, Cæsar. Here we are, man. Lord alive, the smell of the cowhouse. That warm and damp, it's grand! What, don't you know me, Flo? Got your temper still, if you've lost your teeth? My sakes, the haggard! The same spot again! It's turf they're burning inside! And, my gracious, that's herrings roasting in their brine! Where's Grannie, though? Let's put a sight in, Cæsar. Well, well, aw well, aw well!” Thus Pete came home, laughing, shouting, bawling, and bellowing above the tumult of the wind, which had risen by this time to the strength of a gale. “Mother,” cried Cæsar, going in at the porch, “gentleman here from foreign parts to put a word on you.” “I never had nobody there belonging to me,” began Grannie. “No, then, nobody?” said Cæsar. “One that was going to be, maybe, if he'd lived, poor boy----” “Grannie!” shouted Pete, and he burst into the bar-room. “Goodness me!” cried Grannie; “it's his own voice anyway.” “It's himself,” shouted Pete, and the old soul was in his arms in an instant. “Aw dear! Aw dear!” she panted. “Pete it is for sure. Let me sit down, though.” “Did you think it was his ghost, then, mother!” said Cæsar with an indulgent air. “'Deed no,” said Grannie. “The lad wouldn't come back to plague nobody, thinks I.” “Still, and for all the uprisement of Peter, it bates everything,” said Cæsar. “It's a sort of a resurrection. I thought I'd have a sight up to the packet for his chiss, poor fellow, and, behould ye, who should I meet in the two eyes but the man himself!” “Aw, dear! It's wonderful I it's terrible! I'm silly with the joy,” said Grannie. “It was lies in the letter the Manx ones were writing,” said Cæsar. “Letters and writings are all lies,” said Grannie. “As long as I live I'll take no more of them, and if that Kelly, the postman, comes here again, I'll take the bellows to him.” “So you thought I was gone for good, Grannie?” said Pete. “Well, I thought so too. 'Will I die?' I says to myself times and times; but I bethought me at last there wasn't no sense in a good man like me laving his bones out on the bare Veldt yonder; so, you see, I spread my wings and came home again.” “It's the Lord's doings--it's marvellous in our eyes,” said Cæsar; and Grannie, who had recovered herself and was bustling about, cried-- “Let me have a right look at him, then. Goodness me, the whisker! And as soft as Manx carding from the mill, too. I like him best when he takes off his hat. Well, I'm proud to see you, boy. 'Deed, but I wouldn't have known you, though. 'Who's the gentleman in the gig with father?' thinks I. And I'd have said it was the Dempster himself, if he hadn't been dead and in his coffin.”