“Ay, poor fellow—he’s gone, missis,” and the old lady shook her head. Then she looked at us curiously, leaned forward, and, putting her withered old hand on my mother’s arm, her hand with its dark blue veins, she whispered in confidence, “and the candles ’as gone out twice. ’E wor a funny feller, very funny!” “I must come in and settle things—I am his nearest relative,” said my mother, trembling. “Yes—I must ’a dozed, for when I looked up, it wor black darkness. Missis, I dursn’t sit up wi’ ’im no more, an’ many a one I’ve laid out. Eh, but his sufferin’s, Missis—poor feller—eh, Missis!”—she lifted her ancient hands, and looked up at my mother, with her eyes so intensely blue. “Do you know where he kept his papers?” asked my mother. “Yis, I axed Father Burns about it; he said we mun pray for ’im. I bought him candles out o’ my own pocket. He wor a rum feller, he wor!” and again she shook her grey head mournfully. My mother took a step forward. “Did ye want to see ’im?” asked the old woman with half timid questioning. “Yes,” replied my mother, with a vigorous nod. She perceived now that the old lady was deaf. We followed the woman into the kitchen, a long, low room, dark, with drawn blinds. “Sit ye down,” said the old lady in the same low tone, as if she were speaking to herself: “Ye are his sister, ’appen?” My mother shook her head. “Oh—his brother’s wife!” persisted the old lady. We shook our heads. “Only a cousin?” she guessed, and looked at us appealingly. I nodded assent. “Sit ye there a minute,” she said, and trotted off. She banged the door, and jarred a chair as she went. When she returned, she set down a bottle and two glasses with a thump on the table in front of us. Her thin, skinny wrist seemed hardly capable of carrying the bottle. “It’s one as he’d only just begun of—’ave a drop to keep ye up—do now, poor thing,” she said, pushing the bottle to my mother and hurrying off, returning with the sugar and the kettle. We refused. “’E won’t want it no more, poor feller—an it’s good, Missis, he allers drank it good. Ay—an’ ’e ’adn’t a drop the last three days, poor man, poor feller, not a drop. Come now, it’ll stay ye, come now.” We refused. “’T’s in there,” she whispered, pointing to a closed door in a dark corner of the gloomy kitchen. I stumbled up a little step, and went plunging against a rickety table on which was a candle in a tall brass candlestick. Over went the candle, and it rolled on the floor, and the brass holder fell with much clanging.