And at that time I was very much given to playing cards, and that night I went out to a friend's house to play. And the wife before she went to bed broiled a bit of fish and put it on a plate with potatoes, and put it in a box in the room, for fear it might be touched by a cat or a rat or such like. But I was late coming in and didn't mind to eat it. And the next night I was out again. And when we were playing cards we'd play first with tobacco and we'd go on to tea, and we'd end up with whiskey. And the next morning when the wife opened the box she laughed and she said "You didn't drink your tea when you were out last night, for I see you have your dinner eaten." And I said, "Why should you say that? I never touched it." And she held up the plate and showed me that the potatoes were taken off it; but the fish wasn't touched, for it was a bit of a herring and salty. Well, the child was getting sick all the day, and I didn't go out that evening. And in the night we could hear the noise as if of scores of rats, going about the room. And every now and again I struck a light, but so soon as the light was in it we'd hear nothing. But the noise would begin again as soon as it was dark, and sometimes it would seem as if they came up on the bed, and I could feel the weight of them on my chest as if they would smother me. And in the morning I chanced to open the box where the dinner used to be put, and it as big a box as any in Aran, and when I opened it I saw it was all full of blood, up the sides and to the top, that you couldn't put your hand in without it getting bloody. I said nothing but shut the lid down again. But after, when I came into the house, I saw the wife rubbing at it with a thing they call flannel they got at Killinny, and I asked her what was she doing, and she said, "I'm cleaning the box, where it's full of blood." And after that I gave up the child and I had no more hope for its life. But if they had told me that about the neighbour speaking to him, I'd have gone over, and I'd have killed him with my stick, but I'd have made him come and spit on him. After that we didn't hear the noise the same again, but we heard like the sound of a clock all through the night and every night. And the child got a swelling under the feet, and he couldn't put a foot to the ground. But that made little difference to him, for he didn't hold out a week. * * * * * I lost another son after--but he died natural, there was nothing of that sort. And I have one son remaining now, and one day he went to sleep out in a field and that's a bad thing to do. And the sister found him there, and when she woke him he couldn't get up hardly, or move his hand, and she had to help him to the house. _Pat Doherty:_