1938-05-06 — Page 5

HAT

WHAT

CHINA MAIL

FRIDAY SUPPLEMENT, MAY 6, 1938

amuses me about you

make over a wee bit ghost. The boys from the papers go down of and photograph the outside the house and, as like as not, the lady herself" shows

where you she heard the rappings.

Maybe she gets an offer to talk on the air or to write an article for a paper; and isn't it true that you have a society of bearded men to inquire into ghostly phenom

phenom

any- way, whatever it may be called.

And they grandfathers, too, with, you'd think, plenty on their hands.

So let me tell you about a ghost I handled and bested, alone, with- out help, and by myself. And it all part of the day's work, too.

It was out beyond Ballydouie, with the mountains on one hand, the sea on the other, and the big bog stretching by the third. There was the wee bit village with, in the centre, the Laird's Bonnet.

Danny Macllrae it was kept the Laird's Bonnet. He was from out my way, too. You could al-. ways tell a MacIlrae, I'd say. There was still boys out there in County Down the dead spit of Danny, and when I met one I'd always have a drink with 'um.

And so when I passed the Laird's Bonnet I'd always look in and have a drink with the granfer. He'd a still in the hills the Excise men didn't know about, for all that they'd poke their nose everywhere.' And 'twas that spirit... like distilled paradise

would pass between us. He'd drink with no man, Danny wouldn't, not worthy of the hon-

our.

បាន

over

'Twas perhaps a month or

still after he'd taken the from the widow of Mickie Ross, that stumbled over the rails up by the junction and was kilt by the-junction-and-was-kilt-by-the- train, that Danny says to me quiet- like: "This place is haunted."

"Speak 'low, man," I says, look- ing round.

"Would I be lying to you?" he asks.

*

.*

men were

B

Three

in the bar, and they talked of a fourth, friend of us all, who'd mistaken a cow in the dark for the devil him- self, and who, running away like a sensible man would, had broken his kneecap against a gate.

""Tis strange." Danny whis- pered to me, "but the night he did it there was a stranger come who sat talking to him. Over there 'twas," and Danny pointed to the settle by the stove..

"And ye'd have me think. . . I started to say, with indignation, for the whole of "Terry, who'd met the misfortune, amounted to nothing of importance, so that I could not rightly see why the authorities of the nether world should pester themselves on ac count of his kneecap, and that but a little thing in any man-"Ye'd have me think ·.

"

"Whist, man," Danny growled, and slithered his eye over to the corner. I lookit, and there sat a stranger in the shadows. He wore the clothes of a man of the hills and, seeming to like his own company, he sat there, not draw--` ing attention 'down upon himself,

OUT TO BALLYDOUIE night I struggle

"Ye mind when young O'Hara' stumbled down the mine shaft the night he drank with us?" Danny asked.

"I do too," I said. "There was a stranger come that night, too."

I emptied my glass.

“And ye mind when Paddy pull- ed the bedclothes over the lamp the night we three had the argu- ment and burnt the clothes off his back and, but for the grace of God and his wife's mother, would have had to go nakid?"

"I mind that, too," I said, quiet- like. now.

"That same night a man come in. A stranger."

“And ye'd have me think that a stranger comes when

"

Danny nodded his head with gravity. "When misfortune is about to fall on any one of us," he said.

"Was it the same man?" 1 ask- ed.

"No," says he, "for then could warn the boys."

*

$

*

we

I had no taste for more liquor that night, though I could see that Danny could not comfortably and with dignity hold more. But he managed to call out with а fine air to the stranger, where he was from and who.

Short Story

out of So-

And when the stranger repli- the ed. "Then you'll be one of So-and-So's," says Danny, and I knew he crossed himself with 1 wee bit relief, ". and-So." "Ay so," the other ans- wered, and took the pint of bit- ters he had called for. Which settled it in my mind that though he was a stranger he was no

hell emissary from

as Danny would have me believe. And I' went home feeling less frit.

But what do you know? I was at the wee bit work the next day when I heard that Danny had split pen his great haid going to bed; forgetting to duck where the landing comes low under the attic. I called to see him and I sat by his bed.

"Ye mind the stranger?" he whispers, trying to open his eyes and look at me, but closing them plenty quick because of the great. pain.

"I do," I say solemn.

...the

then I thought for a bit and said: "Are ye sure, Danny man, that 'twas not the same fellow ?" But Danny replies that once and he remembered -fine fellow was cleanshaven; once he had a dark moustache and once again he had a beard. Another time, he minded well, there was a foreign look to him with his hair coming low. down his temples and very, black.

'Tis not playing the game av Providence," says I, "to change the appearance of the Herald of Misfortune, 'Tis not cricket.".

For a week or two after Danny returned to the bar he could not

drink. Not really drink. And 'twas child's play to go to

Othe Laird's Bonnet. But the first night he was free to indulge he cocked his haid over his should- er at me, at the. same time that he winks an eye, and handed up. something that, was hidden below the counter and which I right- ly knew to be the distilled para- dise from out of the concealed still in the hills.

་

So I had it, and when the glass was empty I had another. Danny is no cheeseparing sticker for num- bers, and soon I sat down, smil- ing to myself, and trying to re- member the words of a song I sang when a bairn.

"Ha'e a drink,” says a voice beside me, and I look and see a stranger sitting there. And I ha'e.one. Two. "Your're not you're not a stranger?" says I, feeling uncomfortable, and he grins and says "Sure not. It's many the time I've been here."

"You'll be one of the new boys working over on the siding," say, and he replies, "Sure, I'm that man."

But I look at him when his thoughts are away, and I see that he is not the fellow who called the night Danny bumped his haid. This fellow has bushy eyebrows and a small pointed beard. It

to

get free. There's a blackthorn near, and I pull myself out, not much the worse save that me clothes is all apylt.

-

But no one, ghost or nọ ghost, is going to do that to Michael Shay, and I make off in the direc- tion I see him take, and luck is with me, for just when I may be lost in the dark the moon comes sailing out from behind a cloud, and there he is, the spalpeen,. the carrion of Hades, running for the churchyard!

He hears my steps and looks over his shoulder, hurrying faster than ever, but I'm after him. The drink has made me fighting mad, and he knows it.

* *

*

A leap he takes over the low wall where the gravestones start, all bending with age, and grey, and behint a little tree, where he thinks I can't see him, he starts pulling off his beard and eye- brows, giving a great "ouch" of pain-for those things hurt if they are stuck on well-and drop- ping them, and fumbling in his haste and fear of Michael Shay.

I'm over the wall just as he's finished, and a poor wee devil of a no-good he is, with his scared bald face and pale eyes staring out of his haid. As white as a ghost he is, which is but natural.

When he sees me he starts: to tremble so much he drops his eyebrows and beard and has no time to pick them up. Then he

By Prudence looks round-all the spunk gone

O'Shea

made me want to laugh, for he looked for all the world like the little fellows that strut on the stage in the big cities, playing a part and wearing clothes to suit.

*

*

Presently Danny . was

saying that it was time, and I got up to go.

The stranger had already- left, though I could not remember just when. I. mind well the sharp. air on my face and how dark was the night.

-But I knew the path like knew my hand, and I started off, singing as I went. Presently I reached the bog which starts, if be- you know Ballydouie, a bit yont the churchyard.

Suddenly in the darkness I feel a chap coming up near me, and when he' 'is near enough to see me and I him, he asks, courteous- ly: "Will ye be good enough to direct me to the churchyard?"

"Bedang!" I think."That's a funny place to want on a night like this." For in Ballydouic we hurry past the churchyard on dark nights. But I peer at him as I and I see that he is the answer, man with the eye-brows and beard. That very man;

And

what is more

I see that one of the eyebrows has slipped upwards where he has stumbled into a bush,

what

"Ah! I thought, and should happen at that moment, but that the stranger sort of stum- bles towards me and I topple over into the bog.

He sees. me fall, but and gives n

no helping hand, as he disappears

the

Into

L

out of him—and with a long wail he takes a jump on to a tombstone covered with ivy, and without so much as rustling a leaf, he sinks down and disappears into the earth.

But am I skeart? I am not! I stand there after picking up the beard and the eyebrows and I turn “ them over in my hand, laughing to myself. Presently a thin voice trails-out:

"Mister, gimme me beard and me brows."

"I will not!" I say, and laugh.

some more.

"Gimme them, mister," he pleads, and though. I cannot see him his voice comes up clear from under the tombstone.

"You done enough mischief," I

say.

He denies that, of course, and I respect him for ut. I'd deny -having done mischief myself. Presently he starts blabbing about never having no fun; hav- ing no friends; nothing ever hap- pening to him.

"For why?" I shout. "Because ye're no man. Ye'll no' fight, so how can ye expect to ha'e friends?"

At that he says that we can't. help how we're made.,

"For why do ye want to go breaking chaps kneecaps7" 1 ask. “And splitting the haids of fine fellows like Danny Macllrae?” And he replies that he didn't do it that he only happened to be there.

"Then why do ye wear a dis- guise?" And I start pulling the haira out av the beard, but the cry he lets up is enough to melt your heart, and 1 stop doing it.

Well, it seems that, having no initiative, he doesn't like going to (Continued on Page ?)