J. S. Le Fanus Ghostly Tales, Volume 4 | Page 7

them to increase.
Bob, however, beheld him dogging him still in the distance, for his pipe
shed a wonderful red glow, which duskily illuminated his entire figure
like the lurid atmosphere of a meteor.
"I wish the devil had his own, my boy," muttered the excited sexton,
"and I know well enough where you'd be."
The next time he looked over his shoulder, to his dismay he observed
the importunate stranger as close as ever upon his track.
"Confound you," cried the man of skulls and shovels, almost beside
himself with rage and horror, "what is it you want of me?"
The stranger appeared more confident, and kept wagging his head and
extending both glass and bottle toward him as he drew near, and Bob
Martin heard the horse snorting as it followed in the dark.
"Keep it to yourself, whatever it is, for there is neither grace nor luck
about you," cried Bob Martin, freezing with terror; "leave me alone,
will you."
And he fumbled in vain among the seething confusion of his ideas for a
prayer or an exorcism. He quickened his pace almost to a run; he was
now close to his own door, under the impending bank by the river side.
"Let me in, let me in, for God's sake; Molly, open the door," he cried,
as he ran to the threshold, and leant his back against the plank. His
pursuer confronted him upon the road; the pipe was no longer in his
mouth, but the dusky red glow still lingered round him. He uttered
some inarticulate cavernous sounds, which were wolfish and
indescribable, while he seemed employed in pouring out a glass from
the bottle.
The sexton kicked with all his force against the door, and cried at the
same time with a despairing voice.
"In the name of God Almighty, once for all, leave me alone."
His pursuer furiously flung the contents of the bottle at Bob Martin; but
instead of fluid it issued out in a stream of flame, which expanded and
whirled round them, and for a moment they were both enveloped in a
faint blaze; at the same instant a sudden gust whisked off the stranger's
hat, and the sexton beheld that his skull was roofless. For an instant he

beheld the gaping aperture, black and shattered, and then he fell
senseless into his own doorway, which his affrighted wife had just
unbarred.
I need hardly give my reader the key to this most intelligible and
authentic narrative. The traveller was acknowledged by all to have been
the spectre of the suicide, called up by the Evil One to tempt the
convivial sexton into a violation of his promise, sealed, as it was, by an
imprecation. Had he succeeded, no doubt the dusky steed, which Bob
had seen saddled in attendance, was destined to have carried back a
double burden to the place from whence he came.
As an attestation of the reality of this visitation, the old thorn tree
which overhung the doorway was found in the morning to have been
blasted with the infernal fires which had issued from the bottle, just as
if a thunder-bolt had scorched it.
The moral of the above tale is upon the surface, apparent, and, so to
speak, _self-acting_--a circumstance which happily obviates the
necessity of our discussing it together. Taking our leave, therefore, of
honest Bob Martin, who now sleeps soundly in the same solemn
dormitory where, in his day, he made so many beds for others, I come
to a legend of the Royal Irish Artillery, whose headquarters were for so
long a time in the town of Chapelizod. I don't mean to say that I cannot
tell a great many more stories, equally authentic and marvellous,
touching this old town; but as I may possibly have to perform a like
office for other localities, and as Anthony Poplar is known, like
Atropos, to carry a shears, wherewith to snip across all "yarns" which
exceed reasonable bounds, I consider it, on the whole, safer to despatch
the traditions of Chapelizod with one tale more.
Let me, however, first give it a name; for an author can no more
despatch a tale without a title, than an apothecary can deliver his physic
without a label. We shall, therefore, call it--

The Spectre Lovers
There lived some fifteen years since in a small and ruinous house, little
better than a hovel, an old woman who was reported to have
considerably exceeded her eightieth year, and who rejoiced in the name
of Alice, or popularly, Ally Moran. Her society was not much courted,
for she was neither rich, nor, as the reader may suppose, beautiful. In

addition to a lean cur and a cat she had one human companion, her
grandson, Peter Brien, whom, with