down there, sound enough to stand on, as you see, wid a plank; an’ he was buried in the year ‘93. Why, look at the coffin this skull belongs to, ‘tid go into powdher between your fingers; ’tis nothin’ but tindher.’
‘I believe you’re right, Mr. Mattocks.’
‘Phiat! to be sure. ’Tis longer undher ground by thirty years, good, or more maybe.’
Just then the slim figure of my tall mild uncle, the curate, appeared, and his long thin legs, in black worsted stockings and knee-breeches, stepped reverently and lightly among the graves. The men raised their hats, and Mattocks jumped lightly into the grave again, while my uncle returned their salute with the sad sort of smile, a regretful kindness, which he never exceeded, in these solemn precincts.
It was his custom to care very tenderly for the bones turned up by the sexton, and to wait with an awful solicitude until, after the reading of the funeral service, he saw them gently replaced, as nearly as might be, in their old bed; and discouraging all idle curiosity or levity respecting them, with a solemn rebuke, which all respected. Therefore it was, that so soon as he appeared the skull was, in Hibernian phrase, ‘dropt like a hot potato,’ and the grave-digger betook himself to his spade so nimbly.
‘Oh! Uncle Charles,’ I said, taking his hand, and leading him towards the foot of the grave; ‘such a wonderful skull has come up! It is shot through with a bullet, and cracked with a poker besides.’
‘’Tis thrue for him, your raverence; he was murthered twiste over, whoever he was — rest his sowl;’ and the sexton, who had nearly completed his work, got out of the grave again, with a demure activity, and raising the brown relic with great reverence, out of regard for my good uncle, he turned it about slowly before the eyes of the curate, who scrutinised it, from a little distance, with a sort of melancholy horror.
‘Yes, Lemuel,’ said my uncle, still holding my hand, ‘’twas undoubtedly a murder; ay, indeed! He sustained two heavy blows, beside that gunshot through the head.’
‘‘Twasn’t gunshot, Sir; why the hole ‘id take in a grape-shot,’ said an old fellow, just from behind my uncle, in a pensioner’s cocked hat, leggings, and long old-world red frock-coat, speaking with a harsh reedy voice, and a grim sort of reserved smile.
I moved a little aside, with a sort of thrill, to give him freer access to my uncle, in the hope that he might, perhaps, throw a light upon the history of this remarkable memorial. The old fellow had a rat-like gray eye — the other was hid under a black patch — and there was a deep red scar across his forehead, slanting from the patch that covered the extinguished orb. His face was purplish, the tinge deepening towards the lumpish top of his nose, on the side of which stood a big wart, and he carried a great walking-cane over his shoulder, and bore, as it seemed to me, an intimidating, but caricatured resemblance to an old portrait of Oliver Cromwell in my Whig grandfather’s parlour.
‘You don’t think it a bullet wound, Sir?’ said my uncle, mildly, and touching his hat — for coming of a military stock himself, he always treated an old soldier with uncommon respect.
‘Why, please your raverence,’ replied the man, reciprocating his courtesy; ‘I know it’s not.’
‘And what is it, then, my good man?’ interrogated the sexton, as one in authority, and standing on his own dunghill.
‘The trepan,’ said the fogey, in the tone in which he’d have cried ‘attention’ to a raw recruit, without turning his head, and with a scornful momentary skew-glance from his gray eye.
‘And do you know whose skull that was, Sir?’ asked the curate.
‘Ay do I, Sir, well,’ with the same queer smile, he answered. ‘Come, now, you’re a grave-digger, my fine fellow,’ he continued, accosting the sexton cynically; ‘how long do you suppose that skull’s been under ground?’
‘Long enough; but not so long, my fine fellow, as yours has been above ground.’
‘Well, you’re right there, for I seen him buried,’ and he took the skull from the sexton’s hands; ‘and I’ll tell you more, there was some dry eyes, too, at his funeral — ha, ha, ha!’
‘You were a resident in the town, then?’ said my uncle, who did not like the turn his recollections were taking.
‘Ay, Sir, that I was,’ he replied; ‘see that broken tooth, there — I forgot ’twas there — and the minute I seen it, I remembered it like this morning — I could swear to it — when he laughed; ay, and that sharp corner to it — hang him,’ and he twirled the loose tooth, the last but two of all its fellows, from’ its socket, and chucked it into the grave.
‘And were you — you weren’t in the army, then?’ enquired the curate, who could not understand the sort of scoffing dislike he seemed to bear it.
‘Be my faith I was so, Sir — the Royal Irish Artillery,’ replied he, promptly.
‘And in what capacity?’ pursued his reverence.
‘Drummer,’ answered the mulberry-faced veteran.
‘Ho! — Drummer? That’s a good time ago, I dare say,’ said my uncle, looking on him reflectively.
‘Well, so it is, not far off fifty years,’ answered he. ‘He was a hard-headed codger, he was; but you see the sprig of shillelagh was too hard for him — ha, ha, ha!’ and he gave the skull a smart knock with his walking-cane, as he grinned at it and wagged his head.
‘Gently, gently, my good man,’ said the curate, placing his hand hastily upon his arm, for the knock was harder than was needed for the purpose of demonstration.
‘You see, Sir, at that time, our Colonel-inChief was my Lord Blackwater,’ continued the old soldier, ‘not that we often seen him, for he lived in France mostly; the Colonel-enSecond was General Chattesworth, and Colonel Stafford was Lieutenant–Colonel, and under him Major O’Neill; Captains, four — Cluffe, Devereux, Barton, and Burgh: First Lieutenants — Puddock, Delany, Sackville, and Armstrong; Second Lieutenants — Salt; Barber, Lillyman, and Pringle; Lieutenant Fireworkers — O’Flaherty —’
‘I beg your pardon,’ interposed my uncle, ‘Fireworkers, did you say?’
‘Yes, Sir.’
‘And what, pray, does a Lieutenant Fireworker mean?’
‘Why, law bless you, Sir! a Fireworker! ’twas his business to see that the men loaded, sarved, laid, and fired the gun all right. But that doesn’t signify; you see this old skull, Sir: well, ’twas a nine days’ wonder, and the queerest business you ever heerd tell of. Why, Sir, the women was frightened out of their senses, an’ the men puzzled out o’ their wits — they wor — ha, ha, ha! an’ I can tell you all about it — a mighty black and bloody business it was —’
‘I— I beg your pardon, Sir: but I think — yes — the funeral has arrived; and for the present, I must bid you good-morning.’
And so my uncle hurried to the church, where he assumed his gown, and the solemn rite proceeded.
When all was over, my uncle, after his wont, waited until he had seen the disturbed remains re-deposited decently in their place; and then, having disrobed, I saw him look with some interest about the church-yard, and I knew ’twas in quest of the old soldier.
‘I saw him go away during the funeral,’ I said.
‘Ay, the old pensioner,’ said my uncle, peering about in quest of him.
And we walked through the town, and over the bridge, and we saw nothing of his cocked hat and red single-breasted frock, and returned rather disappointed to tea.
I ran into the back room which commanded the church-yard in the hope of seeing the old fellow once more, with his cane shouldered, grinning among the tombstones in the evening sun. But there was no sign of him, or indeed of anyone else there. So I returned,