J.S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 5

essed

ittle white muslin fillet round his neck-tall, sallow, with blue chin, and dark steady eyes-used to glide up and down the stairs, and through the passages; and the Captain sometimes met him in one pla

re and self-possessed; and somehow he thought he had no good opinion of him, and if a nat

t more gloomy, and for about a week came and went oftener. The cleric in the long black frock was also daily there. And at last came that last sacrament in the gates of death, when the sinner

ld him all his grievances, and how happy he and "the poor lady up-stairs" might have been, had it not been for liars, and pick-thanks, and tale-bearers, and the like, who came between them-meaning Molly Doyle-whom, as he waxed eloquent over his liquor, he came at last to curse and rail at by name, with more than his accustomed freedom. And he descr

ting over tea and snuff, etc., with candles lighted round the corpse, which was arrayed in a strangely cut robe of brown s

her thickly. "How dare you dress her up in this -- trumpery, you-

nd cross wound round it, burned a wax candle, shedding its white light over the sharp features of the corpse. Moll Doyle was not to be put down by the Captain, whom she hated, and accordingly, in

dle, you sinn

you eat it, you beast

ided a little sulkily, and he stuffed his hand with the cand

my poor wife, without my leave-you do-and you'll please take off that d-- brown pinafore,

in stalked ou

e mains o' ye; an' may yer own be shut into the wick

lour, where he examined the holy candle for a while, with a tipsy gravity, and then with something of that reverential feeling for the symbolic, which is not uncommon in rakes and scamps, he thoughtfully locked it up in a p

ing a volatile man it is probable that more cheerful