Great Irish Short Stories by Unknown Read Free Book Online Page A

from the insinuating advances of a bailiff or a constable!
    The family of the Meehans consisted of their wives, and three children, two boys and a girl—the former were the offspring of the younger brother, and the latter of Anthony. It has been observed, with truth and justice, that there is no man, how hardened and diabolical soever in his natural temper, who does not exhibit to some particular object a peculiar species of affection. Such a man was Anthony Meehan. That sullen hatred which he bore to human society, and that inherent depravity of heart which left the trail of vice and crime upon his footsteps, were flung off his character when he addressed his daughter Anne. To him her voice was like music. To her he was not the reckless villain, treacherous and cruel, which the helpless and unsuspecting found him, but a parent kind and indulgent as ever pressed an only and beloved daughter to his bosom. Anne was handsome: had she been born and educated in an elevated rank in society, she would have been softened by the polish and luxury of life into perfect beauty; she was, however, utterly without education. As Anne experienced from her father no unnatural cruelty, no harshness, nor even indifference, she consequently loved him in return; for she knew that tenderness from such a man was a proof of parental love rarely to be found in life. Perhaps she loved not her father the less on perceiving that he was proscribed by the world—a circumstance which might also have enhanced in his eyes the affection she bore him. When Meehan came to Carnmore she was sixteen; and as that was three years before the incident occurred on which we have founded this narrative, the reader may now suppose her to be about nineteen; an interesting country girl as to person, but with a mind completely neglected, yet remarkable for an uncommon stock of good nature and credulity.
    About the hour of eleven o’clock one winter’s night in the beginning of December, Meehan and his brother sat moodily at their hearth. The fire was of peat which had recently been put down, and from between the turf the ruddy blaze was shooting out in those little tongues and gusts of sober light which throw around the rural hearth one of those charms which make up the felicity of domestic life. The night was stormy, and the wind moaned and howled along the dark hills beneath which the cottage stood. Every object in the house was shrouded in a mellow shade, which afforded to the eye no clear outline, except around the hearth alone, where the light brightened into a golden hue, giving the idea of calmness and peace. Anthony Meehan sat on one side of it, and his daughter opposite him, knitting. Before the fire sat Denis, drawing shapes in the ashes for his own amusement.
    “Bless me,” said he, “how sthrange it is!”
    “What is?” inquired Anthony, in his deep and grating tones.
    “Why, thin, it is sthrange!” continued the other, who, despite of the severity of his brother, was remarkably superstitious—“a coffin I made in the ashes three times runnin’! Isn’t it very quare, Anne?” he added, addressing the niece.
    “Sthrange enough, of a sartinty,” she replied, being unwilling to express before her father the alarm which the incident, slight as it was, created in her mind; for she, like the uncle, was subject to such ridiculous influences. “How did it happen, uncle?”
    “Why, thin, no way in life, Anne; only, as I was thryin’ to make a shoe, it turned out a coffin on my hands. I thin smoothed the ashes, and began agin, an’ sorra bit of it but was a coffin still. Well, says I, I’ll give you another chance—here goes once more; an’, as sure as a gun’s iron, it was a coffin the third time! Heaven be about us, it’s odd enough!”
    “It would be little matther you were nailed down in a coffin,” replied Anthony fiercely; “the world would have little loss. What a pitiful, cowardly rascal you are—afraid o’ your own shadow afther the