Page:Beside the Fire - Douglas Hyde.djvu/163

 Rh "The devil from me, but, as sure as I'm alive, you're mad!" said Leeam.

"Go out of my sight now," said the priest, "and I'll read a mass for you, to-morrow."

Leeam went home then, and knocked at his own door, but his wife would not let him in. Then he said to himself: "I may as well go and pay my rent now." On his way to the landlord's house every one who saw Leeam was running before him, for they thought he was dead. When the landlord heard that Leeam O'Rooney was coming, he shut the doors and would not let him in. Leeam began knocking at the hall-door till the lord thought he'd break it in. He came to a window in the top of the house, put out his head, and asked: "What are you wanting?"

"I'm come to pay my rent like an honest man," said Leeam.

"Go back to your grave, and I'll forgive you your rent," said the lord.

"I won't leave this," said Leeam, "till I get a writing from you that I'm paid up clean till next May."

The lord gave him the writing, and he came home and knocked at his own door, but the wife would not let him in. She said that Leeam O'Rooney was dead and buried, and that the man at the door was only a deceiver.

"I'm no deceiver," said William; "I'm after paying my master three years' rent, and I'll have possession of my own house, or else I'll know why."

He went to the barn and got a big bar of iron, and it wasn't long till he broke in the door. There was great fear on the wife, and the newly married husband. They thought they were in the time of the General Resurrection, and that the end of the world was coming.