Page:Beside the Fire - Douglas Hyde.djvu/165

 Rh "Why did you think I was dead?" said Leeam.

"Doesn't everybody in the parish know you're dead?" said the wife.

"Your body from the devil," said Leeam, "you're humbugging me long enough, and get me something to eat."

The poor woman was greatly afraid, and she dressed him some meat, and when she saw him eating and drinking, she said: "It's a miracle."

Then Leeam told her his story from first to last, and she told him each thing that happened, and then he said:

"I'll go to the grave to-morrow, till I see the behoonuch ye buried in my place."

The day on the morrow Leeam brought a lot of men with him to the churchyard, and they dug open the grave, and were lifting up the coffin, when a big black dog jumped out of it, and made off, and Leeam and the men after it. They were following it till they saw it going into the house in which Leeam had been asleep, and then the ground opened, and the house went down, and nobody ever saw it from that out; but the big hole is to be seen till this day.

When Leeam and the men went home, they told everything to the priest of the parish, and he dissolved the marriage that was between Leeam's wife and the servant boy.

Leeam lived for years after that, and he left great wealth behind him, and they remember him in Clare-Galway still, and will remember him if this story goes down from the old people to the young.