Page:The Father Confessor, Stories of Danger and Death.djvu/222

212 benumbed and foolish with weariness, yet surely she was in his arms.

"You are so cold," she muttered, yet thought it should be so, seeing he was dead "I do not care if you are living or dead, now I have found you." She felt the cold chill of his soft clasp move upward, now to her waist, now to her shoulders. She struggled a moment, then was quiet — she sank lower. "I am in the bog," she shrieked. Then again, "I am so tired; kiss me, Alanna!" And for a moment the kiss was bitter on her lips, then the bog closed above her soft hair, and she slept.

But still in the little village they tell the story of Eileen and her lover, and bar the door and draw near the fire in the telling; for though one old man always believed it was the jackdaw’s voice that frightened them that night, calling as its lost master had taught it, he was always a foolish old man, and he is dead now, and his story forgotten. The others, and especially the young folk, will tell you it was the ghost of Eileen’s lover who called her forth, and Kathleen O’Grady saw him with her two eyes standing before the door beckoning and calling.