“What a lucky born man you are, Terry O’Shea!” cried the overjoyed gold-finder, “and what a bright day it was for your family that the Boccough Ruadh crossed over the waters of the Nore.”
“It was not a bright day at all, but a wild, gloomy, stormy night,” said the old woman, who, unperceived, had followed her son to watch the success of his expedition.
“No matter for that,” said Terry; “there never was so bright a day in your seven generations as that dark night; I am now the richest man of my name, and I would not, this mortal minute, call Lord De Vesci my uncle.”
It is easier for the reader to imagine than for the writer to describe the manner in which this joyful day was passed by the happy mother and son. Now counting and examining the gold, and again proposing plans, and considering the best purposes to which it could be applied, they passed the hours until the summer sun had long sunk behind the crimson west.
Terry was again in bed, when he started with a wild shriek. “Mother of mercy!” he frantically vociferated, “here is the Boccough Ruadh; I hear the tramp of his wooden leg on the floor.”
“Lord save us!” said the old woman in a trembling voice, “what can ail him now? Maybe it’s more money he has hid somewhere else.”
“Oh, do you hear how he rattles about! Devil a _kippeen_ in the cabin but he will destroy,” exclaimed poor Terry. “It’s the black day to us that ever we seen himself or his dirty thrash of money; and if God saves me till morning, I’ll go back and lave every rap ov id where I got it.”
“That would be a murdher to lave so much fine money moulding in the clay, and so many in want of it; you shall do no such thing,” said the mother.
“I don’t care a straw for that,” said Terry. “I would not have the ould sinner, God rest his sowl, stravagin’ every other night about my honest decent cabin for all the goold in the Queen’s County.”
“Well, then,” says the old woman, “go to the priest in the morning, and leave him the money, and let him dispose of it as he likes for the good of the ould vagabond’s misforthunate soul.”
This plan was agreed to, and the conversation dropt. The ghost of the Boccough still rattled and clanked about the house. He never ceased stumping about, from the kitchen to the room, and from the room to the kitchen. Pots and pans, plates and pitchers, were tossed here and there; the dog was kicked, the cat was mauled, and even the raked-up fire was lashed out of the “gree-sough.” In fact, Terry declared that if the devil or Captain Rock was about the place, there couldn’t be more noise than there was that night with the Boccough’s ghost, and this continued without intermission until the bell of Abbeyleix castle clock was tolling the midnight hour.