'Hollo! who's that?' cried Mervyn sternly.
The figure opened his eyes, with a wild stare, as if he had not opened them for a hundred years before, and rose up with an uncertain motion, returning Mervyn's gaze, as if he did not know where he was.
The phantom seemed to recover himself slowly, and only said: 'Mr. Mervyn?'
'Irons? what _are_ you, and what business have you here, Sir?' demanded Mervyn.
'The Clerk of Chapelizod,' he continued, quietly and remarkably sternly, but a little thickly, like a man who had been drinking.
'The Clerk of Chapelizod--here--sleeping in my parlour! What the devil, Sir, do you mean?'
'Sleep--Sir--sleep! There's them that sleeps with their eyes open. Sir--you know who they may be; there's some sleeps sound enough, like me and you; and some that's sleep-walkers,' answered Irons; and his enigmatical talk somehow subdued Mervyn, for he said more quietly--
'A message,' answered Irons. The man's manner, though quiet, was dogged, and somewhat savage.
'Give it me, then,' said Mervyn, expecting a note, and extending his hand.
'I've nothing for your hand, Sir, 'tis for your ear,' said he.
'From whom, then, and what?' said Mervyn, growing impatient again.
'I ask your pardon, Mr. Mervyn; I have a good deal to do, back and forward, sometimes early, sometimes late, in the church--Chapelizod Church--all alone, Sir; and I often think of you, when I walk over the south-side vault.'
'What's your message, I say, Sir, and who sends it,' insisted Mervyn.
Mervyn looked with a black and wild sort of enquiry on the clerk--was he insane or what?--and seemed to swallow down a sort of horror, before his anger rose again.
'You're mistaken--my father's dead,' he said, in a fierce but agitated undertone.
'He's dead, Sir--yes,' said his saturnine visitor, with the same faint smile and cynical quietude.
'Speak out, Sirrah; whom do you come from?'
'The late Right Honourable the Lord Viscount Dunoran.' He spoke, as I have said, a little thickly, like a man who had drunk his modicum of liquor.
'You've been drinking, and you dare to mix my--my father's name with your drunken dreams and babble--you wretched sot!'
A cloud passed over the moon just then, and Irons darkened, as if about to vanish, like an offended apparition. But it was only for a minute, and he emerged in the returning light, and spoke--