contain the best company that ever figured on the earth.  To the north, you see a bright speck?” “I do.”  “That marks the upward path,—­narrow and hard to find.  To the south you may see a darksome road—­broad, smooth, and easy of descent; that is the lower way.  It is thronged with the great ones of the world; you may see their figures in the gloom.  Those who are soaring upwards are wrapt in the flood of light flowing perpetually from that single spot, and you cannot see them.  The silver path on which we enter is the Limbo.  Here I part with you.  You are to give your letter to the first person you meet.  Do your best;—­be courageous, but observe particularly that you profane no holy name, or I will not answer for the consequences.”

His guide had scarcely vanished, when Larry heard the tinkling of a bell in the distance, and turning his eyes in the quarter whence it proceeded, he saw a grave-looking man in black, with eyes of fire, driving before him a flock of ghosts with a switch, as you see turkeys driven on the western road, at the approach of Christmas.  They were on the highway to Purgatory.  The ghosts were shivering in the thin air, which pinched them severely, now that they had lost the covering of their bodies.  Among the group, Larry recognised his old master, by the same means that Ulysses, Aeneas, and others, recognised the bodiless forms of their friends in the regions of Acheron.  “What brings a living person,” said the man in black, “on this pathway?  I shall make legal capture of you, Larry Sweeney, for trespassing.  You have no business here.”  “I have come,” said Larry, plucking up courage, “to bring your honour’s glory a letter from a company of gintlemin with whom I had the pleasure of spending the evening, underneath the ould church of Inistubber.”  “A letter,” said the man in black, “where is it?” “Here, my lord,” said Larry.  “Ho!” cried the black gentleman, on opening it, “I know the handwriting.  It won’t do, however, my lad,—­I see they want to throw dust in my eyes.”  “Whew,” thought Larry, “that’s the very thing.  ’Tis for that the ould Dublin boy gave me the box.  I’d lay a tinpenny to a brass farthing that it’s filled with Lundy Foot.”  Opening the box, therefore, he flung its contents right into the fiery eyes of the man in black, while he was still occupied with reading the letter,—­and the experiment was successful.  “Curses—­tche-tche-tche,—­ Curses on it,” exclaimed he, clapping his hand before his eyes, and sneezing most lustily.—­“Run, you villians, run,” cried Larry, to the ghosts—­“run, you villians, now that his eyes are off of you—­O master, master!  Sir Theodore, jewel! run to the right-hand side, make for the bright speck, and God give you luck.”