[Illustration:  GUARD CHAMBER, BERRY POMEROY]

In a dismal room, or dungeon, under what was known as St. Margaret’s Tower, one sister had imprisoned another sister for years, because of jealousy, and in another place a mother had murdered her child.  He also told us a story of an old Abbot who had been concerned in some dreadful crime, and had been punished by being buried alive.  Three days were given him in which to repent, and on each day he had to witness the digging in unconsecrated ground of a portion of his grave.  He groaned horribly, and refused to take any food, and on the third morning was so weak that he had to be carried to watch the completion of the grave in which he was to be buried the following day.  On the fourth day, when the monks came in to dress him in his burial garments and placed him on the bier, he seemed to have recovered a little, and with a great effort he twisted himself and fell off.  They lifted him on again, and four lay brothers carried him to the side of the deep grave.  As he was lowered into the tomb a solemn dirge was sung by the monks, and prayers were offered for mercy on his sinful soul.  The earth was being dropped slowly on him when a faint groan was heard; for a few moments the earth above him seemed convulsed a little, and then the grave was closed.

The ghost of the blood-stained Fontebrant and that of his assassin were amongst those that haunted Pomeroy Castle and its lonely surroundings, and cries and groans were occasionally heard in the village below from the shrieking shade of the guilty Eleanor, who murdered her uncle.  At midnight she was said to fly from the fairies, who followed her with writhing serpents, their tongues glistening with poisonous venom and their pestiferous breath turning black everything with which they came in contact, and thus her soul was tortured as a punishment for her horrible deeds.  Amongst the woods glided the pale ghosts of the Abbot Bertrand and the mother with her murdered child.

What a difference there is in guides, and especially when no “tips” are in sight!  You go into a church, for instance, and are shown round in a general kind of a way and inquiries are answered briefly.  As you leave the building you hand the caretaker a silver coin which he did not expect, and then, conscience-stricken, he immediately becomes loquacious and asks if you saw an object that he ought to have shown you, and it generally ends in your turning back and seeing double the objects of interest you saw before, and possibly those in the graveyard as well.  Then there are others whose hearts are in their work, and who insist upon your seeing all there is to be seen and hearing the history or legends connected with the place.  Such was our guide that morning; he was most enthusiastic when giving us his stories, but we did not accept his invitation to come some evening to see the ghosts, as we could not imagine a more lonely and “boggarty” spot at night than amongst the thick bushes and foliage of Berry Castle, very beautiful though it looked in the daylight; nor did we walk backwards three times round the trunk of the old “wishing tree,” and in the process wish for something that we might or might not get; but we rewarded our guide handsomely for his services.