“I have never been in it,” said Barney, “and I don’t think there’s a man or woman in the next three parishes that would enter it alone, even by daylight; but now that you are wid me, I have a terrible curiosity to see it inside.”

A curse was thought to hang over it, but that curse, as it happened, was its preservation in the undilapidated state in which it stood.

On entering it, which Barney did not do without previously crossing himself, they were surprised to find it precisely in the same situation in which it had been abandoned.  There were one small pot, two stools, an earthen pitcher, a few wooden trenchers lying upon a shelf, an old dusty salt-bag, an ash stick, broken in the middle, and doubled down so as to form a tongs; and gathered up in a corner was a truss of straw, covered with a rug and a thin old blanket, which had constituted a wretched substitute for a bed.  That, however, which alarmed Barney most, was an old broomstick with a stump of worn broom attached to the end of it, as it stood in an opposite corner.  This constituted the whole furniture of the hut.

“Now, Barney,” said Harry, after they had examined it, “out with the brandy and water and the slices of ham, till we refresh ourselves in the first place, and after that I will hear your history of this magnificent mansion.”

“O, it isn’t the mansion, sir,” he replied, “but the woman that lived in it that I have to spake about.  God guard us!  There in that corner is the very broomstick she used to ride through the air upon!”

“Never mind that now, but ransack that immense shooting-pocket, and produce its contents.”

They accordingly sat down, each upon one of the stools, and helped themselves to bread and ham, together with some tolerably copious draughts of brandy and water which they had mixed before leaving home.  Woodward, perceiving Barney’s anxiety to deliver himself of his narrative, made him take an additional draught by way of encouragement to proceed, which, having very willingly finished the bumper offered him, he did as follows: 

“Well, Masther Harry, in the first place, do you believe in the Bible?”

“In the Bible!—­ahem—­why—­yes—­certainly, Barney; do you suppose I’m not a Christian?”

“God forbid,” replied Barney; “well, the Bible itself isn’t thruer than what I’m goin’ to tell you—­sure all the world for ten miles round knows it.”

“Well, but, Barney, I would rather you would let me know it in the first place.”

“So I will, sir.  Well, then, there was a witch-woman, by name one Bet Harramount, and on the surface of God’s earth, blessed be his name! there was nothin’ undher a bonnet and petticoats so ugly.  She was pitted wid the small-pox to that degree that you might hide half a peck of marrowfat paise (peas) in her face widout their being noticed; then the sanies (seams) that ran across it were five-foot raspers, every one of them.  She had one of the