The family were not at all surprised at this, even although the period of his walks frequently extended into a protracted hour of the night.  Not so the servants, who wondered why Master Harry should walk so much abroad and remain out so late at night, especially considering the unsettled and alarming state of the country, in consequence of the outrages and robberies which were of such frequent occurrence.  This, it is true, was startling enough to these simple people; but that which filled them not only with astonishment, but with something like awe, was the indifference with which he was known to traverse haunted places alone and unaccompanied, when the whole country around, except thieves and robbers, witches, and evil spirits, were sound asleep.  “What,” they asked each other, “could he mean by it?”

“Barney Casey, you that knows a great deal for an unlarned man, tell us what you think of it,” said the cook; “isn’t it the world’s wondher, that a man that’s out at such hours doesn’t see somethin’?  There’s Lanty Bawn, and sure they say he saw the white woman beyant the end of the long boreen on Thursday night last, the Lord save us; eh, Barney?”

Barney immediately assumed the oracle.

“He did,” said he; “and what is still more fearful, it’s said there was a black man along wid her.  They say that Lanty seen them both, and that the black man had his arm about the white woman’s waist, and was kissin’ her at full trot.”

The cook crossed herself, and the whole kitchen turned up its eyes at this diabolical piece of courtship.

“Musha, the Lord be about us in the manetime; but bad luck to the ould boy, (a black man is always considered the devil, or the ould boy, as they call him,) wasn’t it a daisant taste he had, to go to kiss a ghost?”

“Why,” replied Barney with a grin, “I suppose the ould chap is hard set on that point; who the devil else would kiss him, barrin’ some she ghost or other?  Some luckless ould maid, I’ll go bail, that gather a beard while she was here, and the devil now is kissin’ it off to get seein’ what kind of a face she has.  Well, all I can say,” he proceeded, “is, that I wish him luck of his employment, for in troth it’s an honorable one and he has a right to be proud of it.”

“Well, well,” said the housemaid, “it’s a wondher how any one can walk by themselves at night; wasn’t it near the well at the foot of the long hill that goes up to where the Davorens live that they were seen?”

“It was,” replied Barney; “at laste they say so.”

“And didn’t yourself tell me,” she proceeded, “that that same lonesome boreen is a common walk at night wid Master Harry?”

“And so it is, Nanse,” replied Barney:  “but as for Misther Harry, I believe it’s party well known, that by night or by day he may walk where he likes.”

“Father of heaven!” they exclaimed in a low, earnest voice; “but why, Barney?” they asked in a condensed whisper.