Now it so happened that, in my schoolboy days, I had joined a class of young fellows who were learning what is called the “Sarvin’ of Mass” and had impressed it so accurately on a pretty retentive memory, that I never forgot it.  At length, Ned pulled, out his beads, and bedewed himself most copiously with the holy water.  He then shouted out, with a voice which resembled that of a man in an ague fit, “Dom-i-n-us vo-bis-cum?” “Et cum spiritu tuo,” I replied, in a husky sepulchral tone, from behind the coffin.  As soon as I uttered these words, the whole crowd ran back instinctively with fright; and Ned got so weak, that they were obliged to support him.

“Lord have marcy on us!” said Ned; “hoys, isn’t it an awful thing to speak to a spirit? my hair is like I dunna what, it’s sticking up so stiff upon my head.”

“Spake to it in English, Ned,” said they, till we hear what it will say.  Ax it does anything trouble it; or whether its sowl’s in Purgatory.”

“Wouldn’t it be betther,” observed another, “to ax it who murthered it; maybe it wants to discover that?”

“In the—­na-me of Go-o-d-ness,” said Ned, down to me, “what are you?”

“I’m the soul,” I replied in the same voice, “of the pedlar that was murdered on the bridge below.”

“And—­who—­was—–­it, sur, wid—­submission, that—­murdhered—­you?”

To this I made no reply.

“I say,” continued Ned, “in—­the—­name—­of—­G-o-o-d-ness—­who was it—­that took the liberty of murdhering you, dacent man?”

“Ned Corrigan,” I answered, giving his own name.

“Hem!  God presarve us!  Ned Corrigan!” he exclaimed.  “What Ned, for there’s two of them—­is it myself or the other vagabone?”

“Yourself, you murderer!” I replied.

“Ho!” said Ned, getting quite stout, “is that you, neighbor?  Come, now, walk out wid yourself out of that coffin, you vagabone you, whoever you are.”

“What do you mane, Ned, by spaking to it that-a-way?” the rest inquired.

“Hut,” said Ned, “it’s some fellow or other that’s playing a thrick upon us.  Sure I never knew either act nor part of the murdher, nor of the murdherers; and you know, if it was anything of that nature, it couldn’t tell me a lie, and me a Scapularian along wid axing it in God’s name, with Father Feasthalagh’s Latin.”

“Big tare-an’-ouns;” said the rest; “if we thought it was any man making fun of us, but we’d crop the ears off his head, to tache him to be joking!”

To tell the truth, when I heard this suggestion, I began to repent of my frolic; but I was determined to make another effort to finish the adventure creditably.

“Ned,” said they, “throw some of the holy water on us all, and in the name of St. Pether and the Blessed Virgin, we’ll go down and examine it in a body.”