About the hour of eleven o’clock, one winter’s night in the beginning of December, Meehan and his brother sat moodily at their hearth.  The fire was of peat which had recently been put down, and, from between the turf, the ruddy blaze was shooting out in those little tongues and, gusts of sober light, which throw around the rural hearth one of those charms which make up the felicity of domestic life.  The night was stormy, and the wind moaned and howled along the dark hills beneath which the cottage stood.  Every object in the house was shrouded in a mellow shade, which afforded to the eye no clear outline, except around the hearth alone, where the light brightened into a golden hue, giving the idea of calmness and peace.  Anthony Meehan sat on one side of it, and his daughter opposite him, knitting:  before the fire sat Denis, drawing shapes in the ashes for his own amusement.

“Bless me,” said he, “how sthrange it is!”

“What is?” inquired Anthony, in his deep and grating tones.

“Why, thin, it is sthrange!” continued the other, who, despite of the severity of his brother, was remarkably superstitious—­“a coffin I made in the ashes three times runnin’!  Isn’t it very quare, Anne?” he added, addressing the niece.

“Sthrange enough, of a sartinty,” she replied, being unwilling to express before her father the alarm which the incident, slight as it was, created in her mind; for she, like her uncle, was subject to such ridiculous influences.  “How did it happen, uncle?”

“Why, thin, no way in life, Anne; only, as I was thryin’ to make a shoe, it turned out a coffin on my hands.  I thin smoothed the ashes, and began agin, an’ sorra bit of it but was a coffin still.  Well, says I, I’ll give you another chance,—­here goes one more;—­an’, as sure as gun’s iron, it was a coffin the third time.  Heaven be about us, it’s odd enough!”

“It would be little matther you were nailed down in a coffin,” replied Anthony, fiercely; “the world would have little loss.  What a pitiful cowardly rascal you are!  Afraid o’ your own shadow afther the ’sun goes down, except I’m at your elbow!  Can’t you dhrive all them palavers out o’ your head?  Didn’t the sargint tell us, an’ prove to us, the time we broke the guardhouse, an’ took Frinch lave o’ the ridgment for good, that the whole o’ that, an’ more along wid it, is all priestcraft?”

“I remimber he did, sure enough:  I dunna where the same sargint is now, Tony?  About no good, any way, I’ll be bail.  Howsomever, in regard o’ that, why doesn’t yourself give up fastin’ from the mate of a Friday?”

“Do you want me to sthretch you on the hearth?” replied the savage, whilst his eyes kindled into fury, and his grim visage darkened into a satanic expression.  “I’ll tache you to be puttin’ me through my catechiz about aitin’ mate.  I may manage that as I plase; it comes at first-cost, anyhow:  but no cross-questions to me about it, if you regard your health!”