My uncle, therefore, fiated the sexton’s presentment, and the work commenced forthwith.  I don’t know whether all boys have the same liking for horrors which I am conscious of having possessed—­I only know that I liked the churchyard, and deciphering tombstones, and watching the labours of the sexton, and hearing the old world village talk that often got up over the relics.

When this particular grave was pretty nearly finished—­it lay from east to west—­a lot of earth fell out at the northern side, where an old coffin had lain, and good store of brown dust and grimy bones, and the yellow skull itself came tumbling about the sexton’s feet.  These fossils, after his wont, he lifted decently with the point of his shovel, and pitched into a little nook beside the great mound of mould at top.

‘Be the powers o’ war! here’s a battered head-piece for yez,’ said young Tim Moran, who had picked up the cranium, and was eyeing it curiously, turning it round the while.

‘Show it here, Tim;’ ‘let me look,’ cried two or three neighbours, getting round as quickly as they could.

‘Oh! murdher;’ said one.

‘Oh! be the powers o’ Moll Kelly!’ cried another.

‘Oh! bloody wars!’ exclaimed a third.

‘That poor fellow got no chance for his life at all, at all!’ said Tim.

‘That was a bullet,’ said one of them, putting his finger into a clean circular aperture as large as a half-penny.

‘An’ look at them two cracks.  Och, murther!’

‘There’s only one.  Oh, I see you’re right, two, begorra!’

‘Aich o’ them a wipe iv a poker.’

Mattocks had climbed nimbly to the upper level, and taking the skull in his fist, turned it about this way and that, curiously.  But though he was no chicken, his memory did not go far enough back to throw any light upon the matter.

’Could it be the Mattross that was shot in the year ’90, as I often heerd, for sthrikin’ his captain?’ suggested a by-stander.

‘Oh! that poor fellow’s buried round by the north side of the church,’ said Mattocks, still eyeing the skull.  ’It could not be Counsellor Gallagher, that was kilt in the jewel with Colonel Ruck—­he was hot in the head—­bud it could not be—­augh! not at all.’

‘Why not, Misther Mattocks?’

‘No, nor the Mattross neither.  This, ye see, is a dhry bit o’ the yard here; there’s ould Darby’s coffin, at the bottom, down there, sound enough to stand on, as you see, wid a plank; an’ he was buried in the year ’93.  Why, look at the coffin this skull belongs to, ’tid go into powdher between your fingers; ‘tis nothin’ but tindher.’

‘I believe you’re right, Mr. Mattocks.’

’Phiat! to be sure.  ’Tis longer undher ground by thirty years, good, or more maybe.’

Just then the slim figure of my tall mild uncle, the curate, appeared, and his long thin legs, in black worsted stockings and knee-breeches, stepped reverently and lightly among the graves.  The men raised their hats, and Mattocks jumped lightly into the grave again, while my uncle returned their salute with the sad sort of smile, a regretful kindness, which he never exceeded, in these solemn precincts.