My grandmother was not as angry against the light railway as my grandfather; she used to say that we must go with the times, and she was glad the people were stirring since it kept their thoughts from turning to America.  She had been talked over by Miss Champion, my godmother and the greatest friend we have.  And Miss Champion was always on the side of the people, and had even persuaded my grandmother to let her have some of her famous recipes, such as those for elder and blackberry wine, and for various preserves, and for fine soaps and washes for the skin, so that the people might know them and make more money.

“Every one makes money except the gentry,” my grandfather grumbled, “and we grow poorer year by year.”

My grandfather talked freely in my presence; and I knew that Aghadoe Abbey was mortgaged to the doors and that the mortgages would be foreclosed at my grandfather’s death.  They kept nothing from me, and my grandmother has said to me with a watery smile:  “If I survive your grandfather, Bawn, my dear, you and I will have to find genteel lodgings in Dublin.  It would be a strange thing for a Lady St. Leger to come down from Aghadoe Abbey to that.  To be sure there was once a Countess went ballad-singing in the streets of Cork.”

“That day is far away,” I answered.  “And when it comes there will be no genteel lodgings, but Theobald and I will take care of you somewhere.  In a little house it may be, but one with a garden where you can walk in the sun in winter mornings as you do now, and prod at the weeds in the path as you do now with your silver-headed cane.”

“If I could survive your grandfather,” she said, turning away her head, “my heart would break to leave Aghadoe.  I ask nothing of you and Theobald, Bawn, but that you should take care of each other when we are gone.  It is not right that the old should burden the young.”

I have always known, or at least since I was capable of entertaining such things, that our grandparents destined Theobald and me for each other.  I have no love for Theobald such as I find in my books, but I have a great affection for him as the dearest of brothers.

I have not said before that he is a soldier.  What else should he be but a soldier?  Since there have always been soldiers in the family, and my grandfather could not have borne him to be anything else.

Dear Theobald, how brave and simple and kind he was!

I have said nothing about the ghosts of Aghadoe Abbey, but it has many ghosts, or it had.

First and foremost there is the Lord St. Leger, who was killed in a Dublin street brawl a hundred years ago, who will come driving home at midnight headless in his coach, and the coachman driving him also headless, carrying his head under his arm.  That is not a very pleasant thing to see enter as the gates swing open of themselves to let the ghost through.

Then there is the ghost of the woman who cries outside in the shrubbery.  I have seen her myself in a glint of the moonlight, her black hair covering her face as she bends to the earth, incessantly seeking something among the dead leaves, which she cannot discover, and for which she cries.