‘I heard it in the city of Portsmouth,’ he said.  ’I worked there for fifteen years, and four years in Plymouth, and a long while in the hills of Wales; twenty-five years in all I was working at the other side; and there were many Irish in it, who would be telling stories in the evening, the same as we are doing here.  I heard many good stories, but what can I do with them now and I an old lisping fellow, the way I can’t give them out like a ballad?’

When he had talked a little more about his travels, and a bridge over the Severn, that he thought the greatest wonder of the world, I asked him if he remembered the Famine.

‘I do,’ he said.  ’I was living near Kenmare, and many’s the day I saw them burying the corpses in the ditch by the road.  It was after that I went to England, for this country was ruined and destroyed.  I heard there was work at that time in Plymouth; so I went to Dublin and took a boat that was going to England; but it was at a place called Liverpool they put me on shore, and then I had to walk to Plymouth, asking my way on the road.  In that place I saw the soldiers after coming back from the Crimea, and they all broken and maimed.’

A little later, when he went out for a moment, the people told me he beats up and down between Killorglin and Ballinskelligs and the Inny river, and that he is a particular crabby kind of man, and will not take anything from the people but coppers and eggs.

‘And he’s a wasteful old fellow with all,’ said the woman of the house, ’though he’s eighty years old or beyond it, for whatever money he’ll get one day selling his eggs to the coastguards, he’ll spend it the next getting a drink when he’s thirsty, or keeping good boots on his feet.’

From that they began talking of misers, and telling stories about them.

‘There was an old woman,’ said one of the men, ’living beyond to the east, and she was thought to have a great store of money.  She had one daughter only, and in the course of a piece a young lad got married to her, thinking he’d have her fortune.  The woman died after—­God be merciful to her!—­and left the two of them as poor as they were before.  Well, one night a man that knew them was passing to the fair of Puck, and he came in and asked would they give him a lodging for that night.  They gave him what they had and welcome; and after his tea, when they were sitting over the fire—­the way we are this night—­the man asked them how they were so poor-looking, and if the old woman had left nothing behind her.

’"Not a farthing did she leave,” said the daughter.

“And did she give no word or warning or message in her last moments?” said the man.

’"She did not,” said the daughter, “except only that I shouldn’t comb out the hair of her poll and she dead.”

’"And you heeded her?” said the man.

’"I did, surely,” said the daughter.

’"Well,” said the man, “to-morrow night when I’m gone let the two of you go down the Relic (the graveyard), and dig up her coffin and look in her hair and see what it is you’ll find in it.”