She was leisurely groping her way round it in the dark, when her lamentations, being heard without, woke up the old sexton of the chapel,--for it was there we placed her,--who, entering cautiously with a light, no sooner caught a glimpse of the great black sedan and the figure beside it than he also took to his heels, and ran like a madman to the priest's house.
"'Come, your reverence, come, for the love of marcy! Sure didn't I see him myself! Oh, wirra, wirra!' "'What is it, ye ould fool ?' said M'Kenny.
"'It's Father Con Doran, your reverence, that was buried last week, and there he is up now, coffin and all, saying a midnight Mass as lively as ever.' "Poor Mrs.Rogers, God help her! It was a trying sight for her when the priest and the two coadjutors and three little boys and the sexton all came in to lay her spirit; and the shock she received that night, they say, she never got over.
"Need I say, my dear O'Mealey, that our acquaintance with Mrs.Rogers was closed?
The dear woman had a hard struggle for it afterwards.

Her character was assailed by all the elderly ladies in Loughrea for going off in our company, and her blue satin, piped with scarlet, utterly ruined by a deluge of holy water bestowed on her by the pious sexton.

It was in vain that she originated twenty different reports to mystify the world; and even ten pounds spent in Masses for the eternal repose of Father Con Doran only increased the laughter this unfortunate affair gave rise to.

As for us, we exchanged into the line, and foreign service took us out of the road of duns, debts, and devilment, and we soon reformed, and eschewed such low company." The day was breaking ere we separated; and amidst the rich and fragrant vapors that exhaled from the earth, the faint traces of sunlight dimly stealing told of the morning.

My two friends set out for Torrijos, and I pushed boldly forward in the direction of the Alberche.
It was a strange thing that although but two days before the roads we were then travelling had been the line of retreat of the whole French army, not a vestige of their equipment nor a trace of their _materiel_ had been left behind.