as he crossed the brow of the hill which shelters the town of Chapelizod, the moon shone out for some moments with unclouded lustre, and his eye, which happened to wander by the shadowy enclosures which lay at the foot of the slope, was arrested by the sight of a human figure climbing, with all the haste of one pursued, over the churchyard wall, and running up the steep ascent directly towards him.  Stories of “resurrectionists” crossed his recollection, as he observed this suspicious-looking figure.  But he began, momentarily, to be aware with a sort of fearful instinct which he could not explain, that the running figure was directing his steps, with a sinister purpose, towards himself.

The form was that of a man with a loose coat about him, which, as he ran, he disengaged, and as well as Larkin could see, for the moon was again wading in clouds, threw from him.  The figure thus advanced until within some two score yards of him, it arrested its speed, and approached with a loose, swaggering gait.  The moon again shone out bright and clear, and, gracious God! what was the spectacle before him?  He saw as distinctly as if he had been presented there in the flesh, Ned Moran, himself, stripped naked from the waist upward, as if for pugilistic combat, and drawing towards him in silence.  Larkin would have shouted, prayed, cursed, fled across the Park, but he was absolutely powerless; the apparition stopped within a few steps, and leered on him with a ghastly mimicry of the defiant stare with which pugilists strive to cow one another before combat.  For a time, which he could not so much as conjecture, he was held in the fascination of that unearthly gaze, and at last the thing, whatever it was, on a sudden swaggered close up to him with extended palms.  With an impulse of horror, Larkin put out his hand to keep the figure off, and their palms touched—­at least, so he believed—­for a thrill of unspeakable agony, running through his arm, pervaded his entire frame, and he fell senseless to the earth.

Though Larkin lived for many years after, his punishment was terrible.  He was incurably maimed; and being unable to work, he was forced, for existence, to beg alms of those who had once feared and flattered him.  He suffered, too, increasingly, under his own horrible interpretation of the preternatural encounter which was the beginning of all his miseries.  It was vain to endeavour to shake his faith in the reality of the apparition, and equally vain, as some compassionately did, to try to persuade him that the greeting with which his vision closed was intended, while inflicting a temporary trial, to signify a compensating reconciliation.

“No, no,” he used to say, “all won’t do.  I know the meaning of it well enough; it is a challenge to meet him in the other world—­in Hell, where I am going—­that’s what it means, and nothing else.”

And so, miserable and refusing comfort, he lived on for some years, and then died, and was buried in the same narrow churchyard which contains the remains of his victim.