The three gentlemen at the table called for more liquor, and the stout personage, sitting opposite to Irons, dropped into their talk, having smoked out his pipe, and their conversation became more general and hilarious; but Irons scarce heard it.  Curiosity is an idle minx, and a soul laden like the clerk’s has no entertainment for her.  But when one of the three gentlemen who sat together—­an honest but sad-looking person with a flaxen wig, and a fat, florid face—­placing his hand in the breast of his red plush waistcoat, and throwing himself back in his chair, struck up a dismal tune, with a certain character of psalmody in it, the clerk’s ear was charmed for a moment, and he glanced on the singer and sipped some punch; and the ballad, rude and almost rhymeless, which he chanted had an undefined and unpleasant fascination for Irons.  It was thus:—­

  ’A man there was near Ballymooney,
    Was guilty of a deed o’ blood,
  For thravellin’ alongside iv ould Tim Rooney. 
    He kilt him in a lonesome wood.

  ’He took his purse, and his hat and cravat. 
    And stole his buckles and his prayer-book, too;
  And neck-and-heels, like a cruel savage,
    His corpus through the wood he drew.

  ’He pult him over to a big bog-hole,
    And sunk him undher four-foot o’ wather,
  And built him down wid many a thumpin’ stone. 
    And slipt the bank out on the corpus afther.’

Here the singer made a little pause, and took a great pull at the beer-can, and Irons looked over his shoulder at the minstrel; but his uneasy and malignant glance encountered only the bottom of the vessel; and so he listened for more, which soon came thus:—­

  ‘An’ says he, “Tim Rooney, you’re there, my boy,
    Kep’ down in the bog-hole wid the force iv suction,
  An’ tisn’t myself you’ll throuble or annoy,
    To the best o’ my opinion, to the resurrection.”

  ‘With that, on he walks to the town o’ Drumgoole,
    And sot by the fire in an inn was there;
  And sittin’ beside him, says the ghost—­“You fool! 
    ‘Tis myself’s beside ye, Shamus, everywhere."’

At this point the clerk stood up, and looked once more at the songster, who was taking a short pull again, with a suspicious, and somewhat angry glance.  But the unconscious musician resumed—­

  ’"Up through the wather your secret rises;
    The stones won’t keep it, and it lifts the mould,
  An’ it tracks your footsteps, and yoar fun surprises
    An’ it sits at the fire beside you black and cowld.

  ’"At prayers, at dances, or at wake or hurling;
    At fair, or funeral, or where you may;
  At your going out, and at your returning,
    ‘Tis I’ll be with you to your dying day."’

‘Is there much more o’ that?’ demanded Irons, rather savagely.

The thirsty gentleman in the red plush waistcoat was once more, as he termed it, ‘wetting his whistle;’ but one of his comrades responded tartly enough—­