His story was brief. Some years previous he was in the garden giving directions to an old gardener who had known the place all his life, and when he came to a certain corner, "That," said the gardener, to O'Driscoll, "is where they found the skeletons years agone."
"There was a man whose head had been cut off, for 'twas lying beside his ribs, and there were three fingers that they said were lady's fingers, for on one of them was a gold ring with a jewel in it, and people used to say," the gardener added, "that sometimes on a wild stormy night, when there was thunder, that the ghosts of a gentleman and a lady used to be seen about the house, but he himself had never seen them, nor had he known anyone who had seen them."
My friend not unreasonably concluded that the story of that apparition was an invention subsequent to the discovery of the skeletons, and had given no credence to it. Since he had become tenant of the house there had been many nights of thunderstorm as fierce as, if not fiercer than, that which had just passed, but he had never seen anything and never heard anything until he heard the piercing scream that had brought him to my door.
We talked long over the matter then and many times afterwards, and could find no solution of the mystery; but I could not help asking myself, as I do now, if the apparition were not in the nature of a message from the dead to tell the true story of the fate of my kinsman whom in appearance I so much resembled, and who, we had believed, had fallen in the Spanish expedition to Ireland, three hundred years before.
One wild, stormy night over twenty years ago I entered a second-class smoking carriage in the last train from Dublin to Bray. So wild was the night that it was with great difficulty my cab horse had been able to drag along his rumbling vehicle through the streets swept clear of pedestrians by the blinding sheets of rain. The station was, except for one or two porters, completely deserted. I arrived just as the train, which was almost empty, was about to start, and I entered a carriage with two compartments, in neither of which was there any other passenger. All the windows were closed, and for the few seconds before the train started I enjoyed the luxury of the quiet that contrasted so pleasantly with the storm that was howling outside. But as soon as the train had moved out from the station the rain began to rattle like hail against the windows, and I could hear the wind strike the carriages, and the oil lamps in the roof flash and flicker, so that I expected them every moment to go out. I was muffled up to the throat, and was solacing myself with a cigar and the thought of the bright fire that I knew would greet me on arriving at my destination, and helped to raise my feelings. I was staying at Bray in the house of my sister, who, however, was with her husband in Scotland, and would not return for some days, and the only other occupant of the house besides myself was an old woman who acted as housekeeper for me. She would have gone to bed long before my arrival, but I knew from experience that she would take care to leave for me in the parlour a cheery fire and a comfortable supper.