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-- 'I'd like there was--an' if you mislike it, neighbour, there's the door.' If he expected a quarrel, however, it did not come; and he saw by Irons's wandering eye, fierce as it looked, that his thoughts for the moment were elsewhere.

And just then the songster, having wiped his mouth in his coat-sleeve, started afresh in these terms-- '"You'll walk the world with a dreadful knowledge, And a heavy heart and a frowning brow; And thinking deeper than a man in college, Your eye will deaden, and your back will bow.
'"And when the pariod iv your life is over, The frightful hour of judgment then will be; And, Shamus Hanlon, heavy on your shoulder, I'll lay my cowld hand, and you'll go wid me."' This awful ditty died away in the prolonged drone which still finds favour in the ears of our Irish rustic musicians, and the company now began to talk of congenial themes, murders, ghosts, and retributions, and the horrid tune went dismally booming on in Mr.Irons's ear.
Trifling, and apparently wholly accidental, as was this occurrence, the musical and moral treat had a very permanent effect upon the fortunes of Irons, and those of other persons who figure in our story.

Mr.Irons had another and another glass of punch.

They made him only more malign and saturnine.