What else should he be but a soldier?
Since there have always been soldiers in the family, and my grandfather could not have borne him to be anything else.
Dear Theobald, how brave and simple and kind he was! I have said nothing about the ghosts of Aghadoe Abbey, but it has many ghosts, or it had.
First and foremost there is the Lord St.Leger, who was killed in a Dublin street brawl a hundred years ago, who will come driving home at midnight headless in his coach, and the coachman driving him also headless, carrying his head under his arm.

That is not a very pleasant thing to see enter as the gates swing open of themselves to let the ghost through.
Then there is the ghost of the woman who cries outside in the shrubbery.
I have seen her myself in a glint of the moonlight, her black hair covering her face as she bends to the earth, incessantly seeking something among the dead leaves, which she cannot discover, and for which she cries.
And again, there is the lady who goes down the stairs, down, down, through the underground passage, and yet lower to the well that lies under the house, and is seen no more.

A new maid once saw her in broad daylight--or at least in the grey of the morning--and followed her down the stairs, thinking that it was one of the family ill perhaps, who needed some attention.

She could tell afterwards the very pattern of the lace on the fine nightgown, and describe how the fair curls clustered on the lady's neck.

It was only when the lady disappeared before her, a white shimmer down the darkness of the underground corridor, that the poor thing realized she had seen a ghost, and fell fainting, with a clatter of her dustpan and brush which brought her help.
I could make a long list of the ghosts, for they are many, but I will not, lest I should be tedious.