H. De Vere Stacpoole

“ The constructive imagination of the man was adding a dish of Arran Chief potatoes bursting in snow through their brown jackets, when a wide-open gateway and a drive leading to the house took his eye, lit by a glimpse of the moon. He turned the Cat into the drive and rode up it, sure of the one thing a stranger may be sure of in Ireland—a warm reception and a real and concrete hospitality, including in its form the best bed and the biggest potato. ”

“ IRELAND is, perhaps, the most conservative country on earth. She clings to her past, and here one may still believe in haunted houses without discredit, and rent them without disappointment, sure of a banshee, if nothing else. Here, a few years ago, the Rev. Arthur Ridgwell Bilnott, Rector of Pebwell, Cambridgeshire, came for the hunting, as a guest of Mr. Michael Blake, whose estate lies in the top horn of Tipperary, not a hundred miles from Loch Derg.
Dilnott did not believe in ghosts. ”

“ But ghosts were as far from his mind at this moment as from the minds of Hennessy or Michael Blake. Hennessy, after a look round, determined to draw Barrington Scrub, a mile away over the moorland. They drew it blank, passed on to a big spinney a couple of miles away in the direction of Silvermines, and here the hounds started a fox, running into him and killing him two miles away and right on the edge of a wood by the road to Silvermines. ”

“ The faint toot of horn through the dull grey weather came from away towards Silvermines, but without awakening any echo in his heart. He had done enough hunting for one day. When one is over forty-five, a cropper towards the end of the day is a different thing from a cropper at the start. ”

“ Mounting the Cat—by a miracle unhurt, and now subdued and in her right mind—he turned from the direction of Silvermines. A mile along the road he fell in with an old man driving a donkey-cart. This individual was deaf, but after a while, and by dint of shouting, came to understand his questioner.
"Castle Blake, did you say, sor? It's right foremint you—a matter of twelve miles and a bit as the crow flies, and eleven be the road. What's that you say, sir? I'm hard of hearin'. There ain't no cows. ”

“ But there are no such things as ghosts; the manifestations have been proved over and over again to be fraudulent, as far as apparitional appearances, the result of mediumistic influence, are concerned, illusory as to the rest. Rats and neurotic women and practical jokers—subtract those factors, and the whole theory of haunted houses falls to the ground. ”

“ Why, it's nigh into King's County from here: it's maybe siventeen miles you'll have to go. When you get to the cross-roads, take the way to Castle Down, keep sthrait ahead till you fetch the cross-roads—you can't make no mistake. ”