"I have never been in it," said Barney, "and I don't think there's a man
or woman in the next three parishes that would enter it alone, even by
daylight; but now that you are wid me, I have a terrible curiosity to
see it inside."
A curse was thought to hang over it, but that curse, as it happened, was
its preservation in the undilapidated state in which it stood.
On entering it, which Barney did not do without previously crossing
himself, they were surprised to find it precisely in the same situation
in which it had been abandoned. There were one small pot, two stools, an
earthen pitcher, a few wooden trenchers lying upon a shelf, an old dusty
salt-bag, an ash stick, broken in the middle, and doubled down so as to
form a tongs; and gathered up in a corner was a truss of straw, covered
with a rug and a thin old blanket, which had constituted a wretched
substitute for a bed. That, however, which alarmed Barney most, was an
old broomstick with a stump of worn broom attached to the end of it, as
it stood in an opposite corner. This constituted the whole furniture of
the hut.
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