I had seen this picture before, long ago, when I
was a boy. When I first saw ... the original of the miniature I
remembered this and thought it the strangest coincidence. I wanted to
find out for myself if the likeness was really so strong."
"And it was?" I asked.
"It was. Yet you are more like the miniature than the portrait is."
"Ah, no," I said. "I could not be. The portrait is very beautiful."
"You are more like her," he repeated.
We had left the doors of the gallery ajar, and now we heard plainly a
heavy foot coming up the stairs and puffing and wheezing as of a very
stout, asthmatic person ascending.
"It is Bridget Kelly," he said, turning and smiling at me. "She was much
disturbed that I would not have her as _cicerone_, but she remembered me
from the old days, and, seeing that I would not have her, she left me to
mind the house while she did her marketing."
"I found the door open when I came to it," I said.
"Bridget must have left it so. I dare say the house has a ghostly
reputation and is shunned. And now, do you know why I did not go
treasure-hunting?"
"How should I know?" I answered him.
He caught me suddenly into his arms.
"Because, Bawn, my darling," he said, "the dead has come alive again.
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