The grand compotation going on in the parlour waxed louder and wilder as
the night wore on. There were unseen guests there, elate and inspiring,
who sat with the revellers--phantoms who attend such wassail, and keep
the ladle of the punch-bowl clinking, the tongue of the songster glib
and tuneful, and the general mirth alive and furious. A few honest folk,
with the gift of a second sight in such matters, discover their uncanny
presence--leprous impurity, insane blasphemy, and the stony grin of
unearthly malice--and keep aloof.
To heighten their fun, this jovial company bellowed their abominable
ballads in the hall, one of them about 'Sally M'Keogh,' whose sweetheart
was hanged, and who cut her throat with his silver-mounted razor, and
they hooted their gibes up the stairs. And at last Mary Matchwell,
provoked by the passive quietude of her victim, summoned the three
revellers from the kitchen, and invaded the upper regions at their
head--to the unspeakable terror of poor Sally Nutter--and set her demon
fiddler a scraping, and made them and Dirty Davy's clerk dance a frantic
reel on the lobby outside her bed-room door, locked and bolted inside,
you may be sure.
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