Patrick took him by the nose with the red-hot
pincers."

"Are you fond of driving, Reilly?" said I,
lighting a cigar, and giving him one.

"Not over and above, your honour," said
Reilly. " Put me on top of a hot chesnut and I'm
at home; but this rolling on a rickety coach-box
spiles the digestion. Och! there's no greater
divarsion now to my mind than to sit on a hill and
hear the music of the beagles down in the valleys.
Och! the echoes talk and jangle to each
other: it's mighty divarting, and the purtiest
thing in life of a bright blue June morning. I had
two beagles when I was a young man; I called
one Fly and the other Bird. I should say, in all
Ireland there was no two better dogs to turn and
wind a hare; faix, they played into each other's
hands just like two players at trumps."

"And what became of your beauties?" said I.

Reilly sighed. " Why, Bird was killed leaping
over a cliff, and Fly ate a poisoned lamb
they'd set for these carrion-crows that kill the
game on the hills. He swelled up as big as a
barrel, and died while I was carrying him
home."

"Poor Fly," said I, lighting a sweet-scented
fusee.

"By the powers, your honour," said Reilly,
"as a boy, I should have got down from a gibbet,
I think, if I'd heard the dogs' tongues and seen
the scarlet topping the stone walls in little lines
of red, till they all joined into one great red sea
at the black thorn covert side. Blood-and-
ouns, that makes the blood bile and the pulse go
like a steam-ingine. One day, when I was a
boy, I and five other boys were going to school
with two sods under the arm for the master (that's
how we paid him in the poor parts of county Mayo),
and presently we saw the hounds coming up in full
cry after the bushy tail. Now mother had said,
'Patsy, whatever you do, don't go after the
hounds.' But she said nothing about going
before them, so away we went, hedge and ditch,
barefoot, splash through the black bog-holes,
and tip-tap over the hard blue roads, and hop-
and-hop over the plough, and skim and drop
over the stone croppers, till the fox was run
into. May I never hear mass again if we
weren't some ten miles from home, and we without
our dinner. Well, just as we were looking
about for berries, mushrooms, or anything, what
should we see but a dish of smoking maly
potatoes, laughing, themselves out of elbows, at a
cabin door. Sorra guide me, but before I knew
what I was about, I had it under my arm, and
was a mile off under a bush counting them out,
and trying if the sort could be spoken well of.
At the next turn of a road, what should the
great tempter show us but a large flat-head
cake cooling in a window, and that one of the
fellows took and ran off with too. So that's the
way we made out our dinner. Do you see that
house yonder, sir?"

"Yes; you mean the white one, with the
slate roof," said I.

"Yes," said Reilly; "that belonged to a
magistrate that they tell a good story of. He
was always in debt and being watched, but he
kept himself so close, that divil a fy far or a
car sar could the bailiffs serve, till one day a
Bray man, one Phil O'Shaughnessy, determined
to be up to him, so what does he do but sham
drunkenness outside the magistrate's door,
when he saw the man he wanted squinting
round the window-blind; out rush two policemen,
and take him to the station-house, and
presently before the magistrate. 'Who are
you?' says the magistrate. 'Read this,' said
the bailiff, handing in the latitat, 'and you'll
see.' And so he grabbed him. Mighty nate it
was, anyhow."

"Whose is this cottage, Reilly?" said I.

"Oh, that's," said Reilly, "the priest's,
Father O'Dwyer; and there he comes, in his
Hessian boots, on his little cob. He's not so
poor as Father McGuire, in the next village,
who lives in a little boreen, in a cabin with only
two whitewashed rooms. It's as much as he
can do to live, though he's the sogar tharoon,
the darling of everybody; and just over
again him is the Protestant clergyman's, with
his snug glebe and lawn, and the divil knows
what not."

"What a crop of grass there is on that
cottage roof," said I.

"Sure," said Reilly, strongly agreeing, " the
man might keep a cow there, and no hurt to the
crop."

It was, indeed, such a sluggard's roof as one
only sees in Ireland; a century old thatch, long
brown, and jagged, sunk into deep clefts, and
hollows, and furrows, covered with clumps of
nettles and tufts of long shaking grasses, tall
enough to hide a man in. There was here the
antiquity of decay, the pride of sluggardness, the
triumph of corruption. When we got nearer,
I saw that the gable end had fallen, and that
one window was a blind heap of stones.

"Why it's a ruin, Reilly?" I said, inquiringly.

Reilly, looking away, said, in a low voice,
"That's the house of the degraded priest; and
about this priest I have a terrible story, too
long for to-day, your honour."

Now ready, price 1s.,
Uniform with PICKWICK, DAVID COPPERFIELD, BLEAK
HOUSE, &c.,
The Second Monthly Part of
A TALE OF TWO CITIES.
BY CHARLES DICKENS.
With Two Illustrations on Steel by HABLOT K.
BROWNE.
To be completed in Eight Monthly Parts.
CHAPMAN and HALL, 193, Piccadilly, W., AND
" ALL THE YEAR ROUND" Office, 11, Wellington-street
North, London, W.C.