"One would think," he muttered to me, "it
was the Juke of Wellington and Admiral Nelson
out, arm in arm, for a holiday. I'd upset
them in the next bog-hole for a tinpenny."

But the red-whiskered, fresh-coloured, pompous,
slangy bagmen went on throwing down
the red and black pipped, cards on the car
cushion between them quite unconcerned, the
money lying between them in reasonable pools. of
silver, 'if we had been driving through Paradise
they would not have looked up.

As a road-side dog broke out on us from a
cabin, Mike began to talk.

"There's a power of agles," said Mike, suddenly,"
up in Derryclare, there. I sometimes
am getting them at three-and-sixpence the
couple for gentlemen that keep menageries on
their lawns. I'll tell you a story about them/'

"Give that yelping dog a cut with your
whip," said one of the gamesters.

Mike replied, seriously, bending down to
them, "Perhaps one of you gents would be
kind enough to fling half-a-crown at him.
Well, as I was saying when the dog interrupted
me, I had a man from Letterfrach on
the box the other day, who was a powerful one
on agle stories, but it's not worth telling.—Hold
up, Jinny!"

"Oh, the story, by all means, Mike," said I.

"A year or two ago," said Mike, " it may be
more—there was a poor widdy had her slip of
peaty ground not far from the foot of Benbaun,
that big blue fellow there to the right. She had
just her handful of goats, that nibbled about
Bencullaghduff, and her slice of bog, and such
parquisites as she had got given to her by one of
the great Martins of Bailinahinch, before old
Cruelty to animals reigned in Comiemara (rest
his soul!). Convaynient to the widdy lived an
eagle. 'Do you see that tree we're passing?'
said the Clare man to me. 'To be sure I do,'
said I, 'how can I help it?—did he live in
that?' 'No,' says he, as pat as could be, 'he
didn't, but he built on that wall just beyont it.'
Well, one unlucky Friday, the widdy's sons—
two stout lads, ready for any mischief, and more
fond of snapping at snipes and listening to the
gentlemen's beagles than work—climbed up that
wall of a rock, pulling themselves up by the long
green strings of ivy and the little hollybushes
that grew in the clefts, and, when up there,
what did they do but bring down two of the
young birds. Soon afterwards, the widdy's
lambs began to decrease in number (it was
yearning season at the time), and so it went on,
till only forty of seventy were left. The
widdy, thinking it had been the herd, had him
watched, and then found out, sure enough, it
was devil a one but the ould thafe of the
world, the agle. So she goes to a wise gossip,
and asks her what was to be done. Says
the gossip to her, 'Have you never done
any provocation to the agle?' And the
widdy says to her 'that her sons had taken
two of the young birds to bring up in the
house as pets.' 'That's it,' says the ould
woman, 'and there'll never be good blood
between you, Widdy Grattan, and the agle, till
you give back them cubs, and the boys go
up again and put back the birds, and make all
smooth.' The boys took back the eaglets,
and from that day no more lambs were taken
out of the flock; nor was that all, for the agle
behaved like a jintleman to her, and because
he couldn't give them back—seeing as how they
were picked to the bone—he flew forty miles a
day for thirty days running into county Clare,
and brought back every day a lamb, to make up
the number he and his family had eaten. And
this is how it was found out. The man that
told me, and who lived near the widdy, had
lately married a Westport woman, and came out
of Clare into these very parts, and he declared
the brand on the lambs the agle brought back
was the brand of a squireen from his own
neighbourhood. Now, isn't that mighty quare?'

"It is, indeed," I said, believingly.

Mike continued: "Well, this same Clare man
told me another story of an agle that beats Banagher.
There was a countryman near Bencore who
used to cross a ford every day to cut his little slip
of turf to boil the wife's praties with. One day,
as he goes across with his log over his shoulder
and his kippeen at his back, balancing himself
on the stones, that the water dips and tumbles
over, what does he see but a big baste of an
agle, with wings as big as a fishing-sail, sitting
on a rock half-way across, ating a salmon with
all the relish of a priest at a wedding? The man
up's with a cleaver he has with him to cut a
stick or two of bog-wood, lets fly at the agle,
who drops the salmon down at his feet, and,
without waiting for the change, flies off, as he
thought, to his wife and family in Bencullaghduff.
Pleased enough, the man goes into the
bog, scoops out his kippeenful of the driest turf,
ties the cords across, hoists the fish, shining
like a new dish-cover, in between the fastenings,
and hurries back to the cabin, glad to bring
Biddy, who was ailing, so pretty a dinner without
changing a one pound bill for it. But he
hadn't got the pot that was to boil that fish;
for, as he has got half across the water, flop
comes his friend the agle down on the creel,
pitches on his head, gives him a buffeting with
his wings that half blinds him, and flies off with
the salmon in his claws.

"Teaching him to do as he'd be done by,"
said I.

"Divil anything else," said Mike. "'Bedad,'
says the man to Biddy, 'I'm not the
Christian to be made a fool of by an agle that
has only two legs and no arms. No,' says he,
'and he loads a blunderbuss up to the muzzle
with swan shot, and goes off to the ford the very
next day, and hides under an alder bush to wait
for the agle when he came to drink. In about
half an hour, he sees a dark spot over Derryclare
that gradually gets larger as it gets nearer, and
by-and-by turns out to be the agle. Now, I'll
tache you manners,' says Murphy Joyce, 'but
before he could pull the trigger which was
rather stiff—it hadn't been used much since
the throubles in 'ninety-eight—the agle was down