upon him again, and gave him such a dose of it
as knocks his sinses quite out of him. He
could not see out of his eyes for a month afterwards,
and I don't think would have ever seen
again, if he hadn't made a pilgrimage to Croagh
Patrick, and drank out of the Holy well three
mornings running, fasting.'"

The moral, thought I: Never take a salmon
away from an eagle without remembering his
bill.

"How can those fellows go on playing at
cards instead of listening to your good stories,"
I whispered to Mike.

"Oh, bad luck to them," said Mike, "they
always make up their losses the first fool they
get hold of. Hear me now."

"The twelve Pins look well, gentlemen," said
I, stooping down.

The gents, looking up in a desultory way,
said, "Oh, very—wonderful! Fifteen-two and
a pair are eight—that makes me three-and-six-
pence."

"Oh, let them be, the nagurs," said Mike,
with extreme contempt.

Just then, a pig-driver passed, trimly dressed,
driving, with unnecessary noise and solemnity,
four pigs, completely tatooed with red bars
across the back.

"That's a young pig-jobber, I know," said
Mike.

"How do you know he's only just begun
business," said I.

"Why, there's too much ruddle. He's more
ruddle than pigs. As he gets older he'll put
less."

Mike, the Connaught man, was a shrewd,
good-humoured, sagacious madcap; a man's
body and a boy's heart, like half his
countrymen; a voice stammering with fun, but,
when he grew serious, deep, rhythmical, earnest,
and pathetic . Having sounded him in legends,
I waited till moon-rise for his ghost-stories.

After a short stare at the horses' ears, which
passes with a car-driver for meditation, Mike
said, abruptly, "Did you like Sligo, your
honour?"

In the course of my reminiscences of Sligo, I
mentioned a one-eyed and left-handed waiter.

Mike laughed, and said, "I know that waiter.
Ben and me have an old grudge; he's one of
the ferocious O'Flaherties."

Here our recollections of Sligo were interrupted
as we approached Letterfrach, the
Quaker settlement, by a sinister-looking old
man with bare feet, and a patched great
coat, with a scrubby ram's-wool collar, who
bore on his back an enormous round bundle
of old clothes, wrapped in a rug, that gave
him the air of Atlas, learning the use of
the globes. After much higgling he gets up to
ride to Cliforn, and ties his bundle to one of the
jaunting-car rails.

"Is your portmanty safe, Tom? Are you
insured from fire, or wont they insure tinder?"
said Mike, in a kindly voice.

"I'm all right, Thag, and thanks to you,"
cried grateful Tom.

"Very well, Tom. Then chip, Jinny. I
thought you were off to Coleraine, Tom?"

"No; I've just been reprimanded" (he meant
remanded).

The picking up of passengers makes a long
day's ride, on an Irish jaunting-car, one of the
merriest things in the world. Nowhere can you
pick up stranger sayings or more pleasant bits of
observation to chew the cud of in after and
duller days. Now we drew up at a whitewashed
cabin, with its brown pool and dunghill
before it, the pigs muzzling at the potatoes,
smoking and straining in the basket-lid
before the door. Facing the door, slops down
a peat buttress-trunk, which feeds the fire
ingeniously enough, and also keeps out all pure
air from the circle round the red-hot peat. Our
friend Tom, the pedlar, was snugly established
as a balance to the commercial gentleman, who,
with antagonistic rows of half-crowns, were now
absorbed in the mysteries of blind hookey, and
were blind to everything else except an occasional
tinted yellow glass of whisky, brought out
from a shabbeen by a bare-footed urchin who
acted as pot-boy.

A turn of the road brought us to one
of those cottage stations where Bianconi
keeps his relays of horses. A thin, cheery
old woman, with her dry grey hair blowing
in wisps over her face, tripped out, and
began to put to the horses. "Fergus and
Kitty," were marked by Bianconi's royal decree
upon the collars; so that Fergus should never
wear Kitty's collar nor Kitty Fergus's. She
slipped in the buckles and whipped up the
cheek-straps as deftly as a smart young ostler of
sixteen. She even smeared some black ointment
on Kitty's cracked hoof, and had the leather
case on, before the Connaught man could get
round and help her. I rejoiced to see her slap
the wet flank of Jinny, to send her into the
stables, and pull Brian's mane as a token of
recognition. Five minutes more and Mike was on
the yellow box, tucking the oilskin apron over
my legs, and hoping I had room.

"Now, your honour," said Mike, "for the
next ten miles you'll have as pretty a rocking
as ever a rowler tourist had in his born days.
You might as well be at sea in a gale of wind."

The next time we stopped, Mike exclaimed:
"You see that nate little gurl that brought us
the parcel at the gate?"

"Yes," I replied.

"Well," said Mike, "she's one of their
jumpers."

"Jumper. What's that?"

"Why one of the soupers that went over to
the black faith in the famine times for soup.
She is a nate little girl, and takes in millinery.
I've seen fellows change their faith for a pair
of breeches."

"No?" I said.

"Is it no you say; it's yes I say," cried Mike.
"There was young Brady, of Moycullen. When
the committee was giving away the clothes, he
sees a pair of breeches as mightily takes his
fancy. 'Give me them,' says he, 'and I kiss the