"Ma'am dear, that was a way you had, ever and always, tripping a body up in their story.-Sure I did mend-that is I eased it with a bit of a cord.

But it was my luck hindered me, and the bad foot, from going the day after that; and one thing or another came across me, until it was just a week before I could go for the straw. Well, the black boy himself put it into my head to borrow Matthew Maccan's white mare. Take her and welcome,' says Matty; 'but mind, if you put yourself or any thing else on her, she'll kick till she smashes every bone in your body, though she'll draw a creel, or a cart, till the day of judgment as easy as May butter.'—‹ Thank ye kiudly, Matthew,' says I, I'll mind fast enough,' and away I went. And at his own gate I saw Tom, as grand as Cromwell, with his hands in his pockets, and a silk Barcelona round his neck, like any gentleman.-To be sure the luck of some people! • Good evening, Tim,' says he. • Good evening kindly,' says I. 'Where are you going with Matthew Maccan's beast?' says he. No farther than this,' says I, until I go home again.' I'm always glad to see an ould friend,' says he; but why didn't ye come,' says he again,' for the barley straw?' • Sure I'm come for it now,' says 1. You are!' says he, opening his great grey eyes at me, like a wild cat; sorra as much for ye, then, as would build a sparrow's nest,' says the traitor: If ye'd been glad of it, you would have come when you

was bid to come, and not let a whole week rowl over your head. I gave the straw to Jemmy Hatchet, and by this time it's no straw, but a roof, and a good one too, to his sty, and his neat clean barn.' It's il done of ye,' says I, as cool as a cabbage-leaf, though. my blood was boilin' at the ill luck that follows me; 'ye might have waited; but never heed,' and I turned the horse round to come home. 'Sure,' says he, 'ye're not going to stir ill-blood out of the offer I made ye from kindness; if ye did not take advantage of it, it was your fault not mine.' Well, I didn't value the straw a traneen, ma'am dear; I've a spirit above it; but I did not like his bestowing his dirty straw upon Jemmy Hatchet: so I makes answer, Do you say I'm in fault?' says, with a grin of a laugh.

To be sure I do,' he
Then by this, and by

that,' I says, swearing a great whale of an oath, that

I'd be sorry to repeat before a lady, I'll make ye eat both ye'r words and the straw.' Ye can't,' says he, 6 and what's more ye darn't; a'n't I the priest's nephy?' Well, that would rouse the blood of a wood-queest, for it was cowardly-like; and, as my luck would have it, I hot him an unlucky blow; and a dale of sorrow it got me into; for I had the world and all of penance, to say nothing of being had up, and he swearing he gave no provocation. For sartin I didn't mean to have struck so hard, and didn't think his bones were so soft;-but that wasn't all of it-going home,

the trouble of what I had done uppermost, I forgot what Mat said about the horse, and got on the baste's back, who made no more ado, but kicked and plunged, and pitched me into the thick of a pond full of young ducks and geese; and two ganders set upon me, and as good as tore the eyes out of my head, before I could get out of the water; and I had to pay two and three half-pence for the young that was killed in the scrummage. And well I know it's long afore such luck would have followed any other boy in the parish but myself. Now, ma'am dear, isn't that luck?"

"Is your story finished, Tim ?"

“It just is, ma'am, darlint,—that is, I mean the sty story is finished; but I could tell ye twenty as good, and better too, to show what ill luck I have."

"There is no luck, ill or well, that I can see from beginning to end. Your misfortunes entirely arose

out of your want of punctuality; had your shoes been mended, as they ought to have been, you could have gone for the straw with comfort on the evening you were desired. Still, their not being mended was no excuse for your want of punctuality. You put me in mind of an anecdote I heard once of two Irishmen, who were too lazy to pluck the figs that hung over their heads in a beautiful garden in Italy. There they lay on their backs, beneath a tree covered with fruit, their mouths open for the figs to fall into. At last a fig, by what you would call luck,' fell into the mouth

·

of one of these Irishmen.

What a lucky dog you

are, Paddy!' said the other, opening his great mouth I don't know that, Looney,'

still more widely.

replied Paddy, after swallowing the fig, for I have had the trouble of chewing it!'"

Agh, ma'am honey! I wonder how you have the heart to tell such stories against your own country, letting the foreigners laugh at us that way."

66

Listen, Timothy; how would your own case read? Timothy Brady was indicted for an assault upon Mister Thomas Dooly, who swore that he told the aforesaid Timothy Brady, that, if he came to him on the evening of the first of May, he would make him a present of a load of straw to thatch his pig-sty; that Brady promised to come, but never came until the seventh of May; and in the meantime he, Thomas Dooly, thinking that Brady did not wish to thatch his pig-sty, had given the load of straw to an industrious man who did thatch his pig-sty; that when Brady found the straw had been given, he, without any provocation—”

"Oh, easy, ma'am dear!--you forget the laugh." "And who could help laughing?—without any provocation did assault the said Thomas Dooly.' Now is it not so, worthy Timotheus?"

Reasoning with the Irish on this same subject is pretty much like attempting to swim against the stream of a powerful river.

You catch some little turn or

current, and you think you have them there. No such thing. Away they go the next minute.

Moyna now took up the subject. "Sure, ma'am, you must allow that what happened to Milly Boyle was luck! Poor thing!—she'd as bad luck as her neighbours, and worse too, but she could not go past what was before her."

66

Milly Boyle,-I remember her,haired girl."

‚—a blue-eyed, fair

"With rosy cheeks, and a smile ever ready to coax them into dimples. Ah, ma'am ! she was the pride of the whole village. And her poor mother (and she a widdy) doated on her as mother never doated on child before or since, to my thinking. Then her voice was as clear as a bell, and as sweet as a linnet's; and though she had forty pounds to her fortune, besides furniture, a feather-bed, and a cow, to say nothing of the pigs, and powers of fowl, and lashings of meal and cutlings, (sure her uncle, big Lary Boyle, is a miller)—though she had all them things she was as humble as a wild violet, and to the poor was ever ready with a soft word, and a 'God save you kindly,' and her hand in her pocket, and out with a five-penny bit, or a tester; or would think nothing of lapping her cloak round her, and away to any sick woman, or poor craythur of a man that 'u'd be ailing, and give them the grain of tea, or the bit of tobaccy, or taste of snuff, to comfort them; and the prayer of the country side was Good luck to