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In the meantime, wholly absorbed in his prodigious banquet, he had quite lost sight of his friend, the jockey; but now, as with a sigh of intense satisfaction, he reclined back in the cushioned chair, he became sensible of a sort of fidgetiness about his foot, and on looking down, what should he see but the little chap, very busy indeed, with his whip in his mouth, saddling up his big toe, as gingerly as you please. He was just giving the girth a last pull, which he accompanied with the usual jerking expression, making Dan wince a little, from a sense of tightness in the nag.

The business-like manner of the chap, however, soon banished the uncomfortable feeling, and so excited Dan's risibilities, that the tears rolled down his cheeks with uncontrollable laughter. It is astonishing how very near the surface the leverage of a good dinner and a warm "tod," lifts up one's jolly feelings.

Dan was now in a condition to sign a treaty of perpetual amity with all mankind.

Delusive tranquillity!

"Mount," cried the little rider, jumping into his saddle. "Hurrah! off we go! heigh!"

The first slash of the whip and dig of the spur changed the nature of Dan's emotions most effectually. He roared, he raged, he twisted about like an eel on a spear. Still fiercely and unmercifully the little jockey plied the lash and the goad. Still he shouted, "Hurrah! jump, you devil, jump!"

Now, Dan swore like a rapparee; now, he called upon every saint in the calendar; but there was no cessation to his torture. In the extremity of his fury, he flung the whisky-bottle at the little rider's head; but as it struck his own foot, it only augmented the terrible agony.

From praying and swearing he fell to weeping, but the stony-hearted little tyrant was not assailable by tears or entreaties. Promises of amendment were equally useless; until, at last, happening to recollect what a horror all supernaturals have of the pure element, he seized a tumbler of water, and nearly drowned his tormentor with its contents. This had the desired effect. The little vagabond dismounted with a shrill cry of annoyance, and rushed over towards the fire-place, to dry his soaked garments.

"Ha, ha! you thief of the world, I know what'll settle your hash now – wather!" said Dan, instantly relieved from pain; "and, wid a blessin', you shall have enough of that same, if ever you venture to come hurdle-racin' on any toes o' mine.

"Stick to that Dan, my hero," said the little fellow, as he shook the drops off his drenched jacket; "stick to that, and you may depend upon it that I'll never trouble you any more."

And so, having got rid of his enemy, Dan snuggled himself back into the comfortable easy-chair, and very soon forgot himself and all the real world, in the perplexities and comic horrors of a dyspeptic dream.

CHAPTER V

 
Within the home where jealousy is found,
A Upas grows that poisons all around.
 

It would be as unprofitable as impossible to follow the ever-varying images of a dream, which, apparently consumed the best part of a century; every half hour of which had its separate distress, although the actual period of time passed did not reach ten minutes, to such singular and enormous expansion was the imagination swollen. The few placid moments distorted into numberless years of terror, like the drop of seemingly pure water, resolved, by microscopic power, into an ocean of repulsive monsters.

Dan had just been very properly condemned to death for the five and twentieth time, and had waited in gasping dread for the infliction of some inconceivable – except under such circumstances – mode of bodily torture, when he heard a tremendous noise, like the explosion of an immense piece of ordnance, close by his side. With a nervous start, that benumbed his frame like a powerful shock, he awoke, bathed in perspiration and half dead with fright. The sound was repeated. It was a simple, single, hesitating little knock at the chamber-door.

"Who's there?" he stammered, scarcely yet aroused to the consciousness of his identity.

"It's me, sir," replied a gentle voice, that thrilled through him with different sensations, for delight and joy stole over him like a sun-ray. It was his wife's.

"Come in, Peg," said he, "for an angel that you are. If it wasn't for this blessed interruption I'd have died in my bed with the wear an' tear of murdherin' bad dreams." He would fain have rushed into Peggy's arms as she entered, but the first attempt at making use of his continuations painfully reminded him that they belonged to somebody else. It also admonished him that it was necessary for him to support his new character with dignity.

"Well, ma'm," said he, "what do you mean by disturbin' me in this unprincipled way?"

"Indeed, sir," replied Peggy, timidly, "an' I'm a'most ashamed to tell you; it's that man o' mine over the way, sir; sure, I don't know what's come to him, at all, at all, within the last few hours."

"Ho! ho!" thought Dan, he's had a quare time of it as well as myself. "What's the matter with him, Mrs. Duffy?"

"That's what I want to know, sir, av anybody'd only tell me; I never knew him to kick up such tanthrums ever since we come together; musha! sure, an' the devil's in him if ever he enthered a mortal body, this blessed day – an' dhrink! murdher alive, sir, av he wouldn't dhrink the say dhry av he only had the swally, I'm not here."

"That's bad, very bad, indeed," said the other, oracularly. "People should never indulge in such terrible propensities," he went on, with a bold attempt at Bulworthy's phraseology.

"Sure, sir, doesn't it depend upon what dhrives them to it?" replied Peggy. "Throuble's mighty dhrouthy, sir, intirely; it dhrys up a poor man's throat as if there was a fire in his mouth, and, indeed, me poor Dan's poorer nor the poorest this holy day."

"That's no rayson, ma'm," said the other, with mock sternness, although his frame was in a glow of joy at hearing how Peggy managed to find excuses for his favorite failing. "That's no rayson, ma'm; the more fool him for addin' flame to the fire."

"Thrue for you, sir, but then doesn't it dhrownd the blaze for the time?"

"I'll answer ye that, Mrs. Duff, if you please, allygorically; did ye ever see a few dhrops of sperrets flung into a blazin' fire? a murdherin' lot of dhrowndin' there is about it; bedad, the fire only burns with greater strength."

"Then, of coorse, your honor, it stands to good sense that it's foolish to take only a few dhrops," she replied, with a sly look at the Squire, that made the laugh bubble all over his ruddy face.

"One would a'most suppose that you loved this Dan of yours," said he.

"Love him, sir! do the spring flowers love the sun? does the young mother love her new-born babby?"

"Oh! murdher, murdher! listen to this," cried Dan; "an' me shut up inside of this prison of a carcass; it was a mortial sin to leave her, an' I'm sufferin' for it as I ought, an' it sarves me right." The thought made him savage, so turning to poor Peggy with a look of anger, he continued, fiercely:

"What brought you here, ma'm? may-be you'll condescind to inform me at oncet."

"Oh! sir, don't be angry wid him, but its outrageous intirely that he is; sure, he wants somethin' that I'm afeared to ax."

"What is it? don't keep me waitin' all day."

"I hope yer honor will take into considheration the way he's in just now, for he sthole out onbeknown to me, an' how he got the sup, I can't tell; but it's on him dhreadful, or he'd never think of the likes."

"The likes of what? what's throublin' him now? speak out, woman, or you'll drive the little bit of patience that I have clean out of me."

"Then, sir, the long an' the short of it is, an' I dunno what put such foolishness in his head, he towld me to ax yer honor, if yer honor had a thrifle of that soup left; he'd take it as a mighty great favor if yer honor would let him have the least taste in life of it," said Peggy, with an extreme misgiving as to how so presumptuous a request would be received.

"Is that all?" said Dan, calmly, to her intense relief. "Take it, an' welcome, Mrs. Duff, an' if it does him as much good as it did me you won't be throubled wid such a message again, I'll be bound; there's the vagabone stuff in that big bowl over on the sideboard fornenst you; an' tell him, by the same token, from me, that av he feels at all uncomfortable in his present quarthers, it wouldn't kill me right out to swap again."

"Swap what, sir?" inquired Peggy, rather mystified.

"Oh! he'll know what I mean."

"And so do I," screamed the irate Mrs. Bulworthy rushing into the room, at the door of which, she had been listening during the entire conversation, the spirit of which had inflamed her jealous temperament up to fever heat.

"I know what you want to swap, you ill-conditioned profligate," she went on, in true Zantippe style. "You want to swap wives, don't you?"

"Faix, an' you never said a thruer word," coolly replied Dan.

This was too much for the excited dame; with a yell of fury she rushed at Peggy, and would assuredly have indented the marks of all her finger-nails in her comely countenance, but that the other, finding the door conveniently open, snatched up the tureen of soup and fled down stairs like a phantom.

Her prey thus escaping, the shock of her terrible rage was concentrated upon the head of the devoted Dan; to what grievous extremity it would carry her he had not an idea, but he felt that something awful was about to take place.

"Considher my misfortunes," he cried, "and be merciful, Mrs. Bulworthy."

Implacable as the embodied Parcæ, she advanced towards him.

"You're not goin' to murdher me, woman," he roared.

Silently, she approached still nearer, desperation was in her aspect.

"Help, murdher, help!" cried Dan, inevitable fate seeming to be on the point of overwhelming him in some way or another.

"What the divil is the ould monsther goin' to do?" thought he, as a frightful suspicion raised his flesh into little hillocks, and made his hair sting his head like needle-points, when he saw her deliberately take a singular-looking phial and pour out a few drops of a fiery red liquor, filling the rest of the glass with water, through which the former hissed and eddied for a few moments, and then subsided into a horrible blackness.

"Drink this," she ejaculated, solemnly, "and pay the penalty of your infamous conduct."

"What is it?" he inquired, in a voice of alarm.

"Poison! you profligate," replied the other, regarding him with a Borgian expression.

"Holy Vargin! an' me screwed into the floor wid this threfalian gout," gasped Dan, his face bedewed with the effect of his mental agony. "Stop! you murdherin' ould witch! Stop! you have no right to sarve me this way. I don't belong to you at all," cried Dan, as a last resource.

"What do you mean by that, you miserable sinner?"

"I mean that you're no wife o' mine, the Lord be praised for it."

"Would you deny your honest wife, you cannibal?"

"I would – I do," cried he, desperately.

"You're not my husband?"

"I'll be upon my Bible oath I'm not."

"What – not Bulworthy?"

"The divil a toe, ma'm, savin' yer presence. I'm Dan Duff, the cobbler, from over the way."

"Oh, the man's mad – mad as a coot," said Mrs. Bulworthy, with appalling calmness, "and it would only be a mercy to put him out of his misery, soon an' suddent."

"Tear an aigers, av I only had the use of these blaggard legs of mine, wouldn't I make an example of ye, you ould witch of Endher," muttered Dan. "I won't be slaughtered without an offer to save myself, any way." With that, he started to his feet, and to his great surprise and delight discovered that his powers of locomotion were unimpeded. With a wild hurroo! he jumped, as only a Munster man can jump, and dancing over to the now thoroughly alarmed Squiress, who could see nothing in such extravagance but a confirmation of his utter insanity, he lifted her in his arms as though she were a rag doll.

"Now, ma'm," said he, "I'll see if I can't cure your propensity for pison. Into that closet you'll go, and out of it you sha'n't budge until you come to your senses, or I come to myself; and I'm afeard that one's as far off as the other – worse luck for both of us;" and so, without the slightest attempt at resistance on her part, not knowing to what extremity this outburst of madness would lead him, he snugly deposited her ladyship in a corner cupboard, which he locked, and put the key in his pocket, accompanying the whole movement with a paroxysm of laughter, so long and loud that she congratulated herself upon the slight shelter thus afforded her, and only feared that the next phase in his malady would be of more sanguinary a nature.

This great feat accomplished, Dan threw himself back in the easy-chair, and began seriously to ruminate upon his present condition and his future prospects.

"This, then, is what I left my blessed Peg and the blesseder babby for; to live a life of gout and conthrariness, never to have any confidence in my muscles, but always thremblin' for feard that sharp-spurred jockey would take a fancy for a canther, or, what's worse even than that, to be in dhread of the penethratin' tongue of ould mother Gab, yondher, whinever I'm laid by the leg; oh! if iver there was a poor sinner that repinted, it's myself that's last on the list, an' greatest; could I only see the darlin' of a sperret that gev me the good advice I so foolishly kicked at, it's beg her pardon on my bended knees – that I would, if it was hot cendhers that was undher them."

At that instant, he was aware of the gentlest of all gentle touches on his shoulder, and on turning his head in the direction, sure enough, there she was.

Dan was prostrate before her, in a moment. "Ora good luck and long life to you, miss, for comin' to me in my disthress; I don't deserve it, I know I don't."

"Get up, Mr. Duff," said the spirit. "I am but the reflection of your better thoughts; therefore, you must proffer your repentance, through me, to the throne of One who rules us both."

"I will, I will," cried the other; "truly and wholly," covering his face with his hands, through which the tears now streamed copiously.

"What is your wish?" inquired the good spirit.

"You know, you must know, for it's fairly breakin' my heart I am here; I want to get back to myself, and Peggy, an' the boy."

"Ah! you have begun to think of them at last."

"I own I have been selfish, sinfully, wretchedly selfish, but I'm cured," replied Dan, in a tone of contrition.

"But you remember the conditions of the compact," said the other, "neither of you can regain your original form and station unless both consent."

"Oh! wirrasthrue, then I'll never be my own man again," sobbed Dan. "Ould Bulworthy, bad 'cess to him, has the best of the bargain, an' he'll stick to it like wax; small blame to him for it, seein' that I sould my comfort entirely for a pair of murdherin' top-boots; he ain't such an omathaun as to come back here to his gout an' his scowldin' madame, when its a thrifle of hunger is all he'll have to put up wid, over the way, an' there's happiness enough in one glance of Peggy's bright eye, to swally that up if it was ten times as throublesome; and there's the boy, too, that's like a growin' angel about the house, fillin' up every spot of it wid heavenly joy; oh! wirra, wirra! sure, I didn't know the luck I was in until I lost it out an' out."

"The perversity of mankind is strange," said the spirit. "Are you certain that Bulworthy is content in his present condition?"

"How the divil can he be otherwise?" replied the other, savagely.

"You were not, you remember."

"Because I didn't know there was a worse: like an ignorant fool, I thought that a scanty meal now and then was the greatest calamity in the world; be me sowl, I've had the knowledge rubbed into my bones, that too much is sometimes apt to sting a fellow afterwards more than too little."

"Perhaps the sensation of hunger may be to him as disagreeable as the sense of satiety is to you," suggested the spirit.

"Oh! if there was only a chance of that," cried Dan, brightening up at the idea. "An' be the same token, now that I think of it, he did send over for some of that vagabone soup; long life to you, you've put the hope into me heart once more; but how the mischief am I to find out the state of the ould blaggard's feelin's?"

"There's nothing like going to work in a straightforward way," said the spirit; "just put on your hat and go over and ask him."

"Faix, an' I will, an' thank you kindly, too, for puttin' it into me head," replied Dan.

"I wish you good morning, then," said the other, and even while Dan was looking at her straight in her face, she gradually resumed her vapory appearance, growing thinner and thinner, until she finally went out like a puff of tobacco.

CHAPTER VI

 
"Within the circle of your own estate,
Confine yourself, nor yearn for brighter fate."
 

And now let us return to the cobbler's cabin, and see how matters are progressing there. Peggy has just brought over the tureen of soup so fervently longed for by the changed Squire; with a cry of joy, for he is very hard set, indeed, he seized the welcome gift, and placing it between his knees as he sat on the low workstall, prepared to dive into its savory contents, but a groan of horror and disappointment broke from his lips when, on taking off the cover, he found the tureen was empty.

"The pippin-squeezing ruffian," cried he, "he's sent it over without as much as a smell, and I so mortial hungry that I could bite a tenpenny nail in two; if he was here, bad 'cess to me if I wouldn't smash this upon his head."

"That's mighty strange, entirely," said Peggy, "for I'll be on me oath there was plenty in it when I took it off the Squire's sideboard."

"If there was, you must have gobbled it up yourself, or spilt it on the street, you unconsiderate faymale," said Bulworthy.

"Is it me, indeed, Dan, jewel? it's well you know that if it was goold, an' you could ate it, I wouldn't put a tooth into it, when I knew you wanted it so dhreadful," replied Peggy, reproachfully.

"Well, may-be you wouldn't," doggedly observed Bulworthy; "but do, for Heaven's sake, get me somethin' to put an end to the wobblin' that's goin' on in the inside of me; may I never leave this place alive if I think I've had a male's vitells for a month."

"How outrageous you are, Dan," sorrowfully replied the other. "Where am I to get it?"

"Go out an' buy it, ov coorse."

"Arrah what with? I'd like to know; sure, an' won't we have to wait until that purse-proud ould rap over the way pays us the shillin' that he owes us."

A reproachful pang shot through the heart of Bulworthy at that observation. "The ould skinflint," said he, "if I ever get near him again, may-be I won't touch him up for not doin' that same."

"Indeed, an' it would sarve him right," Peggy went on. "Swimmin' in plenty as he is, it's little that he thinks of the pinchin' hunger we feel."

"Don't don't," cried Bulworthy, pressing his hands against his gastronomic regions. "I feel it now, fairly sthranglin' me; it's just as if some wild savage beast was runnin' up and down here, sarchin' for somethin' to devour, and not bein' able to find it, is takin' mouthfuls out of my intayrior by the way of a relish; oh! murdher, I never knew what hunger was before."

"Didn't you, raylly?" Peggy replied, with a queer expression. "Faith, then, it wasn't for the want of chances enough."

"I mean – don't bother – it's famished I am, and crazy a'most; is there a dhrop of dhrink in the house?"

"Not as much as would make a tear for a fly's eye," said Peg.

"No! then what the Puck are we to do?"

"Bear it, I suppose, as well as we can; we've often done it afore, an' what's worse, will have to do it agin, unless the hearts of the rich changes towards us."

"Oh! if ever I get back to myself again," muttered the hungry Squire. "Peg, darlin', go over to the old schamer, an' tell him that av he doesn't send me the shillin' I'll expose him, I know more about him than he thinks for; if he's black conthrary, you might just whisper in his lug that I'm up to his thricks when he was in the grocery line; ax him for me, who shoved the pennies into the butther, wathered the whisky, and sanded the shugar, who" —

"Why, for gracious sake, Dan, where did you pick up all that knowledgeableness?" interrupted Peggy.

"Hem! no matther – never you mind – may-be I only dhreamt it," replied Bulworthy, with some hesitation. "I don't know exactly what I was talkin' about; it's the imptyness that's speakin', so I wouldn't mention it; only go and get somethin' somewhere, av it was only a brick."

"I'll be at him again, Dan, sence you wish it; but it's little blood I'm thinking, we'll be able to squeeze out of his turnip of a heart," said Peggy, putting on her shawl and bonnet, to make the thankless attempt. As she was going out of the door, however, she saw the Squire hobbling across the street.

"Talk of the – what's his name – May I never, but here the ould reprobate comes, hoppin' gingerly over the stones, like a hen walkin' on a hot griddle. May the saints soften him all over, an' make his heart as tendher as his toes this blessed day. I'll lave you wid him, Dan, darlin', for I'm not over partial to his company. So I'll take the babby out for a blast o' fresh air while yez are convarsin'."

Peggy's preparations for her promenade were quickly made, which resulted in her leaving the place before the gouty visitor had accomplished his short but painful transit from house to house.

"A pretty thing I've done for myself," groaned Bulworthy, suffering alike from thirst, hunger, and cold, as he vainly strove, by slapping his hands against his chest, to make the blood circulate warmly through his finger-ends. "Ov coorse that cobblin' scoundrel will never consent to come back to his starvation and poverty – he'd be a greater fool even than I was if he did. Ah! if I ever do get back to a good dinner again, there shan't be a poor devil within a mile of me that'll ever want one while I live. Here comes the cripple; the only chance I have is to pretend that I'm in a sort of second-hand paradise here." So saying, he commenced to sing, in a voice of exaggerated jollity, a verse of

 
"The jug o' punch,"
 

accompanying the tune by vigorous whacks of his hammer upon the piece of sole-leather he was beating into the requisite toughness.

The united sounds of merriment and industry smote upon Dan's heart like a knell.

"Listen at the happy ragamuffin, working away like a whole hive o' bees, and chirpin' like a pet canary-bird," said he to himself. "Oh, it's aisy seen he won't want to renew his acquaintance wid this murdherin' gout an' the useless money – but, hit or miss, it won't do to let him see me down in the mouth."

So, putting on a careless swagger, and forcing a tone of joyousness into his voice:

"Hallo, cobbler," he cried, "there you are, bellusin' away like a bagpiper. What an iligant thing it is to see such poor wretches whistlin' themselves into an imitation of comfort."

"How do you know but I'm crammed full of real comfort, bad luck to yer mockin' tongue?" said Bulworthy, disgusted at the other's satisfied demeanor.

"It's pleased I am to see your foggy moon of a face, anyway," he went on. "Where's me shillin'?"

"Why, you poor, miserable attenuation of humanity, how dare you address yourself to me in that orthodox manner?" observed Dan, with an ambitious attempt at Bulworthy's magniloquence.

"Miserable, eh?" replied the other, with a chirp. "Is it me miserable, wid such a home as this?"

"It's all over," thought Dan, "the ould brute's as happy as a bird. Bad luck to the minute that my own pelt made a cage for him."

"Go home," Bulworthy continued, with a grin. "Home to yer wretched hospital of a gazebo."

"Wretched!" retorted Dan, "you wouldn't call it wretched if you saw the dinner I had to-day; enough, yer sowl to glory, to satisfy half a dozen families."

"That were starvin' around you," cried Bulworthy, with a severe internal spasm, induced by the mention of the dinner.

"Aha! you're beginnin' to think of that now, are you?" said Dan, tauntingly. "How do you like dinin' on spoonfuls of air, and rich men's promises to pay? Bedad, I'm thinkin I have the best of you there."

"Hould yer prate, you ould Turk, an' give me me shillin'," roared Bulworthy, getting impatient.

"The divil a shillin' you get out o' me, that I can tell you. I've got the upper hand of ye this time, an' I'll keep it. It's hungry enough that you've seen me before now, an' tit for tat's fair play all the world over."

"He's content and comfortable, there's no mistake about that," thought Bulworthy, "and I'm booked for starvation all the rest of my miserable days."

"Gout's my lot; I can see that with half an eye," said Dan to himself. "The ould blaggard will never consent to get into these legs again."

"Squire!" cried the cobbler, suddenly, "do you know that the hunger sometimes puts desperate thoughts into a man's head? You owe me a shillin'. I want something to ate. Are you goin' to give it to me?"

"Supposin' I didn't?" said Dan, coolly.

"Bad luck attind me if I don't shake it out o' you, you iron-hearted ould Craysus," replied the other, doggedly.

"I'd like to see you thryin' that," said Dan, flourishing a huge blackthorn stick dangerously. "You're wake wid the want, an' I'm sthrong wid vittles an' wine. It's aisy to foretell whose head would be cracked first."

"Oh, murdher, Squire, jewel, it's right that you are, for I am just as wake as wather itself, an' the jaws of me is fairly rustin' in their sockets for the want of dacent exercise," cried the now subdued Bulworthy. "For the tindher mercy of goodness, then, av you've got the laste taste ov compassion in yer throat, give us a thrifle, av it was only the price ov a salt herrin' or a rasher o' bakin'."

"Oh, ho! it's there you are," thought Dan, as, rendered more hopeful by this injudicious outburst, he assumed a still more severe aspect.

"It's good for you to feel that way," said he, "an' it's mighty little else you can ever expect while you're throublin' the earth, you impidint cobbler. Look at me, you ungrateful thief o' the world – what's all your hungry nibblin's compared wid the sharp tooth that's perpetually gnawin' at my exthremities? To be sure, the jingle of the goold here in my pockets, keeps the pain undher considherably."

"I know it, I know it," groaned Bulworthy. "Oh, av there was only a market for fools, wouldn't I fetch a high price?"

"Purvided that it wasn't overstocked," said Dan, with a mental addition, which he wisely kept to himself, as, suppressing the violent pain he was suffering, he burst into a merry laugh at the doleful appearance of his companion in distress. "Cheer up, man alive," cried he, through his enforced joyousness; "take example by your neighbors, and content yourself wid your condition. I'm sure it's a mighty agreeable one. See how comfortable I am, an' there's no knowin' what a numberless conglomeration of annoyances men in my responsible station have to put up wid."

"Why, then it's aisy for you to chat," replied Bulworthy, bitterly, "wid your belly full of prog, rattlin' yer money in yer pockets, and greggin' a poor empty Christian wid the chink; but av you had only dined wid me to-day, you wouldn't be so bumptious, I'll be bound."

"Me dine wid you, is it? bedad, an' that's a good joke," said Dan, with another explosion of laughter. "Ho, ho! my fine fella, av jokes was only nourishin', what a fine feed of fun you might have, to be sure."

"Oh, then, by the king of Agypt's baker, that was hanged for makin' his majesty's loaf short weight – the divil's cure to him – it's starved I'd be that way too, for the fun's pinched right out o' me," replied the Squire, in a melancholy tone.

"Why, you don't mane to be tellin' me that you're unhappy in yer present lot?" Dan asked, in the hope of coming to the point at once.

"Where would be the use in sayin' I'm not?" replied the other, cautiously.

"Only just for the pleasure of gettin' at the thruth."

"Bedad, he'd be a wise man that could crack that egg. If it comes to that, how do you like them legs o' yours? It isn't much dancin' you do now, I'm thinkin'."

"Well, not a great dale, seein' that it's a foolish sort of exercise for a man of my consequence," said Dan, shaking the guineas about in his pockets with increased vigor.

"An' how do you find the Misthress's timper now, might I ax?" inquired Bulworthy, with a meaning look.

"Aisy as an ould glove, I'm obliged to you," Dan replied, with wondrous placidity of countenance.

"Peg, my Peg's a real blessin' in a house; an' as for that jewel of a babby" —

"Howld yer decateful tongue, you circumventin' ould tory," cried Dan, shaking his fist in the other's face, rendered almost beside himself by the allusion to his lost treasures; "do you mind this, you chatin' disciple, av you dare to brag ov havin' any property in them two people I'll give your dirty sowl notice to quit the tinimint that it's insultin' every second o' time you dhraw a breath."

"How can you help yerself, I'd like to know?" demanded Bulworthy, in an insolent tone. "Doesn't Peg belong to me now, an' the child?"

"Be the mortial o' war, av ye don't stop your tongue from waggin' in that way, bad luck to me av I don't take ye be the scruff o' the neck, an shake ye out o' me skin, you robber," shouted Dan, still more furiously – unfortunately losing sight of his discretion in the blindness of his rage, for Bulworthy, thinking he saw a gleaming of hope, determined to pursue his advantage; so he continued:

"The devil a toe will you ever come near them again, my fine fella. Possession's nine points of the law; an' as it's your own countenance that I'm carryin', you can't swear me out o' my position. More betoken, there's no use in yer gettin' obsthropulous, for I've only to dhrop the lapstone gingerly upon yer toes, to make you yell out like a stuck pig."

At hearing these conclusive words, Dan's policy and his philosophy fled together, and he poured forth the feelings of his heart without concealment or restraint.