“I’ll tell you, Tim, where I got them—­’twas out of Lord Shannon’s great cow at Cork, the great fat cow that the Lord Mayor bought for the Lord Lieutenant—­Asda churp naur hagushch."[14]

    [14] May it never come out of his body!

“Amen, I pray God!  Paddy.  Out of Lord Shandon’s cow? near the steeple, I suppose; the great cow that couldn’t walk with tallow.  By ——­, these are fine tripes.  They’ll make a man very strong.  Andy, give me two or three libbhers more of ’em.”

“Well, see that! out of Lord Shandon’s cow:  I wonder what they gave her, Paddy.  That I mightn’t!—­but these would eat a pit of potatoes.  Any how, they’re good for the teeth.  Paddy, what’s the reason they send all the good mate from Cork to the Blacks?”

But before Paddy could answer this question, Andy, who had been endeavouring to help Tim, uttered a loud “Thonom an dhiaoul! what’s this?  Isn’t this flannel?” The fact was, he had found a piece of the lining, which Paddy, in his hurry, had not removed; and all was confusion.  Every eye was turned to Paddy; but with wonderful quickness he said “’Tis the book tripe, agragal, don’t you see?”—­and actually persuaded them to it.

“Well, any how,” says Tim, “it had the taste of wool.”

“May this choke me,” says Jack Shea, “if I didn’t think that ’twas a piece of a leather breeches when I saw Andy chawing it.”

This was a shot between wind and water to Paddy.  His self-possession was nearly altogether lost, and he could do no more than turn it off by a faint laugh.  But it jarred most unpleasantly on Andy’s nerves.  After looking at Paddy for some time with a very ominous look, he said, “Yirroo Pandhrig of the tricks, if I thought you were going on with any work here, my soul and my guts to the devil if I would not cut you into garters.  By the vestment I’d make a furhurmeen of you.”

“Is it I, Andy?  That the hands may fall off me!”

But Tim Cohill made a most seasonable diversion.  “Andy, when you die, you’ll be the death of one fool, any how.  What do you know that wasn’t ever in Cork itself about tripes.  I never ate such mate in my life; and ’twould be good for every poor man in the County of Kerry if he had a tub of it.”

Tim’s tone of authority, and the character he had got for learning, silenced every doubt, and all laid siege to the tripes again.  But after some time, Andy was observed gazing with the most astonished curiosity into the plate before him.  His eyes were rivetted on something; at last he touched it with his knife, arid exclaimed, “Kirhappa, dar dhia!”—­[A button by G—.]

“What’s that you say?” burst from all! and every one rose in the best manner he could, to learn the meaning of the button.

“Oh, the villain of the world!” roared Andy, “I’m pisoned!  Where’s the pike?  For God’s sake Jack, run for the priest, or I’m a dead man with the breeches.  Where is he?—­yeer bloods won’t ye catch him, and I pisoned?”