“‘Well,’ says the Gout, ’I went off down the boreen the same as ye told me, an’ I come to the little cabin beyant; the door was open an’ in I walked, but o—­o—­oh!  Wh—­o—­o—­oh!’ (Pat indulged in a prolonged shiver, while Roseen chuckled and clapped her hands.) ’The cowld of that place was near bein’ the death o’ me!  Sure the wind blew into it,’ says he, ‘an’ the rain was comin’ through the roof, an’ there wasn’t as much fire on the hearth as ’ud warm a fly itself.  Well, the poor man come in afther a bit,’ says the Gout, ‘an’ I slipped in through a crack in his owld wore-out brogue, an’ into his toe.  “Och, Mary,” says the poor man to his wife, “I have a terrible bad pain in me toe!  What’ll I do in the world?” says he; “I’ll never be able to stir a fut to-morrow.”  “Whisht, sure it’s maybe a bit of a cramp ye’ve got.  Wait a bit,” she says, “an’ I’ll fetch ye a sup o’ the wather I’m afther bilin’ the pitaties in, maybe that’ll do ye good,” she says.  ‘Well,’ says the Gout, ‘if the fellow didn’t go an’ put his fut, an’ me in it, into an owld rusty bucket full of pitaty-wather!  I thought he’d have destroyed me altogether.  An’ such a night as I passed, wid scarcely a blanket at all on the bed!  An’ nothin’ ’ud sarve the man but to get up before light, an’ go thrampin’ off through the mud an’ rain till I was nearly perished.  There he was draggin’ me up an’ down at the tail of a plough, wid the wet soakin’ in through the holes in his brogues, till I couldn’t stand it any more, an’ I come away wid meself, an’ I’ve been waitin’ for ye this two hours.’  ’Ho then, indeed,’ says the Spider, ’I’d have been glad enough to be out of it before this; I never was so put about in me life as I was up there,’ says he.  ‘Sure they had all their windies shut up,’ says he, ’and the doors too, an’ ne’er a sign of a fly at all in it when I did get in,’ he says; ‘an’ the whole place that clane, an’ sarvants running about, till I couldn’t so much as find a corner to spin my web,’ says he.  ‘Och, dear,’ says the Gout, ’that’s a poor case entirely; what sort of a place was it at all, an’ what were they doin’ in it?’

“’Ah, ‘twas a great big place—­altogether too big for my taste; an’ they had roarin’ fires in the grates.  I was near killed wid the hate.’

“‘That indeed!’ says the Gout, pricking up his ears.”  Roseen listened solemnly, not in the least astonished to be told that the personage in question was possessed of ears; she supposed “a Gout” to be a living thing, an insect probably, of a more noxious kind than a spider.

“‘Fires!’ says the Gout; ‘an’ was they atin’ an’ drinkin’ at all?’ says he.

“‘Atin’ an’ drinkin’!’ says the Spider.  ’Bedad, they’re afther spendin’ hours at it, an’ were in the thick of it when I come away.  If ye were to see the j’ints that was in it, ye wouldn’t believe your own eyes; an’ chickens an’ turkeys,’ he says, ‘was nothin’ at all to them, and they was swalleyin’ down pigeons an’ partridges an’ them sorts o’ little birds, the same as if they wasn’t worth counting.’