“Well, an’ do then—­an’ whistle that idle cur off wid you,” pointing to a nondescript puppy, which had lain happily coiled up at his master’s feet until Mrs. Mulcahy’s appearance, but that now watched her closely, his ears half cocked and his eyes wide open, though his position remained unaltered.  “Go along to the divil, you lazy whelp you!”—­she took up a pint in which a few drops of beer remained since the previous night, and drained it on the puppy’s head, who instantly ran off, jumping sideways, and yelping as loud as if some bodily injury had really visited him—­“Yes, an’ now you begin to yowl, like your masther, for nothing at all, only because a body axes you to stir your idle legs—­hould your tongue, you foolish baste!” she stooped for a stone—­“one would think I scalded you.”

“You know you did, once, Cauth, to the backbone; an’ small blame for Shuffle to be afeard o’ you ever since,” said Jer.

This vindication of his own occasional remonstrances, as well as of Shuffle’s, was founded in truth.  When very young, just to keep him from running against her legs while she was busy over the fire, Mrs. Mulcahy certainly had emptied a ladleful of boiling potato-water upon the poor puppy’s back; and from that moment it was only necessary to spill a drop of the coldest possible water, or of any cold liquid, on any part of his body, and he believed he was again dreadfully scalded, and ran out of the house screaming in all the fancied theories of torture.

“Will you ate your good dinner, now, Jer Mulcahy, an’ promise to do something to help me, afther it?—­Mother o’ Saints!”—­thus she interrupted herself, turning towards the place where she had deposited the eulogized food—­“see that yon unlucky bird!  May I never do an ill turn but there’s the pig afther spilling the sweet milk, an’ now shoveling the beautiful white-eyes down her throat at a mouthful!”

Jer, really afflicted at this scene, promised to work hard the moment he got his dinner; and his spouse, first procuring a pitchfork to beat the pig into her sty, prepared a fresh meal for him, and retired to eat her own in the house, and then to continue her labor.

In about an hour she thought of paying him another visit of inspection, when Jeremiah’s voice reached her ear, calling out in disturbed accents, “Cauth!  Cauth! a-vourneen! For the love o’ heaven, Cauth! where are you?”

Running to him, she found her husband sitting upright, though not upon his round stone, amongst the still untouched heap of pots and pints, his pock-marked face very pale, his single eye staring, his hands clasped and shaking, and moisture on his forehead.

“What!” she cried, “the pewther just as I left it, over again!”

“O Cauth!  Cauth! don’t mind that now—­but spake to me kind, Cauth, an’ comfort me.”

“Why, what ails you, Jer a-vous neen?” affectionately taking his hand, when she saw how really agitated he was.