‘What are those people?’ pointing to a man and woman, curious figures, who had come out of a cabin, the door of which the woman, who came out last, locked, and carefully hiding the key in the thatch, turned her back upon the man, and they walked away in different directions:  the woman bending under a huge bundle on her back, covered by a yellow petticoat turned over her shoulders; from the top of this bundle the head of an infant appeared; a little boy, almost naked, followed her with a kettle, and two girls, one of whom could but just walk, held her hand and clung to her ragged petticoat; forming, altogether, a complete group of beggars.  The woman stopped, and looked back after the man.

The man was a Spanish-looking figure, with gray hair; a wallet hung at the end of a stick over one shoulder, a reaping-hook in the other hand; he walked off stoutly, without ever casting a look behind him.

‘A kind harvest to you, John Dolan,’ cried the postillion, ’and success to ye, Winny, with the quality.  There’s a luck-penny for the child to begin with,’ added he, throwing the child a penny.  ’Your honour, they’re only poor cratures going up the country to beg, while the man goes over to reap the harvest in England.  Nor this would not be, neither, if the lord was in it to give ’em employ.  That man, now, was a good and a willing slave in his day:  I mind him working with myself in the shrubberies at Clonbrony Castle, when I was a boy—­but I’ll not be detaining your honour, now the road’s better.’

The postillion drove on at a good rate for some time, till he came to a piece of the road freshly covered with broken stones, where he was obliged again to go slowly.

They overtook a string of cars, on which were piled up high, beds, tables, chairs, trunks, boxes, bandboxes.

’How are you, Finnucan? you’ve fine loading there—­from Dublin, are you?’

‘From Bray.’

‘And what news?’

’Great news and bad, for old Nick, or some belonging to him, thanks be to Heaven! for myself hates him.’

‘What’s happened him?’

’His sister’s husband that’s failed, the great grocer that was, the man that had the wife that OW’D [Owned] the fine house near Bray, that they got that time the Parliament flitted, and that I seen in her carriage flaming—­well, it’s all out; they’re all done up.

’Tut! is that all? then they’ll thrive, and set up again grander than ever, I’ll engage; have not they old Nick for an attorney at their back? a good warrant!’

’Oh, trust him for that! he won’t go security nor pay a farthing for his SHISTER, nor wouldn’t was she his father; I heard him telling her so, which I could not have done in his place at that time, and she crying as if her heart would break, and I standing by in the parlour.’

’The NEGER! [NEGER, quasi negro; meo periculo, niggard] And did he speak that way, and you by?’