“Not a doubt of it,” added Father Tom; “you’ll polish the same youth until he shines like yourself or his worthy father here.  He’ll give you a complexion, my boy—­a commodity that you sadly want at present.”

The evening was now too far advanced to think of having coffee—­a beverage, by the way, to which scarcely a single soul of them was addicted.  They accordingly got to their legs, and as darkness was setting in they set out for the village to witness the rejoicings.  Young Woodward, however, followed his brother to the drawing-room, whither he had betaken himself at an early hour after dinner.  Under their escort, their mother and sister accompanied them to the bonfire.  The whole town was literally alive with animation and delight.  The news of the intended bonfire had gone rapidly abroad, and the country people crowded into the town in hundreds.  Nothing can at any time exceed the enthusiasm with which the Irish enter into and enjoy scenes like that to which they now flocked with such exuberant spirits.  Bells were ringing, drums were beating, fifes were playing in the town, and horns sounding in every direction, both in town and country.  The people were apparelled in their best costume, and many of them in that equivocal description of it which could scarcely be termed costume at all.  Bareheaded and barefooted multitudes of both sexes were present, regardless of appearances, half mad with delight, and exhibiting many a frolic and gambol considerably at variance with the etiquette of fashionable life, although we question whether the most fashionable fete, of them all ever produced half so much happiness.  Farmers had come from a distance in the country, mounted upon lank horses ornamented with incrusted hips, and caparisoned with long-straw back-suggauns that reached from the shoulders to the tail, under which ran a crupper of the same material, designed, in addition to a hay girth, to keep this primitive riding gear firm upon the animal’s back.  Behind the farmer, generally sat either a wife or a daughter, remarkable for their scarlet cloaks and blue petticoats; sometimes with shoes and stockings, and very often without them.  Among those assembled, we cannot omit to mention a pretty numerous sprinkling of that class of strollers, vagabonds, and impostors with which the country, at the period of our tale, was overrun.  Fortune-tellers, of both sexes, quacks, cardcutters, herbalists, cow-doctors, whisperers, with a long list of such cheats, were at the time a prevailing nuisance throughout the kingdom; nor was there a fair proportion of them wanting here.  That, however, which filled the people with the most especial curiosity, awe, and interest, was the general report that nothing less than a live conjurer, who had come to town on that very evening, was then among them.  The town, in fact, was crowded as if it had been for an illumination; but as illuminations, unless they could be conducted with rushlights, were pageants altogether unknown in such small remote towns