but an agreeable mood.  He thought to have met Alice an ignorant country girl, whom he might play upon; but he found himself completely mistaken, because, fortunately for herself, he had taken her upon one of her strong points.  As it was, however, whilst he could not help admiring the pertinence of her replies, neither could he help experiencing something of a bitter feeling against her, because she indulged in them at his own expense; whilst against O’Connor, who bantered him with such spirit and success, and absolutely turned him into ridicule in her presence, he almost entertained a personal resentment.  His only hope now was in her parents, who seemed as anxious to entertain his proposals with favor as Alice was to reject them with disdain.  As for Alice herself, her opinion of him is a matter with which the reader is already acquainted.

Our hero was about half way home when he overtook a thin, lank old man, who was a rather important character in the eyes of the ignorant people at the period of which we write.  He was tall, and so bare of flesh, that when asleep he might pass for the skeleton of a corpse.  His eyes were red, cunning, and sinister-looking; his lips thin, and from under the upper one projected a single tooth, long and yellow as saffron.  His face was of unusual length, and his parchment cheeks formed two inward curves, occasioned by the want of his back teeth.  His breeches were open at the knees; his polar legs were without stockings; but his old brogues were foddered, as it is called, with a wisp of straw, to keep his feet warm.  His arms were long, even in proportion to his body, and his bony fingers resembled claws rather than anything! else we can now remember.  They (the claws):  were black as ebony, and resembled in length and sharpness those of a cat when she is stretching herself after rising from the! hearth.  He wore an old barrad of the day, the greasy top of which fell down upon the collar of his old cloak, and over his shoulder was a bag which, from its appearance, must have contained something not very weighty, as he walked on without seeming to travel as a man who carried a burden.  He had a huge staff in his right hand, the left having a hold of his bag.  Woodward at first mistook him for a mendicant, but upon looking at him more closely, he perceived nothing of that watchful and whining cant for alms which marks the character of the professional beggar.  The old skeleton walked on, apparently indifferent and independent, and never once put himself into the usual posture of entreaty.  This, and the originality of his appearance, excited Woodward’s curiosity, and he resolved to speak to him.

“Well, my good old man, what may you be carrying in the bag?”

The man looked at him respectfully, and raising his hand and staff, touched his barrad, and replied: 

“A few yarribs, your honor.”

“Yarribs?  What the deuce is that?”

“Why, the yarribs that grow, sir—­to cure the people when they are sick.”