“O, you mean herbs.”

“I do, sir, and I gather them too for the potecars.”

“O, then you are what they call a herbalist.”

“I believe I am, sir, if you put that word against (to) a man that gethers yarribs.”

“Yes, that’s what I mean.  You sell them to the apothecaries, I suppose?”

“I do a little, sir, but I use the most of them myself.  Sorra much the potecars knows about the use o’ them; they kill more than they cure wid ’em, and calls them that understands what they’re good for rogues and quacks.  May the Lord forgive them this day! Amin, acheernah! (Amen, O Lord!)”

“And do you administer these herbs to the sick?”

“I do, sir, to the sick of all kinds—­man and baste.  There’s nothing like them, sir, bekaise it was to cure diseases of all kinds that the Lord, blessed be His name! amin, acheernah! planted them in the earth for the use of his cratures.  Why, sir, will you listen to me now, and mark my words?  There never was a complaint that follied either man or baste, brute or bird, but a yarrib grows that ’ud cure it if it was known.  When the head’s hot wid faver, and the heart low wid care, the yarrib is to be found that will cool the head and rise the heart.”

“Don’t you think, now,” said Woodward, imagining that he would catch him, “that a glass of wine, or, what is better still, a good glass of punch, would raise the heart better than all the herbs in the universe?”

“Lord bless me!” he exclaimed, as if in soliloquy; “the ignorance of the rich and wealthy, and of great people altogether, is unknown!  Wine and punch!  And what, will you tell me, does wine and punch come from?  Doesn’t the wine come from the grapes that grow in forrin parts—­sich as we have in our hot-houses—­and doesn’t the whiskey that you make your punch of grow from the honest barley in our own fields?  So much for your knowledge of yarribs.”

“Why, there you are right, my old friend.  I forgot that.”

“You forgot it?  Tell the truth at once, and say you didn’t know it.  But may be you did forget it, for troth he’d be a poor crature that didn’t know whiskey was made from barley.”

He here turned his red satirical eye upon Woodward, with a glance that was strongly indicative of contempt for his general information.

“Well,” he proceeded, “the power of yarribs is wondherful,—­if it was known to many as it is to me.”

“Why, from long practice, I suppose, you must be skilful in the properties ol herbs?”

“Well, indeed, you needn’t only suppose it, but you may be sartin of it.  Have you a good appetite?”

“A particularly good one, I assure you.”

“Now, wouldn’t you think it strange that I could give you a dose that ’ud keep you on half a male a day for the next three months.”

“God forbid,” replied Woodward, who, among his other good qualities, was an enormous trencherman,—­“God forbid that ever such a dose should go down my throat.”