Having got about a mile from the house, his unknown friend began to become loquacious, and related several anecdotes of successful escape from the meshes and minions of the law, a theme in which his two companions seemed to take singular delight; for they laughed immoderately at every recorded victory in outwitting the legal functionaries aforesaid.

“I was wanst upon a time,” he proceeded, “taken up for a resky; (* a rescue) the case bein’ you see, that we wanted the rent and the landlord wanted patience; so begad, at any rate, we gev the bloody bailiffs a thrifle for themselves, and the consequence was that we brought the cows back to a neighbor’s place that belonged to another property, and the four bailiffs, poor creatures, lay upon the ground lookin’ at us, an’ never said ill we did it, for a raison they had; do you undherstand, boys?”

“Ay, we do undherstand; the bloddy thieves; divil break his neck that invinted rint, anyhow; sure there’s no harm in wishin’ that, the villain.”

“Ay, an’ tides,” (* Tithes) replied the other; “however, we’ll settle that first, and then the rents will soon follow them; an’ sure there’s no harm in that aither.”

“Well an’ good:—­no, divil a harm’s in it;—­well an’ good:  to make a long story short, they grabbed me in a house up in the mountains—­not unlike Finnerty’s, I think that’s his name—­where I was on my keepin’; so what ‘ud you have of it, but we were comin’ acrass the hills, jist as it might be said we are now—­only there’s none of us a prisoner, thank goodness—­hem!  Well, I said to myself, hit or miss, I’ll thry it; I have a pair o’ legs, an’ it won’t be my fault or I’ll put them to the best use:  an’ for that raison it’ll be divil take the hindmost wid us.  Now listen, boys; I started off, an’ one fellow that had a pistol let bang at me, but long life to the pistol, divil a one of it would go off; bang again came the other chap’s, but ’twas ditto repaited, and no go any more than the other.  Well, do you know now, that the third fellow—­for there was only three af them, I must tell you—­the third fellow, I’m inclined to think, was a friend at bottom; for the devil a one of him struv to break his heart in overtakin’ me.  Well, by that manes, I say, I got off from two of as double-distilled villains as ever wor born to die by suspin-sion.”

This narrative, the spirit of which was so acceptable to his two companions, and, if truth must be told, equally so to the third, was treasured up by M’Carthy, who felt that it ingeniously but cautiously pointed out to him the course he should adopt under his own peculiar circumstances.  The consequence was, that on coming within about a couple of furlongs of a dark, narrow, thickly-wooded glen, through which he knew they must pass, he bolted off at the top of his speed, which, although very considerable for a man whose strength had been so completely exhausted by fatigue and the unusual slavery of that day’s wandering through the mountains, was, notwithstanding, such as would never have enabled him to escape from his companions.