“A-hem!  Why, Cannie,” asked O’Driscol, with an expression of strong alarm in his face—­“why do you ask so—­so—­singular a question as that?”

“Bekaise, sir, sooner than you should breathe—­mind, breathe’s the word—­one syllable against Buck English, I’d recommend you to go into the mouse-hole I spoke of, and never show your face out of it agin.  I—­an’ everybody knows me, an’ likes me, too, I hope—­I meek—­hem! throth I do make it a point never to name him at all, barrin’ when I can’t help it.  Nobody knows anything about him, they say.  By all accounts, he never sleeps a week, or at any rate more than a week, in the same place; an’ whatever dress he has on comin’ to any particular part of the counthry, he never changes; but they say that if you find him in any other part of the counthry, he has a different dress on him:  he has a dress, they say, for every part.”

“He has honored my father,” said Alick, “by sending him a written proposal for my sister Julia—­ha! ha! ha!”

“Well, now, did he, Mr. Alick?”

“Yes; and he says that he may be refused now, but won’t the next time he asks her.”

“Well, then, Mr. Alick, I’ll tell you what I’d advise you to do:  go home, and tell your father to send for him, if he knows where to find him, and let him not lose a day in marryin’ her to him; for if everything is thrue that’s said of him, he was never known to break a promise, whether it was for good or ill.”

“Ha! ha! ha! thank you, Cannie,—­excellent!” replied Alick.

“Who can he be, Cannie?” asked Miss O’Driscol, “this person of such wonderful mystery?  I have never seen him, but I wish I could.”

“Ay, have you, often—­I’ll engage, Miss.”

“And so do I,” added her father; “I wish to see him also, and to have everything mysterious cleared up.”

“Well,” continued the pedlar, “I know nothing myself about him, only as I hear; but if all’s thrue that’s said, he could give your father, and you, Mr. Alick, lave to walk through the whole counthry in the hour of noonday or midnight, widout a finger ever bein’ raised against one o’ you; and as for you, Mr. O’Driscol, he could have the house pulled about your ears in an hour’s time, if he wished—­ay, and he would, too, if he heard that you spoke a harsh word of him.”

“As for me, Cannie,” replied the magistrate, “I trust I’m a Christian man, and not in the habit of abusing the absent.  Indeed, I don’t see what right any one has to make impertinent inquiries into the life or way of living of any respectable person—­I do not see it, Cannie; and, I assure you, I always set my face against such prying inquiries.”

“I know, myself,” continued the pedlar, “that there’s a great many things said about him, an’ people wishes to know who he is.  Now I was tould a thing wanst by a sartain parson—­I won’t say who, but I believe it’s not a thousand miles from the truth I’m spakin’ about who he is.”