“Ted, how goes it, my man?”

“Ghe dhe shin dirthu, a dinaousal?” replied Ted, surveying him with a stare.

“D—­n you!” was about to proceed from Hycy’s lips when he perceived that a very active magistrate, named Jennings, stood within hearing.  The latter passed on, however, and Hycy proceeded:—­“I was about to abuse you, Ted, for coming out with your Irish to me,” he said, “until I saw Jennings, and then I had you.”

“Throgs, din, Meeisther Hycy, I don’t like the Bairlha (* English tongue)—­’caise I can’t sphake her properly, at all, at all.  Come you ‘out wid the Gailick fwhor me, i’ you plaise, Meeisther Hycy.”

“D—­n your Gaelic!” replied Hycy—­“no, I won’t—­I don’t speak it.”

“The Laud forget you for that!” replied Ted, with a grin; “my ould grandmudher might larn it from you—­hach, ach, ha!”

“None of your d—­d impertinence, Ted.  I want to speak to you.”

“Fwhat would her be?” asked Ted, with a face in which there might be read such a compound of cunning, vacuity, and ferocity as could rarely be witnessed in the same countenance.

“Can you come down to me to-night?”

“No; I’ll be busy.”

“Where are you at work now?”

“In Glendearg, above.”

“Well, then, if you can’t come to me, I must only go to you.  Will you be there tonight?  I wish to speak to you on very particular business.”

“Shiss; you will, dhin, wanst more?” asked the other, significantly.

“I think so.”

“Shiss—­ay—­vary good.  Fwen will she come?”

“About eleven or twelve; so don’t be from about the place anywhere.”

“Shiss—–­dhin—­vary good.  Is dhat all?”

“That’s all now.  Are your turf dry or wet* to-day?”

* One method of selling Poteen is by bringing in kishes of turf to the neighboring markets, when those who are up to the secret purchase the turf, or pretend to do so; and while in the act of discharging the load, the Keg of Poteen is quickly passed into the house of him who purchases the turf.—­Are your turf wet or dry? was, consequently, a pass- word.

“Not vary dhry,” replied Ted, with a grin so wide that, as was humorously said by a neighbor of his, “it would take a telescope to enable a man to see from the one end of it to the other.”

Hycy nodded and laughed, and Ted, cracking his whip, proceeded up the town to sell his turf.

Hycy now sauntered about through the market, chatting here and there among acquaintances, with the air of a man to whom neither life nor anything connected with it could occasion any earthly trouble.  Indeed, it mattered little what he felt, his easiness of manner was such that not one of his acquaintances could for a moment impute to him the possibility of ever being weighed down by trouble or care of any kind; and lest his natural elasticity of spirits might fail to sustain this perpetual buoyancy, he by no means neglected to fortify himself with artificial support.  Meet him when or where you might, be it at six in the morning or twelve at night, you were certain to catch from his breath the smell of liquor, either in its naked simplicity or disguised and modified in some shape.