We have said that there were several persons singing and dancing, and some asleep, in the remoter part of the cave; and this was true, although we refrained from mingling up either their mirth or melody with the conversation of the principal personages.  All at once, however, a series of noises, equally loud and unexpected, startled melodists, conversationalists, and sleepers all to their legs.  These were no other than the piercing cackles of two alarmed geese which Hogan’s wife had secured from some neighboring farmer, in order to provide a supper for our friend Hycy.

“Ted,” said the female, “I lost my knife since I came out, or they’d be quiet enough before this; lend me one a minute, you blissed babe.”

“Shiss, to be sure, Kate,” he replied, handing her a large clasp knife with a frightful blade; “an’, Kate, whisper, woman alive—­you’re bought up, I see.”

“How is that, you red rascal?”

“Bekaise, don’t I see dat de purchaser has set his mark upon ye?—­hee! hee! hee!” and he pointed to her eye* as he spoke.

     * A black eye is said to be the devil’s mark.

“No,” she replied, nodding towards her husband, “that’s his handy work; an’ ye divil’s clip!” she added, turning to Teddy, “who has a betther right?”

She then bled the geese, and, looking about her, asked—­

“Have you any wet hay or straw in the place?”

“Ay, plenty of bote,” replied Teddy; “an’ here’s de greeshavigh ready.”

She then wrapped the geese, feathers and all, separately in a covering of wet hay, which she bound round them with thumb-ropes of the same material, and clearing away a space among the burning ashes, placed each of them in it, and covered them up closely.

“Now,” said she, “put down a pot o’ praities, and we won’t go to bed fastin’.”

The different groups had now melted into one party, much upon the same principle that the various little streamlets on the mountains around them all run, when swollen by a sudden storm, into some larger torrent equally precipitous and turbulent.  Keenan, who was one of those pertinacious fellows that are equally quarrelsome and hospitable when in liquor, now resumed the debate with a characteristic impression of the pugilistic superiority of his family:—­

“I am right, I say:  I remember it well, for although I wasn’t there myself, my father was, an’ I often h’ard him say—­God rest his sowl!”—­here he reverently took off his hat and looked upwards—­“I often h’ard him say that Paddy Keenan gave Mullin the first knock-down blow, an’ Pether—­I mane no disrespect, but far from it—­give us your hand, man alive—­you’re going to be married upon my shisther to-morrow, plaise God!—­masther, you’ll come, remimber? you’ll be as welcome as the flowers o’ May, masther—­so, Pether, as I was sayin’—­I mane no offince nor disrespect to you or yours, for you are, an’ ever was, a daisent family, an’ well able to fight your corner when it came upon you—­but still, Pether—­an’ for all that—­I say it—­an’ I’ll stand to it—­I’ll stand it—­that’s the chat!—­that, man for man, there never was one o’ your seed, breed, or generation able to fight a Keenan—­that’s the chat!—­here’s luck!