and for your dacent mother’s sake (sobies-coat inpassy, amin), (* Requiescat in pace.) I’ll jist here offer up the gray profungus (* De profundis) for the release of her sowl out o’ the burning flames of pur-gathur.”  I really could not help shuddering at this.  He then repeated a psalm for that purpose, the 130th in our Bible, but the 129th in theirs.  When it was finished, with all due gesticulation, that is to say, having thumped his breast with great violence, kissed the ground, and crossed himself repeatedly, he says to me, like a man confident that he had paved his way to my good graces, “Now, avick, as we did do so much, you’re the very darlin’ young man that I won’t lave, widout the best, maybe, that’s to come yet, ye see; bekase I’ll swap a prayer wid you, this blessed minute.”  “I’m very glad you mentioned it,” said I.  “But you don’t know, maybe, darlin’, that I’m undher five ordhers.”  “Dear me! is it possible you’re under so many?” “Undher five ordhers, acushla!”—­“Well,” I replied, “I am ready.”—­“Undher five ordhers—­but I’ll lave it to yourself; only when it’s over, maybe, ye’ll hear somethin’ from me that’ll make you thankful you ever gave me silver any way.”

By this time I saw his drift:  but he really had managed his point so dexterously—­not forgetting the De profundis—­that I gave him tenpence in silver:  he pocketed it with great alacrity, and was at the prayer in a twinkling, which he did offer up in prime,style—­five paters, five aves, and a creed, whilst I set the same number to his credit.  When we had finished, he made me kneel down to receive his blessing, which he gave in great form:—­“Now,” said he, in a low, important tone, “I’m goin’ to show you a thing that’ll make you bless the born day you ever seen my face; and it’s this—­did ye ever hear of the blessed Thirty Days’ Prayer?"* “I can’t say I did.”  “Well, avick, in good time still; but there’s a blessed book, if you can get it, that has a prayer in it, named the Thirty Bays’ Prayer, an’ if ye jist repate that same, every day for thirty days fastin’, there’s no request ye’ll ax from heaven, good, bad, or indifferent, but ye’ll get.  And now do you begrudge givin’me what I got?” “Not a bit,” said I, “and I’ll certainly look for the book.”  “No, no, the darlin’ fine young man,” soliloquizing aloud—­“Well and well did I know you wouldn’t, nor another along wid it—­sensible and learned as ye are, to know the blessed worth of what ye got for it; not makin’, at the same time, any comparishment at all at all atween it and the dirty thrash of riches of this earth, that every wan has their heart fixed upon—­exceptin’ them that the Lord gives the larnin’ an’ the edication to, to know betther.”

     * There is such a prayer, and I have often seen it in
     Catholic Prayer-books.