in fact, was the case; but she told me that the old one brushed them before she went away, saying that they were ready for me to put on whenever I wanted them.  “Well,” said I, “she has made another man of me.”  The landlady desired me to try if I had my purse; and I found that the kind creature had certainly spared my purse, but showed no mercy at all to what it contained, which was one pound in paper, and a few shillings in silver, the latter, however, she left me.  I had now no alternative but to don the jacket and the hare’s-skin cap, which when I had done, with as bad a grace and as mortified a visage as ever man dressed himself with, I found I had not the slightest encouragement to throw my eye over the uniform gravity of my appearance, as I used to do in the black, for, alas! that which I was proudest of, viz. the clerical cut which it bestowed upon me was fairly gone—­I had now more the appearance of a poacher than a priest.

[Illustration:  PAGE 818—­ In this trim did I return to my friends]

In this trim did I return to my friends—­a goose stripped of my feathers; a dupe beknaved and beplundered—­having been almost starved to death in the “island,” and nearly cudgelled by one of the priests.  As soon as I crossed the threshold at home, the whole family were on their knees to receive my blessing, there being a peculiar virtue in the Lough Derg blessing.  The next thing I did, after giving them an account of the manner in which I was plundered and stripped, was to make a due distribution of the pebbles* of the lake, to contain which my sisters had, previous to my journey, wrought me a little silk bag.  This I brought home, stuffed as full as my purse was empty; for the epicene old villain left it to me in all its plenitude—­disdaining to touch it.  When I went to mass the following Sunday, I was surrounded by crowds, among whom I distributed my blessing, with an air of seriousness not at all lessened by the loss of my clothes and the emptying of my purse.  On telling that part of my story to the priest, he laughed till the tears ran down his cheeks.  He was a small, pleasant little man, who was seldom known to laugh at anybody’s joke but his own.  Now, the said merriment of the Reverend Father I felt as contributing to make me look exceedingly ridiculous and sheepish.  “So,” says he, “you have fallen foul of Nell M’Collum, the most notorious shuler in the province! a gipsy, a fortuneteller, and a tinker’s widow; but rest contented, you are not the first she has gulled—­but beware the next time.”—­“There is no danger of that,” said I, with peculiar emphasis.

* An uncommon virtue in curing all kinds of complaints is ascribed to these pebbles, small bags of which are brought home by the pilgrims, and distributed to their respective relations and friends.