* A portion of butter, weighing from one pound to six or
          eight, made in the shape of a prism.

Then again, never did a forbidding face shine with so winning and amicable an expression as did hers on that merciful occasion.  The sun dancing a hornpipe on Easter Sunday morning, or the full moon sailing as proud as a peacock in a new halo head-dress, was a very disrespectable sight, compared to Norah’s red beaming face, shrouded in her dowd cap with long ears, that descended to her masculine and substantial neck.  Owing to her influence, the whole economy of the school was good; for we were permitted to cuff one another, and do whatever we pleased, with impunity, if we brought the meal, eggs, or butter; except some scapegoat who was not able to accomplish this, and he generally received on his own miserable carcase what was due to us all.

Poor Jack Murray!  His last words on the scaffold, for being concerned in the murder of Pierce the gauger, were, that he got the first of his bad habits under Pat Mulligan and Norah—­that he learned to steal by secreting at home, butter and meal to paste up the master’s eyes to his bad conduct—­and that his fondness for quarrelling arose from being permitted to head a faction at school; a most ungrateful return for the many acts of grace which the indulgence of Norah caused; to be issued in his favor.

I was but a short time under Pat, when, after the general example, I had my cudgel, which I used to carry regularly to a certain furze bush within fifty perches of the “seminary,” where I hid it till after “dismiss.*”!  I grant it does not look well in me to become I my own panegyrist; but I can at least declare, that there were few among the Gaseys able to, resist the prowess of this right arm, puny as it was at the period in question.  Our battles were obstinate and frequent; but as the quarrels of the two families and their relations on each side, were as bitter and pugnacious in fairs and markets as ours were in school, we hit upon the plan of holding our Lilliputian engagements upon the same days on which our fathers and brothers contested.  According to this plan, it very often happened that the corresponding parties were successful, and as frequently, that whilst the Caseys were well drubbed in the fair, their sons were victorious at school, and vice versa.

For my part, I was early trained in cudgelling, and before I reached my fourteenth year, could pronounce as sage and accurate an opinion upon the merits of a shillelagh, as it is called, or cudgel, as a veteran of sixty could at first sight.  Our plan of preparing them was this:  we sallied out to any place where there was an underwood of blackthorn or oak, and, having surveyed the premises with the eye of a connoisseur, we selected the straightest root-growing piece which we could find:  for if not root-growing we did not consider it worth cutting, knowing from experience that a mere branch, how straight and fair soever it