trial had been made, and many a sly offer held out, as a lure to the neighboring teachers, but they did not take; for although the country was densely inhabited, yet it was remarked that no schoolmaster ever “thruv” in the neighborhood of Findramore.  The place, in fact, had got a bad name.  Garraghty died, it was thought, of poverty, a disease to which the Findramore schoolmasters had been always known to be subject.  His predecessor, too, was hanged, along with two others, for burning the house of an “Aagint.”

Then the Findramore boys were not easily dealt with, having an ugly habit of involving their unlucky teachers in those quarrels which they kept up with the Ballyscanlan boys, a fighting clan that lived at the foot of the mountains above them.  These two factions, when they met, whether at fair or market, wake or wedding, could never part without carrying home on each side a dozen or two of bloody coxcombs.  For these reasons, the parish of Aughindrum had for a few years been afflicted with an extraordinary dearth of knowledge; the only literary establishment which flourished in it being a parochial institution, which, however excellent in design, yet, like too many establishments of the same nature, it degenerated into a source of knowledge, morals, and education, exceedingly dry and unproductive to every person except the master, who was enabled by his honest industry to make a provision for his family absolutely surprising, when we consider the moderate nature of his ostensible income.  It was, in fact, like a well dried up, to which scarcely any one ever thinks of going for water.

Such a state of things, however, could not last long.  The youth of Findramore were parched for want of the dew of knowledge; and their parents and grown brethren met one Saturday evening in Barny Brady’s shebeen-house, to take into consideration the best means for procuring a resident schoolmaster for the village and neighborhood.  It was a difficult point, and required great dexterity of management to enable them to devise any effectual remedy for the evil which they felt.  There were present at this council, Tim Dolan, the senior of the village, and his three sons, Jem Coogan, Brian Murphy, Paddy Delany, Owen Roe O’Neil, Jack Traynor, and Andy Connell, with five or six others, whom it is not necessary to enumerate.

“Bring us in a quart, Barny,” said Dolan to Brady, whom on this occasion we must designate as the host; “and let it be rale hathen.”

“What do you mane, Tim?” replied the host.

“I mane,” continued Dolan, “stuff that was never christened, man alive.”

“Thin I’ll bring you the same that Father Maguire got last night on his way home afther anointin’ ’ould Katty Duffy,” replied Brady.  “I’m sure, whatever I might be afther giving to strangers, Tim, I’d be long sorry to give yous anything but the right sort.”

“That’s a gay man, Barny,” said Traynor, “but off wid you like a shot, and let us get it under our tooth first, an’ then we’ll tell you more about it—­A big rogue is the same Barny,” he added, after Brady had gone to bring in the poteen, “an’ never sells a dhrop that’s not one whiskey and five wathers.”