Mike followed his example, and was corking the flask when Rody returned with the gun.

“She’s charged,” said Frank; “but we’d betther put in fresh primin’ for ‘fraid of her hangin’ fire.”

He then primed the gun, and handed it to Reillaghan.  “Do you keep the gun, Mike,” he added, “an’ I’ll keep the cocksticks.  Rody, I’ll bet you a shillin’ I kill more wid! the cockstick, nor he will wid the gun, will you take me up?”

“I know a safer thrick,” replied Rody; “you’re a dead aim wid the cockstick, sure enough, an’ a deader with the gun, too; catch me at it.”

“You show some sinse, for a wondher,” observed Frank, as he and his companion left the barn, and turned towards the mountains, which rose frowning behind the house.  Rody stood looking after them until they wound up slowly out of sight among the hills; he then shook his head two or three times, and exclaimed, “By dad, there’s somethin’ in this, if one could make out:  what it is.  I know Frank.”

Christmas-day passed among the peasantry, as it usually passes in Ireland.  Friends met before dinner in their own, in their neighbors’, in shebeen or in public houses, where they drank, sang, or fought, according to their natural dispositions, or the quantity of liquor they had taken.  The festivity of the day might be known by the unusual reek of smoke that danced from each chimney, by the number of persons who crowded the roads, by their bran-new dresses,—­for if a young man or country girl can afford a dress at all, they provide it for Christmas,—­and by the striking appearance of those who, having drunk a little too much, were staggering home in the purest happiness, singing, stopping their friends, shaking hands with them, or kissing them, without any regard to sex.  Many a time might be seen two Irishmen,’ who had got drunk together, leaving a fair or market, their arms about each other’s necks, from whence they only removed them to kiss and hug one another more lovingly.  Notwithstanding this, there is nothing more probable than that these identical two will enjoy the luxury of a mutual battle, by way of episode, and again proceed on their way, kissing and hugging as if nothing had happened to interrupt their friendship.  All the usual effects of jollity and violence, fun and fighting, love and liquor, were, of course, to be seen, felt, heard, and understood on this day, in a manner much more remarkable than on common occasions; for it maybe observed, that the national festivals of the Irish bring-out their strongest points of character with peculiar distinctness.

The family of Frank M’Kenna were sitting down to their Christmas dinner; the good man had besought a blessing upon the comfortable and abundant fare of which they were about to partake, and nothing was amiss, save the absence of their younger son.

“Musha, where on earth can this boy be stayin’?” said the father:  “I’m sure this, above all days in the year, is one he oughtn’t to be from home an.”