The priest could not avoid smiling when he perused it, and on getting from Peter’s lips an explanation of the hieroglyphics, he laughed heartily at the ingenious shifts they had made to guide his memory.

Peter, for some time after this, confined himself to one glass, as he had promised; but he felt such depression and feebleness, that he ventured slowly, and by degrees, to enlarge the “glass” from which he drank.  His impression touching the happiness of his wife was, that as he had for several months strictly observed his promise, she had probably during that period gone to heaven.  He then began to exercise his ingenuity gradually, as we have said, by using, from time to time, a glass larger than the preceding one; thus receding from the spirit of his vow to the letter, and increasing the quantity of his drink from a small glass to the most capacious tumbler he could find.  The manner in which he drank this was highly illustrative of the customs which prevail on this subject in Ireland.  He remembered, that in making the vow, he used the words, “neither in the house nor out of it;” but in order to get over this dilemma, he usually stood with one foot outside the threshold, and the other in the house, keeping himself in that position which would render it difficult to determine whether he was either out or in.  At other times, when he happened to be upstairs, he usually thrust one-half of his person out of the window, with the same ludicrous intention of keeping the letter of his vow.

Many a smile this adroitness of his occasioned to the lookers-on:  but further ridicule was checked by his wobegone and afflicted look.  He was now a mere skeleton, feeble and tottering.

One night, in the depth of winter, he went into the town where his two sons resided; he had been ill in mind and body during the day, and he fancied that change of scene and society might benefit him.  His daughter and son-in-law, in consequence of his illness, watched him so closely, that he could not succeed in getting his usual “glass.”  This offended him, and he escaped without their knowledge to the son who kept the inn.  On arriving there, he went upstairs, and by a douceur to the waiter, got a large tumbler filled with spirits.  The lingering influences of a conscience that generally felt strongly on the side of a moral duty, though poorly instructed, prompted him to drink it in the usual manner, by keeping one-half of his body, as, nearly as he could guess, out of the window, that it might be said he drank it neither in nor out of the house.  He had scarcely finished his draught, however, when he lost his balance, and was precipitated upon the pavement.  The crash of his fall was heard in the bar, and his son, who had just come in, ran, along with several others, to ascertain what had happened.  They found him, however, only severely stunned.  He was immediately brought in, and medical aid sent for; but, though he recovered from the immediate effects of the fall, the shock it gave to his broken constitution, and his excessive grief, carried him off in a few months afterwards.  He expired in the arms of his son and daughter, and amidst the tears of those who knew his simplicity of character, his goodness of heart, and his attachment to the wife by whose death that heart had been broken.