“What do you think of Jack Taylor?  Will he be cosey?”

“Throth, I doubt so—­a blessed youth is Jack:  yit myself ’ud hardly wish it.  He’s a heerum-skeemm, divil-may-care fellow, no doubt of it, an’ laughs at the priests, which same I’m thinkin’ will get him below stairs more nor a new-milk heat, any way; but thin agin, he thrates thim dacent, an’ gives thim good dinners, an’ they take all this rolliken in good part, so that it’s likely he’s not in airnest in it, and surely they ought to know best, Jimmy.”

“What do you think of Yallow Sam?—­honest Sam, that they say was born widout a heart, an’ carries the black wool in his ears, to keep out the cries of the widows an’ the orphans, that are long rotten in their graves through his dark villany!—­He’ll get a snug birth!"*

* This was actually said of the person alluded to—­a celebrated usurer and agent to two or three estates, who was a little deaf, and had his ears occasionally stuffed with black wool.

“Yallow Sam,” replied the old man, slowly, and a dark shade of intense hatred blackened his weather-beaten countenance, as he looked in the direction from which the storm blew:  “’twas he left us where we’re standin’, Jimmy—­undher this blast, that’s cowldher an’ bittherer nor a step-mother’s breath, this cuttin’ day!  ’Twas he turned us on the wide world, whin your poor mother was risin’ out of her faver.  ’Twas he squenched the hearth, whin she wasn’t able to lave the house, till I carried her in my arms into Paddy Cassidy’s—­the tears fallin’ from my eyes upon her face, that I loved next to God.  Didn’t he give our farm to his bastard son, a purple Orangeman?  Out we went, to the winds an’ skies of heaven, bekase the rich bodagh made intherest aginst us.  I tould him whin he chated me out o’ my fifteen goolden guineas, that his masther, the landlord, should hear of it; but I could never get next or near to him, to make my complaint.  Eh?  A snug birth!  I’m only afeard that hell has no corner hot enough for him—­but lave that to the divil himself:  if he doesn’t give him the best thratement hell can afford, why I’m not here.”

“Divil a one o’ the ould boy’s so bad as they say, father; he gives it to thim hot an’ heavy, at all evints.”

“Why even if he was at a loss about Sam, depind upon it, he’d get a hint from his betthers above, that ’ud be sarviceable.”

“They say he visits him as it is, an’ that Sam can’t sleep widout some one in the room wid him.  Dan Philips says the priest was there, an’ had a Mass in every room in the house; but Charley Mack tells me there’s no! thruth in it.  He was advised to it, he says; but it seems the ould boy has too strong ahoult of him, for Sam said he’d have the divil any time sooner nor the priest, and its likest what he would say.”

“Och, och, Jimmy, avick, I’m tir’d out!  We had betther give in; the day’s too hard, an’ there’s no use in standin’ agin the weather that’s in it.  Lave the ould villain to God, who he can’t chate, any way.”