were the glaiks, a machine for churning; and beside the dresser stood an immense churn, certainly too unwieldy to be managed except by machinery.  The farmer was a ruddy-faced Milesian, who wore a drab frieze coat, with a velvet collar, buff waistcoat, corduroy small-clothes, and top-boots* well greased from the tops down.  He was not only an agriculturist, but a grazier—­remarkable for shrewdness and good sense, generally attended fairs and markets, and brought three or four large droves of fat cattle to England every year.  From his fob hung the brass chain and almost rusty key of a watch, which he kept certainly more for use than ornament.

     * This in almost every instance, is the dress of
     wealthy Irish farmer.

“A little sup o’ this,” said he, “won’t take your life,” approaching Jemmy with a bottle of as good poteen as ever escaped the eye of an exciseman; “it’ll refresh you—­for you’re tired, or I wouldn’t offer it, by rason that one bint on what you’re bint on, oughtn’t to be makin’ freedoms wid the same dhrink.  But there’s a time for everything, an’ there’s a time for this.—­Thank you, agra,” he added, in reply to Jemmy, who had drunk his health.  “Now, don’t be frettin’—­but make yourself as aisy as if you were at your own father’s hearth.  You’ll have everything to your heart’s contint for this night; the carts are goin’ in to the market to-morrow airly—­you can sit upon them, an’ maybe you’ll get somethin’ more nor you expect:  sure the Lord has given it to me, an’ why wouldn’t I share it wid them that wants it more nor I do?”

The lad’s heart yearned to the generous farmer, for he felt that his kindness had the stamp of truth and sincerity upon it.  He could only raise his eyes in a silent prayer, that none belonging to him might ever be compelled, as strangers and way-farers, to commit themselves, as he did, to the casualties of life, in pursuit of those attainments which poverty cannot otherwise command.  Fervent, indeed, was his prayer; and certain we are, that because it was sincere, it must have been heard.

In the meantime, the good woman, or vanithee, had got the pot of water warmed, in which Jemmy was made to put his feet.  She then stripped up her arms to the elbows, and, with soap and seedy meal, affectionately bathed his legs and feet:  then, taking the praskeen, or coarse towel, she wiped them with a kindness which thrilled to his heart.

“And now,” said she, “I must give you a cure for blisthers, an’ it’s this:—­In the mornin’, if we’re all spared, as we will, plase the Almighty, I’ll give you a needle and some white woollen thread, well soaped.  When your blisthers gets up, dhraw the soapy thread through them, clip it on each side, an’, my life for yours, they won’t throuble you.  Sure I thried it the year I went on my Station to Lough Derg, an’ I know it to be the rale cure.”

“Here, Nelly,” said the farmer,—­who sat iwith a placid benevolent face, smoking his pipe on the opposite hob—­to one of the maids who came in from milking,—­“bring up a noggin of that milk, we want it here:  let it be none of your washy foremilk, but the strippins, Nelly, that has the strinth in it.  Up wid it here, a colleen.”