One of those who lay behind the ditch now arose, and after a few hems and scratchings of the head, ventured to join in the conversation.

“Pray have you, my man,” said the elder of the two, “been acquainted with the circumstances of this boy’s illness?”

“Is it the poor scholar, my Lord?* Oh thin bedad it’s myself that has that.  The poor crathur was in a terrible way all out, so he was.  He caught the faver in the school beyant, one day, an’ was turned out by the nager o’ the world that he was larnin’ from.”

     * The peasantry always address a Roman Catholic Bishop
     as “My Lord.”

“Are you one of the persons who attended him?”

“Och, och, the crathar! what could unsignified people like us do for him, barrin’ a thrifle?  Any how, my Lord, it’s the meracle o’ the world that he was ever able to over it at all.  Why, sir, good luck to the one of him but suffered as much, wid the help o’ God, as ’ud overcome fifty men!”

“How did you provide him with drink at such a distance from any human habitation?”

“Throth, hard enough we found it, sir, to do that same:  but sure, whether or not, my Lord, we couldn’t be sich nagers as to let him die all out, for want o’ sometlrm’ to moisten his throath wid.”

“I hope,” inquired the other, “you had nothing to do in the milk-stealing which has produced such an outcry in this immediate neighborhood?”

“Milk-stalin’!  Oh, bedad, sir, there never was the likes known afore in the caunthry.  The Lord forgive them, that did it!  Be gorra, sir, the wickedness o’ the people’:  mighty improving if one ‘ud take warnin’ by it, glory be to God!”

“Many of the fanners’ cows have been milked at night, Connor—­perfectly drained.  Even my own cows have not escaped; and we who have suffered are certainly determined, if possible, to ascertain those who have committed the theft.  I, for my part, have gone even beyond my ability in relieving the wants of the poor, during this period of sickness and famine; I therefore deserved this the less.”

“By the powdbers, your honor, if any gintleman desarved to have his cows unmilked, it’s yourself.  But, as I said this minute, there’s no end to the wickedness o’ the people, so there’s not, although the Catechiz is against them; for, says it, ‘there is but one Faith, one Church, an’ one Baptism.’  Now, sir, isn’t it quare that people, wid sich words in the book afore them, won’t be guided by it?  I suppose they thought it only a white sin, sir, to take the milk, the thieves o’ the world.”

“Maybe, your honor,” said another, “that it was only to keep the life in some poor sick crathur that wanted it more nor you or the farmers, that they did it.  There’s some o’ the same farmers desarve worse, for they’re keepin’ up the prices o’ their male and praties upon the poor, an’ did so all along, that they might make money by our outlier destitution.”