“I think so,” said Sullivan.  “Indeed, to tell you the truth, I had as little notion that you wore jokin’ as he had.”

“That’s my drame out last night, at all events,” said Donnel.

“How is that?” asked Sullivan, as they approached the door.

“Why,” said he, “I dreamed that I was lookin’ for a hammer at your house, an’ I thought that you hadn’t one to give me; but your daughter Mave came to me, and said, ‘here’s a hammer for you, Donnel, an’ take care of it, for it belongs to Condy Dalton.’  I thought I took it, an’ the first thing I found myself doin’ was drivin’ a nail in what appeared to be my own coffin.  The same dhrame would alarm me but that I know that dhrames goes by contrairies, as I’ve reason to think this will.”

“No man understands these things better than yourself, Donnel,” said Sullivan; “but, for my part, I think there’s a dangerous kick in the boy that jist left us; and I’m much mistaken or the world will hear of it an’ know it yet.”

“Well, well,” said Donnel Dhu, in a very Christian-like spirit, “I fear you’re right, Jerry; but still let us hope for the best.”

And as he spoke, they entered the house.

CHAPTER III. —­ A Family on the Decline—­Omens.

Jerry Sullivan’s house and place had about them all the marks and tokens of gradual decline.  The thatch on the roof had begun to get black, and in some places was sinking into rotten ridges; the yard was untidy and dirty; the walls and hedges were broken and dismantled; and the gates were lying about, or swinging upon single hinges.  The whole air of the premises was uncomfortable to the spectator, who could not avoid feeling that there existed in the owner either wilful neglect or unsuccessful struggle.  The chimneys, from which the thatch had sank down, stood up with the incrustations of lime that had been trowelled round their bases, projecting uselessly out from them; some of the quoins had fallen from the gable; the plaster came off the walls in several places, and the whitewash was sadly discolored.

Inside, the aspect of everything was fully as bad, if not worse.  Tables and chairs, and the general furniture of the house, had all that character of actual cleanliness and apparent want of care which poverty superinduces upon the most strenuous efforts of industry.  The floor was beginning to break up into holes; tables and chairs were crazy; the dresser, though clean, had a cold, hungry, unfurnished look; and, what was unquestionably the worst symptom of all, the inside of the chimney brace, where formerly the sides and flitches of deep, fat bacon, grey with salt, were arrayed in goodly rows, now presented nothing but the bare and dust-covered hooks, from which they had depended in happier times.  About a dozen of herrings hung at one side of a worn salt-box, and at the other a string of onions that was nearly Stripped, both constituting the principal kitchen, varied, perhaps, with a little buttermilk,—­which Sullivan’s family were then able to afford themselves with their potatoes.