“You’ll let me bring some o’ the meal home wid me now,” said the man; “the poor cratures tasted hardly anything to-day yet, an’ they wor cryin’ whin I left home.  I’ll come back wid the heifer fullfut.  Troth they’re in utther misery, Darby.”

“Poor things!—­an’ no wondher, wid such a haythen of a father; but, Jemmy, bring the heifer here first till I look at it, an’ the sooner you bring it here the sooner they’ll have relief, the crathurs.”

It is not our intention to follow up this iniquitous bargain any further; it is enough to say that the heifer passed from Jemmy’s possession into his, at about the fourth part of its value.

To those who had money he was a perfect honey-comb, overflowing with kindness and affection, expressed in such a profusion of warm and sugary words, that it was next to an impossibility to doubt his sincerity.

“Darby,” said a very young female, on whose face was blended equal beauty and sorrow, joined to an expression that was absolutely death-like, “I suppose I needn’t ax you for credit?” He shook his head.

“It’s for the couple,” she added, “an’ not for myself.  I wouldn’t ax it for myself.  I know my fault, an’ my sin, an’ may God forgive myself in the first place, an’ him that brought me to it, an’ to the shame that followed it!  But what would the ould couple do now widout me?”

“An’ have you no money?  Ah, Margaret Murtagh! sinful creature—­shame, shame, Margaret.  Unfortunate girl that you are, have you no money?”

“I have not, indeed; the death of my brother Alick left us as we are; he’s gone from them now; but there was no fear of me goin’ that wished to go.  Oh, if God in His goodness to them had took me an’ spared him, they wouldn’t be sendin’ to you this day for meal to keep life in them till things comes round.”

“Troth I pity them—­from my heart I pity them now they’re helpless and ould—­especially for havin’ sich a daughter as you are; but if it was my own father an’ mother, God rest them, I couldn’t give meal out on credit.  There’s not in the parish a poorer man than I am.  I’m done wid givin’ credit now, thank goodness; an’ if I had been so long ago, it isn’t robbed, and ruined, an’ beggared by rogues I’d be this day, but a warm, full man, able and willin’ too to help my neighbors; an’ it is not empty handed I’d send away any messenger from your father or mother, as I must do, although my heart bleeds for them this minute.”

Here once more he wiped away the rheum, with every appearance of regret and sorrow.  In fact, one would almost suppose that by long practice he had trained one of his eyes—­for we ought to have said that there was one of them more sympathetic than the other—­to shed its hypocritical tear at the right place, and in such a manner, too, that he might claim all the credit of participating in the very distresses which he refused to relieve, or by which he amassed his wealth.

The poor heart-broken looking girl, who by the way carried an unfortunate baby in her arms, literally tottered out of the room, sobbing bitterly, and with a look of misery and despair that it was woeful to contemplate.