Sheelah having satisfied herself that everything calculated to save her darling from the small-pox was done, felt considerably relieved, and hoped that whoever might be infected, Phelim would escape.  On the morning when the last journey to the river had been completed, she despatched him home with the halters.  Phelim, however, wended his way to a little hazel copse, below the house, where he deliberately twined the halters together, and erected a swing-swang, with which he amused himself till hunger brought him to his dinner.

“Phelim, you idle thief, what kep you away till now?”

“Oh; mudher, mudher, gi’ me a piece o’ arran? (* bread.)

“Why, here’s the praties done for your dinner.  What kep you?”

“Oh, be gorra, it’s well you ever seen me at all, so it is!”

“Why,” said his father, “what happened you?”

“Oh, bedad, a terrible thing all out.  As I was crassin’ Dunroe Hill, I thramped on hungry grass.  First, I didn’t know what kem over me, I got so wake; an’ every step I wint, ‘twas waker an’ waker I was growin’, till at long last, down I dhrops, an’ couldn’t move hand or fut.  I dunna how long I lay there, so I don’t; but anyhow, who should be sthreelin’ acrass the hill, but an old baccagh.

“‘My bouchaleen dhas,’ says he—­’my beautiful boy,’ says he—­’you’re in a bad state I find.  You’ve thramped upon Dunroe hungry grass, an’ only for somethin’ it’s a prabeen you’d be, afore ever you’d see home.  Can you spake at all?’ says he.

“‘Oh, murdher,’ says I,’ I b’lieve not.’

“‘Well here,’ says the baccagh, ‘open your purty gub, an’ take in a thrifle of this male, an’ you’ll soon be stout enough.’  Well, to be sure, it bates the world!  I had hardly tasted the male, whin I found myself as well as ever; bekase you know, mudher, that’s the cure for it.  ‘Now,’ says the baccagh, ’this is the spot the fairies planted their hungry grass, an’ so you’ll know it agin when you see it.  What’s your name?’ says he.

“‘Phelim O’Toole,’ says I.

“‘Well,’ says he, ‘go home an’ tell your father an’ mother to offer up a prayer to St. Phelim, your namesake, in regard that only for him you’d be a corp before any relief would a come near you; or, at any rate, wid the fairies.’”

The father and mother, although with a thousand proofs before them that Phelim, so long as he could at all contrive a lie, would never speak truth, yet were so blind to his well-known propensity, that they always believed the lie to be truth, until they discovered it to be a falsehood.  When he related a story, for instance, which carried not only improbability, but impossibility on the face of it, they never questioned his veracity.  The neighbors, to be sure, were vexed and nettled at the obstinacy of their credulity; especially on reflecting that they were as sceptical in giving credence to the narrative of any other person, as all rational people ought to be.  The manner of training up Phelim, and Phelim’s method of governing them, had become a by-word in the village.  “Take a sthraw to him, like Sheelah O’Toole,” was often ironically said to mothers remarkable for mischievous indulgence to their children.