“He’d look betther still if that ould coat wasn’t sweepin’ the ground behind him; an’ what ‘ud you think to put a pair o’ martyeens on his legs to hide the mazles!  He might go anywhere thin.”

“Throth he might; but Larry, what in the world wide could be in the Fairy-man’s bottle that Phelim took sich a likin’ for it.  He tould me this mornin’ that he’d suffer to have the pock agin, set in case he was cured wid the same bottle.”

“Well, the Heaven be praised, any how, that we have a son for the half-acre, Sheelah.’

“Amin!  An’ let us take good care of him, now that he’s spared to us.”

Phelim’s appetite, after his recovery, was anything but a joke to his father.  He was now seldom at home, except during meal times; for wherever fun or novelty was to be found, Phelim was present.  He became a regular attendant upon all the sportsmen.  To such he made himself very useful by his correct knowledge of the best covers for game, and the best pools for fish.  He was acquainted with every rood of land in the, parish; knew with astonishing accuracy where coveys were to be sprung, and hares started.  No hunt was without him; such was his wind and speed of foot, that to follow a chase and keep up with the horsemen was to him only a matter of sport.  When daylight passed, night presented him with amusements suitable to itself.  No wake, for instance, could escape him; a dance without young Phelim O’Toole would have been a thing worthy to be remembered.  He was zealously devoted to cock-fighting; on Shrove-Tuesday he shouted loudest among the crowd that attended the sport of throwing at cooks tied to a stake; foot-ball and hurling never occurred without him.  Bull-baiting—­for it was common in his youth—­was luxury to him; and, ere he reached fourteen, every one knew Phelim O’Toole as an adept at card-playing.  Wherever a sheep, a leg of mutton, a dozen of bread, or a bottle of whiskey was put up in a shebeen house, to be played for by the country gamblers at the five and ten, or spoil’d five, Phelim always took a hand and was generally successful.  On these occasions he was frequently charged with an over-refined dexterity; but Phelim usually swore, in vindication of his own innocence, until he got black in the face, as the phrase among such characters goes.

The reader is to consider him now about fifteen—­a stout, overgrown, unwashed cub.  His parents’ anxiety that he should grow strong, prevented them from training him to any kind of employment.  He was eternally going about in quest of diversion; and wherever a knot of idlers was to be found, there was Phelim.  He had, up to this period, never worn a shoe, nor a single article of dress that had been made for himself, with the exception of one or two pair of sheepskin small-clothes.  In this way he passed his time, bare-legged, without shoes, clothed in an old coat much too large for him, his neck open, and his sooty locks covered with the hare-skin cap,