“An’ this rain, too,” said Cooney, “so soft, and even, and small, and warm, that it’s playin’ the very devil.  Nothin’ could stand it.  Why it ud make a rotten twig grow if it was put into the ground.”

“Divil a one o’ me would like to make the third,” said Murray, “for ’fraid I might have the misfortune to succeed.  Death alive!  Only think of my four arks, of meal, an’ my three stacks of hay, an’ divil a pile to come out of them for another twelve months!”

“It’s bad, too bad, I allow,” said the other; “still let us not despair, man alive; who knows but the saison may change for the worse yet.  Whish!” he exclaimed, slapping the side of his thigh, “hould up your head, Jemmy, I have thought of it; I have thought of it.”

“You have thought of what, Cooney?”

“Why, death alive, man, sure there’s plenty of time, God be praised for it, for the—­murdher, why didn’t we think of it before? ha, ha, ha!”

“For the what, man? don’t keep us longin’ for it.”

“Why for the pratie crops to fail still; sure it’s only the beginning o’ May now, and who knows but we might have the happiness to see a right good general failure of the praties still?  Eh? ha, ha, ha!”

“Upon my sounds, Cooney, you have taken a good deal of weight off of me.  Faith we have the lookout of a bad potato crop yet, sure enough.  How is the wind?  Don’t you think you feel a little dry bitin’ in it, as if it came from the aist?”

“Why, then, in regard of the dead calm that’s in it, I can’t exactly say—­but, let me see—­you’re right, divil a doubt of it; faith it is, sure enough; bravo, Jemmy, who knows but all may go wrong wid the crops yet.”

“At all events, let us have a glass on the head of it, and we’ll drink to the failure of the potato craps, and God prosper the aist wind, for it’s the best for you an’ me, Cooney, that’s goin’.  Come up to the house above, and we’ll have a glass on the head of it.”

The fastidious reader may doubt whether any two men, no matter how griping or rapacious, could prevail upon themselves to express to each other sentiments so openly inimical to all human sympathy.  In holding this dialogue, however, the men were only thinking aloud, and giving utterance to the wishes which every inhuman knave of their kind feels.  In compliance, however, with the objections which maybe brought against the probability of the above dialogue, we will now give the one which did actually occur, and then appeal to our readers whether the first is not much more in keeping with the character of the speakers—­which ought always to be a writer’s great object—­than the second.  Now, the reader already knows that each of these men had three or four large arks of meal laid past until the arrival of a failure in the crops and a season of famine, and that Murray had three large stacks of hay in the hope of a similar failure in the meadow crop.

“Good-morrow, Jemmy.”