As one of the little ones ran out to fill his jug, he spied his mother and Owen approaching, on which, with the empty vessel in his hand, he flew towards them, his little features distorted by glee and ferocity, wildly mixed up together.

“Oh mudher, mudher—­ha, ha, ha!—­don’t come in yet; don’t come in, Owen, till Jimmy un’ huz, an’ the Denisses, gets the bailie drownded.  We’ll soon have the bot (* tub) full; but Paddy an’ Jack Denis have the eyes a’most pucked out of him; an’ Katty’s takin’ the rapin’ hook from, behind the cuppet, to get it about his neck.”

Owen and the widow entered with all haste, precisely at the moment when Frank’s head was dipped, for the first time, into the vessel.

“Is it goin’ to murdher him ye are?” said Owen, as he seized Jemmy with a grasp that transferred him to the opposite end of the house; “hould back ye pack of young divils, an’ let the man up.  What did he come to do but his duty?  I tell you, Jimmy, if you wor at yourself, an’ in full strinth, that you’d have the man’s blood on you where you stand, and would suffer as you ought to do for it.”

“There, let me,” replied the lad, his eyes glowing and his veins swollen with passion; “I don’t care if I did.  It would be no sin, an’ no disgrace, to hang for the like of him; dacenter to do that, than stale a creel of turf, or a wisp of straw, ’tanny rate.”

In the meantime the bailiff had raised his head out of the water, and presented a visage which it was impossible to view with gravity.  The widow’s anxiety prevented her from seeing it in a ludicrous light; but Owen’s severe face assumed a grave smile, as the man shook himself and attempted to comprehend the nature of his situation.  The young urchins, who had fallen back at the appearance of Owen and the widow, now burst into a peal of mirth, in which, however, Jemmy, whose fiercer passions had been roused, did not join.

“Frank M’Murt,” said the widow, “I take the mother of heaven to witness, that it vexes my heart to see you get sich thratement in my place; an’ I wouldn’t for the best cow I have that sich a brieuliagh (* squabble) happened. Dher charp agusmanim, (** by my soul and body) Jimmy, but I’ll make you suffer for drawin’ down this upon my head, and me had enough over it afore.”

“I don’t care,” replied Jemmy; “whoever comes to take our property from us, an’ us willin’ to work will suffer for it.  Do you think I’d see thim crathurs at their dhry phatie, an’ our cows standin’ in a pound for no rason?  No; high hangin’ to me, but I’ll split to the skull the first man that takes them; an’ all I’m sorry for is, that it’s not the vagabone Landlord himself that’s near me.  That’s our thanks for paying many a good pound, in honesty and dacency, to him an’ his; lavin’ us to a schamin’ agent, an’ not even to that same, but to his undher-strap-pers, that’s robbin’ us on both sides between them.  May hard fortune attind him, for a landlord!  You