“A hunt, a hunt, by all manes! there’s the fun of it!  Come on, lads—­here’s the place!—­turn off, and go to work!  Wait, wait! get a stick a-piece, and break the necks of ’em!  Hurrah!—­in Spider!—­find ’em boy!  Good lad!  Tare an ouns, you may well squeak!  Good dog! good dog! that’s a grandfather!—­we’ll have more yet; the family always come to the ould one’s berrin’.  I’ve seen ’em often, and mighty dacent they behave.  Damn Kells and the barber, up with the boords and go to work!—­this is something like sport!  Houly Paul, there’s one up my breeches—­here’s the tail of him—­he caught a hould of my leather-garter.  Come out of that, Spider!  Spider, here he is—­that’s it—­give him another shake for his impudence—­serve him out!  Hurrah!”

“Fast and furious” grew our incessant urging on of the willing Spider, for his continued efforts at extermination.  At the end of two hours, the metamorphosed barn was nearly stripped of its flooring—­nine huge rats lay dead, as trophies of our own achievements—­the panting Spider, “by turns caressing, and by turns caressed,” licking alternately the hands and faces of all, as we sat on the low ledge of the doorway, wagging his close-cut stump of tail, as if he were resolved, by his unceasing exertions, to get entirely rid of that excited dorsal ornament.

“This is the rael thing,” said Bob.

“So it is,” said Dick; “but”—­

“But what?”

“Why, devil a ha’p’orth of Kells or hair-cutting there’s in it.”

“Not a taste,” chimed in Jack.

“Nothing like it,” echoed Will.

“What will we do?” said all at once.  There was a short pause—­after which the matter was resumed by Dick, who was intended for a parson, and therefore rather given to moralising.

“Life,” quoth Dick—­“life’s uncertain.”

“You may say that,” rejoined Bob; “look at them rats.”

“Tony Dowlan’s a hard-drinking man, and his mother had fits.”

“Of the same sort,” said Bob.

“Well, then,” continued Dick, “there’s no knowing—­he may be dead—­if so, how could he cut our hair?”

Here Dick, like Brutus, paused for a reply.  Bob produced one.

“It’s a good scheme, but it won’t do; the likes of him never does anything he’s wanted to.  He’s the contrariest ould thief in Ireland!  I wish mama hadn’t got a party; we’d do well enough but for that.  Never mind, boys, I’ve got it.  There’s Mikey Brian, he’s the boy!

“What for?”

“To cut the hair of the whole of us.”

“He can’t do it.”

“Can’t! wait, a-cushla, till I tell you, or, what’s better, show you.  Come now, you devils.  Look at the heels (Rasper’s and Scrub’s) of them ponies!  Did ever you see anything like them!—­look at the cutting there—­Tony Dowlan never had the knack o’ that tasty work in his dirty finger and thumb—­and who done that?  Why Mikey Brian—­didn’t I see him myself; and isn’t he the boy that can ‘bang Bannaker’ at anything!  Oh! he’ll cut us elegant!—­he’ll do the squad for a fi’penny—­and then, lads, there’s them five others will be just one a-piece to buy gut and flies!  Come on, you Hessians!”