He was about sixteen years old, and above six feet high, dressed in a gray suit; the coat, from its size, appeared to have been made for him some ten years before.  He was remarkably narrow-chested and round-shouldered, owing, perhaps as much to the tightness of his garment as to the hand of nature.  His face was long, and his complexion swarthy, relieved, however, by certain freckles, with which the skin was plentifully studded.  He had strange wandering eyes, gray, and somewhat unequal in size; they seldom rested on the book, but were generally wandering about the room, from one object to another.  Sometimes he would fix them intently on the wall, and then suddenly starting, as if from a reverie, he would commence making certain mysterious movements with his thumbs and forefingers, as if he were shuffling something from him.

One morning, as he sat by himself on a bench, engaged in this manner, I went up to him, and said, ’Good-day, Murtagh; you do not seem to have much to do?’

’Faith, you may say that, Shorsha dear!—­it is seldom much to do that I have.’

‘And what are you doing with your hands?’

‘Faith, then, if I must tell you, I was e’en dealing with the cards.’

‘Do you play much at cards?’

’Sorra a game, Shorsha, have I played with the cards since my uncle Phelim, the thief, stole away the ould pack, when he went to settle in the county Waterford!’

‘But you have other things to do?’

’Sorra anything else has Murtagh to do that he cares about and that makes me dread so going home at nights.’

‘I should like to know all about you; where do you live, joy?’

’Faith, then, ye shall know all about me, and where I live.  It is at a place called the Wilderness that I live, and they call it so, because it is a fearful wild place, without any house near it but my father’s own; and that’s where I live when at home.’

‘And your father is a farmer, I suppose?’

’You may say that; and it is a farmer I should have been, like my brother Denis, had not my uncle Phelim, the thief, tould my father to send me to school, to learn Greek letters, that I might be made a saggart of, and sent to Paris and Salamanca.’

‘And you would rather be a farmer than a priest?’

’You may say that!—­for, were I a farmer, like the rest, I should have something to do, like the rest—­something that I cared for—­and I should come home tired at night, and fall asleep, as the rest do, before the fire; but when I comes home at night I am not tired, for I have been doing nothing all day that I care for; and then I sits down and stares about me, and at the fire, till I become frighted; and then I shouts to my brother Denis, or to the gossoons, “Get up, I say, and let’s be doing something; tell us the tale of Finn-ma-Coul, and how he lay down in the Shannon’s bed, and let the river flow down his jaws!” Arrah, Shorsha!  I wish you would come and stay with us, and tell us some o’ your sweet stories of your own self and the snake ye carried about wid ye.  Faith, Shorsha dear! that snake bates anything about Finn-ma-Coul or Brian Boroo, the thieves two, bad luck to them!’