“‘True for ye,’ said the boy; ’true for ye, Father Malachi’s dark; but the coadjutor!—­the coadjutor’s as red as a fox.’”

When the laugh this story caused had a little subsided, Father Malachi called out, “Mickey Oulahan!  Mickey, I say, hand his lordship over ’the groceries’”—­thus he designated a square decanter, containing about two quarts of whiskey, and a bowl heaped high with sugar—­“a dacent boy is Mickey, my lord, and I’m happy to be the means of making him known to you.”  I bowed with condescension, while Mr. Oulahan’s eyes sparkled like diamonds at the recognition.

“He has only two years of the lease to run, and a ‘long charge,’ (anglice, a large family,) continued the priest.

“I’ll not forget him, you may depend upon it,” said I.

“Do you hear that,” said Father Malachi, casting a glance of triumph round the table, while a general buzz of commendation on priest and patron went round, with many such phrases as, “Och thin, it’s his riv’rance can do it,” “na bocklish,” “and why not,” &c. &c.  As for me, I have already “confessed” to my crying sin, a fatal, irresistible inclination to follow the humour of the moment wherever it led me; and now I found myself as active a partizan in quizzing Mickey Oulahan, as though I was not myself a party included in the jest.  I was thus fairly launched into my inveterate habit, and nothing could arrest my progress.

One by one the different individuals round the table were presented to me, and made known their various wants, with an implicit confidence in my power of relieving them, which I with equal readiness ministered to.  I lowered the rent of every man at table.  I made a general jail delivery, an act of grace, (I blush to say,) which seemed to be peculiarly interesting to the present company.  I abolished all arrears—­made a new line of road through an impassable bog, and over an inaccessible mountain—­and conducted water to a mill, which (I learned in the morning) was always worked by wind.  The decanter had scarcely completed its third circuit of the board, when I bid fair to be most popular specimen of the peerage that ever visited the “far west.”  In the midst of my career of universal benevolence, I was interrupted by Father Malachi, whom I found on his legs, pronouncing a glowing eulogium on his cousin’s late regiment, the famous North Cork.

“That was the corps!” said he.  “Bid them do a thing, and they’d never leave off; and so, when they got orders to retire from Wexford, it’s little they cared for the comforts of baggage, like many another regiment, for they threw away every thing but their canteens, and never stopped till they ran to Ross, fifteen miles farther than the enemy followed them.  And when they were all in bed the same night, fatigued and tired with their exertions, as ye may suppose, a drummer’s boy called out in his sleep—­’here they are—­they’re coming’—­they all jumped up and set off in their shirts, and got two miles out of town before they discovered it was a false alarm.”