who wondered very much that Art Maguire, after the treatment he had formerly received at their hands, should be mean enough, they said, ever “to be hail fellow well met” with them again.  But Art, alas! in spite of all his dignity of old blood, and his rodomontade about the Fermanagh Maguires, was utterly deficient in that decent pride which makes a man respect himself, and prevents him from committing a mean action.

For a considerable time before his arrival, there were assembled in Barney Scaddhan’s tap, Tom Whiskey, Jerry Shannon, Jack Mooney, Toal Finnigan, and the decoy duck, young Barney Scaddhan himself, who merely became a teetotaller that he might be able to lure his brethren in to spend their money in drinking cordial.

“I wondher Art’s not here before now,” observed Tom Whiskey; “blood alive, didn’t he get on well afther joinin’ the ’totallers?”

“Faix, it’s a miracle,” replied Jerry Shannon, “there’s not a more ’spbnsible man in Ballykeerin, he has quite a Protestant look;—­ha, ha, ha!”

“Divil a sich a pest ever this house had as the same Art when he was a blackguard,” said young Scaddhan; “there was no keepin’ him out of it, but constantly spungin’ upon the dacent people that wor dhrmkin’ in it.”

“Many a good pound and penny he left you for all that, Barney, my lad,” said Mooney; “and purty tratement you gave him when his money was gone.”

“Ay, an’ we’d give you the same,” returned Scaddhan, “if your’s was gone, too; ha, ha, ha! it’s not moneyless vagabones we want here.”

“No,” said Shannon, “you first make them moneyless vagabones, an’ then you kick them out o’ doors, as you did him.”

“Exactly,” said the hardened miscreant, “that’s the way we live; when we get the skin off the cat, then we throw out the carcass.”

“Why, dang it, man,” said Whiskey, “would you expect honest Barney here, or his still honester ould rip of a father, bad as they are, to give us drink for nothing?”

“Now,” said Finnigan, who had not yet spoken, “yez are talkin’ about Art Maguire, and I’ll tell yez what I could do; I could bend my finger that way, an’ make him folly me over the parish.”

“And how could you do that?” asked Whiskey.

“By soodherin’ him—­by ticklin’ his empty pride—­by dwellin’ on the ould blood of Ireland, the great Fermanagh Maguires—­or by tellin’ him that he’s betther than any one else, and could do what nobody else could.”

“Could you make him drunk to-night?” asked Shannon.

“Ay,” said Toal, “an’ will, too, as ever you seen him in your lives; only whin I’m praisin’ him do some of you oppose me, an’ if I propose any thing to be done, do you all either support me in it, or go aginst me, accordin’ as you see he may take it.”

“Well, then,” said Mooney, “in ordher to put you in spirits, go off, Barney, an’ slip a glass o’ whiskey a piece into this cordial, jist to tighten it a bit—­ha, ha, ha!”