them all over the world. A lazy set of thieves you are, every one of you;
spending your time inventing lies, devil a more nor less; and here," this
time he filled again,--"and here's a hot corner and Kilkenny coals, that's
half sulphur, to the villain--"

For what particular class of offenders Mike's penal code was now devised, I
was not destined to learn; for overcome by punch and indignation, he gave
one loud whoop, and measured his length upon the floor. Having committed
him to the care of the waiters, from whom I learned more fully the
particulars of his acquaintance with Mr. Meekins, I enjoined them,
strictly, not to mention that I knew anything of the matter; and betook
myself to my bed sincerely rejoicing that in a few hours more Mike would
be again in that laud where even his eccentricities and excesses would be
viewed with a favorable and forgiving eye.

CHAPTER XLI.

IRELAND.

"You'd better call your master up," said the skipper to Mickey Free, on the
second evening after our departure from Bristol; "he said he'd like to have
a look at the coast."

The words were overheard by me, as I lay between sleeping and waking in the
cabin of the packet, and without waiting for a second invitation, I rushed
upon deck. The sun was setting, and one vast surface of yellow golden light
played upon the water, as it rippled beneath a gentle gale. The white foam
curled at our prow, and the rushing sound told the speed we were going at.
The little craft was staggering under every sheet of her canvas, and her
spars creaked as her white sails bent before the breeze. Before us, but to
my landsman's eyes scarcely perceptible, were the ill-defined outlines of
cloudy darkness they called land, and which I continued to gaze at with a
strange sense of interest, while I heard the names of certain well-known
headlands assigned to apparently mere masses of fog-bank and vapor.

He who has never been separated in early years, while yet the budding
affections of his heart are tender shoots, from the land of his birth and
of his home, knows nothing of the throng of sensations that crowd upon him
as he nears the shore of his country. The names, familiar as household
words, come with a train of long-buried thoughts; the feeling of attachment
to all we call our own--that patriotism of the heart--stirs strongly within
him, as the mingled thrills of hope and fear alternately move him to joy or
sadness.

Hard as are the worldly stru