bottom; that's his carracther."

"I know it is," said Art, "but, until I find it to be true, I'll take
the ginerous side, an' I won't believe it; he's a screw, I know, an' a
skinflint, an'--whisht! here he is."

"Toal Finnigan, how are you?" said Art; "I was goin' to say how is every
tether length of you, only that I think it would be impossible to get a
tether short enough to measure you."

"Ha, ha, ha, that's right good--divil a man livin' makes me laugh so
much as--why then, Frank Maguire too!--throth, Frank, I'm proud to see
you well--an' how are you, man? and--well, in throth I am happy to see
you lookin' so well, and in good health; an' whisper, Frank, it's your
own fau't that I'm not inquirin' for the wife and childre."

"An' I can return the compliment, Toal; it's a shame for both of us to
be bachelors at this time o' day."

"Ah," said the little fellow, "I wasn't Frank Maguire, one of the best
lookin' boys in the barony, an' the most respected, an' why not? Well,
divil a thing afther all like the ould blood, an' if I wanted a pure
dhrop of that same, maybe I don't know where to go to look for it--maybe
I don't, I say!"

"It's Toal's fault that he wasn't married many a year ago," said Art;
"he refused more wives, Frank, than e'er a boy of his years from this to
Jinglety cooeh--divil a lie in it; sure he'll tell you himself."

Now, as Toal is to appear occasionally, and to be alluded to from time
to time in this narrative, we shall give the reader a short sketch or
outline of his physical appearance and moral character. In three words,
then, he had all his father's vices multiplied tenfold, and not one of
his good qualities, such as they were; his hair was of that nondescript
color which partakes at once of the red, the fair, and the auburn; it
was a bad dirty dun, but harmonized with his complexion to a miracle.
That complexion, indeed, was no common one; as we said, it was one
of those which, no matter how frequently it might have been scrubbed,
always presented the undeniable evidences of dirt so thorougly ingrained
into the pores of the skin, that no process could remove it, short
of flaying him alive. His vile, dingy dun bristles stood out in all
directions from his head, which was so shaped as to defy admeasurement;
the little rascal's body was equally ill-made, and as for his limbs,
we have already described them, as reaping-hooks of flesh and blood,
terminated by a pair of lark-heeled feet, as fla