ll, Dan,' says he; 'you can catch fast hold of the
reaping-hook that's sticking out of the side of the moon, and 'twill
keep you up.' 'I won't, then,' said I. 'Maybe not,' said he, quite
quiet. 'If you don't, my man, I shall just give you a shake, and one
slap of my wing, and send you down to the ground, where every bone in
your body will be smashed as small as a drop of dew on a cabbage-leaf
in the morning.' 'Why, then, I'm in a fine way,' said I to myself, 'ever
to have come along with the likes of you'; and so, giving him a hearty
curse in Irish, for fear he'd know what I said, I got off his back with
a heavy heart, took hold of the reaping-hook and sat down upon the moon,
and a mighty cold seat it was, I can tell you that.

"When he had me there fairly landed, he turned about on me, and said,
'Good morning to you, Daniel O'Rourke,' said he; 'I think I've nicked
you fairly now. You robbed my nest last year' ('twas true enough for
him, but how he found it out is hard enough to say), 'and in return you
are freely welcome to cool your heels dangling upon the moon like a
cockthrow.'

"'Is that all, and is this how you leave me, you brute, you,' says I.
'You ugly unnatural _baste_, and is this the way you serve me at last?
Bad luck to yourself, with your hook'd nose, and to all your breed, you
blackguard.' 'Twas all to no manner of use; he spread out his great big
wings, burst out a laughing, and flew away like lightning. I bawled
after him to stop; but I might have called and bawled for ever, without
his minding me. Away he went, and I never saw him from that day to
this--sorrow fly away with him! You may be sure I was in a disconsolate
condition, and kept roaring out for the bare grief, when all at once a
door opened right in the middle of the moon, creaking on its hinges as
if it had not been opened for a month before--I suppose they never
thought of greasing them--and out there walks--who do you think but the
man in the moon himself? I knew him by his bush.

"'Good morrow to you, Daniel O'Rourke,' says he, 'how do you do?' 'Very
well, thank your honour,' says I. 'I hope your honour's well.' 'What
brought you here, Dan?' said he. So I told him how I was a little
overtaken in liquor at the master's, and how I was cast on a _dissolute_
island, and how I lost my way in the bog, and the thief of an eagle
promised to fly me out of it, and how, instead of that, he had fled me
up to the moon.

"'Dan,' said the man in the