er a pipe and its full of tobacky
about her,--or, failin' that, if she'd hoppen to have a knife in her
pocket, till I cut out the ould divil Jeff on the gallows, and give him
what he'd git, if we iver put our hands on him."

"A knife," repeated Drake, starting from his abstraction, and fumbling
in his pocket, from which he drew an old bit of iron. "I am not the
queen of the fairies; but with this you can hang Jeff and his cabinet in
effigy, if you choose, and can find the material to carve."

"Arrah, and that's aisy, wid illigant bones like these, that chips off
like marble or wud itself; but I'm misdoubtin' I'm robbin' ye, Musther
Talcott."

"I have another," said Drake, producing it; and as he did so, there
breathed upon him, like a breeze from home, a recollection of the dim
light shining in an old library down on a broad-leaved volume resting on
a carved rack,--of a brown-tressed girl who stood with him before it,
her head just at his shoulder, looking at the cathedral on its page,--of
the chance touch of a little hand on his,--of the brush of a perfumed
sleeve,--of the flitting color in her clear cheek,--of a subtile magic,
interweaving blush, perfume, picture, and thought of Alice. Dainty
pinnacle and massive arch and carved buttress were photographed on his
brain, and arch and pinnacle and buttress could be notched out in bone
by his poor skill,--and if he died, some kindly comrade should carry it
to Alice, and it should tell her what he had left unsaid,--and if he
lived, he would take it to her himself, and it should serve him for the
text of his story. That the carving of a design so intricate, on so
minute a scale, must prove tedious argued in its favor; and putting off
mourning weeds for his history, he took to this new love with a
complacency that excited Corny's special admiration.

"Sure, and it's a beautiful thing is religion; and the Divil fly away
wid me, if I don't be afther gittin' it meself! Here's Musther Talcott:
if he was fur carving a fort or a big gun, the eyes and the face of him
would be little but scowls and puckers; and there he sits, though it's
only the dumb likeness of a church that he's at, by the same token that
it's no bigger than me thumb, and, by the howly piper, you'd think the
light that flings away from the big colored windy down the church was
stramin' in his face, he looks so paceful-like; and he no betther than a
heretic nayther, though he's the heart of a good Catholic, as