deny it,--the horrible imprecation I had heard uttered against
me seemed to fill up the cup of my misery. An outcast, without home,
without a friend, this alone was wanting to overwhelm me with very
wretchedness; and as I covered my face with both hands, I thought my
heart would break.

"Come, come. Master Tom!" said Darby, "don't be afeard; it'll never do
you harm, all she said. I made the sign of the cross on the road between
you and her with the end of my stick, and you 're safe enough this time.
Faix, she 's a quare divil when she 's roused,--to destroy an illigint
pot of praties that way! But sure she had hard provocation. Well, well!
you war n't to blame, anyhow; Tony Basset will have a sore reckoning
some day for all this."

The mention of that name recalled me in a moment to the consideration
of my own danger if he were to succeed in overtaking me, and I eagerly
communicated my fear to Darby.

"That's thrue," said he; "we must leave the highroad, for Basset will be
up at the house by this, and will lose no time in following you out. If
you had a bit of something to eat."

"As to that. Darby," said I, with a sickly effort to smile, "Peg's curse
took away my appetite, full as well as her potatoes would have done."

"'T is a bad way to breakfast, after all," said Darby. "Do you ever take
a shaugh of the pipe, Master Tom?"

"No," said I, laughing, "I never learned to smoke yet."

"Well," replied he, a little piqued by the tone of my answer, "'t is
worse you might be doin' than that same. Tobacco's a fine thing for the
heart! Many's the time, when I 'm alone, if I had n't the pipe I 'd be
lone and sorrowful,--thinking over the hard times and the like; but when
I 've filled my dudeen, and do be watching the smoke curling up, I begin
dhraming about sitting round the fire with pleasant companions, chatting
away, and discoorsing, and telling stories. And then I invint the
stories to myself about quare devils of pipers travelling over the
country, making love here and there, and playing dhroll tunes out of
their own heads; and then I make the tunes to them. And after that,
maybe, I make words, and sometimes lay down the pipe and begin singing
to myself; and often I take up the bagpipes and play away with all my
might, till I think I see the darlingest little fairies ever you seen
dancing before me, setting to one another, and turning round, and
capering away,--down the middle and up again; small chaps, with
three-