cornered hats, and wigs, and little red coats all slashed with
goold; and beautiful little craytures houlding their petticoats,
this way to show a nate leg and foot; and I do be calling out to
them,--'Hands round!' 'That 's your sowl!' 'Look at the green fellow;
'tis himself can do it!' 'Rise the jig, hoo!'--and faix 't is sorry
enough I 'm when they go, and lave me all alone by myself."

"And how does all that come into your head. Darby?" "Troth, 'tis hard
to tell," said Darby, with a sigh. "But my notion is, that the poor man
that has neither fine houses, nor fine clothes, nor horses, nor sarvants
to amuse him, that Providence is kind to him in another way, and fills
his mind with all manner of dhroll thoughts and quare stories and bits
of songs, and the like, and lets him into many a sacret about fairies
and the good people that the rich has no time for. And sure you must
have often remarked it, that the quality has never a bit of fun in
them at all, but does be always coming to us for something to make them
laugh. Did you never lave the parlor, when the company was sitting with
lashings of wine and fruit, and every convaniency, and go downstairs to
the kitchen, where maybe there was nothing but a salt herrin' and a jug
of punch; and if you did, where wais the most fun, I wondher? Arrah,
when they bid me play a tune for them, and I look at their sorrowful
pale faces, and their dim eyes and the stiff way they sit upon their
chairs, I never put heart in it; but when I rise 'Dirty James,' or 'The
Little Bould Fox,' or 'Kiss my Lady,' for the boys and girls, sure 't is
my whole sowl does be in the bag, and I squeeze the notes out of it with
all my might."

In this way did Darby converse until we reached a cross road, when,
coming to a halt, he pointed with his finger to the distance, and
said,--

"Athlone is down beyond that low mountain. Now, Ned Malone's is only six
short miles from this. You keep this byroad till you reach the smith's
forge; then turn off to the lift, across the fields, till you come to an
ould ruin; lave that to your right hand, and follow the boreen straight;
'twill bring you to Ned's doore."

"But I don't know him," said I.

"What signifies that? Sure 'tis no need you have. Tell him you 'll stop
there till Darby the Blast comes for you. And see, now, here 's all you
have to do: put your right thumb in the palm of your lift hand,--this
way,--and then kiss the other thumb, and then you have it.