, because it
is a fearful wild place, without any house near it but my father's own;
and that's where I live when at home."

"And your father is a farmer, I suppose?"

"You may say that; and it is a farmer I should have been, like my brother
Denis, had not my uncle Phelim, the thief! tould my father to send me to
school, to learn Greek letters, that I might be made a saggart of and
sent to Paris and Salamanca."

"And you would rather be a farmer than a priest?"

"You may say that! for, were I a farmer, like the rest, I should have
something to do, like the rest, something that I cared for, and I should
come home tired at night and fall asleep, as the rest do, before the
fire; but when I comes home at night I am not tired, for I have been
doing nothing all day that I care for; and then I sits down and stares
about me, and at the fire, till I become frighted; and then I shouts to
my brother Denis, or to the gasoons, 'Get up, I say, and let's be doing
something; tell us a tale of Finn-ma-Coul, and how he lay down in the
Shannon's bed and let the river flow down his jaws!' Arrah, Shorsha, I
wish you would come and stay with us, and tell us some o' your sweet
stories of your ownself and the snake ye carried about wid ye. Faith,
Shorsha dear! that snake bates anything about Finn-ma-Coul or Brian
Boroo, the thieves two, bad luck to them!"

"And do they get up and tell you stories?"

"Sometimes they does, but oftenmost they curses me and bids me be quiet!
But I can't be quiet, either before the fire or abed; so I runs out of
the house, and stares at the rocks, at the trees, and sometimes at the
clouds, as they run a race across the bright moon; and the more I stares,
the more frighted I grows, till I screeches and holloas. And last night
I went into the barn and hid my face in the straw; and there, as I lay
and shivered in the straw, I heard a voice above my head singing out 'To
whit, to whoo!' and then up I starts and runs into the house, and falls
over my brother Denis, as he lies at the fire. 'What's that for?' says
he. 'Get up, you thief!' says I, 'and be helping me. I have been out in
the barn, and an owl has crow'd at me!'"

"And what has this to do with playing cards?"

"Little enough, Shorsha dear!--If there were card-playing, I should not
be frighted."

"And why do you not play at cards?"

"Did I not tell you that the thief, my uncle Phelim, stole away the pack?
If we had the pack, my brother Denis an