ticle.
Here, boy, here are twenty pieces for it, and give it to my servant.'

'Give it to mine,' cried another lord of the party, 'and here's my
purse, where you will find ten more. And if any man offers another
fraction for it to outbid that, I'll spit him on my sword like a
snipe.'

'I outbid him,' said a fair young lady in a veil, by his side,
flinging twenty golden pieces more on the ground.

There was no voice to outbid the lady, and young Owney, kneeling, gave
the cup into her hands.

'Fifty gold pieces for a china cup,' said Owney to himself, as he
plodded on home, 'that was not worth two! Ah! mother, you knew that
vanity had an open hand.'

But as he drew near home he determined to hide his money somewhere,
knowing, as he well did, that his cousin would not leave him a single
cross to bless himself with. So he dug a little pit, and buried all
but two pieces, which he brought to the house. His cousin, knowing the
business on which he had gone, laughed heartily when he saw him enter,
and asked him what luck he had got with his punch-bowl.

'Not so bad, neither,' says Owney. 'Two pieces of gold is not a bad
price for an article of old china.'

'Two gold pieces, Owney, honey! Erra, let us see 'em, maybe you
would?' He took the cash from Owney's hand, and after opening his eyes
in great astonishment at the sight of so much money, he put them into
his pocket.

'Well, Owney, I'll keep them safe for you, in my pocket within. But
tell us, maybe you would, how come you to get such a _mort_ o' money
for an old cup o' painted chaney, that wasn't worth, maybe, a fi'penny
bit?'

'To get into the heart o' the fair, then, free and easy, and to look
about me, and to cry old china, and the first man that _come_ up, he
to ask me, what is it I'd be asking for the cup, and I to say out
bold: "A hundred pieces of gold," and he to laugh hearty, and we to
huxter together till he beat me down to two, and there's the whole way
of it all.'

Owney-na-peak made as if he took no note of this, but next morning
early he took an old china saucer himself had in his cupboard, and off
he set, without saying a word to anybody, to the fair. You may easily
imagine that it created no small surprise in the place when they heard
a great big fellow with a china saucer in his hand crying out: 'A raal
_chaney_ saucer going for a hundred pieces of goold! raal
chaney--who'll be buying?'

'Erra, what's that you're saying, you great gomeril?' s