ounty of Limerick, is still
continued, notwithstanding the exertions of the neighbouring Catholic
priesthood, which have diminished, but not abolished it.]

Owney, being sensible that they were all gone, came from his
hiding-place, and knowing the road to Barrygowen well, he set off, and
groped his way out, and shortly knew, by the rolling of the waves,[12]
coming in from the point of Foynes, that he was near the place. He
got to the well, and making a round like a good Christian, rubbed his
eyes with the well-water, and looking up, saw day dawning in the east.
Giving thanks, he jumped up on his feet, and you may say that
Owney-na-peak was much astonished on opening the door of the forge to
find him there, his eyes as well or better than ever, and his face as
merry as a dance.

[Footnote 12: Of the Shannon.]

'Well, cousin,' said Owney, smiling, 'you have done me the greatest
service that one man can do another; you put me in the way of getting
two pieces of gold,' said he, showing two he had taken from his
hiding-place. 'If you could only bear the pain of suffering me just to
put out your eyes, and lay you in the same place as you laid me, who
knows what luck you'd have?'

'No, there's no occasion for putting out eyes at all, but could not
you lay me, just as I am, to-night, in that place, and let me try my
own fortune, if it be a thing you tell thruth; and what else could
put the eyes in your head, after I burning them out with the irons?'

'You'll know all that in time,' says Owney, stopping him in his
speech, for just at that minute, casting his eye towards the hob, he
saw the cat sitting upon it, and looking very hard at him. So he made
a sign to Owney-na-peak to be silent, or talk of something else; at
which the cat turned away her eyes, and began washing her face, quite
simple, with her two paws, looking now and then sideways into Owney's
face, just like a Christian. By and by, when she had walked out of the
forge, he shut the door after her, and finished what he was going to
say, which made Owney-na-peak still more anxious than before to be
placed under the tombstone. Owney agreed to it very readily, and just
as they were done speaking, cast a glance towards the forge window,
where he saw the imp of a cat, just with her nose and one eye peeping
in through a broken pane. He said nothing, however, but prepared to
carry his cousin to the place; where, towards nightfall, he laid him
as he had been laid himself