nterpreted to him by some second person, "I
was bringin' the books, thinkin' the lad might use them--he's young
enough. But I'm not come to stop on you," he added, speaking faster,
"on'y just for this night. Early to-morra I must be off to Ardnacreagh,
and try for the taichin' there again. 'Twas on'y on account of bringin'
the books I came this way. I'll be on the road quite early."

His insistence on this point made, somehow, a very melancholy
impression on Felix; but he replied jovially: "Is it to-morra? Bedad
then, sir, don't you wish you may slip off on us that soon, and we after
gettin' a hould of you agin? What fools we are. Not if you was as
slithery, ivery inch of you, as a wather-eel."

The wraith of a relieved smile at this came over Mr. Polymathers's face;
still it looked so grey and withered, and his eyes were so sunken, and
his large, bony hands so shaky, that all with one consent refrained from
questions which they were agog to ask; and when Mrs. Keogh by and by
dropped in, and being an inquisitive and not very quick-witted person,
said, "Saints among us--it's Mr. Polymathers. And how's yourself, sir?
And are you bringing home the grand Degree?" though they all listened
eagerly for the reply, they wished she had held her tongue.

"The divil a Degree, ma'am," said Mr. Polymathers, "and niver will."

There was a short silence, and then he turned round on his stool--it was
the same from which he had made his boast in the summer sunset, but Dan
had meanwhile mended its broken leg with the handle of a worn-bladed
spade. "I've given up," he said to them. "I no longer entertain the
project of becomin' a graduate, or for the matter of that an
undergraduate of Dublin University; and if I'd done right, I'd niver
have taken up such an idea. I've put it out of me head. But it's been in
me mind a great while--a terrible long while."

"Look you here, Mr. Polymathers, sir, are you after gittin' any bad
thratment from any people up in thim places?" said Felix, who always
liked better to lay a grievance on some human and possibly breakable
head than to believe it the work of the vengeance-baffling demon
bad-luck.

"Not at all, not at all," said Mr. Polymathers, when the question
reached him. "I've nothin' to complain of. They're very respectable
people in Dublin, and it's a fine city. But me head's a bit giddy yet
wid the drivin' they have in the streets, that makes one stupid. I mind
there was a car tatterin' along,