ad the Latin tongue and the Greek
letters, with a nice old clergyman, who sat behind a black oaken desk,
with a huge Elzevir Flaccus before him, in a long gloomy kind of hall,
with a broken stone floor, the roof festooned with cobwebs, the walls
considerably dilapidated, and covered over with strange figures and
hieroglyphics, evidently produced by the application of burnt stick; and
there I made acquaintance with the Protestant young gentlemen of the
place, who, with whatever _eclat_ they might appear at church on a
Sunday, did assuredly not exhibit to much advantage in the schoolroom on
the week days, either with respect to clothes or looks. And there I was
in the habit of sitting on a large stone, before the roaring fire in the
huge open chimney, and entertaining certain of the Protestant young
gentlemen of my own age, seated on similar stones, with extraordinary
accounts of my own adventures, and those of the corps, with an occasional
anecdote extracted from the story-books of Hickathrift and Wight Wallace,
pretending to be conning the lesson all the while.

And there I made acquaintance, notwithstanding the hint of the landlord,
with the Papist 'gossoons,' as they were called, the farmers' sons from
the country; and of these gossoons, of whom there were three, two might
be reckoned as nothing at all; in the third, however, I soon discovered
that there was something extraordinary.

He was about sixteen years old, and above six feet high, dressed in a
grey suit; the coat, from its size, appeared to have been made for him
some ten years before. He was remarkably narrow-chested and
round-shouldered, owing, perhaps as much to the tightness of his garment
as to the hand of nature. His face was long, and his complexion swarthy,
relieved, however, by certain freckles, with which the skin was
plentifully studded. He had strange wandering eyes, grey, and somewhat
unequal in size; they seldom rested on the book, but were generally
wandering about the room, from one object to another. Sometimes he would
fix them intently on the wall, and then suddenly starting, as if from a
reverie, he would commence making certain mysterious movements with his
thumbs and forefingers, as if he were shuffling something from him.

One morning, as he sat by himself on a bench, engaged in this manner, I
went up to him, and said, 'Good-day, Murtagh; you do not seem to have
much to do?'

'Faith, you may say that, Shorsha dear!--it is seldom