hink there's a dangerous kick in the boy
that jist left us; and I'm much mistaken or the world will hear of it
an' know it yet."

"Well, well," said Donnel Dhu, in a very Christian-like spirit, "I fear
you're right, Jerry; but still let us hope for the best."

And as he spoke, they entered the house.

CHAPTER III. -- A Family on the Decline--Omens.

Jerry Sullivan's house and place had about them all the marks and tokens
of gradual decline. The thatch on the roof had begun to get black, and
in some places was sinking into rotten ridges; the yard was untidy and
dirty; the walls and hedges were broken and dismantled; and the gates
were lying about, or swinging upon single hinges. The whole air of the
premises was uncomfortable to the spectator, who could not avoid feeling
that there existed in the owner either wilful neglect or unsuccessful
struggle. The chimneys, from which the thatch had sank down, stood
up with the incrustations of lime that had been trowelled round their
bases, projecting uselessly out from them; some of the quoins had fallen
from the gable; the plaster came off the walls in several places, and
the whitewash was sadly discolored.

Inside, the aspect of everything was fully as bad, if not worse.
Tables and chairs, and the general furniture of the house, had all that
character of actual cleanliness and apparent want of care which poverty
superinduces upon the most strenuous efforts of industry. The floor
was beginning to break up into holes; tables and chairs were crazy; the
dresser, though clean, had a cold, hungry, unfurnished look; and, what
was unquestionably the worst symptom of all, the inside of the chimney
brace, where formerly the sides and flitches of deep, fat bacon, grey
with salt, were arrayed in goodly rows, now presented nothing but the
bare and dust-covered hooks, from which they had depended in happier
times. About a dozen of herrings hung at one side of a worn salt-box,
and at the other a string of onions that was nearly Stripped, both
constituting the principal kitchen, varied, perhaps, with a little
buttermilk,--which Sullivan's family were then able to afford themselves
with their potatoes.

We cannot close our description here, however; for sorry we are to
say, that the severe traces of poverty were as visible upon the inmates
themselves as upon the house and its furniture. Sullivan's family
consisted of his eldest daughter, aged nineteen, two growing boys, the
eldes