a suit of clothes for him."

"Michael, will you rise up, sir, and make the gintleman a bow? he has
given you the price of a shoot of clothes, ma bouchal."

Michael came up with a very tattered coat hanging about him; and,
catching his forelock, bobbed down his head after the usual manner,
saying--"Musha yarrah, long life to your honor every day you rise, an'
the Lord grant your sowl a short stay in purgatory, wishin' ye, at the
same time, a happy death aftherwards!"

The gentleman could not stand this, but laughed so heartily that the
argument was fairly knocked up.

It appeared, however, that Squire Johnston did not visit Mat's school
from mere curiosity.

"Mr. Kavanagh," said he, "I would be glad to have a little private
conversation with you, and will thank you to walk down the road a little
with this gentleman and me."

When the gentlemen and Mat had gone ten or fifteen yards from the
school door, the Englishman heard himself congratulated in the following
phrases by the scholars:--

"How do you feel afther bein' sacked, gintleman? The masther sacked
you! You're a purty scholar! It's not you, Mr. Johnston, it's the other.
You'll come to argue agin, will you? Where's your head, Bah! Come back
till we put the _suggaun_* about your neck. Bah! You now must go to
school to Cambridge agin, before you can argue an Irisher! Look at the
figure he cuts! Why duv ye put the one foot past the other, when ye
walk, for? Bah! Dunce!"

* The suggaun was a collar of straw which was put round
the necks of the dunces, who were then placed at the
door, that their disgrace might be as public as
possible.

"Well, boys, never heed yez for that," shouted Mat; "never fear but I'll
castigate yez, ye spalpeen villains, as soon as I go back. Sir," said
Mat, "I supplicate upwards of fifty pardons. I assure you, sir,
I'll give them a most inordinate castigation, for their want of
respectability."

"What's the Greek for tobaccy?" they continued--"or for Larry O'Toole?
or for bletherum skite? How many beans makes five? What's the Latin
for poteen, and flummery? You a mathemathitician! could you measure a
snail's horn? How does your hat stay up and nothing undher it? Will you
fight Barny Parrel wid one hand tied! I'd lick you myself! What's Greek
for gosther?"--with many other expressions of a similar stamp.

"Sir," said Mat, "lave the justice of this in my hands. By the sowl of
Newton, your own counthryman, ould