m
cordially by the hand, welcomed him among them. To the kindness of
this reception, however, Mat was wholly insensible, having been for the
greater part of the journey in a profound sleep. The boys now slipped
the loop of the sack off the straddle-pin; and, carrying Mat into a
farmer's house, they deposited him in a settle-bed, where he slept
unconscious of the journey he had performed, until breakfast-time on the
next morning. In the mean time, the wife and children were taken care of
by Mrs. Connell, who provided them with a bed, and every other comfort
which they could require.

The next morning, when Mat awoke, his first call was for a drink. I
should have here observed, that Mrs. Kavanagh had been sent for by the
good woman in whose house Mat had slept, that they might all breakfast
and have a drop together, for they had already succeeded in reconciling
her to the change. "Wather!" said Mat--"a drink of wather, if it's to
be had for love or money, or I'll split wid druth--I'm all in a state
of conflagration; and my head--by the sowl of Newton, the inventor of
fluxions, but my head is a complete illucidation of the centrifugal
motion, so it is. Tundher-an'-turf! is there no wather to be had? Nancy,
I say, for God's sake, quicken yourself with the hydraulics, or the best
mathematician in Ireland's gone to the abode of Euclid and Pythagoras,
that first invented the multiplication table."

On cooling his burning blood with the "hydraulics," he again lay down
with the intention of composing himself for another sleep; but his eye
having noticed the novelty of his situation, he once more called Nancy.

"Nancy avourneen," he inquired, "will you be afther resolving me one
single proposition.--Where am I at the present spaking? Is it in the
Siminary at home, Nancy?" Nancy, in the mean time, had been desired to
answer in the affirmative, hoping that if his mind was made easy on that
point, he might refresh himself by another hour or two's sleep, as
he appeared to be not at all free from the effects of his previous
intoxication.

"Why, Mat, jewel, where else could you be, alannah, but at home? Sure
isn't here Jack, an' Biddy, an' myself, Mat, agra, along wid me. Your
head isn't well, but all you want is a good rousin' sleep."

"Very well, Nancy; very well, that's enough--quite satisfactory--quod
erat demonstrandum. May all kinds of bad luck rest upon the Findramore
boys, any way! The unlucky vagabonds--I'm the third they