let the river flow down his jaws!' Arrah, Shorsha, I
wish you would come and stay with us, and tell us some o' your sweet
stories of your ownself and the snake ye carried about wid ye. Faith,
Shorsha dear! that snake bates anything about Finn-ma-Coul or Brian
Boroo, the thieves two, bad luck to them!"

"And do they get up and tell you stories?"

"Sometimes they does, but oftenmost they curses me, and bids me be quiet!
But I can't be quiet, either before the fire or abed; so I runs out of
the house, and stares at the rocks, at the trees, and sometimes at the
clouds, as they run a race across the bright moon; and, the more I
stares, the more frighted I grows, till I screeches and holloas. And
last night I went into the barn, and hid my face in the straw; and there,
as I lay and shivered in the straw, I heard a voice above my head singing
out 'To whit, to whoo!' and then up I starts, and runs into the house,
and falls over my brother Denis, as he lies at the fire. 'What's that
for?' says he. 'Get up, you thief!' says I, 'and be helping me. I have
been out in the barn, and an owl has crow'd at me!'"

"And what has this to do with playing cards?"

"Little enough, Shorsha dear!--If there were card-playing, I should not
be frighted."

"And why do you not play at cards?"

"Did I not tell you that the thief, my uncle Phelim, stole away the pack?
If we had the pack, my brother Denis and the gasoons would be ready
enough to get up from their sleep before the fire, and play cards with me
for ha'pence, or eggs, or nothing at all; but the pack is gone--bad luck
to the thief who took it!"

"And why don't you buy another?"

"Is it of buying you are speaking? And where am I to get the money?"

"Ah! that's another thing!"

"Faith it is, honey!--And now the Christmas holidays is coming, when I
shall be at home by day as well as night, and then what am I to do?
Since I have been a saggarting, I have been good for nothing at
all--neither for work nor Greek--only to play cards! Faith, it's going
mad I will be!"

"I say, Murtagh!"

"Yes, Shorsha dear!"

"I have a pack of cards."

"You don't say so, Shorsha ma vourneen?--you don't say that you have
cards fifty-two?"

"I do, though; and they are quite new--never been once used."

"And you'll be lending them to me, I'll warrant?"

"Don't think it!--But I'll sell them to you, joy, if you like."

"Hanam mon Dioul! am I not after telling you that I have no money at
a