esterday--that's clean beyond me; and the reason, God help me, is
no great comfort to me after all--for it's just this: that when I do a hard
thing, whether distraining a creature out of his bit of ground, selling a
widow's pig, or fining a fellow for shooting a hare, I lose my appetite and
have no heart for my meals; and as sure as I go asleep, I dream of all the
misfortunes in life happening to me, and my guardian angel sitting laughing
all the while and saying to me, "Didn't you bring it on yourself, Mathew
Kearney? couldn't you bear a little rub without trying to make a calamity
of it? Must somebody be always punished when anything goes wrong in life?
Make up your mind to have six troubles every day of your life, and see how
jolly you'll be the day you can only count five, or maybe four."'

As Mr. Kearney sat brooding in this wise, Peter Gill made his entrance into
the study with the formidable monthly lists and accounts, whose examination
constituted a veritable doomsday to the unhappy master.

'Wouldn't next Saturday do, Peter?' asked Kearney, in a tone of almost
entreaty.

'I'm afther ye since Tuesday last, and I don't think I'll be able to go on
much longer.'

Now as Mr. Gill meant by this speech to imply that he was obliged to trust
entirely to his memory for all the details which would have been committed
to writing by others, and to a notched stick for the manifold dates of a
vast variety of events, it was not really a very unfair request he had made
for a peremptory hearing.

'I vow to the Lord,' sighed out Kearney, 'I believe I'm the hardest-worked
man in the three kingdoms.'

'Maybe you are,' muttered Gill, though certainly the concurrence scarcely
sounded hearty, while he meanwhile arranged the books.

'Oh, I know well enough what you mean. If a man doesn't work with a spade
or follow the plough, you won't believe that he works at all. He must
drive, or dig, or drain, or mow. There's no labour but what strains a man's
back, and makes him weary about the loins; but I'll tell you, Peter Gill,
that it's here'--and he touched his forehead with his finger--'it's here is
the real workshop. It's thinking and contriving; setting this against that;
doing one thing that another may happen, and guessing what will come if we
do this and don't do that; carrying everything in your brain, and, whether
you are sitting over a glass with a friend or taking a nap after dinner,
thinking away all the time! What would yo