ld never
gave them credit for any consciousness of separate identity. These were
the postillions of the travelling carriage, which having left at its
destination, about two miles distant, they were now regaling themselves
at Mary's, where the horses were to rest for the night.

"Faix, ma'am, and it's driving ye may call it," said one of the pair,
as he sipped a very smoking compound the hostess had just mixed, "a
hard gallop every step of the way, barrin' the bit of a hill at
Carrignacurra."

"Well, I hope ye had the decent hansel for it, any how, Jim?"

"I'm Joe, ma'am, av its plazing to ye; Jim is the pole-end boy; he rides
the layders. And it's true for ye--they behaved dacent."

"A goold guinea, divil a less"--said the other, "there's no use in
denying it. Begorra, it was all natural, them's as rich as Crasis; sure
didn't I see the young lady herself throwing out the tenpenny bits to
the gossoons, as we went by, as if it was dirt; bad luck to me, but I
was going to throw down the Bishop of Cloyne."

"Throw down who?" said the hostess.

"The near wheeler, ma'am; he's a broken-kneed ould divil, we bought from
the bishop, and called him after him; and as I was saying, I was going
to cross them on the pole, and get a fall, just to have a scramble for
the money, with the gaffers."

"'They look so poor,' says she. God help her--it's little poverty she
saw--there isn't one of them crayters hasn't a sack of potatoes."

"Ay--more of them a pig."

"And hens," chimed in the first speaker, with a horror at the imposition
of people so comfortably endowed, affecting to feel any pressure or
poverty.

"And what's bringing them here at all?" said Mrs. M'Kelly, with a voice
of some asperity; for she foresaw no pleasant future in the fact of a
resident great man, who would not be likely to give any encouragement to
the branch of traffic her principal customers followed.

"Sorrow one of me knows," was the safe reply of the individual
addressed, who not being prepared with any view of the matter, save that
founded on the great benefit to the country, preferred this answer to a
more decisive one.

"'Tis to improve the property, they say," interposed the other, who was
not equally endowed with caution. "To look after the estate himself he
has come."

"Improve, indeed!" echoed the hostess. "Much we want their improving!
Why didn't they leave us the ould families of the country? It's little
we used to hear of improving, whe