the woman resumed--

"Well, he tried that same too, your honour, and if he did, by my sowl,
it was worse for him, for when he seen the slates going off every minit
with the wind, he put the harrow on the top--"

"The harrow--put the harrow on the roof?"

"Just so--wasn't it natural? But as sure as the wind riz, down came the
harrow, and stript every dirty kippeen of a slate away with it."

"So the roof is off," said Sir Marmaduke with stifled rage.

"Tis as clean as my five fingers, the same rafters," said she with
unmoved gravity.

"This is too bad--Wylie, do you hear this?" said the old gentleman, with
a face dark with passion.

"Aye," chorused in some half dozen friends of the woman--"nothing stands
the wind like the thatch."

Wylie whispered some words to his master, and by a side gesture,
motioned to the woman to take her departure. The hint was at once taken,
and her place immediately filled by another. This was a short little
old fellow, in yellow rags, his face concealed by a handkerchief,
on removing which, he discovered a countenance that bore no earthly
resemblance to that of a human being: the eyes were entirely concealed
by swollen masses of cheek and eye-lid--the nose might have been eight
noses--and the round immense lips, and the small aperture between,
looked like the opening in a ballot-box.

"Who is this?--what's the matter here?" said Sir Marmaduke, as he stared
in mingled horror and astonishment at the object before him.

"Faix, ye may well ax," said the little man, in a thick guttural voice.
"Sorra one of the neighbours knew me this morning. I'm Tim M'Garrey, of
the cross-roads."

"What has happened to you then?" asked Sir Marmaduke, somewhat ruffled
by the sturdy tone of the ragged fellow's address.

"'Tis your own doing, then--divil a less--you may be proud of your
work."

"My doing!--how do you dare to say so?"

"'Tis no darin' at all--'tis thrue, as I'm here. Them bloody beehives
you made me take home wid me, I put them in a corner of the house, and
by bad luck it was the pig's corner, and, sorra bit, but she rooted them
out, and upset them, and with that, the varmint fell upon us all, and
it was two hours before we killed them--divil such a fight ever ye seen:
Peggy had the beetle, and I the griddle, for flattening them agin the
wall, and maybe we didn't work hard, while the childer was roarin' and
bawlin' for the bare life."

"Gracious mercy, would this be credited?--could