ss than a rare windfall to him and the
parson that was to marry them after him--bekase you persave a Protestant
and Catholic must be married by both, otherwise it does not hould good
in law. The parson was as grave as a mustard-pot, and Father Flannagan
called the bride and bridegroom his childher, which was a big bounce for
him to say the likes of, more betoken that neither of them was a drop's
blood to him.

"However, he pulled out the book, and was just beginning to buckle them
when in comes Jack's ould acquaintance, the smoking cur, as grave as
ever. The priest had just got through two or three words of Latin, when
the dog gives him a pluck by the sleeve; Father Flannagan, of coorse,
turned round to see who it was that _nudged_ him: 'Behave yourself,'
says the dog to him, just as he peeped over his shoulder---'behave
yourself,' says he; and with that he sat him down on his hunkers beside
the priest, and pulling a cigar instead of a pipe out of his pocket, he
put it in his mouth, and began to smoke for the bare life of him. And,
by my own word, it's he that could smoke: at times he would shoot the
smoke in a slender stream like a knitting-needle, with a round curl at
the one end of it, ever so far out of the right side of his mouth; then
he would shoot it out of the left, and sometimes make it swirl out so
beautiful from the middle of his lips!--why, then, it's he that must
have been the well-bred puppy all out, as far as smoking went. Father
Flannagan and they all were thundherstruck.

"'In the name of St. Anthony, and of that holy nun, St. Teresa,' said
his Reverence to him, 'who and what are you, at all at all?'

"'Never mind that,' says the dog, taking the cigar for a minute between
his claws; 'but if you wish particularly to know, I'm a thirty-second
cousin of your own by the mother's side.'

"'I command you in the name of all the saints,' says Father Flarmagan,
believing him to be the devil, 'to disappear from among us, and never
become visible to any one in this house again.'

"'The sorra a budge, at the present time, will I budge,' says the dog to
him, 'until I see all sides rightified, and the rogues disappointed.'

"Now one would be apt to think the appearance of a _spaking_ dog might
be after fright'ning the ladies; but doesn't all the world know that
_spaking_ puppies are their greatest favorites? Instead of that, you
see, there was half a dozen fierce-looking whiskered fellows, and three
or four ha