ver them at a half bend, clapping their hands, and praising
them, as far as they could say anything good of them; and indeed, the
craythurs, they were never any one's enemy but their own, so that nobody
could say an ill word of either of them. Bad luck to it for potteen-work
every day it rises! only for it, that couple's poor orphans wouldn't be
left without father or mother as they were; nor poor Hurrish go the gray
gate he did, if he had his father living, may be; but having nobody
to bridle him in, he took to horse riding for the squire, and then to
staling them for himself. He was hanged afterwards, along with Peter
Doraghy Crolly, that shot Ned Wilson's uncle of the Black Hills.

"After the first keening, the friends and neighbors took their sates
about the corpse. In a short time, whiskey, pipes, snuff, and tobacco
came, and every one about the place got a glass and a fresh pipe. Tom,
when he held his glass in his hand, looking at his dead brother, filled
up to the eyes, and couldn't for some time get out a word; at last,
when he was able to spake--'Poor Larry,'says he, 'you're lying there low
before me, and many a happy day we spint with one another. When we were
childher,' said he, turning to the rest, 'we were never asunder; he was
oulder nor me by two years, and can I ever forget the leathering he gave
Dick Rafferty long ago, for hitting me with the rotten egg--although
Dick was a great dale bigger than either of us. God knows, although you
didn't thrive in life, either of you, as you might and could have done,
there wasn't a more neighborly or friendly couple in the parish they
lived in; and now, God help them both, and their poor orphans over them!
Larry, acushla, your health, and Sally, yours; and may God Almighty have
marcy on both your sowls.'

"After this, the neighbors began to flock in more generally. When any
relation of the corpses would come, as soon, you see, as they'd get
inside the door, whether man or woman, they'd raise the shout of a
keena, and all the people about the dead would begin along with them,
stooping over them and clapping their hands as before.

"Well, I said, it's it that was the merry wake, and that was only the
thruth, neighbors. As soon as night came, all the young boys and girls
from the countryside about them flocked to it in scores. In a short
time the house was crowded; and maybe there wasn't laughing, and
story-telling, and singing, and smoking, and drinking, and crying--