wine who were
poking at the fence, as if they longed for the sweet young cornstalks
within. Whence the reader may perceive that Mr. Wynn had become proprietor
of certain items of live stock, including sundry fowls, which were apt to
keep all parties in exhilarating exercise by their aggressions on the
garden.

'Musha, but 'tis very hot intirely,' soliloquized Andy, returning from
the aggravated stern-chase of the swine, and lifting his grass hat to
fan his flushed face. 'The sun don't know how to obsarve a madium at all
in this counthry, as our poor ould Irish sun does. We're aither freezin'
or fryin' the year round.' Hereupon, as reminded by the last-named
experience, he threw down his hoe, and went to settle the smouldering
fires in the fallow, where one or two isolated heaps of brush were
slowly consuming, while their bluish smoke curled up lazily in the still
air. 'It's quare to think of how lonesome I am this minnit,' continued
he, as he blackened himself in ministering to the heaps. 'Sorra livin'
sowl to spake to nearer than the captin's, barrin' the cow, an' the
pigs, an' thim savidges down at the swamp.'

Here he made an infuriate swing backwards of a bush, fortunately in
his hand; but it was against no Indian foe; on the contrary, his own
shoulders received the blow, and another to make sure; whereby an
individual enemy was pasted to the spot where its proboscis had
pierced shirt and skin, and half-a-dozen others saved themselves by
flight--being the dreaded black flies of Canada.

'Why, thin, ye murtherin' villins, will ye follow me into the smoke
itself?' said Andy, whirling his bush in the air to disperse their
squadrons. 'I thought ye wor satisfied wid most atin' us last week, an'
blindin' the young gintlemin, an' lavin' lumps on their faces as big as
hazel nuts. Betune yerselves an' the miss kitties, it's hard for a man
to do a sthroke of work, wid huntin' ye. Ay, ye may well moo, ye crathur
below in the meadow, that has only horns an' a tail to fight 'em. An'
sure, may be 'tain't the cow at all that's roarin', only one of them big
frogs that bellows out of the swamp, for all the world as if they was
bullocks.'

To settle the question, he walked away down to the beaver meadow, now
an expanse of the most delicious level green, and found that the cow
had protected herself against all winged adversaries by standing in
the creek up to her throat in the cool water, where she chewed the
cud tranquilly, and