ntly. "May you and them
never--oh, may you never--never suffer what we've suffered; nor know
what it is to want a male's mate, or a night's lodgin'!"

"Amin!" exclaimed Kathleen; "may the world flow upon you! for your good,
kind heart desarves it."

Farmer--"An' whisper; I wish you'd offer up a prayer for the rulin' o'
the tongue. The Lord might hear you, but there's no great hopes that
ever he'll hear me; though I've prayed for it almost ever since I was
married, night an' day, winther and summer; but no use, she's as bad as
ever."

This was said in a kind of friendly insinuating undertone to Owen; who,
on hearing it, simply nodded his head, but made no other reply.

They then recommenced their journey, after having once more blessed,
and been invited by their charitable entertainers, who made them promise
never to pass their house without stopping a night with them.

It is not our intention to trace Owen M'Carthy and his wife through
all the variety which a wandering pauper's life affords. He never could
reconcile himself to the habits of a mendicant. His honest pride and
integrity of heart raised him above it: neither did he sink into the
whine and cant of imposture, nor the slang of knavery. No; there was
a touch of manly sorrow about him, which neither time, nor familiarity
with his degraded mode of life, could take away from him. His usual
observation to his wife, and he never made it without a pang of intense
bitterness, was--"Kathleen, dar-lin', it's thrue we have enough to ate
an' to dhrink; but we have no home--no home!" to a man like him it was a
thought of surpassing bitterness, indeed.

"Ah! Kathleen," he would observe, "if we had but the poorest shed that
could be built, provided it was our own, wouldn't we be happy? The bread
we ate, avourneen, doesn't do us good. We don't work for it; it's the
bread of shame and idleness: and yet it's Owen M'Carthy that ates it!
But, avourneen, that's past; an' we'll never see our own home, or
our own hearth agin. That's what's cuttin' into my heart, Kathleen.
Never!--never!"

Many a trial, too, of another kind, was his patience called upon to
sustain; particularly from the wealthy and the more elevated in
life, when his inexperiences as a mendicant led him to solicit their
assistance.

"Begone, sirrah, off my grounds!" one would say. "Why don't you work,
you sturdy impostor," another would exclaim, "rather than stroll about
so lazily, training your brats to th