d a poor baste of
a villain, that I never turn my tongue on, barrin' to tell him the kind
of a man he is, the blaguard!"

"You're betther than you desarve to be!"

To this, Sheelah made no further reply; on the contrary, she sat
smoking her pipe with a significant silence, that was only broken by an
occasional groan, an ejaculation, or a singularly devout upturning
of the eyes to heaven, accompanied by a shake of the head, at once
condemnatory and philosophical; indicative of her dissent from what he
said, as well as of her patience in bearing it.

Larry, however, usually proceeded to combat all her gestures by viva
voce argument; for every shake of her head he had an appropriate answer:
but without being able to move her from the obstinate silence she
maintained. Having thus the field to himself, and feeling rather annoyed
by the want of an antagonist, he argued on in the same form of dispute,
whilst she, after first calming her own spirit by the composing effects
of the pipe, usually cut him short with--

"Here, take a blast o' this, maybe it'll settle you."

This was received in silence. The good man smoked on, and every puff
appeared, as an evaporation of his anger. In due time he was as placid
as herself, drew his breath in a grave composed manner, laid his pipe
quietly on the hob, and went about his business as if nothing had
occurred between them.

These bickerings were strictly private, with the exception of some
disclosures made to Sheelah's mother and sisters. Even these were
thrown out rather as insinuations that all was not right, than as direct
assertions that they lived unhappily. Before strangers they were perfect
turtles.

Larry, according to the notices of his life furnished by Sheelah, was
"as good a husband as ever broke the world's bread;" and Sheelah "was
as good a poor man's wife as ever threw a gown over her shoulders."
Notwithstanding all this caution, their little quarrels took wind; their
unhappiness became known. Larry, in consequence of a failing he had, was
the cause of this. He happened to be one of those men who can conceal
nothing when in a state of intoxication. Whenever he indulged in
liquor too freely, the veil which discretion had drawn over their
recriminations was put aside, and a dolorous history of their
weaknesses, doubts, hopes, and wishes, most unscrupulously given to
every person on whom the complainant could fasten. When sober, he had no
recollection of this, so that