a burn it made on him, no more nor if it was a good oak sapling.
"Thankee," says Tom; "now would you open the gate for a body and I'll
give you no more trouble." "Oh, tramp!" says Ould Nick, "is that the way?
It is easier getting inside them gates than getting out again. Take that
tool from him, and give him a dose of the oil of stirrup." So one fellow
put out his claws to seize on the flail, but Tom gave him such a welt of
it on the side of his head that he broke off one of his horns, and made
him roar like a divel as he was. Well, they rushed at Tom, but he gave
them, little and big, such a thrashing as they didn't forget for a
while. At last says the ould thief of all, rubbing his elbows, "Let the
fool out; and woe to whoever lets him in again, great or small."

So out marched Tom and away with him, without minding the shouting and
cursing they kept up at him from the tops of the walls. And when he got
home to the big bawn of the palace, there never was such running and
racing as to see himself and the flail. When he had his story told he
laid down the flail on the stone steps, and bid no one for their lives
to touch it. If the King and Queen and princess made much of him before
they made ten times as much of him now; but Redhead, the mean
scruff-hound, stole over, and thought to catch hold of the flail to make
an end of him. His fingers hardly touched it, when he let a roar out of
him as if heaven and earth were coming together, and kept flinging his
arms about and dancing that it was pitiful to look at him. Tom run at
him as soon as he could rise, caught his hands in his own two, and
rubbed them this way and that, and the burning pain left them before you
could reckon one. Well, the poor fellow, between the pain that was only
just gone, and the comfort he was in, had the comicalest face that ever
you see; it was such a mixerum-gatherum of laughing and crying. Everyone
burst out a laughing--the princess could not stop no more than the
rest--and then says Gilla, or Tom, "Now, ma'am, if there were fifty
halves of you I hope you'll give me them all." Well, the princess had no
mock modesty about her. She looked at her father, and, by my word, she
came over to Gilla and put her two delicate hands into his two rough
ones, and I wish it was myself was in his shoes that day!

Tom would not bring the flail into the palace. You may be sure no other
body went near it; and when the early risers were passing next morning
they fo