" inquired the second stranger, "testimonials from your parish
priest?"

"I had, sir: they are in the hands of Mr. O'Brien. I also had a
character from my father's landlord."

"But how," asked the other, "have you existed here during your illness?
Have you been long sick?"

"Indeed I can't tell you, sir, for I don't know how the time passed
at all; but I know, sir, that there were always two or three people
attendin' me. They sent me whatever they thought I wanted, upon a shovel
or a pitchfork, across the ditch, because they were afraid to come near
me."

During the early part of the dialogue, two or three old hats, or
caubeens, might have been seen moving steadily over from the wigwam
to the ditch which ran beside the shed occupied by M'Evoy. Here they
remained stationary, for those who wore them were now within hearing of
the conversation, and ready to give their convalescent patient a good
word, should it be necessary.

"How were you supplied with drink and medicine?" asked the younger
stranger.

"As I've just told you, sir," replied Jemmy; "the neighbors here let me
want for nothing that they had. They kept me in more whey than I could
use; and they got me medicine, too, some way or other. But indeed, sir,
during a great part of the time I was ill, I can't say how they attended
me: I wasn't insinsible, sir, of what was goin' on about me."

One of those who lay behind the ditch now arose, and after a few hems
and scratchings of the head, ventured to join in the conversation.

"Pray have you, my man," said the elder of the two, "been acquainted
with the circumstances of this boy's illness?"

"Is it the poor scholar, my Lord?* Oh thin bedad it's myself that has
that. The poor crathur was in a terrible way all out, so he was. He
caught the faver in the school beyant, one day, an' was turned out by
the nager o' the world that he was larnin' from."

* The peasantry always address a Roman Catholic Bishop
as "My Lord."

"Are you one of the persons who attended him?"

"Och, och, the crathar! what could unsignified people like us do for
him, barrin' a thrifle? Any how, my Lord, it's the meracle o' the world
that he was ever able to over it at all. Why, sir, good luck to the one
of him but suffered as much, wid the help o' God, as 'ud overcome fifty
men!"

"How did you provide him with drink at such a distance from any human
habitation?"

"Throth, hard enough we found it, sir, to do that same: but