e conviction I had long been labouring under,
but never could thoroughly appreciate, broke on me at the moment. It
was this: the sudden vicissitudes of everyday life in Ireland are sadly
unsuited to our English natures and habits of thought and action. These
changes from grave to gay, these outbreaks of high-souled enthusiasm
followed by dark, reflective traits of brooding thought, these noble
impulses of good, these events of more than tragic horror, demand a
changeful, even a forgetful temperament to bear them; and while the
Irishman rises or falls with every emergency of his fate, with us
impressions are eating deeper and deeper into our hearts, and we become
sad and thoughtful, and prematurely old. Thus at least did I feel, and
it seemed to me as though very many years had passed over me since I
left my father's house.

The tramp of feet and the sounds of speaking and laughter outside
interrupted my musings, and I heard my friend Joe carolling at the top
of his voice--

'Sir Pat bestrode a high-bred steed,
And the huntsman one that was broken-kneed,
And Father Pitz had a wiry weed
With his tally-high-ho in the morning.'

''Faith, and you're a great beast entirely; and one might dance a jig on
your back, and leave room for the piper besides.'

I opened the window, and in the bright moonlight beheld the party
leading up a short, rugged-looking pony, whose breadth of beam and
square proportions fully justified all Joe's encomiums.

'Have you bought this pony for me, Joe?' cried I. 'No, sir, only
borrowed him. He'll take you up to Wheley's mills, where we'll get
Andy's mare to-morrow morning.'

'Borrowed him?' 'Yes.'

'Where 's his owner?'

'He 's in bed, where he ought to be. I tould him through the door who it
was for, and that he needn't get up, as I 'd find the ways of the place
myself; and ye see so I did.'

'Told him who it was for! Why, he never heard of me in his life.'

'Devil may care; sure you're the priest's friend, and who has a better
warrant for everything in the place? Don't you know the song--

"And Father Fitz had no cows nor sheep,
And the devil a hen or pig to keep;
But a pleasanter house to dine or sleep
You 'd never find till morning."

"For Molly, says he, if the fowls be few,
I 've only one counsel to give to you:
There's hens hard by--go kill for two,
For I 've a friend till morning."

By the Rock of Cashel, it 'ud b