's an
informer.'

'I should not have thought, from what I see of you,' said Lord Colambre,
smiling, 'that you, Larry, would have offered an informer a lift.'

'Oh, plase your honour!' said Larry, smiling archly, 'would not I give
the laws a lift, when in my power?'

Scarcely had he uttered these words, and scarcely was the informer out
of sight, when across the same bog, and over the ditch, came another
man, a half kind of gentleman, with a red silk handkerchief about his
neck, and a silver-handled whip in his hand.

'Did you see any man pass the road, friend?' said he to the postillion.

'Oh! who would I see? or why would I tell?' replied Larry, in a sulky
tone.

'Came, come, be smart!' said the man with the silver whip, offering
to put half a crown into the postillion's hand; 'point me which way he
took.'

'I'll have none a' your silver! don't touch me with it!' said Larry.
'But, if you'll take my advice, you'll strike across back, and follow
the fields, out to Killogenesawee.'

The exciseman set out again immediately, in an opposite direction to
that which the man who carried the still had taken. Lord Colambre now
perceived that the pretended informer had been running off to conceal a
still of his own.

'The gauger, plase your honour,' said Larry, looking back at Lord
Colambre; 'the gauger is a STILL-HUNTING!'

'And you put him on a wrong scent!' said Lord Colambre.

'Sure, I told him no lie; I only said, "If you'll take my advice." And
why was he such a fool as to take my advice, when I wouldn't take his
fee?'

'So this is the way, Larry, you give a lift to the laws!'

'If the laws would give a lift to me, plase your honour, maybe I'd do as
much by them. But it's only these revenue laws I mean; for I never, to
my knowledge, broke another commandment; but it's what no honest poor
man among his neighbours would scruple to take--a glass of POTSHEEN.'

'A glass of what, in the name of Heaven?' said Lord Colambre.

POTSHEEN, plase your honour;--becaase it's the little whisky that's made
in the private still or pot; and SHEEN, becaase it's a fond word for
whatsoever we'd like, and for what we have little of, and would make
much of: after taking the glass of it, no man could go and inform to
ruin the CRATURES, for they all shelter on that estate under favour of
them that go shares, and make rent of 'em--but I'd never inform again'
'em. And, after all, if the truth was known, and my Lord Clonbrony
should