" said Joe,
who did not fancy this summary departure, while he fumbled in his pocket
for a suitable coin.

"Vite!--quick!--sharp time!" cried one of the fellows, who, as the sound
of voices was heard from within, seemed impatient to be off; and so,
snatching rather than taking the shilling which still lingered in Joe's
reluctant fingers, he wheeled about and fled, followed rapidly by the
other.

"Qui va!" cried a sharp voice from within, as I knocked for the second
time on the door-panel with a stone.

"Friends," said I; "we want a lodging and something to eat."

The door was at once opened, and, by the light of a lantern, we saw the
figure of an old woman, whose eyes, bleared and bloodshot, glared at us
fixedly.

"'Tis a lodgen' yez want?" said she, in an accent that showed her to be
Irish. "And who brought yez here?"

"Two young fellows we met on the quay," said Joe; "one called the other
'Tony.'"

"Ay, indeed!" muttered the hag; "I was sure of it: his own son! his own
son!"

These words she repeated in a tone of profound sorrow, and for a time
seemed quite unmindful of our presence.

"Are we to get in at all?" said the old man, in an accent of impatience.

"What a hurry yer in; and maybe 'tis wishing yerself out again ye 'd be,
after ye wor in!"

"I think we'd better try somewhere else," whispered Joe to me; "I don't
like the look of this place." Before I could reply to this, a loud yell
burst forth from the end of the street, accompanied by the tramp of many
people, who seemed to move in a kind of regulated step.

"Here they are! Here they come!" cried the old woman; "step in quick,
or ye 'll be too late!" and she dragged the young girls forward by the
cloak into the hall; we followed without further question. Then, placing
the lantern on the floor, she drew a heavy chain across the door, and
dropped her cloak over the light, saying in a low, tremulous voice,
"Them's the 'Tapageers!'"

The crowd now came closer, and we perceived that they were singing in
chorus a song, of which the air, at least, was Irish.

The barbarous rhyme of one rude verse, as they sung it in passing, still
lingers in my memory:

"No bloody agint here we see,
Ready to rack, distrain, and saze us;
Whatever we ax, we have it free,
And take at hand, whatever plaze us.
Row, row, row, Will yez show me, now,
The polis that 'll dare to face us!"

"There they go! 'tis well ye wor safe!" said the ol