en-and-ink sketch of my respected relative. Fancy a man declining from his
fiftieth year, but fresh, vigorous, and with a greenness in his age that
might put to the blush some of our modern hotbed-reared youths, with the
best of whom he could cross a country on the back of his favourite hunter,
_Cruiskeen_, and when the day's sport was over, could put a score of them
under the aforementioned oak table--which, by the way, was frequently the
only one of the company that kept its legs upon these occasions of
Hibernian hospitality. I think I behold him now, with his open, benevolent
brow, thinly covered with grey hair, his full blue eye and florid cheek,
which glowed like the sunny side of a golden-pippin that the winter's frost
had ripened without shrivelling. But as he has finished the admixture of
his punch, I will leave him to speak for himself.

"You know, Jack," said he, after gulping down nearly half the newly-mixed
tumbler, by way of sample, "you know that our family can lay no claim to
antiquity; in fact, our pedigree ascends no higher, according to the most
authentic records, than Shawn Duffy, my grandfather, who rented a small
patch of ground on the sea-coast, which was such a barren, unprofitable
spot, that it was then, and is to this day, called 'The Devil's Half-acre.'
And well it merited the name, for if poor Shawn was to break his heart at
it, he never could get a better crop than thistles or ragweed off it. But
though the curse of sterility seemed to have fallen on the land, Fortune,
in order to recompense Shawn for Nature's niggardliness, made the caverns
and creeks of that portion of the coast which bounded his farm towards the
sea the favourite resort of smugglers. Shawn, in the true spirit of
Christian benevolence, was reputed to have favoured those enterprising
traders in their industry, by assisting to convey their cargoes into the
interior of the country. It was on one of those expeditions, about five
o'clock on a summer's morning, that a gauger unluckily met my grandfather
carrying a bale of tobacco on his back."

Here my uncle paused in his recital, and leaning across the table till his
mouth was close to my ear, said, in a confidential whisper--

"Jack, do _you_ consider killing a gauger--murder?"

"Undoubtedly, sir."

"You do?" he replied, nodding his head significantly. "Then heaven forgive
my poor grandfather. However, it can't be helped now. The gauger was found
dead, with an ugly fracture