r afther
it."

Such was Mary Sullivan, as she sat at her own hearth, quite alone,
engaged as we have represented her. What she may have been meditating
on, we cannot pretend to ascertain; but after some time, she looked
sharply into the "backstone," or hob, with an air of anxiety and alarm.
By and by she suspended her knitting, and listened with much
earnestness, leaning her right ear over to the hob, from whence the
sounds to which she paid such deep attention proceeded. At length she
crossed herself devoutly, and exclaimed, "Queen of saints about us!--is
it back ye are? Well sure there's no use in talkin' bekase they say you
know what's said of you, or to you--an' we may as well spake yez fair.
Hem--musha yez are welcome back, crickets, avour-neenee! I hope that,
not like the last visit ye ped us, yez are comin' for luck now! Moolyeen
died, any way, soon afther your other _kailyee_, ye crathurs ye. Here's
the bread, an' the salt, an' the male for yez, an' we wish ye well.
Eh?--saints above, if it isn't listenin' they are jist like a
Christhien! Wurrah, but ye are the wise an' the quare crathurs all out!"

She then shook a little holy water over the hob, and muttered to herself
an Irish charm or prayer against the evils which crickets are often
supposed by the peasantry to bring with them, and requested, still in
the words of the charm, that their presence might, on that occasion,
rather be a presage of good fortune to man and beast belonging to her.

"There now, ye _dhonans_ ye, sure ye can't say that ye're ill-thrated
here, anyhow, or ever was mocked or made game of in the same family. You
have got your hansel, an' full an' plenty of it; hopin' at the same time
that you'll have no rason in life to cut our best clothes from revinge.
Sure an' I didn't desarve to have my brave stuff _long body_ riddled the
way it was the last time ye wor here, an' only bekase little Barny, that
has but the sinse of a _gorsoon_, tould yez in a joke to pack off wid
yourselves somewhere else. Musha, never heed what the likes of him says;
sure he's but a _caudy_, that doesn't mane ill, only the bit o'
divarsion wid yez."

She then resumed her knitting, occasionally stopping, as she changed her
needles, to listen, with her ear set, as if she wished to augur from the
nature of their chirping, whether they came for good or evil. This,
however, seemed to be beyond her faculty of translating their language;
for after sagely shaking her head