how many
nights and days it is at all--but here I'll stop; niver a fut I'll stir
to be lookin' for bite or sup, or lettin' on I'm in it--and anybody may
take the bit of money and welcome; I'd as lief be pickin' up the dirt on
the road--for I'll just give me life a chance to ind out of the world's
misery and disolation."

"Now, may goodness forgive you," said the widow M'Gurk, "it's a poor
case to want the wit. Troth, and yourself's the quare ould
child-desertin', mane-spirited, aisy-frighted slieveen of a young
bosthoon; but what sort of a conthrivance is it you have on you at all
at all be way of a head that you couldn't have the sinse to considher
the roof blowin' off a body's house 'ud be raison enough for them to be
quittin' out of it, and no signs of dyin' in the matter? D'you think the
win' was apt to be waitin' till there happened to be nobody widin, afore
it got scatterin' the thatch? God help us all, you've little to do to be
squattin' there talkin' about disolations and miseries, wid the two of
them this instiant minyit sittin' be the fire up at my place, and sorra
a hand's turn ailin' them, forby Katty's a thrifle conthrary now and
agin, thro' not bein' entirely strong yet."

"And bedad at that hearin'," reports of the occurrence used to proceed
from this point, "the lep he gathered himself up wid, and the rate he
legged it off--musha, he was over the hill while we were pickin' up his
things for him. And as for th' ould cat that he tripped over, it rowled
three perch of ground before it got a hould of its four feet."

"Sure we were sittin' there as quite as could be consaived"--the
conclusion of this precipitate rush was thus recounted--"when all of a
suddint we couldn't tell what come bouncin' in at the door, as if it had
been shot out of the inds of the earth, and had us all jumpin' up and
screechin', till we seen it was on'y Tom Patman, and he in such a takin'
you might suppose he thought somethin' 'ud swally up ould Joe and the
child on him before he could get at them."

Lisconnel's opinion was divided as to whether Tom would actually have
stayed and starved in his hiding-place had he not been discovered. Mrs.
M'Gurk thought it likely enough. "The cat goin' back and for'ards that
way," she said, "gave her an idee there was somethin' amiss in it, and
that was why she took Andy along. 'Deed and she got a quare turn when
first she spied the chap croochin' under the bank--she couldn't tell but
he might h