ce but for his monstrous size, which rendered him
quite unfit to be the attendant of any gentleman of condition; and so I
presented him with a handsome gratuity, and promised to stand godfather
to his next child: the eleventh since my absence. There is no country in
the world where the work of multiplying is carried on so prosperously
as in my native island. Mr. Tim had married the girls' waiting-maid,
who had been a kind friend of mine in the early times; and I had to go
salute poor Molly next day, and found her a slatternly wench in a mud
hut, surrounded by a brood of children almost as ragged as those of my
friend the blacksmith.

From Tim and Phil Purcell, thus met fortuitously together, I got the
very last news respecting my family. My mother was well.

''Faith sir,' says Tim, 'and you're come in time, mayhap, for preventing
an addition to your family.'

'Sir!' exclaimed I, in a fit of indignation.

'In the shape of father-in-law, I mane, sir,' says Tim: 'the misthress
is going to take on with Mister Jowls the praacher.'

Poor Nora, he added, had made many additions to the illustrious race of
Quin; and my cousin Ulick was in Dublin, coming to little good, both my
informants feared, and having managed to run through the small available
remains of property which my good old uncle had left behind him.

I saw I should have no small family to provide for; and then, to
conclude the evening, Phil, Tim, and I, had a bottle of usquebaugh, the
taste of which I had remembered for eleven good years, and did not part
except with the warmest terms of fellowship, and until the sun had been
some time in the sky. I am exceedingly affable; that has always been
one of my characteristics. I have no false pride, as many men of high
lineage like my own have, and, in default of better company, will hob
and nob with a ploughboy or a private soldier just as readily as with
the first noble in the land.

I went back to the village in the morning, and found a pretext for
visiting Barryville under a device of purchasing drugs. The hooks were
still in the wall where my silver-hiked sword used to hang; a blister
was lying on the window-sill, where my mother's 'Whole Duty of Man' had
its place; and the odious Doctor Macshane had found out who I was (my
countrymen find out everything, and a great deal more besides), and
sniggering, asked me how I left the King of Prussia, and whether my
friend the Emperor Joseph was as much liked as the Emp