get up and let me in. Don't you know me? I'm Corney's
landlord, Thady Macdermot. I'll wait here till he comes; so get up
and let me in."

There was a silence for some time; then he heard the old woman say to
some one else,

"The Lord be praised! It can't be him--it can't be Mr. Thady coming
here at this time of night. Don't stir I tell ye--don't stir, avick!"

"Oh! but it wor him, mother. Shure, don't I know his voice?" answered
the child that the old woman had spoken to.

"I tell you it is me," shouted Thady. "Open the door, will you! and
not keep me here all night!"

The child now got up and opened the door, and let him into the single
room which the cabin contained. There were still a few embers of turf
alight on the hearth, but not sufficient to have enabled Thady to see
anything had not the moon shone brightly in through the door. There
was but one bed in the place,--at the end of the cabin farthest from
the door, standing between the hearth and the wall, and in this the
old woman was lying. The child, about eight years, had jumped out of
bed, stark naked, and now in this condition was endeavouring with
a bit of stick to poke the hot embers together, so as to give out
a better heat and light. But Thady was in want of neither, and he
therefore desired the boy to get into bed, and upsetting with his
foot the little heap which the urchin had so industriously collected
together for his benefit, so as to extinguish the few flickering
flames which it afforded, he sat down to try and think what it would
now be best for him to do.

"Where's Corney, then," he said, "at this hour? Will he be long
before he's here?"

"Not a one of me rightly knows, yer honer; maybe it 'll not be long
afore he's here, and maybe it 'll not be afore the morning," said the
child.

"And, maybe, not then," added his grandmother. "There's no knowing
when he 'll be here; maybe not for days. I don't know what's come to
them at all now--being out night skirring through the counthry; it
can't come to no good, any ways."

"When Corney's at home, where does he sleep?" said Thady, looking
round the cabin for a second bed, but seeing none.

"He mostly takes a stretch then down there afore the fire; but
Corney's not over partickler where he sleeps. For the matter of that,
I b'lieve he sleeps most out in the bog at day time."

Thady now sat down on one of the two rude stools with which the place
was furnished, either to wait for Corney, or to m