been neatly tied under the left ear, and the cap drawn over his
eyes, that her majesty had granted him a full pardon? But you remember
your own schoolboy days, and that's enough.

The nice discrimination with which Norah used to time her interference
was indeed surprising. God help us! limited was our experience, and
shallow our little judgments, or we might have known what the master
meant, when with upraised arm hung over us, his eye was fixed upon the
door of the kitchen, waiting for Norah's appearance.

Long, my fair and virtuous countrywomen, I repeat it to you all, as
I did to Norah--may you reign in the hearts and affections of your
husbands (but nowhere else), the grace, ornaments, and happiness of
their hearths and lives, you jewels, you! You are paragons of all that's
good, and your feelings are highly creditable to yourselves and to
humanity.

When Norah advanced, with her brawny, uplifted arm (for she was a
powerful woman) and forbidding aspect, to interpose between us and the
avenging, terrors of the birch, do you think that she did not reflect
honor on her sex and the national character! I sink the base allusion
to the _miscaun_* of fresh butter, which we had placed in her hands that
morning, or the dish of eggs, or of meal, which we had either begged or
stolen at home, as a present for her; disclaiming, at the same time, the
rascally idea of giving it as a bribe, or from any motive beneath the
most lofty minded and disinterested generosity on our part.

* A portion of butter, weighing from one pound to six or
eight, made in the shape of a prism.

Then again, never did a forbidding face shine with so winning and
amicable an expression as did hers on that merciful occasion. The sun
dancing a hornpipe on Easter Sunday morning, or the full moon sailing as
proud as a peacock in a new halo head-dress, was a very disrespectable
sight, compared to Norah's red beaming face, shrouded in her dowd cap
with long ears, that descended to her masculine and substantial neck.
Owing to her influence, the whole economy of the school was good; for
we were permitted to cuff one another, and do whatever we pleased, with
impunity, if we brought the meal, eggs, or butter; except some scapegoat
who was not able to accomplish this, and he generally received on his
own miserable carcase what was due to us all.

Poor Jack Murray! His last words on the scaffold, for being concerned in
the murder of Pierce the gaug