them, and
the pig craturs into the bargain. Your father and your mother, and your
brother, and your three sisters, send their duty to you, and their
blessings too--and you may add my blessing, Terence, which is worth them
all; for won't I get you out of purgatory in the twinkling of a
bed-post? Make yourself quite asy on that score, and lave it all to me;
only just say a _pater_ now and then, that when St. Peter lets you in,
he mayn't throw it in your teeth, that you've saved your soul by
contract, which is the only way by which emperors and kings ever get to
heaven. Your letter from Plymouth came safe to hand: Barney, the
post-boy, having dropped it under foot close to our door, the big pig
took it into his mouth and ran away with it; but I caught sight of him,
and _speaking_ to him, he let it go, knowing (the 'cute cratur!) that I
could read it better than him. As soon as I had digested the contents,
which it was lucky the pig did not instead of me, I just took my meal
and my big stick, and then set off for Ballycleuch.

"Now, you know, Terence, if you haven't forgot--and if you have, I'll
just remind you--that there's a flaunty sort of young woman at the
poteen shop there, who calls herself Mrs O'Rourke, wife to a corporal
O'Rourke, who was kilt or died one day, I don't know which, but that's
not of much consequence. The devil a bit do I think the priest ever
gave the marriage-blessing to that same; although she swears that she
was married on the rock of Gibraltar--it may be a strong rock fore I
know, but it's not the rock of salvation like the seven sacraments, of
which marriage is one. _Benedicite_! Mrs O'Rourke is a little too apt
to fleer and jeer at the priests; and if it were not that she softens
down her pertinent remarks with a glass or two of the real poteen, which
proves some respect for the church, I'd excommunicate her body and soul,
and everybody, and every soul that put their lips to the cratur at her
door. But she must leave that off, as I tell her, when she gets old and
ugly, for then all the whisky in the world shan't save her. But she's a
fine woman now, and it goes agin my conscience to help the devil to a
fine woman. Now this Mrs O'Rourke knows everybody and everything
that's going on in the country about; and she has a tongue which has
never had a holyday since it was let loose.

"`Good morning to ye, Mrs O'Rourke,' says I.

"`An' the top of the morning to you, Father McGrath,' says