peculation--few, very few travelled the
road--fewer still would halt to bait within ten miles of Bantry. Report,
however, said differently; the impression in the country was, that
"Mary's"--as it was briefly styled--had a readier share of business than
many a more promising and pretentious hotel; in fact, it was generally
believed to be the resort of all the smugglers of the coast; and the
market, where the shopkeepers of the interior repaired in secret to
purchase the contraband wares and "run goods," which poured into the
country from the shores of France and Holland.

Vast storehouses and caves were said to exist in the rock behind
the house, to store away the valuable goods, which from time to time
arrived; and it was currently believed that the cargo of an Indiaman
might have been concealed within these secret recesses, and never a cask
left in view to attract suspicion.

It is not into these gloomy receptacles of contraband that we would now
conduct our reader, but into a far more cheerful and more comfortable
locality--the spacious kitchen of the cabin, or, in fact, the apartment
which served for the double purpose of cooking and eating--the common
room of the inn, where around a blazing fire of black turf was seated a
party of three persons.

At one side sat the fat and somewhat comely figure of Mary herself, a
woman of some five-and-forty years, with that expression of rough and
ready temperament, the habits of a wayside inn will teach. She had a
clear, full eye--a wide, but not unpleasant mouth--and a voice that
suited well the mellifluous intonation of a Kerry accent. Opposite to
her were two thin, attenuated old men, who, for dress, look, age, voice,
and manner, it would have been almost impossible to distinguish from
each other; for while the same weather-beaten, shrivelled expression was
common to both, their jackets of blue cloth, leather breeches, and
top boots, were so precisely alike, that they seemed the very Dromios
brought back to life, to perform as postillions. Such they were--such
they had been for above fifty years. They had travelled the country from
the time they were boys--they entered the career together, and together
they were jogging onward to the last stage of all, the only one where
they hoped to be at rest! Joe and Jim Daly were two names no one ever
heard disunited; they were regarded as but one corporeally, and although
they affected at times to make distinctions themselves, the wor