of the
bed which Tom had just vacated. "I wos wantin' to ax ye, sir, av ye
could put in me pick and shovel in the lan'scape."

"In the landscape, Pat!" exclaimed Ned, addressing his visitor by the
generic name of the species; "I thought you wanted a portrait."

"Troth, then, I don't know which it is ye call it; but I wants a pictur'
o' meself all over, from the top o' me hat to the sole o' me boots.
Isn't that a lan'scape?"

"No, it's a portrait."

"Then it's a porthraite I wants; an' if ye'll put in the pick and
shovel, I'll give ye two dollars a pace for them."

"I'll put them in, Pat, for nothing," replied Ned, smiling, as he
commenced his sketch. "I suppose you intend to send this to some fair
one in old Ireland?"

Pat did not reply at once. "Sure," said he, slowly, "I niver thought of
her in that way before, but maybe she was fair wance, though she's been
a'most as black as bog-oak for half-a-cintury. It's for me grandmother
I want it."

"Your grandmother! that's curious, now; the last man I painted meant to
send the likeness to his mother."

"Not so cur'ous neither," replied the man, with some feeling; "it's my
opinion, the further a man goes from the owld country, and the rougher
he becomes wi' scrapin' up and down through the world, the more tinder
his heart gits when he thinks o' his mother. Me own mother died whin I
wos a bit spalpeen, an' I lived wi' me grandmother, bliss her heart,
ever since,--at laste till I took to wanderin', which was tin years
past."

"So long! Pat, you must have wandered far in that time. Have you ever
been away far into the interior of this country, among the mountains, in
the course of your wanderings!"

"Among the mountains, is it? Indeed I have, just; an' a most
tree-mendous beautiful sight it is. Wos ye goin' there?"

"I've been thinking about it. Is the shooting good?"

"Shootin', ah! av ye'd bin wi' me an' Bill Simmons, two summers ago,
ye'd have had more nor enough o' shootin'. The grizzlies are thick as
paes, and the buffaloes swarm in the valleys like muskaitoes, not to
mintion wolves, and beavers, and badgers, and deer, an' sich like--forby
the red Injuns; we shot six o' them critters about the legs an' arms in
self defence, an' they shot us too--they put an arrow dane through the
pint o' Bill's nose, an' wan ripped up me left arm, it did." (Pat bared
the brawny limb, and exhibited the wound as he spoke.) "Shootin', is it?
faix there's the hoith o