s at the sale which Peter held in
"distraint for rent."

Poor old Pat was helped out of the cabin and insisted on seating
himself by the roadside to watch proceedings, though his wife tried
anxiously to persuade him to accept at once the hospitality pressed
upon them by sympathetic neighbours.

"Lave me alone," he growled, "I'll see this out, so I will. Och,
bedad, they are afther liftin' out the bed now--mind it doesn't fall
to pieces on yez before yez get it into the cart. Troth, ould Peter
himself ought to sleep in that iligant bed; it's the pleasant dhrames
he'd have!"

"It doesn't become ye to be talkin' that way, Pat," cried "Herself,"
flushed and weeping; "that was me mother's bed, so it was. Oh dear, oh
dear! that I should live to see it taken off of us that way! And
there's me pot that I biled mornin' an' evenin' these years an'
years!"

"Och, musha, lave the pot," retorted Pat; "sure what good is the pot
to us when we haven't a bit to put in it? Troth, now the ould sckamer
beyant has Mike in prison, we may give up altogether. Yourself an' me
will soon be undher the Daisy-quilt, never fear. There they have me
ould chair, now," he added sardonically; "troth it looks well cocked
up there. Mind the china now, Jack McEvoy; herself here thinks there
isn't the like in the country,--have ye all now, the two mugs an' the
three plates, an' the cups an' saucers, an' the little taypot with the
cracked spout? Ah, don't be forgettin' the little jug though, the
little weeny jug with a rose on it. Sure, what are ye crying for,
woman! Isn't it great grandeur for the little jug to be goin' up to
Monavoe? Bedad, ould Peter'll be apt to be puttin' it undher a glass
case on the chimley-piece!"

Their friends and neighbours gathering round gazed with puzzled looks
at the old man as he sat enthroned on his heap of stones, his knotted
trembling hands leaning on a blackthorn stick, his face flushed, and
his eyes blazing under their shaggy white brows. They could scarcely
understand his stoicism; Mrs. Clancy's lamentations were far more
comprehensible to them.

"I won't be in it long," she wailed, "throublin' anybody. Sure, what
matther if it's in the poorhouse the two of us ends our days, now poor
Mike has been sent to gaol on us! Ah! God bless us! I could never
hould up me head agin afther that."

"God help ye!" commented a bystander. "Don't be frettin' that a-way,
ma'am; sure even if he's in gaol itself, he'll be out agin