and we had a great deal of talk
about this thing and that. 'And how is it,' says he, 'your master keeps
on so well upon his legs? I heard say he was off Holantide twelvemonth
past.'

'Never was better or heartier in his life,' said I.

'It's not that I'm after speaking of' said he; 'but there was a great
report of his being ruined.'

'No matter,' says I, 'the sheriffs two years running were his particular
friends, and the sub-sheriffs were both of them gentlemen, and were
properly spoken to; and so the writs lay snug with them, and they, as
I understand by my son Jason the custom in them cases is, returned the
writs as they came to them to those that sent 'em much good may it do
them!--with a word in Latin, that no such person as Sir Condy Rackrent,
Bart., was to be found in those parts.'

'Oh, I understand all those ways better--no offence--than you,' says
he, laughing, and at the same time filling his glass to my master's good
health, which convinced me he was a warm friend in his heart after
all, though appearances were a little suspicious or so at first. 'To
be sure,' says he, still cutting his joke, 'when a man's over head and
shoulders in debt, he may live the faster for it, and the better if he
goes the right way about it; or else how is it so many live on so well,
as we see every day, after they are ruined?'

'How is it,' says I, being a little merry at the time--'how is it but
just as you see the ducks in the chicken-yard, just after their heads
are cut off by the cook, running round and round faster than when
alive?'

At which conceit he fell a-laughing, and remarked he had never had the
happiness yet to see the chicken-yard at Castle Rackrent.

'It won't be long so, I hope,' says I; 'you'll be kindly welcome
there, as everybody is made by my master: there is not a freer-spoken
gentleman, or a better beloved, high or low, in all Ireland.'

And of what passed after this I'm not sensible, for we drank Sir Candy's
good health and the downfall of his enemies till we could stand no
longer ourselves. And little did I think at the time, or till long
after, how I was harbouring my poor master's greatest of enemies myself.
This fellow had the impudence, after coming to see the chicken-yard, to
get me to introduce him to my son Jason; little more than the man that
never was born did I guess at his meaning by this visit: he gets him
a correct list fairly drawn out from my son Jason of all my master's
debts, and