ointed flaps reached nearly to the knees. Last of
all was produced a hat not more than three inches deep in the crown, and
brimmed so narrowly, that a spectator would almost imagine the leaf had
been cut off. Having pranked himself out in these habiliments, contrary
to the strongest expostulations of both wife and son, he took his
staff and set forth. But lest the reader should expect a more accurate
description of his person when dressed, we shall endeavor at all events
to present him with a loose outline. In the first place, his head was
surmounted with a hat that resembled a flat skillet, wanting the handle;
his coat, from which avarice and penury had caused him to shrink away,
would have fitted a man twice his size, and, as he had become much
stooped, its tail, which, at the best, had been preposterously long, now
nearly swept the ground. To look at him behind, in fact, he appeared all
body. The flaps of his waistcoat he had pinned up with his own hands,
by which piece of exquisite taste, he displayed a pair of thighs so thin
and disproportioned to his small--clothes, that he resembled a boy who
happens to wear the breeches of a full-grown man, so that to look at
him in front he appeared all legs. A pair of shoes, polished with burned
straw and buttermilk, and surmounted by two buckles, scoured away
to skeletons, completed his costume. In this garb he set out with a
crook-headed staff, into which long use, and the habit of griping
fast whatever he got in his hand, had actually worn the marks of his
forefinger and thumb.

Bodagh Buie, his wife, and their two children, were very luckily
assembled in the parlor, when the nondescript figure of the deputy-wooer
made his appearance on that part of the neat road which terminated at
the gate of the little lawn that fronted the hall-door. Here there was
another gate to the right that opened into the farm or kitchen yard,
and as Fardorougha hesitated which to enter, the family within had an
opportunity of getting a clearer view of his features and person.

"Who is that quare figure standing there?" inquired the Bodagh; "did you
ever see sich a----ah, thin, who can he be?"

"Somebody comin', to see some of the sarvints, I suppose," replied his
wife; "why, thin, it's not unlike little Dick _Croaitha_, the fairyman."

In sober truth, Fardorougha was so completely disguised by his dress,
especially by his hat, whose shallowness and want of brim, gave his face
and head so wild