shot Mr. Johnson coming home from work, and will be hanged
on Saturday; and that 's in our favor, as he was a life in
Honan's lease. There 's no money in Ireland, Kellet tells
me, and there 's none here. Where the blazes is it all gone
to? Maybe, like the potatoes 't is dying out!

Frank 's well sick of soldiering; they chained him up like
a dog, with his hand to his leg, the other night for going
to the play; and if he was n't a born gentleman, he says,
they 'd have given him "four-and-twenty," as he calls it,
with a stick for impudence. Stephen 's no more good to him
than an old umbrella, never gave him bit nor sup! Bad luck
to the old Neygur I can't speak of him.

Nelly goes on carving and cutting away as before. There 's
not a saint in the calendar she did n't make out of rotten
wood this winter, and little Hans buys them all, at a fair
price, she says; but I call a Holy Family cheap at ten
florins, and 't is giving the Virgin away to sell her for a
Prussian dollar. 'T is a nice way for one of the Daltons to
be living by her own industry!

I often wish for you back here; but I 'd be sorry, after
all, ye 'd come, for the place is poorer than ever, and you
're in good quarters, and snug where you are.

Tell me how they treat you if they're as kind as before and
how is the old man, and is the gout bad with him still? I
send you in this a little bill Martin Cox, of Drumsnagh,
enclosed me for sixty-two ten-and-eight. Could you get the
old Baronet to put his name on it for me? Tell him 't is as
good as the bank paper, that Cox is as respectable a man as
any in Leitrim, and an estated gentleman, like myself, and
of course that we'll take care to have the cash ready for it
when due. This will be a great convenience to me, and Fogles
says it will be a pleasure to Sir Stafford, besides
extending his connection among Irish gentlemen. If he seems
to like the notion, say that your father is well known in
Ireland, and can help him to a very lively business in the
same way. Indeed, I 'd have been a fortune to him myself
alone, if he 'd had the discounting of me for the last
fifteen years!

Never mind this, however, for bragging is not genteel; but
get me his name, and send me the "bit of stiff" by return of
post.

If