.

Seated one night at a public house, the common resort of Barny and
other marine curiosities, our hero got entangled in debate with what
he called a strange sail,--that is to say, a man he had never met
before, and whom he was inclined to treat rather magisterially upon
nautical subjects; at the same time the stranger was equally inclined
to assume the high hand over him, till at last the new-comer made a
regular outbreak by exclaiming, "Ah, tare-and-ouns, lave aff your
balderdash, Mr. O'Reirdon, by the powdhers o' war it's enough, so it
is, to make a dog bate his father, to hear you goin' an as if you war
Curlumberus or Sir Crustyphiz Wran, when ivery one knows the divil a
farther you iver war nor ketchin crabs or drudgen oysters."

"Who towld you that, my Watherford Wondher?" rejoined Barny; "what the
dickens do you know about sayfarin' farther nor fishin' for sprats in a
bowl wid your grandmother?"

"O, baithershin," says the stranger.

"And who made you so bowld with my name?" demanded O'Reirdon.

"No matther for that," said the stranger; "but if you'd like for to
know, shure it's your own cousin Molly Mullins knows me well, and maybe
I don't know you and yours as well as the mother that bore you, aye, in
throth; and sure I know the very thoughts o' you as well as if I was
inside o' you, Barny O'Reirdon."

"By my sowl thin, you know betther thoughts than your own, Mr.
Whippersnapper, if that's the name you go by."

"No, it's not the name I go by; I've as good a name as your own, Mr.
O'Reirdon, for want of a betther, and that's O'Sullivan."

"Throth there's more than there's good o' them," said Barny.

"Good or bad, I'm a cousin o' your own twice removed by the mother's
side."

"And is it the Widda O'Sullivan's boy you'd be that left this come
Candlemas four years?"

"The same."

"Throth thin you might know better manners to your eldhers, though I'm
glad to see you, anyhow, agin; but a little thravellin' puts us beyant
ourselves sometimes," said Barny, rather contemptuously.

"Throth I nivir bragged out o' myself yit, and it's what I say, that a
man that's only fishin' aff the land all his life has no business to
compare in the regard o' thracthericks wid a man that has sailed to
Fingal."

This silenced any further argument on Barny's part. Where Fingal lay was
all Greek to him; but, unwilling to admit his ignorance, he covered his
retreat with the usual address of his countrymen, and turned the