a straw too much, though. Corney jumped to his feet, stamped on the floor, and shouted, "Ma'am, what did ye call my house?"

"A randyvoo, I called it," she said, turning again in the door-" A randyvoo, I called it; and a randyvoo it is."

"A-randyvoo!" Corney ejaculated, aghast at the enormity, and turning upon his friends appealing eyes. They inclined their heads in silent sympathy.

"A randyvoo," Susie defiantly repeated. "Did you hear that, Pat?" Corney appealed in martyr-tones. "Did you hear that, John Burns? and you, Matthew McCourt?"

"Put her out," Owen a-Slaivin interjected; but in a voice so studiedly low that only his immediate neighbors heard him.

"A randyvoo!" Corney plaintively repeated. "Did ye hear it, Masther?"

"It pains me to acknowledge that I overheard the insidious remark," the Master said boldly. For he was unquestionably daring when necessity called.

"Upon my veracity," Corney said with decision, "I'll not let much grass grow under me heels till I hear if Father Dan thinks you, Shusie Gallagher, or any other woman in the parish, or out of it, has the right to take away the cha-rackter of my house."

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Tir-oodle-um!" said Susie, with affected flippancy. "Ye didn't laive it in my power to take away its charackter. Atween whiskeydhrinkin' every night ever you dhraw yer pension, and card-playin' and the Lord-only-knowswhat every other night, ye have long ago put it past the power of man or mortial to take away the charackter of yer house. There's plain spaikin' for ye! and ye can give that in to Father Dan, too; and tell him it'll take all the Latin he knows to give yer house a charackter again."

Corney collapsed; and the man who had faced a thousand cannon unflinchingly, subsided into his seat in utter despair.

"Shusie Gallagher!" the Widow's Pat sorrowfully said, "I'm ashamed for ye."

Owen a-Slaivin, stung into a momentary fit of reckless bravery, said, "Ye're a varaago, Shusie Gallagher!"

Susie cast a glance upon Owen that withered his spirit instantly. Then turning to the Master, she said:

"It's a wondher to me that ye'd let yerself be seen in such company."

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Madam," said the Master, with judicial severity, "it is not less a wonder that you let yourself be seen in it, and heard."

"What do you mane?" Susie asked, angrily. "I mean to say, madam," said the Master, "that in my opinion you are little better than a troglodyte!"

For a moment after the bomb fell, Susie gasped for breath. Then she said, in distressful appeal, " Yez is all witnesses!"

"Little better," said the Master, with villainous coolness, applying a blazing spail of fir to his pipe -" little better," (puff) "I remarked, than a " (puff) "troglodyte."

"Masther Whorisky!" she cried. "Oh, Masther Whorisky! It's ill I've earned that-and from you, too. Oh! Oh! Oh!" "It's what she is," said Corney, revived.

"It's what she is," Owen a-Slaivin said. “And I'm prepared to swear it on any book in Europe."

Susie only said, “Oh! Oh! Oh!" and fled. And the Master thereat tipped the company a wink that instantly restored their good-humor again.

"Friend Cornelius," said the Master, "please get the bottle into locomotion." Which order Cornelius very quickly complied with.

When Corney, two days later, called upon Father Dan to charge Susie Gallagher with an attempt to take away the character of his house, Father Dan said gravely, "Hum! So she called it a randyvoo, did she? And what's this she's been here to tell me but couldn't tell me that the Masther called her?"

"He called her only her desarvin', Father Dan, -a throglodyte."

The muscles about Father Dan's mouth trem

bled too slightly for Corney to detect the motion. After a minute, Father Dan said:

"A randyvoo-a troglodyte. What are ye goin' to come to, anyhow? Go home. Go home; and let me hear no more of this. And tell the Masther, too, that I'll have to be talkin' to him, if he doesn't keep a guard on his tongue."

I said I balanced accounts with Toal. It was I who, knowing Susie to be smarting under Corney's insults, informed her where her husband was to be found carousing. And in justice to Susie I should say that, had she not been smarting as keenly as she was, she would not have permitted her temper to betray her so.

I

CHAPTER XVIII

When GREEK met GREEK

T was not till many weeks after the Harvest
Fair of Glenties that Ellen Burns learned the

cause of Billy's burst on that day. She found Billy absenting himself from the Nation-reading on Sunday afternoons, and, after diligent inquiry, discovered the cause. Then she took an early opportunity of winning his confidence, and establishing herself in his graces once more, by sending Pat the Pedlar to him the next time Pat came around, with the earnest request that Billy would do her the delight of purchasing for her a certain very attractive shawl-pin, the like of which, Pat declared, could not be got this side of Dublin town down of the ridiculous figure for which he offered it, tuppence-ha'penny, to wit. Billy thankfully did Ellen (and equally himself) the delight-after beating Pat down a ha'penny in price, though; and he had the joy of seeing Ellen sport it prominently, and take it out of her shawl, too, for the girls to handle and admire, in Billy's presence, as we all tramped to Mass on the following Sunday. And henceforth Billy was again one of the most eager and constant attendants when Ellen spelled the Nation.

But on Easter Sunday afternoon, I remember