“‘And there’s no goold in it?’ says my father. ‘“Divil a guinea.’ “‘Nor silver?’ “‘No, nor silver; nor as much as sixpence, either.’ “‘Didn’t ye hear that all day yesterday when the people was coming in with their notes, the chaps there were heating the guineas in a frying-pan, pretending that they were making them as fast as they could; and sure, when they had a batch red-hot they spread them out to cool; and what betune the hating and the cooling, and the burning the fingers counting them, they kept the bank open to three o’clock, and then they ran away.’ “‘Is it truth yer telling?’ says my father. “‘Sorra word o’ lie in it! Myself had two-and-fourpence of their notes.’ “‘And so they’re broke,’ says my father, ‘and nothing left?’ “‘Not a brass farden.’ “‘And what am I staying here for, I wonder, if there’s nothing to guard?’ “‘Faix, if it isn’t for the pride of the thing--’ “‘Oh, sorra taste!’ “‘Well, may be for divarsion.’ “‘Nor that either.’ “‘Faix, then you’re a droll man, to spend the evening that way,’ says he; and all the crowd--for there was a crowd--said the same. So with that my father unscrewed his bayonet, and put his piece on his shoulder, and walked off to his bed in the barrack as peaceable as need be. But well, when they came to relieve him, wasn’t there a raal commotion? And faith, you see, it went mighty hard with my father the next morning; for the bank was open just as usual, and my father was sintinced to fifty lashes, but got off with a week in prison, and three more rowling a big stone in the barrack-yard.” Thus chatting away, the time passed over, until we arrived at Fermoy. Here there was some little delay in procuring horses; and during the negotiation, Mike, who usually made himself master of the circumstances of every place through which he passed, discovered that the grocer’s shop of the village was kept by a namesake, and possibly a relation of his own. “I always had a notion, Mister Charles, that I came from a good stock; and sure enough, here’s ‘Mary Free’ over the door there, and a beautiful place inside; full of tay and sugar and gingerbread and glue and coffee and bran, pickled herrings, soap, and many other commodities.” “Perhaps you’d like to claim kindred, Mike,” said I, interrupting; “I’m sure she’d feel flattered to discover a relative in a Peninsular hero.” “It’s just what I’m thinking; av we were going to pass the evening here, I’d try if I couldn’t make her out a second cousin at least.”