The hag, apparently moved by the ready compliance to make the best of matters, went out, and returned with some more wood,--fragments of ship-timber,--which she offered us, saying, "'T is all I can give yez. Good night to yez all!" "Well, father," said Joe, as soon as he had lighted his pipe, and taken a seat by the fire, "ye wor tired enough of the ship, but I think ye wish yerself back again there, now." "I wish more nor that," said the old man, querulously; "I wish I never seen the same ship; nor ever left ould Ireland!" This sentiment threw a gloom over the whole party, by awakening, not only memories of home and that far-away land, but also by the confession of a sense of disappointment which each was only able to struggle against while unavowed. The sorrow made them silent, and at last sleepy. At first, the three "boys," great fellows of six feet high, stretched themselves full-length on the floor, and snored away in concert; then the two girls, one with her head on the other's lap, fell off; while the old man, sitting directly in front of the fire, nodded backwards and forwards, waking up, every half hour or so, to light his pipe; which done, he immediately fell off into a doze once more, leaving Joe and myself alone, waking and watchful. CHAPTER XVI. A NIGHT IN THE LOWER TOWN Joe's eyes were bent upon me, as I sat directly opposite him, with a fixedness that I could easily see was occasioned by my showy costume; his glances ranged from my buckled shoes to my white cravat, adorned with a splendid brooch of mock amethyst; nay, I almost fancied once that he was counting the silver clocks on my silk stockings! It was a look of most undisguised astonishment,--such a look as one bestows upon some new and singular animal, of whose habits and instincts we are lost in conjecture. Now, I was "York too,"--that is to say, I was Irish as well as himself; and I well knew that there was no rank nor condition of man for which the peasant in Ireland conceives the same low estimate as the "Livery Servant." The class is associated in his mind with chicanery, impudence, falsehood, theft, and a score of similar good properties; not to add that, being occasionally, in great families, a native of England, the Saxon element is united to the other "bitters" of the potion.