"There! there, a cushla!" cried Andy, as he saw me performing the first act of the piece with a vigor he had never calculated on; "'tis n't a coach and six ye want to drive through. Tear and ages! ye'll take the whole roof off." The truth was, I worked away with a malicious pleasure in the destruction of the old miser's roof; nor is it quite certain how far my zeal might have carried me, when suddenly one of the rafters--mere light poles of ash--gave way, and down I went, at first slowly, and then quicker, into a kind of funnel formed by the smashed timbers and the earthen sods. The crash, the din, and the dust appeared to have terrified the wicked beast below, for she stood trembling in one corner of the stable, and never moved a limb as I walked boldly up and passed the bridle over her head. This done, I had barely time to spring on her back, when the door was forced open by the young gentleman, whose fears for my fate had absorbed every other thought. "Are you safe, my boy, quite safe?" he cried, making his way over the fallen rubbish. "Oh! the devil fear him," cried Andy, in a perfect rage of passion; "I wish it was his bones was smashed, instead of the roof-sticks--see!--Och, murther, only look at this." And Andy stood amid the ruins, a most comical picture of affliction, in part real and in part assumed. Meanwhile the youth had advanced to my side, and, with many a kind and encouraging word, more than repaid me for all my danger. "'T is n't five pound will pay the damage," cried Andy, running up on his fingers a sum of imaginary arithmetic. "Where's the saddle, you old--" What the young man was about to add, I know not; but at a look from me he stopped short. "Is it abusin' me you're for now, afther wrecking my house and destroying my premises?" cried Andy, whose temper was far from sweetened by the late catastrophe. "Sure what marcy my poor beast would get from the likes of ye! sorry step she 'll go in yer company; pay the damages ye done, and be off." Here was a new turn of affairs, and, judging from the irascibility of both parties, a most disastrous one; it demanded, indeed, all my skill,--all the practised dexterity of a mind trained, as mine had been been by many a subtlety, to effect a compromise, which I did thus: my patron being cast in the costs of all the damages to the amount of twenty shillings, and the original contract to be maintained in all its integrity. The young man paid the money without speaking; but I had time to mark that the purse from which he drew it was far from weighty. "Are we free to go at last?" cried he, in a voice of suppressed wrath. "Yes, yer honor; all's right," answered Andy, whose heart was mollified at the sight of money. "A pleasant journey, and safe to ye; take good care of the beast, don't ride her over the stones, and--" The remainder of the exhortation was lost to us, as we set forth in a short jog-trot, I running alongside.