"When we are once below the hill, yonder," said I to my companion, "give her the whip, and make up for lose time." "And how are you to keep up, my lad?" asked he, in some surprise. I could scarcely avoid a laugh at the simplicity of the question; as if an Irish gossoon, with his foot on his native bog, would n't be an overmatch in a day's journey for the best hack that ever ambled! Away we went, sometimes joking over, sometimes abusing, the old miser Andy, of whom, for my fellow-traveller's amusement, I told various little traits and stories, at which he laughed with a zest quite new to me to witness. My desire to be entertaining then led me on to speak of my father and his many curious adventures,--the skill with which he could foment litigation, and the wily stratagems by which he sustained it afterwards. All the cunning devices of the process-server I narrated with a gusto that smacked of my early training: how, sometimes, my crafty parent would append a summons to the collar of a dog, and lie in wait till he saw the owner take it off and read it, and then, emerging from his concealment, cry out "sarved," and take to his heels; and again how he once succeeded in "serving" old Andy himself, by appearing as a beggar woman, and begging him to light a bit of paper to kindle her pipe. The moment, however, he took the bit of twisted paper, the assumed beggar-woman screamed out, "Andy, yer sarved: that's a process, my man!" The shock almost took Andy's life; and there's not a beggar in the barony dares to come near him since. "Your father must be well off, then, I suppose," said my companion. "He was a few weeks ago, sir; but misfortune has come on us since that." I was ashamed to go on, and yet I felt that strange impulse so strong in the Irish peasant to narrate anything of a character which can interest by harrowing and exciting the feelings. Very little pressing was needed to make me recount the whole story, down to the departure of my father with the other prisoners sentenced to transportation. "And whither were you going when I met you this morning on the common?" said my fellow-traveller, in a voice of some interest. "To seek my fortune, sir," was my brief answer; and either the words or the way they were uttered seemed to strike my companion, for he drew up short, and stared at me, repeating the phrase, "Seek your fortune!" "Just so," said I, warmed by an enthusiasm which then was beginning to kindle within me, and which for many a long year since, and in many a trying emergency, has cheered and sustained me. "Just so; the world is wide, and there 's a path for every one, if they 'd only look for it." "But you saw what came of _my_ taking a short cut, this morning," said my companion, laughing.