"Of course it was, Peter," says he; "sure it was all a joke, for the matter of that. Won't I make the neighbors laugh hearty to-morrow when I tell them all about it!" "You wouldn't be mean enough to betray me?" says Peter, trembling with fright. "Sure ye would n't be mean enough to go against yer father's dying words," says my father,--"the last sentence ever he spoke? And here he gave a low, wicked laugh, that made myself shake with fear. "Very well, Con!" says Peter, holding out his hand; "a bargain's a bargain; yer a deep fellow, that's all!" And so it ended; and my father slipped quietly home over the bog, mighty well satisfied with the legacy he left himself. And thus we became the owners of the little spot known to this day as Con's Acre; of which, more hereafter. CHAPTER II. ANOTHER PEEP AT MY FATHER My father's prosperity had the usual effect it has on similar cases. It lifted him into a different sphere of companionship and suggested new habits of life. No longer necessitated to labor daily for his bread, by a very slight exercise of industry he could cultivate his "potato-garden;" and every one who knows anything of Ireland well knows that the potato and its corollary, the pig, supply every want of an Irish cottier household. Being thus at liberty to dispose of himself and his time, my parent was enabled to practise a long-desired and much-coveted mode of life; which was to frequent "sheebeens" and alehouses, and all similar places of resort,--not, indeed, for the gratification of any passion for drink, for my father only indulged when he was "treated," and never could bring himself to spend a farthing in liquor himself, but his great fondness for these places took its origin in his passion for talk. Never, indeed, lived there a man--from Lord Brougham himself downwards--who had a greater taste for gossip and loquaciousness than my father. It mattered little what the subject, he was always ready; and whether it were a crim. con. in the newspapers, a seizure for rent, a marriage in high life, or a pig in the pound,--there he was, explaining away all difficult terms of law and jurisprudence; and many a difficulty that Tom Cafferty, the postmaster, had attempted in vain to solve was, by a kind of "writ of error," removed to my father's court for explanation and decision. That he soon became a kind of authority in the neighboring town of Kilbeggan need not excite any surprise. It is men of precisely his kind, and with talents of an order very similar to his, that wield influence in the great cities of the earth. It is your talking, pushing, forward men, seeming always confident in what they say, never acknowledging an error nor confessing a defeat, who take the lead in life. With average ability, and ten times the average assurance, they reach the goal that bashful merit never even so much as gets within sight of.