But, "stop!" you say, "these are twists you're getting into, indeed. What has this to do with your legend?" Well, then, reader, jump over with me into a snug cabin, which is not so very unlike a log-cabin, only built of stone or mud, (excuse me,) and sit down with me and a collection of choice spirits, round a blazing turf fire, keeping it warm, as we say, with the pipe and the "darlin' tibacky" taking their accustomed rounds. I may as well introduce Jimmy Carmody to you--my "Micky Free"--Tom Dillon, and a few others. So, now we are all settled. "What's this you're all discussing so learnedly, boys?" "O, nothing very partic'lar, your honor, only we're just saying what mighty quare owld ruins them is--them round towers. Did your honor never see any of them? Sure there's one on Scattery Island, in the Shannon, and one at Kilmacduagh, I believe, in this county." "O, yes, Tom, I've seen those you mention, and a great many more, too; and if any of you have ever been to Dublin by the canal, I'm sure you must have seen the one at Clondalkin. There's one, too, you know, in the county Wicklow, at the lake that Tommy Moore made the beautiful song about: 'By that lake, whose gloomy shore Skylark never warbled o'er.'" "Why, now, yer honor's perfectially right!" said Jimmy, who just then remembered some incidents in his former travels to Dublin about his "little spot of a pratee garden, that was near being sowld at the Four Courts for _non payment_. Quite right your honor is. Sure I wint down to see where the blessed Saint Kevin done all his miracles--where he turned the loaves into stones, and where he med the owld king's goose, that he was so fond of, young again, and all that; but sure your honor knows all about it; but after a while, the man that was there showed me a little hole up over the lake in the _clift_ above, and 'look!' says he, 'that's St. Kevin's bed,' says he. 'Why, then, now!' says I, 'up in _that_ little pigeon-hole!' says I. 'O! and did his blessed reverince go up _there_ to bed?' says I. 'No! you fool!' says he, 'but to avoid the darlin' young lady,' says he. 'And it's _there_ he threw her down into the deep, cowld, dark lake,' says he. 'Would you like to go up and lie down in his bed?' says he. 'Is it _me_,' says I, 'to do it? Why my brain is like a spider's web wid lookin' at it,' says I. But a young man that was used to crawling in them unchristian places--them mines--went up; and I thought I could jump through a key-hole, I felt so, to see him do it; and says I, when he came down, 'Young man, I pray, when you settle in life, you may have a handier way of gettin' into bed than that, particularly if you're--'" Here a burst of laughter, which it is not hard to elicit from such an auditory, interrupted Jimmy, who is requested to tell "whether he ever heard who built these round towers, or why they were built at all?"