Everything about the cottage gave evidence of comfort on the part of its owner, and, to judge from the numbers without and within the house, you would say he did not want for friends; for all, as they arrived at its door, greeted Phelim O'Hara kindly, and Phelim welcomed each new comer with a heartiness that did honour to his grey hairs. Frequently passing to and fro, busily engaged in arranging an ample breakfast in the barn, appeared his daughter, a pretty round-faced girl, with black hair and the long and silky-lashed dark grey eyes of her country, where merriment loves to dwell, and a rosy mouth whose smiles served at once to display her good temper and her fine teeth; her colour gets fresher for a moment, and a look of affectionate recognition brightens her eye, as a lithe young fellow springs briskly over the stepping stones that lead across the stream, and trips lightly up to the girl, who offers her hand in welcome. Who is the happy dog that is so well received by Honor O'Hara, the prettiest girl in that parish or the next, and the daughter of a "snug man" into the bargain?--It is the reader's old acquaintance, Larry Lanigan;--and maybe Larry did not give a squeeze extraordinary to the hand that was presented to him. The father received him well also; indeed, for that matter, the difficulty would have been to find a house in the whole district that Larry would not have been welcome in. "So here you are at last, Larry," said old O'Hara; "I was wondering you were not here long ago." "An' so I would, I thank you kindly," said Larry, "only I overtook owld Hoppy here, on the road, and sure I thought I might as well take my time, and wait for poor Hoppy, and bring my welkim along with me;" and here he shoved the fiddler into the house before him. "The girls will be glad to see the pair o' yiz," said the old man, following. The interior of the house was crowded with guests, and the usual laughing and courting so often described, as common to such assemblages, were going forward amongst the young people. At the farther end of the largest room in the cottage, a knot of the older men of the party was engaged in the discussion of some subject that seemed to carry deep interest along with it, and at the opposite extremity of the same room, a coffin of very rude construction lay on a small table; and around this coffin stood all the junior part of the company, male and female, and the wildness of their mirth, and the fertility of their jests, over this tenement of mortality and its contents, might have well startled a stranger for a moment, until he saw the nature of the deposit the coffin contained. Enshrouded in a sheaf of wheat lay a pig, between whose open jaws a large potato was placed, and the coffin was otherwise grotesquely decorated.