About five o'clock Dan duly made his appearance, wearing a much more
jubilant aspect than when his pastor had taken leave of him. With a
comical and somewhat sheepish grin he produced the "ordher" in a
crumpled condition from his tattered pocket, and handed it over to the
priest, remarking, as he did so, that "it was a quare thing to think
what a power o' money did be in a little or'nary thing like that."
"Yes, indeed," said Father Taylor, with a sigh, "that little bit of
paper will carry you and Mary all the way over the sea, and across a
State as big as Ireland."
"Would it now?" inquired Dan, eyeing it curiously. "Well now, to tell
you the truth, yer reverence, herself an' me has been havin' a bit of
a chat. She thinks bad, the cratur', of lavin' the bed, an' the ould
pot, an' all our little sticks o' things behind, ye know, sir, an' I
do be thinkin' I'd never get my health at all out of ould Ireland; an'
any way the two of us is too ould to be thravellin' off that way. An'
so herself says to me--she says:--'Dan,' says she, 'I think the best
way would be for ye to step down to his reverence's,' says she, 'an'
give him the ordher,' she says, 'an' ax him,' says she, 'if he'll just
write a line to poor Larry, an' let him know that we haven't the heart
nor the strength to be lavin' our own little place. An' bid him,' says
she, "ax Larry if it 'ud be all the same to him if his reverence was
to keep the money for us agin we want it.'"
"To be sure, to be sure," cried Father Taylor, delighted. "You show
your good sense, Dan, and so does Mary. I'll just go with you now, and
change the order; and I'll let Larry know that I'll keep the money for
you, and pay it out little by little as long as it lasts."
"Not at all, not at _all_," interrupted Dan, hastily and indignantly.
"Bedad, it isn't that we want yer reverence to do for us. Sure the
raison I'm afther givin' ye the ordher is for you to keep it safe, the
way we'll have it for the monyement."
"THE SPIDER AND THE GOUT"
Old Pat Clancy lived in a small cabin immediately beneath the Rock of
Donoughmor, and looked upon the ruined castle on the top as his
especial property, the legends concerning them being treasured by him
as jealously as though they were traditions of his own ancestors. A
proud man was Pat when piloting the occasional strangers who wished to
inspect the keep up the steep and slippery path which led to the
ancient portcullis, and conducting them thence to the banqueting-hall,
sparing the luckless pilgrim, in fact, no corner of the edifice or its
surroundings, and pausing only on the mossy slope to the rear, where,
his charge having duly admired "the view over three counties," he
would proudly point out the precise spots where Fin-ma-coul had
"wrastled" with and overthrown another "monsthrous joynt" of name
unknown, the traces of the encounter being yet visible in the short
turf.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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