"'You infarnal little sckamer, what brings you here at all?' And she whips out her duster an' hot the poor Spider such a crack that his web was destroyed on him altogether, an' it was on'y by the greatest good luck he was able to creep out of her way behind the corner of the frame, or she'd have had him killed as well. Well, the poor fellow, there he sat the whole livelong day, niver so much as offerin' to spin another web; an' sure if he had it 'ud have been no use, for there wasn't the sign of a fly at all. When evenin' come the masther of the house had company, an' there was atin' an' drinkin' an' the best of everything but the poor little Spider was lookin' on, very near perishin' wid hunger an' fright. Well, at the long and the last, when he thought there was nobody lookin', he crept down the wall an' folleyed wan o' the sarvants out o' the room, an' by good luck, the hall door was open, so the poor fellow made off wid himself as fast as he could. Down the road wid him till he come to where the Gout was sittin' waitin' for him at the crass roads. 'Is that yourself?' says the Spider. 'How did you get on?' says he. 'Och,' says the poor Gout"--and here Pat assumed a tone of extreme weakness and exhaustion--"'it's near killed I am altogether; I never put in such a time in me life.' 'Well, for that matther,' says the Spider, 'I might say the same; but what happened to ye at all? Tell me all about it in the name of goodness,' says he. "'Well,' says the Gout, 'I went off down the boreen the same as ye told me, an' I come to the little cabin beyant; the door was open an' in I walked, but o--o--oh! Wh--o--o--oh!' (Pat indulged in a prolonged shiver, while Roseen chuckled and clapped her hands.) 'The cowld of that place was near bein' the death o' me! Sure the wind blew into it,' says he, 'an' the rain was comin' through the roof, an' there wasn't as much fire on the hearth as 'ud warm a fly itself. Well, the poor man come in afther a bit,' says the Gout, 'an' I slipped in through a crack in his owld wore-out brogue, an' into his toe. "Och, Mary," says the poor man to his wife, "I have a terrible bad pain in me toe! What'll I do in the world?" says he; "I'll never be able to stir a fut to-morrow." "Whisht, sure it's maybe a bit of a cramp ye've got. Wait a bit," she says, "an' I'll fetch ye a sup o' the wather I'm afther bilin' the pitaties in, maybe that'll do ye good," she says. 'Well,' says the Gout, 'if the fellow didn't go an' put his fut, _an' me in it_, into an owld rusty bucket full of pitaty-wather! I thought he'd have destroyed me altogether. An' such a night as I passed, wid scarcely a blanket at all on the bed! An' nothin' 'ud sarve the man but to get up before light, an' go thrampin' off through the mud an' rain till I was nearly perished. There he was draggin' me up an' down at the tail of a plough, wid the wet soakin' in through the holes in his brogues, till I couldn't stand it any more, an' I come away wid