The mirth of the old couple was excessive. The father laughed till he fell off his stool, and the mother till the tears ran down her cheeks. “Death alive; ould man! but you're very merry,” said Phelim. “If you wor my age, an' in such an' amplush, you'd laugh on the wrong side o' your mouth. Maybe you'll tarn your tune when you hear that she has a hundhre and twenty guineas.” “An' you'll be rich, too,” said the father. “The sprig an' you will be rich!--ha, ha, ha!” “An' the family they'll have!” said the mother, in convulsions. “Why, in regard o' that,” said Phelim, rather nettled, “if all fails us, sure we can do as my father and you did: kiss the Lucky Stone, an' make a Station.” “Phelim, aroon,” said the mother, seriously, “put it out o' your head. Sure you wouldn't go to bring me a daughter-in-law oulder nor myself?” “I'd as soon go over,” (* be transported) said Phelim; “or swing itself, before I'd marry sich a piece o' desate. Hard feelin' to her! how she did me to my face!” Phelim then entered into a long-visaged detail of the scene at Father O'Hara's, dwelling bitterly on the alacrity with which the old housekeeper ensnared him in his own mesh. “However,” he concluded, “she'd be a sharp one if she'd do me altogether. We're not married yet; an' I've a consate of my own, that she's done for the ten guineas, any how!” A family council was immediately held upon Phelim's matrimonial prospects. On coming close to the speculation of Miss Patterson, it was somehow voted, notwithstanding Phelim's powers of attraction, to be rather a discouraging one. Gracey Dalton was also given up. The matter was now serious, the time short, and Phelim's bounces touching his own fascinations with the sex in general, were considerably abated. It was therefore resolved that he ought to avail himself of Sam Appleton's clothes, until his own could be made. Sam, he said, would not press him for them immediately, inasmuch as he was under obligations to Phelim's silence upon some midnight excursions that he had made. “Not,” added Phelim, “but I'm as much, an' maybe more in his power, than he is in mine.”