Musha, I'm out agin--ha, ha, ha! Why, I b'lieve there's pishthrogues an me, or I'd remember it. Bud-an-age, dhrink of all ye. Lie in to the liquor, I say; don't spare it. Here, Mike, send us up another gallon, Faith, we'll make a night of it. 'Och, three maidens a milkin' did go An' three maidens a milkin' did go; An' the winds they blew high An' the winds they blew low, An' they dashed their milkin' pails to an' fro.' All your healths, childhre! Neighbors, all your healths! don't spare what's before ye. It's long since I tuck a jorum myself an--come, I say, plase God, we'll often meet ins' way, so we will. Faith, I'll take a sup from this forrid, with a blessin'. Dhrink, I say, dhrink!” By the time he had arrived at this patch, he was able to engross no great portion either of the conversation or attention. Almost every one present had his songs, his sorrows, his laughter, or his anecdotes, as well as himself. Every voice was loud; and every tongue busy. Intricate and entangled was the talk, which, on the present occasion, presented a union of all the extremes which the lights and shadows of the Irish character alone could exhibit under such a calamity as that which brought the friends of the deceased together. Peter literally fulfilled his promise of taking a jorum in future. He was now his own master; and as he felt the loss of his wife deeply, he unhappily had recourse to the bottle, to bury the recollection of a woman, whose death left a chasm in his heart, which he thought nothing but the whiskey could fill up. His transition from a life of perfect sobriety to one of habitual, nay, of daily intoxication, was immediate. He could not bear to be sober; and his extraordinary bursts of affliction, even in his cups, were often calculated to draw tears from the eyes of those who witnessed them. He usually went out in the morning with a flask of whiskey in his pocket, and sat down to weep behind a ditch--where, however, after having emptied his flask, he might be heard at a great distance, singing the songs which Ellish in her life-time was accustomed to love. In fact, he was generally pitied; his simplicity of character, and his benevolence of heart, which was now exercised without fear of responsibility, made him more a favorite than he ever had been. His former habits of industry were thrown aside; as he said himself, he hadn't heart to work; his farms were neglected, and but for his son-in-law, would have gone to ruin. Peter himself was sensible of this. “Take them,” said he, “into your own hands, Denis; for me, I'm not able to do anything more at them; she that kep me up is gone, an' I'm broken down. Take them--take them into your own hands. Give me my bed, bit, an' sup, an' that's all I Want.”