_Michael Miskell:_ O to listen to you! And I striving to please you and to be kind to you and to close my ears to the abuse you would be calling and letting out of your mouth. To trespass on your crops is it? It’s little temptation there was for my poor beasts to ask to cross the mering. My God Almighty! What had you but a little corner of a field! _Mike McInerney:_ And what do you say to my garden that your two pigs had destroyed on me the year of the big tree being knocked, and they making gaps in the wall. _Michael Miskell:_ Ah, there does be a great deal of gaps knocked in a twelvemonth. Why wouldn’t they be knocked by the thunder, the same as the tree, or some storm that came up from the west? _Mike McInerney:_ It was the west wind, I suppose, that devoured my green cabbage? And that rooted up my Champion potatoes? And that ate the gooseberries themselves from off the bush? _Michael Miskell:_ What are you saying? The two quietest pigs ever I had, no way wicked and well ringed. They were not ten minutes in it. It would be hard for them eat strawberries in that time, let alone gooseberries that’s full of thorns. _Mike McInerney:_ They were not quiet, but very ravenous pigs you had that time, as active as a fox they were, killing my young ducks. Once they had blood tasted you couldn’t stop them. _Michael Miskell:_ And what happened myself the fair day of Esserkelly, the time I was passing your door? Two brazened dogs that rushed out and took a piece of me. I never was the better of it or of the start I got, but wasting from then till now! _Mike McInerney:_ Thinking you were a wild beast they did, that had made his escape out of the travelling show, with the red eyes of you and the ugly face of you, and the two crooked legs of you that wouldn’t hardly stop a pig in a gap. Sure any dog that had any life in it at all would be roused and stirred seeing the like of you going the road! _Michael Miskell:_ I did well taking out a summons against you that time. It is a great wonder you not to have been bound over through your lifetime, but the laws of England is queer. _Mike McInerney:_ What ailed me that I did not summons yourself after you stealing away the clutch of eggs I had in the barrel, and I away in Ardrahan searching out a clocking hen. _Michael Miskell:_ To steal your eggs is it? Is that what you are saying now? (_Holds up his hands._) The Lord is in heaven, and Peter and the saints, and yourself that was in Ardrahan that day put a hand on them as soon as myself! Isn’t it a bad story for me to be wearing out my days beside you the same as a spancelled goat. Chained I am and tethered I am to a man that is ramsacking his mind for lies! _Mike McInerney:_ If it is a bad story for you, Michael Miskell, it is a worse story again for myself. A Miskell to be next and near me through the whole of the four quarters of the year. I never heard there to be any great name on the Miskells as there was on my own race and name.