“Musha, now I’ll be skivered,” said Mick, standing still, “if that’s not Joe McEvoy’s ould cow. You’ll be apt to experience a dampin’, ould woman, if you don’t quit out of there. Whethen, it’s a quare man he is to lave the baste sthrayin’ about permiscuous in the welther of the tide.” He peered over the edge of the cliff, evidently mistrusting its smooth face; and then he threw several stones and clods at the cow, with shouts of “Hi, out of that!” and “Shoo along!” But his missiles fell short of their mark, and if his voice reached her, she treated it with the placid disregard of which her kind are mistress on such occasions, and never raised her crumple-horned head. “Have it your own way, then,” said Mick, cynically; “it’s nothin’ to me if you’ve a mind to thry a taste of swimmin’ under wather.” He had not, however, strolled much farther when he met with somebody who was vastly more concerned about the animal’s impending fate. This was old Joe McEvoy himself, who, out of the mouth of a steep, sandy boreen, sprang up suddenly, like a jack-fn-the-box-one of the shock-wigged, saturnine-complexioned pattern. But no jack-in-the-box could have looked so flurriedly distracted, or have muttered to itself such queer execrations as he did, hobbling along. “A year’s loadin’ of bad luck to the whoule of thim!” he was saying with gasps when Mick approached; “there’s not a one of thim but ’ud do desthruction on herself sooner than lose a chanst to be annoyin’ anybody, if she could conthrive it no other way.” “If it’s th’ ould cow you’re cursin’,” said Mick, “she’s down below yonder.” “Och, tell me somethin’ I dunno, you gomeral, not but what I’m nigh as big a one meself as can be, to go thrust her wid that little imp of mischief. Bad scran to it, I must give me stiff leg a rest, and she’ll be up here blatherin’ after me before you can look round, you may bet your brogues she will.” “Gomeral yourself and save your penny,” said Mick, whose temper was not at its best after his long day of hungry discontent. “And the divil a call you have to be onaisy about the crathur follyin’ you anywheres. Stayin’ where she is she’s apt to be, until she gets the chanst of goin’ out to say wid the turn of the tide, and that’s like enough to happen her.”