“Oh, it would be too bad to be keeping your honour from your dinner, but I’ll make your honour sinsible immadiately. It is not of Christy Salmon at-all-at-all I’m talking. May be your honour is not sinsible yet who I am--I am Paddy M’Doole, of the Curragh, and I’ve been a flax-dresser and dealer since I parted your honour’s land, and was last night at the fair of Clonaghkilty, where I went just in a quiet way thinking of nothing at all, as any man might, and had my little yarn along with me, my wife’s and the girl’s year’s spinning, and all just hoping to bring them back a few honest shillings as they desarved--none better!--Well, plase your honour, my beast lost a shoe, which brought me late to the fair, but not so late but what it was as throng as ever; you could have walked over the heads of the men, women, and childer, a foot and a horseback, all buying and selling; so I to be sure thought no harm of doing the like; so I makes the best bargain I could of the little hanks for my wife and the girl, and the man I sold them to was just weighing them at the crane, and I standing forenent him--‘Success to myself!’ said I, looking at the shillings I was putting into my waistcoat pocket for my poor family, when up comes the inspector, whom I did not know, I’ll take my oath, from Adam, nor couldn’t know, becááse he was the deputy inspector, and had been but just made, of which I was ignorant, by this book and all the books that ever were shut and opened--but no matter for that; he seizes my hanks out of the scales that I had just sold, saying they were unlawful and forfeit, becááse by his watch it was past four o’clock, which I denied to be possible, plase your honour, becááse not one, nor two, nor three, but all the town and country were selling the same as myself in broad day, only when the deputy came up they stopped, which I could not, by rason I did not know him.--‘Sir,’ says I (very civil), ‘if I had known you, it would have been another case, but any how I hope no jantleman will be making it a crime to a poor man to sell his little matter of yarn for his wife and childer after four o’clock, when he did not know it was contrary to law at-all-at-all.’ “‘I gave you notice that it was contrary to law at the fair of Edgerstown,’ said he.--‘I axe your pardon, sir,’ said I, ‘it was my brother, for I was by.’ With that he calls me liar, and what not, and takes a grip[40] of me, and I a grip of my flax, and he had a shilala[41] and I had none; so he gave it me over the head, I crying ‘murder! murder!’ and clinging to the scales to save me, and they set a swinging and I with them, plase your honour, till the bame comes down a’top o’ the back o’ my head, and _kilt_ me, as your honour sees.” “I see that you are alive still, I think.”