It wasn’t long until we were on the road again, makin’ for the town; an’ as we were goin’ along, who did we meet but a spalpeen from the county Galway, that came over as soon as he met us to beg among the quality; an’ sure enough he was as poor-lookin’ a crathur as ever axed a charity. His legs were bare, and all blue and brackit with could an’ hardship, an’ the sorra a skreed of dacint clothin’ he had on him but an ould tattered breeches an’ a blanket thrown over his shoulders and fastened at the throat with a big skiver; he had a bag on his back, an’ a mether in one fist, an’ a boolteen in the other; an’ if he had any more wealth about him, sure enough it was hid safely. By the discoorse we had one with another, he soon larned about the big stone, and how it puzzled all the scholars in the parish, not to say them from Dublin, an’ how the priest refused to read it because it was magic; and betther nor all, how the Maw offered five goold guineas to any poor scholar, or the like, that could explain it. ‘I’d like to see that stone,’ says the spalpeen. ‘Poor-lookin’ as I am,’ says he, ‘maybe I could insinse ye into the maining of it.’ Well, sir, the words were scarce out of his mouth when Mac Coghlan was tould of them. ‘What’s that you say, honest man,’ says he; ‘can you decypher the writing?’ ‘I’d like to try anyhow, yer honour,’ says the spalpeen, ‘worse than fail I can’t.’ ‘Bedad,’ says Father Madden, ‘it ’ud be a pity not to let you; sure if you say you know nothin’ about it, wiser men nor you had to confess that same; an’ as for us, why, our time will be as well spent listening to one dunce as to another.’ ‘Oh, by all manes,’ says the Maw, ‘we’ll go back and hear what he makes of it.’ So we all turned back with the spalpeen. When he came to the stone, it’s a different kind of look he gave it entirely from what the quality scholars did; you’d know by the way he fixed his eye on it at the very first, that it was no saycret to him, an’ he walked up an’ down from one end of the lines to the other, until he had them all read. ‘Now, my man,’ says the Mac Coghlan, ‘if you read it, the reward is yours,’ an’ he took the five goold guineas out of his purse an’ showed them to him. ‘I can read it, yer honour,’ says the spalpeen; ‘but what it says might be displeasin’ to some of this company, an’ I had betther hould my tongue.’ ‘By my word,’ says Mac Coghlan, ‘let who will be offended by it, no part of the blame shall rest on your shoulders, so speak out, an’ speak true.’ ‘Well, yer honour,’ says the spalpeen, takin’ courage, ‘what it says is this, that this castle was built on such a time, an’ that it will stand whole an’ sound for three hundred years an’ no more; an’ that it’s to be held by eleven Mac Coghlan heirs, and the eleventh will be the last of his race.’