“Oh, then, troth I’ll be bound that’s a lie, e’er-a-way: the born vagabond, there wasn’t that much good in him, egg or bird: the idle, worthless ruffian, that was the ruination of every one he kem near: the, the----” “Softly, Judith, softly; don’t wrong the absent: it is from Dinny M’Daniel to his ould mother, and contains money moreover;” and she then proceeded to tell how the postmistress had desired the poor widow to bring some responsible person that might guarantee her identity, before such a weighty affair was given into her keeping, for who knew what might be inside of it? though a still greater puzzle was to discover by what means the much reprobated Dinny obtained even the price of the letter-paper; and how old Sibby had borrowed a cloak from one, and a “clane cap” from another, and the huxter had harnessed his ass and car to bring her in style, and Corney King the contingent man,[1] that knows all the quality, was going along with her to certify that she was the veritable Mrs Sybilla M’Daniel of Tullybawn; and how she would have for an escort every man, woman, and child in the village that could make a holiday--compliments cheerfully accorded by each and all, to do honour to the America letter, and the individual whose superscription it bore. Dinny M’Daniel was the widow’s one son, born even in her widowhood, for his father had been killed by the fall of a tree before he had been six months married, and poor Sibby had nothing to lavish her fondness upon but her curly-headed gossoon, who very naturally grew up to be the greatest scapegrace in the parish. He had the most unlucky knack of throwing stones ever possessed by any wight for his sins; not a day passed over his head without a list of damages and disasters being furnished to his poor mother, in the shape of fowls killed and maimed, and children half murdered, or pitchers and occasionally windows made smithereens of; but to do him justice, his breakage in this latter article was not very considerable, there being but few opportunities for practice in Tullybawn. To all these the poor widow had but one reply, “Arrah, what would you have me do?--sorra a bit of harm in him; it’s all element, and what ’ud be the good of batin’ him?” At last the neighbours, utterly worn out by the pertinacity of his misdemeanours, hit upon an expedient to render him harmless for at least half the day, and enjoy that much of their lives in peace, with the ultimate chance of perhaps converting the parish nuisance into a useful character. A quarterly subscription of a penny for each house would just suffice to send Dinny to school to a neighbouring pedagogue, wonderful in the sciences of reading and writing, and, what was a much greater recommendation under the present circumstances, the “divil entirely at the taws.” To him accordingly Dinny was sent, and under his discipline spent some five or six years of comparative harmlessness, during which he mastered the