The stranger was up at sunrise, and was preparing to depart, but his kind host and hostess would not permit him to go. They told him to stop a few days to rest himself, and in the interim, that he could not do better than take his stand at the ford, and ask alms of those who passed the way, as a great many frequented that pass; and as nothing was ever craved from them there, they would cheerfully extend their charity to an object worthy of relief. Acting on their suggestions, the old sailor was soon sitting on a stone at the western extremity of the ford. With his old caubeen in his hand, and his head enveloped in the gigantic red nightcap, he craved alms, in the name of God and the Virgin, from all who passed the way; and before the sickly beams of the December sun had sunk behind the conical “Gizebo,” he could show more money than ever he did before, since his limb was swept off by the shot of the smuggling Frenchman. The next morning, and every morning after, found the sailor at his post at the ford: he soon became well known to all the villagers, and from the circumstance of his always appearing with no other head-gear than the red nightcap, they nicknamed him the “Boccough Ruadh,”[4] a name by which he went ever after till his death. Time passed on as usual, and the one-legged sailor still plied his lucrative vocation at the river pass. Neale O’Shea’s cabin still continued to afford him shelter every night, and all his days, from the crow of the cock to the vesper song of the wood-thrush, were passed at the ford, seated on that remarkable block of limestone called to this day the “Clough-na-Boccough.”[5] His hand was stretched to every stranger for alms, “for the good of their souls,” and very few passed without giving more or less to the Boccough Ruadh. Thus he acquired considerable sums of money, but constantly denied having a “keenogue;” but when bantered by any of the neighbouring urchins on the length of his purse, he would get into a great rage, and swear, by the cross of his crutch, that between buying the shough of tobacco and paying for other things he wanted, he hadn’t as much as would jingle on a tomb-stone, or what would buy a farthing candle to show light to his poor corpse at the last day. His food was of the very worst description, and unless supplied by the kind-hearted Kathleen O’Shea, he would sooner go to bed supperless than lay out one penny to buy bread. He suffered his clothes to go to rags, unless when any person in the neighbourhood would give him old clothes for charity, and he would not pay for soap to wash his shirt once in the twelvemonth. Yet no one could find out what he did with his money; he did not spend two-and-sixpence in the year, and it was people’s opinion that he was hoarding it up to give for the benefit of his soul at his dying day.