“An’ so ye war saying, Shane Glas,” he said, advancing in a straight line with his spectre-looking companion, “ye war saying that face of yours would be the means of keeping the guager from our taste of tibaccy.” “The devil resave the guager will ever squint at a lafe of it,” says Shane Glas, “if I’m in yer road. There was never a cloud over Tim Casey for the twelve months I thravelled with him; and if the foolish man had had me the day his taste o’ brandy was taken, he’d have the fat boiling over his pot to-day, ’tisn’t that I say it myself.” “The sorrow from me, Shane Glas,” returned his friend with a hearty laugh, and a roguish glance of his funny eye at the angular and sallow countenance of the other, “the sorrow be from me if it’s much of Tim’s _fat_ came in your way, at any rate, though I don’t say as much for the _graise_.” “It’s laughing at the crucked side o’ yer mouth ye’d be. I’m thinking, Paddy Corbett,” said Shane Glas, “if the thief of a guager smelt your taste o’ tibaccy--Crush Chriest duin! and I not there to fricken him off, as I often done afore.” “But couldn’t we take our lafe o’ tibaccy on our ponies’ backs in panniers, and throw a few hake or some oysters over ’em, and let on that we’re fish-joulting?” “Now, mark my words, Paddy Corbett: there’s a chap in Killarney as knowledgeable as a jailor; Ould Nick wouldn’t bate him in roguery. So put your goods in the thruckle, shake a wisp over ’em, lay me down over that in the fould o’ the quilt, and say that I kem from Decie’s counthry to pay a round at Tubber-na-Treenoda, and that I caught a faver, and that ye’re taking me home to die, for the love o’ God and yer mother’s sowl. Say, that Father Darby, who prepared me, said I had the worst spotted faver that kem to the counthry these seven years. If that doesn’t fricken him off, ye’re sowld” (betrayed.) By this time they had reached a deep ravine, through which a narrow stream pursued its murmuring course. Here they left the horses, and, furnished with the empty sacks, pursued their onward route till they reached a steep cliff. Far below in the dark and undefined space sounded the hollow roar of the heaving ocean, as its billowy volume broke upon its granite barrier, and formed along the dark outline a zone of foam, beneath whose snowy crest the ever-impelled and angry wave yielded its last strength in myriad flashes of phosphoric light, that sparkled and danced in arrowy splendour to the wild and sullen music of the dashing sea. “Paddy Corbett, avick,” said Shane Glas, “pull yer legs fair an’ aisy afther ye; one inch iv a mistake, achorra, might sind ye a long step of two hundred feet to furnish a could supper for the sharks. The sorrow a many would vinture down here, avourneen, barring the red fox of the hill and the honest smuggler; they are both poor persecuted crathurs, but God has given them _gumpshun_ to find a place of shelter for the fruits of their honest industhry, glory be to his holy name!”