Early on a clear sunny morning after this, a man with a horse and truckle car was observed to enter the town of Killarney from the west. He trolled forth before the animal, which, checked by some instinctive dread, with much reluctance allowed himself to be dragged along at the full length of his hair halter. On the rude vehicle was laid what seemed a quantity of straw, upon which was extended a human being, whose greatly attenuated frame appeared fully developed beneath an old flannel quilt. His face, that appeared above its tattered hem, looked the embodiment of disease and famine, which seemed to have gnawed, in horrid union, into his inmost vitals. His distorted features pourtrayed rending agony; and as the rude vehicle jolted along the rugged pavement, he groaned hideously. This miserable man was our acquaintance Shane Glas, and he that led the strange procession no other than Paddy Corbett, who thus experimented to smuggle his “taste o’ tibaccy,” which lay concealed in well-packed bales beneath the sick couch of the wretched simulator. As they proceeded along, Shane Glas uttered a groan, conveying such a feeling of real agony that his startled companion, supposing that he had in verity received the sudden judgment of his deception, rushed back to ascertain whether he had not been suddenly stricken to death. “Paddy, a chorra-na-nea,” he muttered in an undergrowl, “here’s the vagabone thief of a guager down sthreet! Exert yerself, a-lea, to baffle the schamer, an’ don’t forget ’tis the spotted faver I have.” Sure enough, the guager did come; and noticing, as he passed along, the confusion and averted features of Paddy Corbett, he immediately drew up. “Where do you live, honest man, an’ how far might you be goin’?” said the keen exciseman. “O, wisha! may the heavens be yer honour’s bed!--ye must be one o’ the good ould stock, to ax afther the consarns of a poor angishore like me: but, a yinusal-a-chree, ’tisn’t where I lives is worse to me, but where that donan in the thruckle will die with me.” “But how far are you taking him?” “O, ’tis myself would offer a pather an’ ave on my two binded knees for yer honour’s soul, if yer honour would tell me that. I forgot to ax the crathur where he _should_ be berrid when we kim away, an’ now he’s speechless out an’ out.” “Come, say where is your residence,” said the other, whose suspicion was increased by the countryman’s prevarication. “By jamine, yer honour’s larnin’ bothers me intirely; but if yer honour manes where the woman that owns me and the childre is, ’tis that way, west at Tubber-na-Treenoda; yer honour has heard tell o’ Tubber-na-Treenoda, by coorse?” “Never, indeed.” “O, wisha! don’t let yer honour be a day longer that way. If the sickness, God betune us an’ harum, kim an ye, ’twould be betther for yer honour give a testher to the durhogh there, to offer up a rosary for ye, than to _shell out_ three pounds to Doctor Crump.”