“Ay, he's fond of dabbling at Latin, so he may try him--I'm sure I have no objection--: so, Captain, as I was telling you--” “Silence there below!” said Phaddhy to those at the lower end of the table, who were now talkative enough; “will yez whisht there till Father Con hears Briney a lesson in his Latin. Where are you, Briney? come here, ma bouchal.” But Briney had absconded when he saw that the tug of war was about to commence. In a few minutes, however, the father returned, pushing the boy before him, who in his reluctance to encounter the ordeal of examination, clung to every chair, table, and person in his way, hoping that his restiveness might induce them to postpone the examination till another occasion. The father, however, was inexorable, and by main force dragged him from all his holds, and, placed him before Father Con. “What's come over you, at all at all, you unsignified shingawn you, to affront the gintleman in this way, and he kind enough to go for to give you an examination?--come now, you had betther not vex me, I tell you, but hould up your head, and spake out loud, that we can all hear you: now, Father Con, achora, you'll not be too hard upon him in the beginning, till he gets into it, for he's aisy dashed.” “Here, Briney,” said Father Philemy, handing him his tumbler, “take a pull of this and if you have any courage at all in you it will raise it;--take a good pull.” Briney hesitated. “Why, but you take the glass out of his Reverence's hand, sarrah,” said the father--“what! is it without dhrinking his Reverence's health first?” Briney gave a most melancholy nod at his Reverence, as he put the tumbler to his mouth, which he nearly emptied, notwithstanding his shyness. “For my part,” said his Reverence, looking at the almost empty tumbler, “I am pretty sure that that same chap will be able to take care of himself through life. And so, Captain,--” said he, resuming the conversation with Captain Wilson--for his notice of Briney was only parenthetical. Father Con now took the book, which was AEsop's Fables, and, in accordance with Briney's intention, it opened exactly at the favorite fable of Gallus Gallinacexis. He was not aware, however, that Briney had kept that place open during the preceding part of the week, in order to effect this point. Father Philemy, however, was now beginning to relate another anecdote to the Captain, and the thread of his narrative twined rather ludicrously with that of the examination. Briney, after, a few hems, at length proceeded--“_Gallus Gallinaceus_, a dung-hill cock--” “So, Captain, I was just after coming out of Widow Moylan's--it was in the Lammas fair--and a large one, by the by, it was--so, sir, who should come up to me but Branagan. 'Well, Branagan,' said I, 'how does the world go now with you?'----” “_Gallus Gallinaceus_, a dunghill cock----” ----“Says he. 'And how is that?' says I. “_Gallus Gallinaceus_----”