“Well, Mr. O'Driscol, you're well known! to have more o' the divil than the man in you--beggin' your pardon, sir, for the freedoms, I'm takin'--but it's all for your own good I'm doin' it. Have you e're a mouse-hole about your place, sir?” “A-hem! Why, Cannie,” asked O'Driscol, with an expression of strong alarm in his face--“why do you ask so--so--singular a question as that?” “Bekaise, sir, sooner than you should breathe--mind, breathe's the word--one syllable against Buck English, I'd recommend you to go into the mouse-hole I spoke of, and never show your face out of it agin. I--an' everybody knows me, an' likes me, too, I hope--I meek--hem! throth I do make it a point never to name him at all, barrin' when I can't help it. Nobody knows anything about him, they say. By all accounts, he never sleeps a week, or at any rate more than a week, in the same place; an' whatever dress he has on comin' to any particular part of the counthry, he never changes; but they say that if you find him in any other part of the counthry, he has a different dress on him: he has a dress, they say, for every part.” “He has honored my father,” said Alick, “by sending him a written proposal for my sister Julia--ha! ha! ha!” “Well, now, did he, Mr. Alick?” “Yes; and he says that he may be refused now, but won't the next time he asks her.” “Well, then, Mr. Alick, I'll tell you what I'd advise you to do: go home, and tell your father to send for him, if he knows where to find him, and let him not lose a day in marryin' her to him; for if everything is thrue that's said of him, he was never known to break a promise, whether it was for good or ill.” “Ha! ha! ha! thank you, Cannie,--excellent!” replied Alick. “Who can he be, Cannie?” asked Miss O'Driscol, “this person of such wonderful mystery? I have never seen him, but I wish I could.” “Ay, have you, often--I'll engage, Miss.” “And so do I,” added her father; “I wish to see him also, and to have everything mysterious cleared up.” “Well,” continued the pedlar, “I know nothing myself about him, only as I hear; but if all's thrue that's said, he could give your father, and you, Mr. Alick, lave to walk through the whole counthry in the hour of noonday or midnight, widout a finger ever bein' raised against one o' you; and as for you, Mr. O'Driscol, he could have the house pulled about your ears in an hour's time, if he wished--ay, and he would, too, if he heard that you spoke a harsh word of him.” “As for me, Cannie,” replied the magistrate, “I trust I'm a Christian man, and not in the habit of abusing the absent. Indeed, I don't see what right any one has to make impertinent inquiries into the life or way of living of any respectable person--I do not see it, Cannie; and, I assure you, I always set my face against such prying inquiries.”