And, faith! it's nothing he does, but walk about like a half-sir as he is,--smoking his pipe the whole blessed morning, for the sake, he says, of getting himself an appetite for dinner. But he needn't take the trouble; for it's just as needless, in my mind, as whistling to the sea, when the tide's coming in; and come it will, like Bat's appetite, whether you whistle or no, devouring almost everything in its way. Without a word of a lie, Bat's the biggest eater in all the barony, and the biggest brag,--that is, he was,--to the tail o' that. But, poor fellow! he don't know his infirmity; and thinks his appetite a sign of weakness, instead of sound health: it's the only living thing he takes on about. “There's nothing, Jimmy Fitzgerald,” says he, to me, one day; “there's nothing, in the universal world, I can keep on my stomach,--bad luck to the bit!--for if I ate half a rack of mutton, with peeathees and milk, or a pound of pig's face, or eight or ten red herrings, for my breakfast,--it's hungry I am, in an hour or two again, as though nothing had happened to me that day in the way of provision.”--What think you of that for digestion? There's three things Bat thinks about, and that's all first, his belly;--secondly, making believe he's not to be frightened, by man or beast, nor even the good people that lives in the moats, and frolics away all night on the heath, and goes to bed in the butter-cups and daisies--it's a wonder to some they've played no tricks with him yet and lastly, that he has much better blood in his body than the people about him. Now I'll tell you what happened Bat. 'While ago,--three or four years back,--we'd a cunning woman came here,--and it's but little she got,--how would she, when there was little to give?--it was going to a goat's house to look for wool: and plenty of bad luck she prophesied, for nobody had enough to pay for better. Some of it came true enough; and if she spoke truth, there's more mischief behind. She said to me, I'd have my roof down; but it's safe yet, for I trusted in Providence, and put a new beam across it the week after she wint. At last, when she'd tould a power of ill-tidings to many, and no one would go near her for fear, and she'd stood by the abbey-wall for a long hour, waiting for customers, with the people,--men, women, and children,--making a circle about her, who should come up but Misther Bat Boroo, just after taking a good dinner with Paddy Doolan?--“What's the murther here?” says he. So they up and tould him, that nobody dared to have their fates from the cunning-woman. This was a windfall for Bat,--a glorious occasion for making much of himself. Up he marched to the woman, as though he was going to attack an entrenchment, and crossing her ould yellow hand with the copper,--the best his pocket could afford,--he desired she'd say what would happen him. “Speak bouldly,” says he, “for Bat Muggleburgh isn't the man that's to be frightened by a bulrush.”