Duck, as I said, was a little dashed at first, but he soon got heart, and, says he to himself, “It is but her stick she's stuck up there, like a centinel, to scare away the boys from teazing her while she sleeps; but I'll just teach her that I'm not to be come over so aisily.” Upon this, with a long barley-straw, from behind the tree where he was, Dick began to tickle and teaze the ould woman's nose, that was almost as rough and as prickly as the ear of the straw.--Did you ever get your nose tickled that way while you were asleep?--If you didn't, take my word for it, and upon my honour and conscience, it's far from pleasant; and so the ould woman found it. She scratched her nose with her long blue nails, muttered a curse upon the flies, and snored again.--Duck was in his glory; he tickled as before, and the ould woman opened her eyes, but he shrunk behind the tree, and didn't breathe: so she dropped off once more. The third time he touched her she awoke at once, and from what she said, and her preparing to get up, Duck knew she was sure of being teazed by something bigger than a fly: so, for fear of anything unpleasant, he moved off, and ran away across the field, chuckling in his own mind at the fine fun he'd had. When he got within a step or two of the gate, Duck heard a sound with which he was very well acquainted--I mane that of a stick descending with force upon his back; and within much less than a quarter of a second, he felt such a blow across his shoulders as he didn't get for many's the long day. He looked behind, thinking to see the ould woman, who he now thought was a witch, close at his heels; but no--it was only her stick!--There it stood, staring him full in the face, though its owner was yet but a little distance from the tree, and hobbling towards him, in such a weak way, that Duck felt sure she couldn't have had strength to throw it. Don't think that, while he observed this, Duck wasn't wriggling his shoulders to and fro, and bellowing lustily with the pain of the thwack. It wasn't a little that would make him cry; but roar he did, this while, as loud as ever he roared in his life. Not knowing what to make of this that had happened him, while the stick stood where it did, he was afraid to turn his back to it again; and there he was, still wriggling and roaring, when the ould woman came up. The state she found Duck in seemed to give her great satisfaction: she took the point of the stick out of the ground, and clasping it round the middle to support herself, gnashed her toothless gums up in Duck's face, and, for his malicious tricks to her that day,--waking her when she was weary, as he did,--promised him a taste of her switch whenever he worried an ould woman again. With this she tottered off, and Duck sneaked home, blubbering as he went, expecting to be saluted with a blow of either the ladle or the sleeve-board, for delaying: but he was disappointed, for he got both;--one from ould Alice, and the other from her husband.