“Ceased!” exclaimed Corney, bursting into a laugh; “if you waited for that, sir, you'd stay till the crows removed you as a nuisance to the frogs in the slush there behind. Does it ever cease?--Divil a bit, then, for three miles round, morning, noon, or night,--summer or winter,--but keeps pelting and pattering away, at all times and in all seasons, as it has for hundreds of years, and will for ever and ever except once in a twelvemonth, sometimes, and that's the fifteenth day of the month of July, when St. Swithin is too busy raining down upon the other parts of the world, to mind this which is his watery worship's home. It's fine weather here, if, with three coats on your back, you don't get wet to the skin in forty minutes. I wouldn't insult the Saint, by carrying an umbrella, for Damer's estate! Bad luck and ill chance is the best I'd expect, and so may you; for it's raining now just worse than ever I knew it but once. Had you no idea, then, where you were, sir?” “I had,” says the gentleman; “but I wasn't sure. I never came by this road to The Beg before; and I asked the boy that's with you where I was, when I met him hereabouts, full two hours ago; but he grinned in my face.” “Is it yourself that bate him, bekase he couldn't understand English?” “I certainly did lay my whip over his shoulders,” says the gentleman; “and the young villain then began to pelt me and my mare with stones, so that the animal feared to approach near enough to permit of my beating him again; and at last she got unmanageable, ran away, and threw me off,--that is, I mean--threw me off, and ran away.” “Rory was right, then, and so I said while ago, when he tould me part of the story; for you'd no business to bate him,--had you, now?--But what makes you wait, sir? If you don't come at once, why, then, good night!--For it's not agreeable to be houlding a conversation such weather as this, with one on a mile-stone under a big umbrella.--Is it coming you are?” The gentleman talked of borrowing a boat, or backing the car into the pool: but Corney said he couldn't get the one, and wouldn't do the other; and, moreover, that the umbrella must be sacrificed to St. Swithin, for he wasn't reprobate enough to ride in its company. After many more words, the gentleman got down from the mile-stone, with his dog under his arm, and walked through the water like a cat through a puddle. At first he insisted on being allowed his umbrella; but Corney was resolute; and away it wint, at last, scudding over the bog,--frightening up thousands of birds, which flew screaming after it,--until it suddenly sunk in what's called “The Saint's Piggin.” The gentleman wasn't well seated on the car, before Corney thrust a bottle of whiskey into his hand, and threatened him with a quantity of discipline from his wooden leg, if he didn't take a good pull at it.