By this time Luke had got out his best pair of yarn stockings, and the channel pumps, he made when he was a journeyman in Waterford, and the newest clothes he had, and insisted upon Purcell's laying aside his own for them: but the Mushroom, instead of minding him, whistled his dog, and seemed to be going. Corney, however, put his leg across the door, and Luke himself got a hold of Purcell by the coat, and swore he'd not let him budge a foot:--“Sure,” says he, “you wouldn't think of insulting me so in my own house! I couldn't let a dog go from under my roof such a night as this. If you lived but a stone's throw away, I'd be wrong if I'd let you stir: though they say you were the first that arrested Pierce Veogh, it matters but little to me. May be I like him; may be I don't: but if I'd give you a crack on the head for so doing--I won't say I would though, why should I?--but in case I would if I met you abroad in company, yet in my own house, coming into it as you do, I could not but make you welcome, you know. There's my own bed in the corner for you; and after supper I'll give you as much whiskey as you can carry into it from the place where you'll sit.” Luke Fogarty now gently pushed the Mushroom back to a log o' wood that stood for a chair by the hearth, and began to unbutton his coat. But Purcell wouldn't demean himself so much as to have the likes o' Luke for a valet, and put on the stockings and pumps, which was all he'd accept, without any assistance. I won't tell you what was served up for supper, by Luke's sister, who was his housekeeper,--the wife being dead,--in the state cabin that night, for I didn't hear; and if I did, I forgot: neither, for the same good rason, will I say what songs the piper sung, or what tunes he played on his pipes, or how many piggins of whiskey was drained: but I know this--that Luke Fogarty reeled in his way to the place where he was going to sleep; and that he left Corney, with the pipes by his side, snoring away on the bare floor, with nothing upon him but what he could stand upright in, except a bit of a rug, that Rory, by way of a joke, had thrown on his wooden leg, to keep the end of it warm. As soon as Luke was gone, the Mushroom got into the bed that Corney had described to him, and bad as the accommodation was for one of his way of living, he soon fell fast asleep. Though he said nothing about what business brought him to The Beg that night, it was known, afterwards, that he was called there by letter, to receive whatever Pierce Veogh might then be in debt to him. And I must tell you, he wasn't among the creditors that had security on the land, or the house, or what was in it; but only on Pierce himself, who'd often been worried by him, and never could get clane out of his debt; for if he paid him to-day, Purcell would have something else due against him in a month. And to tell the truth, Pierce had so borrowed of Purcell--at short dates, and long dates, on bills and