"Shure now, and is that all?" interrupted Larry; "and, belike, the doctors have been chating you; for I tell you, honey, and you, too, Patrick, those 'natomy chaps know no more about the rheumatiz than holy Solomon knew about stameboats. But, belike, I'm the lad that disn't know neither; but maybe your chating yoursilf if ye think so. I'll tell ye what it is: the rheumatiz is a wandering wind between the flesh and the bone; and, more than that, there is no way to cure it but to squaze it out at the ends of the fingers or toes." "Oh, my childer's sorrow on it, thin!" replied the suffering man's wife; "but, more and above the rheumatiz, Patrick got his leg broke last Fibruary----" "Ay, splintered, honey," added the husband; "and the doctors--bad luck be wid them!--can't make nothing on't; and I am now goin to the great Salford bone-doctor." "And maybe he won't be curing the bit bone without the money?" said Larry, with an expression of sympathy. The sufferer shook his head, and was silent; his wife burst into tears. "I will work, I will beg, I will die, for my Patrick," she exclaimed, and pressed the child closer to her breast. "You had better be barring the dying, honey," returned Larry; "and wouldn't a raffle, think ye, among friends, be more gintale thin begging among strangers?" "Ohon! and is it _friends_ you say?" replied she. "Yes, shure, and it is _friends_ that I say," answered Larry; "and a raffle is what no gintleman need be ashamed on." The boat at this moment stopped opposite an inn at the side of the canal; Larry borrowed a quart measure from the skipper, and sprang ashore. In a few minutes he returned with a quantity of rum, and, handing it first to the wife, and then to her lame husband, said, "Come, warm up thy ould bones with a drop of the cratur." He called the rest of his countrymen around him, and handed the liquor to each. When gathered together, there might be about sixteen or eighteen of them in all.