the house. De Vere meantime took out his Spencer, and threw himself upon the settle, in the place of the female in the frize cloak, to whom the landlady was serving out some milk in another part of the kitchen; when his neighbour in the calash, jerking the skirt of her riding cloak forward, which he had incautiously sat upon, observed---" I'd trouble you to move off: you were not so ready to put your comether* on me, when you refused me making a third in the chay, why! from Dublin to Cashel."

Startled at this half-remembered accent, De Vere raised his eyes fearfully, and under the yawning cavity of the calash beheld the red nose and green spectacles of Mrs. Magillicuddy. He sprung from his seat and left the house. "For heaven's sake," he exclaimed, as with rapid strides he advanced to his fel

* “ Comether"—officious intrusiveness.

low traveller, who stood talking near the door to the Baccah and the Kerry horsedealer-" for heaven's sake let us be off directly, with or without a wheel. Who do you think one of the two females at the fire may be?"

"Not your night-mare, I hope," said the Commodore, smiling-" not Mrs. Magillicuddy."

"My night-mare, indeed!" he reiterated, shrugging his shoulders: "this is being fairly hag-ridden."

Magillicuddy!" repeated the driver of the first-arrived chaise, who was putting-to his horses. "Is that the ould lady's name, your honor? Why, then, troth, she's a gentlewoman every taste of her, and pays finely; and for that same I bate your chay fairly, and got in half an hour before yez."

"Where did you start from," asked Owny, coming forward.

"From Cashel; and came the low road; and wonders yez would take to

the mountains; only it's what I be lieve you lost your way, Sir," he replied.

"And where are you going to now?" asked De Vere, evidently interested in the question.

"We are going on to one side of Doneraile, Sir: and if we can't make that before ten o'clock, we are to stop at the New Inn; for th' ould lady doesn't care to be on the road after the moon goes down, though from this to Doneraile is as beautiful as a bowling-green."

"I think," said Mr. De Vere, "I should be well contented to remain here to-night if there was a chance of clean beds, or even of fresh hether: we could then proceed to Court Fitzadelm early to-morrow, instead of having to tread back our steps by going to Buttevant first." This was addressed to the Commodore.

"Och, then, not better beds you'll get in the barony than at the little back

room at Lis-na-sleugh," observed Owny, who appeared to listen with attention; " and I carried two gentlemen here who slept in them last week, and one of them a priest, that's Friar O'Sullivan, on his way to Cork."

"Then we will endeavour to make our arrangements accordingly," said De Vere, turning sharp round, and coming in contact with the whalebone of Mrs. Magillicuddy's calash; for she had stood for the last few minutes behind them. Why, then, man," she exclaimed to her driver, "will lave off your gossip, and not keep us here till midnight, why!"

you

To this remonstrance, made in a most stentorian voice, the man replied by opening the chaise door, letting down the steps, and letting in the infirm Mrs. Magillicuddy and her more youthful attendant, who sprung lightly into the chaise after her:-they immediately drove away.

"I told you," said the younger traveller, "we were fated to remain at this miserable little mountain inn."

"The fatality lies in your prepossessions," replied the Commodore," or if you will, in the super-human influence of Mrs. Magillicuddy; for it appears that your motions are retarded or accelerated, according to your conjunctions or opposition with that most repelling body. She rules the ascendant."

"Well," he replied, shrugging his shoulders,

"In her bright radiance and collateral heat, May I be comforted—not in her sphere.” "And yet," said the Commodore," she is a woman."

"A woman! Sex hath but one age: that passed, there is neither man nor woman. Who would assign to such a thing as that a gender, with her lungs and her bulk, her natural defects and artificial disgusts, her Bardolph's nose, and tower of horse hair. A woman!