"You know you did, once, Cauth, to the backbone; an' small blame for
Shuffle to be afeard o' you ever since," said Jer.

This vindication of his own occasional remonstrances, as well as of
Shuffle's, was founded in truth. When very young, just to keep him from
running against her legs while she was busy over the fire, Mrs. Mulcahy
certainly had emptied a ladleful of boiling potato-water upon the poor
puppy's back; and from that moment it was only necessary to spill a drop
of the coldest possible water, or of any cold liquid, on any part of his
body, and he believed he was again dreadfully scalded, and ran out of
the house screaming in all the fancied theories of torture.

"Will you ate your good dinner, now, Jer Mulcahy, an' promise to do
something to help me, afther it?--Mother o' Saints!"--thus she
interrupted herself, turning towards the place where she had deposited
the eulogized food--"see that yon unlucky bird! May I never do an ill
turn but there's the pig afther spilling the sweet milk, an' now
shoveling the beautiful white-eyes down her throat at a mouthful!"

Jer, really afflicted at this scene, promised to work hard the moment he
got his dinner; and his spouse, first procuring a pitchfork to beat the
pig into her sty, prepared a fresh meal for him, and retired to eat her
own in the house, and then to continue her labor.

In about an hour she thought of paying him another visit of inspection,
when Jeremiah's voice reached her ear, calling out in disturbed accents,
"Cauth! Cauth! _a-vourneen!_ For the love o' heaven, Cauth! where
are you?"

Running to him, she found her husband sitting upright, though not upon