"A hunt, a hunt, by all manes! there's the fun of it! Come on,
lads--here's the place!--turn off, and go to work! Wait, wait! get a
stick a-piece, and break the necks of 'em! Hurrah!--in Spider!--find
'em boy! Good lad! Tare an ouns, you may well squeak! Good dog! good
dog! that's a grandfather!--we'll have more yet; the family always come
to the ould one's berrin'. I've seen 'em often, and mighty dacent they
behave. Damn Kells and the barber, up with the boords and go to
work!--this is something like sport! Houly Paul, there's one up my
breeches--here's the tail of him--he caught a hould of my
leather-garter. Come out of that, Spider! Spider, here he is--that's
it--give him another shake for his impudence--serve him out! Hurrah!"

"Fast and furious" grew our incessant urging on of the willing Spider,
for his continued efforts at extermination. At the end of two hours,
the metamorphosed barn was nearly stripped of its flooring--nine huge
rats lay dead, as trophies of our own achievements--the panting Spider,
"by turns caressing, and by turns caressed," licking alternately the
hands and faces of all, as we sat on the low ledge of the doorway,
wagging his close-cut stump of tail, as if he were resolved, by his
unceasing exertions, to get entirely rid of that excited dorsal
ornament.

"This is the rael thing," said Bob.

"So it is," said Dick; "but"--

"But what?"

"Why, devil a ha'p'orth of Kells or hair-cutting there's in it."