being left-handed. Both were butchers, and both, we believe,
alive and kicking at this day.

"And what will you do with him, Nancy?"

"Och! thin, Dick, avourneen, it's myself that's jist tired thinking of
that; at any rate, consamin' to the loose foot he'll get this blessed
month to come, Dick, agra!"

"Throth, Nancy," another mischievous monkey would exclaim, "if
you hadn't great patience entirely, you couldn't put up with such
threatment, at all at all."

"Why thin, God knows it's true for-you, Barney. D'ye hear that,
'graceless?' the very childhre making a laughing-stock and a may-game of
you!--but wait till we get under the roof, any how."

"Ned," a third would say, "isn't it a burning shame for you to break
the poor crathur's heart this a-way? Throth, but you ought to hould down
your head, sure enough--a dacent woman! that only for her you wouldn't
have a house over you, so you wouldn't."

"And throth, and the same house is going, Tim," Nancy would exclaim,
"and when it goes, let him see thin who'll do for him; let him thry if
his blackguards will stand to him, when he won't have poor foolish Nancy
at his back."

During these conversations, Ned would walk on between his two guards
with a dogged-looking and condemned face; Nancy behind him, with his own
cudgel, ready to administer an occasional bang whenever he attempted