ould a hand about the pot for that. Warn't you in the mountains last
week?"

"Ay: but the curse of Cromwell upon the thief of a gauger,
Simpson--himself and a pack o' redcoats surrounded us when we war
beginnin' to double, and the purtiest runnin' that ever you seen was
lost; for you see, before you could cross yourself, we had the bottoms
knocked clane out of the vessels; so that the villains didn't get a hole
in our coats, as they thought they would."

"I tell you," observed O'Neil, "there's a bad pill* somewhere about us."

* This means a treacherous person who cannot depended
upon.

"Ay, is there, Owen," replied Traynor; "and what is more, I don't think
he's a hundhre miles from the place where we're sittin' in."

"Faith, maybe so Jack," returned the other.

"I'd never give into that," said Murphy. "'Tis Barny Brady that would
never turn informer--the same thing isn't in him, nor in any of his
breed; there's not a man in the parish I'd thrust sooner."

"I'd jist thrust him," replied Traynor, "as far as I could throw a cow
by the tail. Arrah, what's the rason that the gauger never looks next
or near his place, an' it's well known that he sells poteen widout a
license, though he goes past his door wanst a week?"

"What the h---- is keepin' him at all?" inquired one of Dolan's sons.