as if you were under the hands of the hangman, with the rope about
your neck, for the question is indeed a trying one which I am about
to put. Are you still 'blue-moulded for want of a beating'?"

The tailor collected himself to make a reply; he put one leg
out--the very leg which he used to show in triumph to his friend,
but, alas, how dwindled! He opened his waistcoat and lapped it
round him until he looked like a weasel on its hind legs. He then
raised himself up on his tiptoes, and, in an awful whisper, replied,
"No!!! the divil a bit I'm blue-mowlded for want of a batin'!"

The schoolmaster shook his head in his own miserable manner; but,
alas! he soon perceived that the tailor was as great an adept at
shaking the head as himself. Nay, he saw that there was a calamitous
refinement, a delicacy of shake in the tailor's vibrations, which
gave to his own nod a very commonplace character.

The next day the tailor took in his clothes; and from time to time
continued to adjust them to the dimensions of his shrinking person.
The schoolmaster and he, whenever they could steal a moment, met
and sympathised together. Mr. O'Connor, however, bore up somewhat
better than Neal. The latter was subdued in heart and in spirit,
thoroughly, completely, and intensely vanquished. His features
became sharpened by misery, for a termagant wife is the whetstone
on which all the calamities of a henpecked husband are painted by
the devil. He no longer strutted as he was wont to do, he no longer
carried a cudgel as if he wished to wage a universal battle with
mankind. He was now a married man. Sneakingly, and with a cowardly
crawl, did he creep along, as if every step brought him nearer
to the gallows. The schoolmaster's march of misery was far slower