"Oh, ullagone! ullagone! this is a wide world, but what will we do in it, or where will we go?" muttered Bill Doody, as he sat on a rock by the Lake of Killarney. "What will we do? Tomorrow's rent-day, and Tim the Driver swears if we don't pay our rent, he'll cant every ha'perth we have; and then sure enough, there's Judy and myself, and the poor grawls, 1 will be turned out to starve on the high-road, for the never a halfpenny of rent have I!--Oh hone, that ever I should live to see this day!"
Thus did Bill Doody bemoan his hard fate, pouring his sorrows to the reckless waves of the most beautiful of lakes, which seemed to mock his misery as they rejoiced beneath the cloudless sky of a May morning. That lake, glittering in sunshine, sprinkled with fairy isles of rock and verdure, and bounded by giant hills of ever-varying hues, might, with its magic beauty, charm all sadness but despair; for alas,
And heart that cannot rest agree!"
"A sad story, indeed," said the stranger; "but surely, if you represented the case to your landlord's agent, he won't have the heart to turn you out." "Heart, your honour; where would an agent get a heart!" exclaimed Bill. "I see your honour does not know him; besides, he has an eye on the farm this long time for a fosterer of his own; so I expect no mercy at all, only to be turned out." "Take this, my poor fellow, take this," said the stranger, pouring a purse full of gold into Bill's old hat, which in his grief he had flung on the ground. "Pay the fellow your rent, but I'll take care it shall do him no good. I remember the time when things went otherwise in this country, when I would have hung up such a fellow in the twinkling of an eye!" These words were lost upon Bill, who was insensible to everything but the sight of the gold, and before he could unfix his gaze, and lift up his head to pour out his hundred thousand blessings, the stranger was gone. The bewildered