When he came to his own place in Connacht he made straight for a loy and then for the lone bush. Not a long was he digging before he hoked out a precious crock full of treasure, and he carried it into the house.
There was a piece of a flag stone lying on top of the gold, and there was a writing cut into it. What might be the meaning of that Michael Hugh had no notion, for the words were not Gaelic nor English at all.
It happened one evening that a poor scholar came in for to make his cailee.
“Can you read me that inscription, mister?” asks Michael Hugh, bringing out the flag.
“Aye surely,” says the poor scholar. “That is a Latin writing, and I am well learned in the same.”
“What meaning is in it?” asks the other.
“ ‘The same at the far side,’ ” says the scholar. “And that is a droll saying surely when it gives no information beyond.”
“Maybe it will serve my turn, mister!” says Michael Hugh, in the best of humour.
After the scholar was gone on his way, didn’t himself take the loy and out to the garden. He began for to dig at the far side of the lone bush, and sure enough he found a second beautiful kist the dead spit of the first.
It was great prosperity he enjoyed from that out. And he bought the grandest of raiment, the way the neighbours began for to call him Michael Hughie the Cock.