"'There's a decent, honest, respectable man livin' near you, called James Malone. You're to give him the biggest an' best ham off this pig an' off every pig you kill in future!'
"'Yes, your Majesty.'
"'An' you're never to open your lips to anybody about your visit here to-night, nor to tell livin' man or mortal anythin' we're after sayin' to you.'
"'No, your Majesty.'
"'That'll do, Neddy M'Govern. Now, walk round that bush three times again, an' then straight across to the gap an' down the boreen to your own house, an' look neither up in the air, nor behind you, nor to either side o' you, an' when you go home you'll find your pig in the place it was when we confiscated it. It's cut an' salted an' packed, an' will be fit for use in ten days an' ten nights. Remember your promises, Neddy M'Govern!'
"'Yes, your Majesty,' says Neddy again, an' then he done what he was told, an' when he went back there was the bacon at the gable-end o' the house where 'his Majesty,' Jimmy the Thrick, was after leavin' it. Neddy, of course, was delighted, an' he shared the bacon with Phil, an' gave the biggest ham to Jimmy—there was one ham cut very big—an' from that until he died there wasn't a pig he killed but Jimmy got a ham off it, an' no one knew anythin' about it until Jimmy himself told Father Martin about it the day o' Neddy's funeral, an' I dunno how they settled the matter between them. An' that's the whole story about Jimmy Malone an' the bacon."
["BOW-WOW"]
Nobody could listen to Ned M'Grane's laughter and refrain from laughing himself; it was so airy, so wholehearted, so pleasant, that it became, after the initial explosion, contagious, and if the forge were full of young fellows—as it generally was—the smith's hearty "Ha, ha, ha-ah!" set them all in tune, and there would be a chorus of laughter under that old roof fit to rouse the most despondent heart that ever made its owner believe he was in the blues, and that caused passers-by to stand for a moment on the road and listen, and they usually murmured, as they wagged their heads and walked on, "Ned must be after tellin' a good one now." It was, I think, the most cheering and exhilarating thing I have ever heard—the laughter of Ned M'Grane, the blacksmith of Balnagore.