"Faix, an' it's just because I'm afeered to sthraighten myself out, that murdherin thief rheumatism has screwed the muscles of my back so tight."
"You can't stand up then, eh Terry?"
"Not for this many a long day, sir, more is the pity," replied the other, with a heavy sigh.
"You don't tell me that," said the leprechaun, with a queer expression of sympathy. "There could be no harm thryin', any way."
"If I thought there would be any use in it, it's only too glad that I'd be," said Terry.
"There's no knowin' what a man can do, until he makes the effort."
Encouraged by these words, Terry commenced very gingerly to lift his head from its long sunken position; to his infinite delight he found the movement unaccompanied by the slightest twinge, and so, with a heart brim full of overflowing joy, he drew himself up to his full height without an ache or a pain; tall, muscular, and as straight as a tailor's yard.
The hurroo! that Terry sent forth from his invigorated lungs, when he felt the entire consciousness of his return to youth and its attendant freshness and strength, startled the echoes of the mountain, like the scream of a grey eagle.
"And now, Misther Terry Magra," said the leprechaun, "I may as well tell you the exact period of time that has transpired since I first had the pleasure of a conversation with you; it is now exactly, by my watch," and he pulled out a mite of a time-keeper from his fob—"there's nothing like being particular in matters of chronology—jist fourteen minutes and fifty-nine seconds, or to be more explicit, in another minute it will be precisely a quarter of an hour."
"Oh, murdher alive, only to think!" cried Terry, gasping for breath. "An' the wife an' childher, and the drunkenness and misery I scattered around me."