When we had finished our journey for the day, I was glad to find a tolerable bed; and never did man enjoy such a luxury of sweet sleep as I did that night. My old companion, too, evinced an attention to me seldom experienced in an accidental traveller. She made them get down water and bathe my feet, and asked me at what hour I would set out in the morning, telling me that she would see my clothes brushed, and everything done herself—so minute was the honest creature in her little attentions. I told her I would certainly take a nap in the morning, as I had slept so little for the last three nights, and was besides so fatigued. “Musha to be sure, and why not, agra! afther the hard bout you had in that blessed Island! betoken that you're tinder and too soft rared to bear it like them that the work hardens; sleep!—to be sure you'll sleep your fill—you want it, in coorse; and now go to bed, and you'll appear quite another man in the mornin', plaise God!”
I did not awake the next morning till ten o'clock, when I found the sun shining full into the room. I accordingly dressed myself partially, and I say partially—for I was rather surprised to find an unexpected chasm in my wardrobe; neither my hat, coat, nor waistcoat being forthcoming. But I immediately made myself easy, by supposing that my kind companion had brought them to be brushed. Yet I relapsed into something more than surprise when I saw my fellow-traveler's redoubtable jacket lying on the seat of a chair, and her hare's-skin cap on the top of it. My misgivings now were anything but weak; nor was I at all improved, either in my religion or philosophy, when, on calling up the landlady I heard that my two companions had set out that morning at four o'clock. I then inquired about my clothes, but all to no purpose; the poor landlady knew nothing about them: which, in fact, was the case; but she told me that the old one brushed them before she went away, saying that they were ready for me to put on whenever I wanted them. “Well,” said I, “she has made another man of me.” The landlady desired me to try if I had my purse; and I found that the kind creature had certainly spared my purse, but showed no mercy at all to what it contained, which was one pound in paper, and a few shillings in silver, the latter, however, she left me. I had now no alternative but to don the jacket and the hare's-skin cap, which when I had done, with as bad a grace and as mortified a visage as ever man dressed himself with, I found I had not the slightest encouragement to throw my eye over the uniform gravity of my appearance, as I used to do in the black, for, alas! that which I was proudest of, viz. the clerical cut which it bestowed upon me was fairly gone—I had now more the appearance of a poacher than a priest.
In this trim did I return to my friends—a goose stripped of my feathers; a dupe beknaved and beplundered—having been almost starved to death in the “island,” and nearly cudgelled by one of the priests. As soon as I crossed the threshold at home, the whole family were on their knees to receive my blessing, there being a peculiar virtue in the Lough Derg blessing. The next thing I did, after giving them an account of the manner in which I was plundered and stripped, was to make a due distribution of the pebbles* of the lake, to contain which my sisters had, previous to my journey, wrought me a little silk bag. This I brought home, stuffed as full as my purse was empty; for the epicene old villain left it to me in all its plenitude—disdaining to touch it. When I went to mass the following Sunday, I was surrounded by crowds, among whom I distributed my blessing, with an air of seriousness not at all lessened by the loss of my clothes and the emptying of my purse. On telling that part of my story to the priest, he laughed till the tears ran down his cheeks. He was a small, pleasant little man, who was seldom known to laugh at anybody's joke but his own. Now, the said merriment of the Reverend Father I felt as contributing to make me look exceedingly ridiculous and sheepish. “So,” says he, “you have fallen foul of Nell M'Collum, the most notorious shuler in the province! a gipsy, a fortuneteller, and a tinker's widow; but rest contented, you are not the first she has gulled—but beware the next time.”—“There is no danger of that,” said I, with peculiar emphasis.
* An uncommon virtue in curing all kinds of complaints
is ascribed to these pebbles, small bags of which are
brought home by the pilgrims, and distributed to their
respective relations and friends.