Page:Three advices an Irish tale.pdf/8

 at onee aequitted: and the judge ordered a large reward to be paid to John Carson, as through his means the real murderers were brought to justiee.

John now proceeded towards home, fully convinced of the value of two of the advices which his master had given him. On arriving at his cabin, he found his wife and children rejoicing over a purse full of gold which the eldest boy had picked up on the road that morning. Whilst he was away, they had endured all the miseries which the wretched families of those who go over to seek work in England are exposed to. With precarious food, without a bed to lie down on, or a roof to shelter them, they had wandered through the country, seeking food from door to door of a starving population; and, when a single potato was bestowed, showering down blessings and thanks on the giver, not in the set phrases of the medicant, but in a burst of eloquence too fervid not to gush direct from the heart. Those only who have seen a family of such beggars as I deseribe, can fancy the joy with which the poor woman weleomed her husband back, and informed him of the purse full of gold.

“And where did Mick, my boy, find it?” inquired John Carson.

“It was the young squire, for certain, who dropped it,” said his wife; “for he rode down the road this morning, and was leaping his horse in the very gap where Micky picked it up; but sure, John, he has enough besides, and never a halfpenny have I to buy