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 of glittherin' glass—I can't belave, for me soul, they were diamints any more—and careful old Jack's money is charmed out of his hand like a bird flyin' to a whussle. Well, a hoondred days is a hoondred dollars, as the old jerry said. I can make it up if I live long enough, barrin' the ile farm I'll retrate to when I'm old and stiff."

"Some of the lads in town are hard losers," Hall said. "Kraus is as blue as a mackerel, and Old Doc Ross has gone on a tear to pickle his sorrow."

"There was some n'ise comin' out of the boardin'-train, too," Jack said, without much sympathy for those who scoffed at his oily job. "She sounded like the keeners I used to hear when I was a b'y in Ireland, howlin' over the dead."

"She lost five thousand dollars, all her savings for years," Hall said, rebuking Jack for his unfeeling words.

"Sure," said Jack cheerfully; "sure she did. I got the accoutremints of it down to the other ind of the yaard. Of course, a woman would tear on about it where a man would hide his head in the ile-house out of shame for bein' so aisy. I'll own to you, Dochter, I was groanin' in me soul till the joke of it struck me. Then I put out me chist and laughed. I've been laughin' ever since the p'int of the blarneyin' felly's joke struck me brain."

"This town is notable for its jokers," Hall said, greatly interested in this view of Burnett's roguery, "but I'll bet a brass dollar you've got it over the funniest man in town if you can see the joke in that."

Jack filled his pipe with a viscid, black, repellent mess of tobacco that he took out of a paper pouch, cramming it down with his oily thumb, winking his eye knowingly,