appreciated it. His death, however, deprived them of this advantage; and
as schoolmasters, under the old system, were always at a premium, it
so happened, that for three years afterwards, not one of that class
presented himself to their acceptance. Many a trial had been made, and
many a sly offer held out, as a lure to the neighboring teachers, but
they did not take; for although the country was densely inhabited, yet
it was remarked that no schoolmaster ever "thruv" in the neighborhood of
Findramore. The place, in fact, had got a bad name. Garraghty died, it
was thought, of poverty, a disease to which the Findramore schoolmasters
had been always known to be subject. His predecessor, too, was hanged,
along with two others, for burning the house of an "Aagint."

Then the Findramore boys were not easily dealt with, having an ugly
habit of involving their unlucky teachers in those quarrels which they
kept up with the Ballyscanlan boys, a fighting clan that lived at the
foot of the mountains above them. These two factions, when they met,
whether at fair or market, wake or wedding, could never part without
carrying home on each side a dozen or two of bloody coxcombs. For these
reasons, the parish of Aughindrum had for a few years been afflicted
with an extraordinary dearth of knowledge; the only literary
establishment which flourished in it being a parochial institution,
which, however excellent in design, yet, like too many establishments of
the same nature, it degenerated into a source of knowledge, morals, and
education, exceedingly dry and unproductive to every person except the
master, who was enabled by his honest industry to make a provision for
his family absolutely surprising, when we consider the moderate nature
of his ostensible income. It was, in fact, like a well dried up, to
which scarcely any one ever thinks of going for water.

Such a state of things, however, could not last long. The youth of