employment.

"The Nagurs wouldn't have been a job at all for ould England, letting
alone Ireland," said the latter, "if these French and Spanishers hadn't
been troubling themselves in the matter. I'm sure its but little reason
I have for thanking them, if a man is to kape as sober as a praist at
mass, for fear he should find himself a souldier, and he knowing nothing
about the same."

"Hoot! mon! ye ken but little of raising an airmy in Ireland, if ye mak'
a drum o' a whiskey keg," said the drover, winking to the listeners.
"Noo, in the north, they ca' a gathering of the folk, and follow the
pipes as graciously as ye wad journey kirkward o' a Sabbath morn. I've
seen a' the names o' a Heeland raj'ment on a sma' bit paper, that ye
might cover wi' a leddy's hand. They war' a' Camerons and M'Donalds,
though they paraded sax hundred men! But what ha' ye gotten here! That
chield has an ow'r liking to the land for a seafaring body; an' if the
bottom o' the sea be onything like the top o't, he's in gr'at danger o'
a shipwreck!"

This unexpected change in the discourse drew all eyes on the object
toward which the staff of the observant drover was pointed. To the utter
amazement of every individual present, a small vessel was seen moving
slowly round a point of land that formed one of the sides of the little
bay, to which the field the laborers were in composed the other. There
was something very peculiar in the externals of this unusual visitor,
which added in no small degree to the surprise created by her appearance
in that retired place. None but the smallest vessels, and those rarely,
or, at long intervals, a desperate smuggler, were ever known to venture
so close to the land, amid the sand-bars and sunken rocks with which