“Well!” exclaimed Michael Leahy, as he entered his cottage – “well! the Lord be praised! – I've seen a powerful deal of happiness this day, one way or the other. Above, at the big house, the mistress was giving out the medicine, and food, with her own two blessed hands, to half the parish; there she was, at the closet window, slaving herself for the poor – that's Christianity!” He proceeded to shake the snow from his “big coat,” and hang it up. “It's a powdering night of snow, as ever came out of the heavens; but, any how, we have a roof to shelter us, thank God! – to say nothin’ o’ the sod o’ turf, and the boiling pratees; and the master gave me a good quarter o’ tobaccy; so now, Norry, lay by your spinning, and let's have our bit o’ supper.”

“With all the joy in life, Mick – and thank God, too, that my husband comes home, when his work is done, to his wife and childer.”

Mick Leahy looked affectionately at his wife – and well he might. She was clean and industrious – cheerful and contented: the mud walls of her cabin were whitewashed; a glass window, small, but unbroken, looked out on a little garden, stocked with potatoes and cabbages, and hedged with furze. No labourer in the country had thicker stockings than Mick Leahy – they were his wife's knitting; no whiter shirts were on the town-land than Mick Leahy's – and they were all of his wife's spinning. No finer children knelt to receive the priest's blessing on a summer Sunday, than Mick Leahy's; and proud were father and mother of them.

“God help all poor travellers! – it's blake and bitther weather,” continued Mick, as he lit his pipe, and took his seat on the settle, under the wide chimney, after he had finished his supper: “I wish some unfortunate cratur had a share of the chimbly-corner, for there'll be neither hedge nor ditch to be seen by morning, if it snows on in this way.”