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From Household Words.
THE GAUGER'S POCKET.

POOR old Tristram Pentire! How he comes up before me as I pronounce his name! That light, active, half-stooping form; bent as though he had a brace of kegs upon his shoulders still; those thin, gray, rusty locks that fell upon a forehead seamed with the wrinkles of threescore years and five; the cunning glance that questioned in his eye, and that nose carried always at half-cock, with a red blaze along its ridge, scorched by the departing footstep of the fierce fiend Alcohol, when he fled before the reinforcements of the Coast Guard.

pleas for the revenue, and then down he came upon me with the unanswerable argument

"But why should the king tax good liquor? If they must have taxes, why can't they tax something else?"

My efforts, moreover, to soften and remove his doctrinal prejudice as to the unimportance, in a moral point of view, of putting the officers of his Majesty's revenue to death, were equally unavailing. Indeed, to my infinite chagrin, I found that I had lowered myself exceedingly in his estimation by what he called standing up for the exciseman.

"There had been divers parsons," he assured me," in his time in the parish, and very larned clargy they were; and some very He was the last of the smugglers; and strict; and some would preach one doctrine, when I took possession of my glebe, I hired and some another; and there was one that had him as my servant of all work, or rather no very mean notions about running goods, and work, about the house, and there he rollick- said 't was a wrong thing to do; but even he, ed away the last few years of his careless and the rest, never took no part with the existence, in all the pomp and idleness of gauger-never! And besides," said old Trim, "The parson's man.” ́ He had taken a bold part in every landing on the coast, man and boy, full forty years; throughout which time, all kinds of men had largely trusted him with their brandy and their lives, and true and faithful had he been to them as sheath to

steel.

with another demolishing appeal, "Wasn't the exciseman always ready to put us to death when he could !"

With such a theory it was not very astonishing-although it startled me at the time— that I was once suddenly assailed, in a pause of his spade, with the puzzling inquiry,Gradually he grew attached to me, and I" Can you tell me the reason, sir, that no could not but take an interest in him. I en-grass will ever grow upon the grave of a man deavored to work some softening change in that 's hanged unjustly?" him, and to awaken a certain sense of the errors of his former life. Sometimes, as a sort of condescension on his part, he brought himself to concede and to acknowledge in his own quaint rambling way:

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Well, sir, I do think when I come to look back, and to consider what lives we used to live-drunk all night, and idle abed all day, cursing, swearing, fighting, gambling, lying, and always prepared for to shet (shoot) the gauger-I do really believe, sir, we surely

was in sin!"

"No, indeed, Tristram, I never heard of the fact before."

"Well, I thought every man know'd that from the Scripture; why, you can see it, sir, every Sabbath day. That grave on the right hand of the path as you go down to the porchdoor, that heap of arth with no growth, not one blade of grass on it-that 's Will Pooly's grave that was hanged unjustly."

"Indeed! but how came such a shocking deed to be done?"

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Why, you see, sir, they got poor Will down to Bodmin, all among strangers, and there was bribery, and false swearing; and an unjust judge came down-and the jury, all bad rascals, tin-and-copper-men-and so they all agreed together, and they hanged poor Will. But his friends begged the body and brought the corpse home here to his own parish; and they turfed the grave, and they sowed the grass twenty times over, but 't was all no use; nothing would ever grow-he was hanged unjustly."

But, whatever contrite admissions to this extent were extorted from old Tristram by misty glimpses of a moral sense and by his desire to gratify his master, there were two points on which he was inexorably firm. The one was, that it was a very guilty practice in the authorities to demand taxes for what he called run goods; and the other settled dogma of his creed was, that it never could be a sin to make away with an exciseman. Battles between Tristram and myself on these themes were frequent and fierce; but I am bound to Well, but Tristram, you have not told confess that he always managed, somehow or me all this while what this man Pooly was other, to remain master of the field. In-accused of-what had he done?" deed, what Chancellor of the Exchequer could Done, sir! Done? Nothing whatsoevbe prepared to encounter the triumphant de- er but killed the exciseman!" mand with which Tristram smashed to atoms The glee, the chuckle, the cunning glance my suggestions of morality, political econo- were inimitably characteristic of the hardened my, and finance? He would listen with ap- old smuggler; and then down went the spade parent patience to all my solemn and secular with a plunge of defiance, and, as I turned

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away, a snatch of his favorite song came carolling after me like the ballad of a victory.

On, through the ground-sea, shove !
Light on the larboard bow!
There's a nine-knot breeze above,
And a sucking tide below!

Hush for the beacon fails;
The skulking gauger 's by.
Down with your studding sails,
Let jib and fore-sail fly!

Hurrah, for the light, once more!
Point her for Shark's Nose Head,
Our friends can keep the shore,

Or the skulking gauger 's dead.

On, through the ground-sea, shove '
Light on the larboard bow!
There's a nine-knot breeze above,
And a sucking tide below!

Among the "King's men," whose achievements haunted the old man's memory with a sense of mingled terror and dislike, a certain Parminter and his dog occupied a principal place. This officer appeared to have been a kind of Frank Kennedy in his way, and to have chosen for his watchword the old Irish signal "Dare!"

"Sir," said old Tristram one day, with a burst of indignant wrath, "Sir, that villain Parminter and his dog murdered with their shetting-irons no less than seven of our people at divers times, and they peacefully at work in their calling all the while!"

I found on further inquiry that this man Parminter was a bold and determined officer, whom no threats could deter and no money bribe. He always went armed to the teeth, and was followed by a large, fierce, and dauntless dog, which he had thought fit to call Satan. This animal he had trained to carry in his mouth a carbine or a loaded club, which, at a signal from his master, Satan brought to the rescue. "Ay, they was bold audacious rascals-that Parminter and his dog-but he went rather too far one day, as I suppose," was old Tristram's chuckling remark as he leaned upon his spade, and I stood by.

"Did he, Trim; in what way?"

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"Because," as I interposed, "they took him off to their ship."

"No, not they not a bit of it. Their blood was up, poor fellows, so they just pulled Parminter down in the boat, and chopped off his head on the gunwale!"

The exclamation of horror with which I reIceived this recital, elicited no kind of sympathy from Tristram. He went on quietly with his work, merely moralizing thus-"Ay, better Parminter and his dog had gone now and then to the gauger's pocket at Tidnacombe Cross, and held their peace, better far."

The term, The Gauger's Pocket," in old Tristram's phraseology, had no kind of reference to any place of deposit in the apparel of the exciseman; but to a certain large gray rock, which stands upon a neighboring moorland, not far from the cliffs which overhang the sca. It bears to this day, among the parish people, the name of the Witan-Stone, that is to say, in the language of our forefathers, the Rock of Wisdom; because it was one of the places of usual assemblage for the Gray Elderinen of British or of Saxon timesa sort of speaker's chair or woolsack in the local Parliaments. It was, moreover, there is no doubt, one of the natural altars of the old religion; and, as such, it is greeted with a fond and legendary reverence still. Hither Trim guided me one day to show, as he told me, "the great rock set up by the giants, so they said; long, long ago, before there was any bad laws such as they make now." It was indeed a wild, strange, striking scene; and one to lift and fill, and, moreover, to subdue, the thoughtful mind. Around me was the wild, half-cultured moor; yonder, within reach of sight and ear, that boundless, breathing sea, with that shout of the waters, which came up ever and anor to recall the strong metre of the Greek,

Hark! how old ocean laughs with all his waves!

and there, before me, stood the tall, vast, solemn stone, gray and awful with the myriad memoirs of ancient ages, when the white fathers bowed around the rocks and worshipped..

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"And now, sir," clashed in a shrill, sharp voice, let me show you the wonderfulest thing in all the place, and that is, the Gauger's Pocket."

Why, sir, the case was this. Our people had a landing down at Mellnach, in Johnnie Mathoy's hole; and Parminter and his dog found it out. So they got into the cave at ebb tide, and laid in wait, and when the first boat-load came ashore, just as the keel Accordingly, I followed my guide, for it took the ground, down storms Parminter, seems, "I had a dream which was not all a shouting for Satan to follow. But the dog dream," as he led the way to the back of the knew better, and held back, they said, for the Witan-Stone; and there, grown over with first time in all his life; so in leaps Parmin- moss and lichen, with a movable slice of rock ter smack into the boat, alone, with his cut- to conceal its mouth, old Tristram pointed lass drawn; but" (with a kind of inward ecs-out, triumphantly, a dry and secret crevice tasy), "he didn't do much harm to the about an arm's length deep. "There sir," boat's crew-" said he, with a joyous twinkle in his eye,

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"there have I dropped a little bag of gold, many and many a time, when our people wanted to have the shore quiet, and to keep the exciseman out of the way of trouble; and there he would go, if so be he was a reasonable officer; and the byword used to be, when 't was all right, one of us would go and meet him, and then say, Sir, your pocket is unbuttoned; and he would smile and answer, Ay! ay! but never mind, my man, my money's safe enough;' and thereby we knew that he was a just man, and satisfied, and that the boats could take the roller in peace; and that was the very way, sir, it came to pass that this crack in the stone was called for evermore The Gauger's Pocket.'"

From Chambers' Journal.

A NIGHT IN CUNNEMARA.

THE evening of an autumn day in 1829 brought two young men, who had been engaged for several hours in shooting over the wilds of Cunnemara, to the vicinity of the lodgings of a priest, with whom one of them was on terms of intimate friendship. The day had been one of cheerless, unintermitting rain; the two sportsmen were drenched with wet; and one of them, a stranger in the district, and not accustomed to its rude exercises, was spent with fatigue. It was after a slow and toilsome march through a bog of various degrees of solidity, and being more than once soused almost to the shoulders in the black moreen or bog-water which lay at the bottoms of the hollows cut in it by the winter floods, that the young men reached the vicinity of the priest's mansion. A shot fired at this moment by Blake, the individual of the party to whom Cunnemara was native ground, caused the almost instant appearance, at the door of his hovel, of the goodhumored face of Father Dennis, who no sooner distinguished his friend, than he issued forth, and gave him and his ion a hearty welcome.

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Father Dennis, Captain Clinton, of the -th. Clinton, Father Dennis Connelly," was the brief introduction by which Blake put the priest and his friend upon a footing of friendship. There was no need to inquire into the condition of the two sportsmen, and as little need to hint to the priest the line of conduct he ought to pursue towards them.

got calls, to buckle a pair in one place, and christen a couple of pausteens in another." "What was it kept you so busy, Dennis ?" said Blake.

"Patthern_day,* don't you know? And didn't you hear how the Heffernans and Conrys were killing aich other last year? Oh, then, if I hadn't enough to do with them this day, my name's not Dennis Connelly. God knows a heart-scald they are to any one that wants to keep paice and quiet among them. If you knew the pain I have in my shouldher this minute with leathering the scoundrels, and the tired legs I have pelting afther them; for as fast as I'd disperse them in one place, they'd gather in another." And Father Dennis, with grimaces expressive of extreme suffering, rubbed the ailing shoulder with his left hand, and the ailing legs with both.

What! do you beat your parishioners?" cried the Englishman, in utter astonishment. "To be sure I do-bate them while baiting's good for them, and that 's long enough," replied the priest. "The poor ignorant cratures! sure, they 're like wild Indians! It's the only way to get any good of them."

"And are none of them ever tempted to make a return in kind?"

"Sthrike me! is it? Ah, captain, you English have quare notions in your heads no, but down on their knees to beg my pardon, and would n't think they 'd have luck or grace if they didn't get it. When one dashes into the thick of a fight, then, to be sure, one may get an odd blow, but not on purpose; they'd think the hand would rot off them if they riz it on their clargy."

"In such a very wild district, all this may probably be necessary," said Clinton, making a polite effort.

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It is, my dear sir, quite necessary," cried the priest, taking Clinton's remark in perfect good faith; "only look at this delicate little switch I took from a fellow to-day. There can't be less than a pound's weight of lead in the ferral. A crack of that now would smash an ox's skull, let alone a Christian's; and the blackguard had it up, just ready to let fly at one that was n't thinking of him at all- (you know him, Isidore Davy Gavan, from Rusvela, a quiet, poor man as ever lived.) I got a hoult of the stick, but the fellow held it tight; he dar n't sthrike me, and he did n't like to let it go; so there "Cold, wet, hungry and fatigued, I see we were at it, pully hauly, till I twisted it you are, said he, taking a pinch of snuff, out of his grip, in spite of him. I had a and snapping his fingers after it. But there's great mind to give him a good clip then, but none of you more so than I am myself. Up I didn't like to do it with such a walloper, and out I've been from peep of day this morn- so I makes a kick at him; and what do you ing; not a morsel inside my lips since the bit of breakfast I swallowed at six o'clock; and never sat down a minute, no, nor stood still either, only just while I stepped in where I

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ple in solitary places, common in the Highlands of Ireland, and at which much fighting sometimes takes place.

A half-festive, half-religious meeting of the peo

think?-the impudent scoundrel caught my foot in his hand. I felt I could not help going; but just as I was tumbling back, I tilts up the other foot with a spang, hit him just here undher the butt of the ear, and knocked him over and over-you never seen a fellow take such a roll. Between ourselves," added the stalwart champion of good order, with a meaning compression of the lips, and a corresponding wink and nod, " he did n't get up quite so quick as I did."

The young men were by this time seated in the priest's parlor, where no time was lost in purveying for them, and for the priest himself, the solacements demanded by their worn-out condition. An hour must be supposed to have passed since their meal was concluded. They are seated round a blazing turf fire, and the corner of a large square table is drawn in between them, the more conveniently to bring within general reach the materials for compounding the smoking and smoky beverage that stands before each. The general appearance of the apartment is rather more decent than might be expected in a district so uncivilized. It is ceiled and whitewashed, and the earthen floor is covered with a “cautiugh," or carpet of rush matting. It moreover boasts a couple of little sashed windows, a painted wooden chimneypiece (no grate, however), and for ornament, a whole series of highly-colored prints of saints, angels and devils, varied by a coffee-colored whole-length of Napoleon Bonaparte, a view of the Bay of Naples, and a political caricature or two of some fifty years' standing. The priest's bed, it is true, as it stands against the wall, is rather a conspicuous object. But with its gay chintz curtains (quite new) and its patchwork quilt, it cannot well be deemed an eyesore, especially considering that the room is not otherwise very rich in furniture. Indeed, unless a great chest and a trunk or two may be counted as such, the inventory must be limited to a few chairs and an immense wooden press painted red (mahogany color intended), to which the woman of the house is paying constant visits, the upper compartments being her pantry, and the lower her repository for house linen, &c.

The trio at the fire sat for a time silent and unoccupied; the countenances and attitudes of each richly, though in different styles, expressive of the quiet, indolent satisfaction of rest after fatigue. At length, arousing himself, Father Dennis exclaimed: -"Come, another tumbler, gentlemen! A wet day in the hills calls for two, at any rate, to the one you'd take at any other time."

"Ay, that's the rule, Clinton; so fill, fill, my boy," cried Blake. "Do you know, I I think you are getting reconciled to the poteen?"

"You are not far from the truth," returned Clinton, smiling. "I am truly grateful to the put-put-heen, or what do you call it? and with good reason, too, for I never swallowed a potion half so grateful as that tumbler you forced down my throat by way of a preparative to drying myself. Henceforward I shall ever account it as the very best of cordials, where cordials are needed."

"There's many a true word said in jest, captain," said Father Dennis, nodding, as he filled his own glass brimful, and with an air of practised dexterity, turned it into his tumbler.

"You fancy I'm jesting, Mr. Connelly, do you? Upon my honor you are wrong if you do. I literally think what I say of it.'

"Then, upon my honor, and my conscience too, you 're not far out in that anyway. And it's in such a place as this it is needed. Oh, the hardships I have to go through here in the winter saison, they're beyond belief! One can't even have a horse to help one out, for there's no riding. Look at my two elegant pair of boots that I brought with me, hanging up there against the wall, till they 'd puzzle the rats themselves to make any use of them. And the foot work through the wet bogs is the sore work, though nothing at all to the boat work! Think, now, what it is to be out tossing on this conthrary coast in all weathers-often with every tack about you as dripping wet as if you were keelhauled, and knowing all the time that you have a great deal better chance of the bottom than of any other end to your voyage. How would you like that, captain ?"

"Not at all, I confess. But I hardly think the perils of the sea can be much greater than the perils of the land in this quarter."

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"Ah, the mooreen!" cried the priest. Well, captain, I agree with you. As bad to be choked that way as with salt water." Ay, Dennis; but 'tis n't either of them you or I'd choose, if we were to be choked at all," said Blake, laughing; "water like this would be more to our taste. Come, will you tell the story of the cock and the tumbler to Clinton? Do, now that 's a good fellow." 't would be no

"Oh, that ould story!. pleasure to him."

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"I beg your pardon, it would be a very great pleasure to me to hear a story of yours, if you will so far favor me," said the young officer politely.

"You're very kind to say so, captain, I'm sure. And if it was anything worth your hearing

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Here both the young men broke in upon his disqualifying speech, with assurances that at length seemed to conquer his modesty. "Oh, if you ra'ally have a fancy for it, gentlemen, 't is no throuble to me to tell it, to be sure. I

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don't know, Captain Clinton, whether you themselves down by the fire, very cosey and have any idaia of the sort of life a poor man comfortable. The priest had just mixed his lades, that's coadjuthor (what you'd call tumbler, when he sees the cock that was curate, you know), to a snug, dacent, worthy, roosting upon the rafters above, lifting up the gentale parish priest that loves his aise. I'll wings of him, this way (acting the motion), tell you then. It's just the life of a pack-"getting ready for the crow; a sign, mark horse no better. A sort of hand-ball he is, you, that twelve o'clock was coming. Now, knocked about here and there, and up and a priest can't touch bit or sup, you know, down, and to and fro, wherever his shuparior from twelve o'clock on Saturday night, till plases to think he's wanted. Then, afther twelve o'clock next day-that 's till afther slaving this way all day, routed out of his last mass. So when he sees the lad preparbed, maybe, half-a-dozen times in the coorse ing, he ups with the tumbler" (still acting.) of the one night, to trot to the far ends of" and down clean he had it, before the the parish at the bidding of every ould screech came. There now,' says he, in collioch that takes it into her crazy head Irish, as he set it down with a whack,' was n't she's booked for the other world, and she as that well done? I took it off between the tough all the time, maybe, as an old raven.' clapping and the crowing.' "I beg pardon for the interruption, Mr. Connelly," said Clinton, laughing heartily" at the list of grievances, or rather at the manner in which they were set forth, tones and grimaces, inclusive; "but you must make allowance for my utter ignorance. Tell me, how is this very hard case different from yours at present, as a parish priest? You are liable to be called about in the same way, if I don't misunderstand you.'

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"True for you, my dear sir. I have most of the hardships as it is, sure enough. But then there's two little circumstances in the case that make a matarial difference. The poor coadjuthor, you see, does all the work, and gets only half, maybe only the third of the dues. Then, again, afther one of them unlucky calls, when he jogs back tired and disappointed, all the comfort there 's for him is black looks, if it is n't hard words itself, from one that wouldn't wag a finger to save him a journey to Jericho and back again." "All very true," cried Blake. "But where has the story slipped to, Dennis?"

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"Patience, Isidore, I'm coming to it, all in good time, if you 'll only let me. Well, you are to know, Captain Clinton, there was once upon a time a poor priest - as it might be myself and he, afther a hard day's work, was just going to sit down to his little supper, of a Saturday night, of all nights in the week, when there comes a tantararara to his door, enough to waken up the dead; and before he had time to bless himself, he was packed off to ride seven miles up the mountain, through the rain and sleet and wind(pitch dark it was too, into the bargain) · to anoint a crature that was n't expected.* Well, captain, I need n't tell you what a time he and his poor baste had of it, getting through the bogs such a night; but he did get through them at last. The man of the house was in bed, but he got up, and brought out a little cruiskeen of poteen; and another man that had come across from Joyce Country, he got up too, and they all three settled *Not expected to live.

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The lungs of the young Englishman did crow like chanticleer" at this narrative; nor was he behindhand in the clapping.

"Ah, but it's better far in the Irish," resumed Father Dennis. "Edir sgihan seh gub, you know, Isidore, between the wing and the beak. By far more expressive."

Another hearty fit of laughter signalized the conclusion of the story. But, Clinton having for some time given tokens of a disposition to sleep, his friend now proposed that they should bid their kind host goodnight. Dennis, though willing to prolong the entertainment, was too polite to resist their wishes; and he accordingly rose, and led the way across the kitchen to an apartment, which was certainly no favorable contrast to the one they had just quitted. The earthen floor, in its undisguised ruggednessthe unhinged door merely resting against its door-frame the partition wall wanting at least two feet of reaching the loft of hurdles that formed the sole ceiling overhead-and the small dismantled window, one pane alone, out of its four, in proper order for excluding air and admitting light, displayed no inconsiderable sum total of discomfort. Nor was there much to balance the account, except a tolerably clear fire on the hearth, and the clean and good articles of bedding that furnished forth a wooden-roofed bedstead, sociably destined for the accommodation of the pair of wearied sportsmen. Clinton's glance did not fail to take in all these details. But the idea of a bivouac being uppermost in his mind, he was able, with a good grace, to make light of the subject-matter of the lamentations with which the parting compliments of the hospitable priest were rather profusely seasoned.

Scarcely an hour had elapsed, and the two youths were not half that time asleep, when Blake was awakened by Father Dennis' housekeeper, with the information that a marriage party had arrived, after having followed the priest all day, and that, if he and his friend would rise, they might see the whole fun from the top of the partition wall, without

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