CHAPTER V .-- CURSECOWL.
From his red poll a redder cowl hung down; His jacket, if through grease we guess, was brown; A vigorous scamp, some forty summers old; Rough Shetland stockings up his thighs were roll'd; While at his side horn-handled steels and knives Gleam'd from his pouch, and thirsted for sheeps' lives.
ODOHERTY'S _Miscellanea Classica_.
But, losh me! I have come on too far already, before mentioning a wonderful thing that happened to me when I was only seven years old.

Few things in my eventful life have made a deeper impression on me than what I am going to relate.
It was the custom, in those times, for the different schools to have cock- fighting on Fastern's E'en; and the victor, as he was called, treated the other scholars to a football.

Many a dust have I seen rise out of that business--broken shins and broken heads, sore bones and sound duckings--but this was none of these.
Our next neighbour was a flesher; and right before the window was a large stone, on which old wives with their weans would sometimes take a rest; so what does I, when I saw the whole hobble-shaw coming fleeing down the street, with the kick-ba' at their noses, but up I speels upon the stone, (I was a wee chap with a daidley, a ruffled shirt, and leather cap edged with rabbit fur,) that I might see all the fun.

This one fell, and that one fell, and a third was knocked over, and a fourth got a bloody nose: and so on; and there was such a noise and din, as would have deaved the workmen of Babel--when, lo! and behold! the ball played bounce mostly at my feet, and the whole mob after it.

I thought I should have been dung to pieces; so I pressed myself back with all my might, and through went my elbow into Cursecowl's kitchen.