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There are still beavers in Schlesien; the Katzbach River has gold grains in it, a kind of Pactolus not now worth working; and in the scraggy lonesome pine-woods, grimy individuals, with kindled mounds of pine-branches and smoke carefully kept down by sods, are sweating out a substance which they inform you is to be tar.
He reached, over and pulled up a tuft of sod at his side; for all one could have told, it might have been growing there, neighbor to all the other sods. Underneath was a dark little hole in the ground; and out of this he brought a brown earthen crock. "The crock o' gold!" everybody whispered, awesomely. "Aye, the crock o' gold," agreed the cobbler.
But the old lady's face was pinched, sharp and sallow, wearing a niggardly and avaricious expression, and forming an odd contrast to the splendor of her attire, as did likewise the implement which she held in her hand. The tender sods, however, possessed a strange impenetrability.
One minute, two, three minutes, it was a dreadfully long time, and then it was the voice of Abe Selover mixed with a long yelp from Quib. "Come on, boys! I've shoved him through. I'm going right up after him. Nothing to pull away but some sods." "Dat's de tog!" exclaimed Mr. Hamburger. "Keep shtill, black poy! De rest of dose vootshucks is coming. Keep shtill."
"A son of your own at the alther saying mass for you, Biddy Flaherty from Glengariff!" "He's no mind for it, more's the grief," answered the mother, unexpectedly, shaking her head gloomily on the pillow, "but marruk me wuds now, he'll ride in his carriage when I'm under the sods, give me grace and you too Mike Bogan! Look at the airs of him and the toss of his head.
Although, in addition to Colonel Blake's five hundred regulars, scarcely more than three hundred fighting men could be mustered in the town, there were no signs of wavering; but high and low endeavoured to make amends for the paucity of their numbers by their dauntless courage, their energy, and unceasing toil; and even women and children were to be seen in all directions, filling baskets with sods, and carrying materials to the labourers at the earthworks.
By this course the furrows are partially filled with loose, friable soil and manure, and they average four or five inches in depth. The sets are planted at once eight inches apart, the eye turned upward, and the cut part down. The sets are then covered with three or four inches of fine soil, not with sods and stones.
Such were a few of the explosives of mingled fun and devilment that proceeded from a group of ragged urchins, who were busily employed in pelting with hard mud, sods and other missiles, an old and decrepit woman, whose gray hair and infirmities ought to have been her protection, but whose reputation as an evil disposed witch proved quite the contrary.
Now the time had come to convert it into such money as it would fetch. Denis Donohoe whistled merrily that night as he piled the donkey cart, or "creel," with the sods of turf. Long before daybreak next morning he was about, his movements quick like one who had great business on hands.
Wiles now known as "Don Jose" sharply reminded them that he wanted some "grub," that they came to their senses. When the frugal meal of tortillas, frijoles, salt pork, and chocolate was over, an oven was built of the dark-red rock brought from the ledge before them, and an earthenware jar, glazed by some peculiar local process, tightly fitted over it, and packed with clay and sods.
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