"I've seen a donkey hobbled," cried Dick.
"Thin you've seen the twin brother of Buck M'Cann. Well, one night me elder brother Tim was sittin' over the fire, smokin' his dudeen an' thinkin' of his sins, when in comes Buck with the hobbles on him.
"`Tim,' says he, `I've got her at last!' "`Got who?' says Tim.
"`The moon,' says he.
"`Got her where?' says Tim.
"`In a bucket down by the pond,' says t'other, `safe an' sound an' not a scratch on her; you come and look,' says he. So Tim follows him, he hobblin', and they goes to the pond side, and there, sure enough, stood a tin bucket full of wather, an' on the wather the refliction of the moon.
"`I dridged her out of the pond,' whispers Buck. `Aisy now,' says he, `an' I'll dribble the water out gently,' says he, `an' we'll catch her alive at the bottom of it like a trout.' So he drains the wather out gently of the bucket till it was near all gone, an' then he looks into the bucket expectin' to find the moon flounderin' in the bottom of it like a flat fish.
"`She's gone, bad 'cess to her!' says he.
"`Try again,' says me brother, and Buck fills the bucket again, and there was the moon sure enough when the water came to stand still.
"`Go on,' says me brother. `Drain out the wather, but go gentle, or she'll give yiz the slip again.' "`Wan minit,' says Buck, `I've got an idea,' says he; `she won't give me the slip this time,' says he. `You wait for me,' says he; and off he hobbles to his old mother's cabin a stone's-throw away, and back he comes with a sieve.
"`You hold the sieve,' says Buck, `and I'll drain the water into it; if she 'scapes from the bucket we'll have her in the sieve.' And he pours the wather out of the bucket as gentle as if it was crame out of a jug.
When all the wather was out he turns the bucket bottom up, and shook it.
"`Ran dan the thing!' he cries, `she's gone again'; an' wid that he flings the bucket into the pond, and the sieve afther the bucket, when up comes his old mother hobbling on her stick.
"`Where's me bucket?' says she.
"`In the pond,' say Buck.
"`And me sieve?' says she.
"`Gone afther the bucket.' "`I'll give yiz a bucketin!' says she; and she up with the stick and landed him a skelp, an' driv him roarin' and hobblin' before her, and locked him up in the cabin, an' kep' him on bread an' wather for a wake to get the moon out of his head; but she might have saved her thruble, for that day month in it was agin. . . . There she comes!"