Front matter (continued 6)

“‘Come on ye auld Puseyite, and no more about it,’ says William. With that he joined to go forrard, and James he should have come forrard fornenst him, but Andy’s mare, she just planted the fore-feet o’ her and stud there the same as she was growed in the ground. With that there was two of the Aiden-scampses come on, and of all the pullin’ and haulin’! But de’il a toe would she budge, and all the boys began larfin’, so they did, and William says, says he:

“‘Come on till I pull the neck out o’ ye.... Come on, me brave boy.... Fetch her a clip on the lug. Hit her a skelp behint. Jab her with yer knee, man alive. Och, come on, ye Bap, ye.’

“Well, the skin o’ a pig couldn’t stand that, and Andy, he was middlin’ smart at a repartee, so ‘Bap yersel’,’ says he, and with that he let a growl out o’ him ye might have heared te Portadown. Ye never heared the like, nor what’s more, Andy Wilson’s mare, she never heared the like, and she just made the wan lep and landed in the strame fornenst William; then James he tuk a howlt o’ William, and ‘Bap yersel’, says he; and with that he coped him off his gran’ white horse, and he drooked him in the watter.

“Then there was the fine play, and the best divarsion ever ye seen. Some they were for William, and some they were for James, and every wan he up with his fut or his fist, or onny other weepon that come convenient, and the boys they were all bloodin’ other, and murder and all sorts.”

“I thought you were all friends at Scarva?”

“And so we were—just friends fightin’ through other.”

“Was any one hurt?”

“Was anyone hurted? Sure, they were just trailin’ theirselves off the ground. Ye wud have died larfin’. There’s Jimmy Hanlon was never his own man since, and I had me nose broke on me—I find it yet—and some says there was a wee girl from Tanderagee got herself killed.”

“What became of William?”

“He was clean drowned.”

“And King James?”

“He’s in hell with Johnny M‘Adam.”

I tried to explain that I had not meant the King himself, but the actor in whom nature had been stronger than dramatic instinct, but Tummus either could not or would not dissociate the two. He really was not attending to me: I had perceived for some time that his thoughts were wandering far from our conversation. Suddenly a spasm convulsed his features. With one hand he raised his hoe in the air like a tomahawk, disregarding the weed of his afternoon’s toil, which was left limp and helpless on the gravel; with the other he grasped his side. I feared the old man was going to have a fit, but it was only uncontrollable laughter at some joke as yet hidden from me.

“Well, do ye know what I’m goin’ te tell ye? I wud just allow William was a middlin’ polished boy, so he was. He subsidised the Pope o’ Rome, did he? Man, oh! Do ye tell me that? That bates all, and him goin’ to take just twiste what he let on.”

Old Tummus unquestionably was absolutely sober at the beginning of our interview, and had remained “dry” during it, but he now became gradually intoxicated with what had appeared to him to be his hero’s splendid cunning. The thought of a genius which could overreach someone else in a bargain rose to his brain like champagne. He swayed on his feet; he ran his words into each other; he assumed a gaiety of manner and expression quite unusual to him.

I watched him lurch down the walk, and then pause on the bridge. He supported himself by the wooden railing, which creaked as he swayed to and fro, and addressed the stream and the trees—

“Do ye know what I’m goin’ to tell ye? I wud just allow he was a middlin’ polished boy—so he was.”

The Game Leg.

From “The Furry Farm.”

By K. F. Purdon.

Heffernan’s house at the Furry Farm stood very backwards from the roadside, hiding itself, you’d really think, from anyone that might be happening by. As if it need do that! Why, there was no more snug, well-looked-after place in the whole of Ardenoo than Heffernan’s always was, with full and plenty in it for man and beast, though it wasn’t to say too tasty-looking.

And it was terrible lonesome. There wasn’t a neighbour within the bawl of an ass of it. Heffernan, of course, had always been used to it, so that he didn’t so much mind; still, he missed Art, after he going off with little Rosy Rafferty. That was nigh hand as bad upon him as losing the girl herself. He had got to depend on Art for every hand’s turn, a thing that left him worse, when he was without him. And he was very slow-going. As long as Julia was there, she did all, and Heffernan might stand to one side and look at her. And so he missed her now, more than ever; and still he had no wish to see her back, though even to milk the cows came awkward to him.

He was contending with the work one evening, and the calves in particular were leaving him distracted; above all, a small little white one that he designed for Rosy, when he’d have her Woman of the House at the Furry Farm. That calf, I needn’t say, was not the pick of the bunch, but as Mickey thought to himself, a girl wouldn’t know any better than choose a calf by the colour, and there would be no good wasting anything of value on her. At all events, it would be “child’s pig and Daddy’s bacon” most likely with that calf. But sure, what matter! Rosy was never to have any call to it, or anything else at the Furry Farm.

Those calves were a very sweet lot, so that Mickey might have been feeling all the pleasure in life, just watching them, with their soft, little muzzles down in the warm, sweet milk, snorting with the pure enjoyment. But Mickey was only grousing to get done, and vexed at the way the big calves were shoving the little ones away, and still he couldn’t hinder them. Art used to regulate them very simple by means of a little ash quick he kept, to slap the forward calves across the face when they’d get too impudent. But as often as Mickey had seen him do that, he couldn’t do the same. The ash quick was so close to him that if it had been any nearer it would have bitten him. Stuck up in a corner of the bit of ruin that had once been Castle Heffernan it was. But it might as well have been in America for all the good it was to Mickey.

“I wish to God I was rid of the whole of yous, this minute!” says he to himself, and he with his face all red and steamy, and the milk slobbering out of the pail down upon the ground, the way the calves were butting him about the legs.

That very minute, he heard a sound behind him. He turned about, and, my dear! the heart jumped into his mouth, as he saw a great, immense red face, just peeping over the wall that shut in his yard from the boreen. That wall was no more than four feet high. Wouldn’t anyone think it strange to see such a face, only that far from the ground! and it with a bushy, black beard around it, and big rolling eyes, and a wide, old hat cocked back upon it? You’d have to think it was something “not right”; an Appearance or Witchery work of some kind.

But, let alone that, isn’t there something very terrifying and frightful in finding yourself being watched, when you think you’re alone; and of all things, by a man? The worst of a wild beast wouldn’t put the same bad fear in your heart.

“Good evening, Mr. Heffernan,” says the newcomer, with a grin upon him, free and pleasant; “that’s a fine lot of calves you have there!”

Heffernan was so put about that he made no answer, and the man went on to say, “Is it that you don’t know me? Sure, you couldn’t forget poor old Hopping Hughie as simple as that!”

And he gave himself a shove, so that he raised his shoulders above the wall. A brave, big pair they were, too, but they were only just held up on crutches. Hughie could balance himself upon them, and get about, as handy as you please. But he was dead of his two legs.

“Oh, Hughie...!” says Heffernan, pretty stiff; “well, and what do you want here?”

“Och, nothing in life....”

“Take it, then, and let you be off about your business!” says Mickey, as quick as a flash, for once; and he that was proud when he had it said!

Hughie had a most notorious tongue himself, but he knew when to keep it quiet, and he thought it as good to appear very mild and down in himself now, so he said, “My business! sure, what word is that to say to a poor old fellah on chrutches! Not like you, Mr. Heffernan, that’ll be off to the fair of Balloch to-morrow morning, bright and early, with them grand fine calves of yours. The price they’ll go! There isn’t the peel of them in Ardenoo!”

“Do you tell me that?” says Heffernan, that a child could cheat.

“That’s what they do be telling me,” says Hughie. He could build a nest in your ear, he was that cunning. He thought he saw a chance of getting to the fair himself, and a night’s lodging as well, if he managed right.

“I wish to goodness I could get them there, so,” says Mickey, “and hasn’t one to drive them for me!”

“Would I do?” says Hughie.

Heffernan looked at him up and down.

“Sure you’d not be able!”

“Whoo! me not able? Maybe I’m like the singed cat, better than I look! I’m slow, but fair and easy goes far in a day! Never you fear but I’ll get your calves to Balloch the same way the boy ate the cake, very handy....”

The simplest thing would have been for Heffernan to take and drive the calves himself. But he never had the fashion of doing such things. Anyway, it wouldn’t answer for the people to see a man with a good means of his own, like Mickey, turning drover that way.

So he thought again, while Hughie watched him, and then says he, “You’ll have to be off out of this before the stars have left the sky!”

“And why wouldn’t I?” says Hughie; “only give me a bit of supper and a shakedown for the night, the way I’ll be fresh for the road to-morrow.”

Hughie was looking to be put sitting down in the kitchen alongside Heffernan himself, and to have the settle-bed foreninst the fire to sleep in. But he had to content himself with the straw in the barn and a plateful carried out to him. Queer and slow-going Heffernan might be, but he wasn’t thinking of having the likes of Hopping Hughie in his chimney-corner, where he had often thought to see little Rosy Rafferty and she smiling at him.

Hughie took it all very contented. Gay and happy he was after his supper, and soon fell asleep on the straw, with his ragged pockets that empty that the divil could dance a hornpipe in them and not strike a copper there; while Mickey above in bed in his own house, with his fine farm and all his stock about him, calves and cows and pigs, not to speak of the money in the old stocking under the thatch ... Mickey couldn’t sleep, only worrying, thinking was he right to go to sell the calves at all; and to be letting Hughie drive them!

“I had little to do,” he thought, “to be letting him in about the place at all, and couldn’t tell what divilment he might be up to, as soon as he gets me asleep! Hughie’s terrible wicked, and as strong as a ditch! I done well to speak him civil, anyway. But I’ll not let them calves stir one peg out of this with him! I’d sooner risk keeping them longer....”

There’s the way he was going on, tossing and tumbling and tormenting himself, as if bed wasn’t a place to rest yourself in and not be raking up annoyances.

So it wasn’t till near morning that Mickey dozed off, and never wakened till it was more than time to be off to the fair.

Up he jumped and out to stop Hughie. But the yard was silent and empty. Hughie and the calves were gone.

Mickey was more uneasy than ever.

“A nice bosthoon I must be,” he thought, “to go trust my good-looking calves to a k’nat like Hughie! And he to go off without any breakfast, too...!”

Heffernan was a good warrant to feed man or beast. But he mightn’t have minded about Hughie, that had plenty of little ways of providing for himself. His pockets would be like sideboards, the way he would have them stuck out with meat and eggs, and so on, that he would be given along the road. Hughie was better fed than plenty that bestowed food upon him.

Balloch, where the fair is held, is the wildest and most lonesome place in Ardenoo, with a steep, rough bit of road leading up to it, very awkward to drive along. Up this comes Heffernan, on his sidecar, driving his best, and in a great hurry to know where he would come on Hughie. He had it laid out in his own mind that sight nor light of his calves he never would get in this world again. So it was a great surprise to him to find them there before him, safe and sound. His heart lightened at that as if a mill-stone was lifted off it.

And the fine appearance there was upon them. Not a better spot in the fair-green than where Hughie had them, opposite a drink-tent where the people would be thronging most! And it was a choice spot for Hughie too. Happy and contented he was, his back against a tree, leaning his weight on one crutch and the other convenient to his hand.

“So there’s where you are,” says Hughie, a bit scornful. Sure it was a foolish remark to pass and the man there before him, as plain as the nose on your face. But Hughie was puzzled too by the look of relief he saw on Mickey’s face. He understood nothing of what Heffernan was passing through. It’s an old saying and a true one, “Them that has the world has care!” but them that hasn’t it, what do they know about it?

While Hughie was turning this over in his mind, Mickey was throwing an eye upon the calves, and then, seeing they were all right, he was bandying off with himself, when Hughie said, “Terrible dry work it is, driving stock along them dusty roads since the early morning,” and he rubbed the back of his hand across his mouth with a grin.

At that, Mickey put his hand into his pocket and felt round about, and then pulled it out empty.

“I’ll see you later, Hughie,” says he, “I’ll not forget you, never fear! Just let you wait here till I have the poor mare attended to that drew me here....”

So he went off to do this, and then into the drink-tent with him, the way he could be getting a sup himself. But no sign of he to give anything to Hughie. And there now is where Mickey made a big mistake.

He met up with a couple or three that he was acquainted with in the tent, and they began to talk of this thing and that thing, so that it was a gay little while before Mickey came out again.

When he did: “What sort is the drink in there, Mr. Heffernan?” says Hughie.

Now what Mickey had taken at that time was no more than would warm the cockles of his heart. So he looked quite pleasant and said, “Go in yourself, Hughie, and here’s what will enable you to judge it!”

And he held out a shilling to Hughie.

“A bird never yet flew upon the one wing, Mr. Heffernan!” said Hughie, that was looking to get another shilling, and that would be only his due for driving the calves.

Mickey said nothing one way or the other, only went off, and left Hughie standing there, holding out his hand in front of him with the shilling in it, lonesome.

He that was vexed! He got redder in the face than ever, and gave out a few curses, till he remembered there wasn’t one to hear him. So he stopped and went into the tent and I needn’t say he got the best value he could there.

But all the time he was thinking how badly Heffernan was after treating him, putting him off without enough to see him through the fair even, let alone with a trifle in his pockets to help him on his rounds. He began planning how he could pay out Mickey.

He got himself back to the same spot, near the calves, to see what would happen. After a time, he saw Heffernan coming back, and little Barney Maguire with him. A very decent boy Barney was, quiet and agreeable; never too anxious for work, but very knowledgable about how things should be done, from a wake to a sheep-shearing. Heffernan always liked to have Barney with him at a fair.

The two of them stood near the calves, careless-like, as if they took no interest in them at all.

A dealer came up.

“How much for them calves? Not that I’m in need of the like,” says he.

“Nobody wants you to take them, so,” says Barney, “but the price is three pounds ... or was it guineas you’re after saying, Mr. Heffernan?”

Heffernan said nothing, and the dealer spoke up very fierce; “Three pounds! Put thirty shillings on them, and I’ll be talking to ye!”

Mickey again only looked at his adviser, and says Barney, “Thirty shillings! ’Tis you that’s bidding wide, this day! May the Lord forgive you! Is it wanting a present you are of the finest calves in Ardenoo?”

Heffernan swelled out with delight at that; as if Barney’s word could make his calves either better or worse.

“Wasn’t it fifty-seven and sixpence you’re after telling me you were offered only yesterday, Mr. Heffernan,” says Barney, “just for the small ones of the lot?”

“Och! I dare say! don’t you?” says the dealer; “the woman that owns you it was that made you that bid, to save your word!”

Poor Mickey! and he hadn’t a woman at all! The dealer of course being strange couldn’t know that, nor why Hughie gave a laugh out of him.

But that didn’t matter. Mickey took no notice. A man that’s a bit “thick” escapes many a prod that another would feel sharp. So in all things you can see how them that are afflicted are looked after in some little way we don’t know.

The dealer looked at the calves again.

“Troth, I’m thinking it’s the wrong ones yous have here! Yous must have forgotten them fine three-pound calves at home!”

And Mickey began looking very anxiously at them, as he thought maybe he had made some mistake.

“Them calves,” says the dealer, slowly, “isn’t like a pretty girl, that everyone will be looking to get! And, besides, they’re no size! A terrible small calf they are!”

“Small!” said Barney, “It’s too big they are! And if they’re little itself, what harm! Isn’t a mouse the prettiest animal you might ask to see?”

“Ay, it is,” says the dealer, “but it’ll take a power of mice to stock a farm!” and off with him in a real passion—by the way of.

But Barney knew better than to mind. The dealer came back, and at long last the calves were sold and paid for. Then the lucky-penny had to be given. Hard-set Barney was to get Heffernan to do that. In the end Mickey was so bothered over it that he dropped a shilling just where Hughie was standing leaning his weight on the one crutch as usual.

As quick as a flash, he had the other up, and made a kind of a lurch forward, as if to look for the money. But he managed to get the second crutch down upon the shilling, to hide it; and then he looked round about the ground as innocent as a child, as if he was striving his best to find the money for Mickey.

“Where should it be, at all, at all?” says Mickey; “bewitched it should be, to say it’s gone like that!”

And Heffernan, standing there with his mouth open, looked as if he had lost all belonging to him. Then he began searching about a good piece off from where the shilling fell.

“It’s not there you’ll get it!” said Barney, “sure you ought always look for a thing where you lost it!”

He went over to Hughie.

“None of your tricks, now! It’s you has Mr. Heffernan’s money, and let you give it up to him!”

“Is it me have it? Sure if I had, what would I do, only hand it over to the man that owns it!” says Hughie.

On the word, he let himself down upon the ground, and slithered over on top of the shilling.

But, quick and all as he was, Barney was quicker.

“Sure, you have it there, you vagabone, you! Give it up, and get off out of this with yourself!”

And he caught Hughie a clip on the side of the head that sent him sprawling on the broad of his back. And there, right enough, under him, was the shilling.

So Barney picked it up, and for fear of any other mistake, he handed it to the dealer.

“It’s an ugly turn whatever, to be knocking a poor cripple about that-a-way!” said the dealer, dropping the lucky-penny into his pocket.

“Ach, how poor he is, and let him be crippled, itself!” says Barney; “it’s easy seeing you’re strange to Ardenoo, or you’d not be compassionating Hughie so tender!”

No more was said then, only in the tent with them again to wet the bargain. Hughie gathered himself up. He was in the divil’s own temper. Small blame to him, too! Let alone the disappointment about the shilling, and the knock Barney gave him, the people all had a laugh at him. And he liked that as little as the next one. You’d think he’d curse down the stars out of the skies this time, the way he went on.

And it wasn’t Barney’s clout he cared about, half as much as Mickey’s meanness. It was that had him so mad. He felt he must pay Heffernan out.

He considered a bit; then he gave his leg a slap.

“I have it now!” he said to himself.

He beckoned two young boys up to him, that were striving to sell a load of cabbage plants they had there upon the donkey’s back, and getting bad call for them.

“It’s a poor trade yous are doing to-day,” said Hughie; “and I was thinking in meself yous should be very dry. You wouldn’t care to earn the price of a pint?”

“How could we?” says the boys.

“I’ll tell you! Do you see that car?” and Hughie pointed to where Heffernan had left his yoke drawn up, and the old mare cropping a bit as well as she could, being tied by the head; “well, anyone that will pull the linch-pin out of the wheel, on the far side of the car, needn’t be without tuppence to wet his whistle....” and Hughie gave a rattle to a few coppers he had left in his pocket.

“Yous’ll have to be smart about it, too,” said he, “or maybe whoever owns that car will have gone off upon it, afore yous have time to do the primest bit of fun that ever was seen upon this fair green!”

“Whose is the car?”

“Och, if I know!” says Hughie; “but what matter for that? One man is as good as another at the bottom of a ditch! ay, and better. It will be the height of divarshin to see the roll-off they’ll get below there at the foot of the hill....”

“Maybe they’d get hurted!” said the boys.

“Hurted, how-are-ye!” says Hughie; “how could anyone get hurted so simple as that? I’d be the last in the world to speak of such a thing in that case! But if yous are afraid of doing it....”

“Afraid! that’s queer talk to be having!” says one of them, very stiff, for like all boys, he thought nothing so bad as to have “afraid” said to him; “no, but we’re ready to do as much as the next one!”

“I wouldn’t doubt yiz!” said Hughie; “h-away with the two of you, now! Only mind! don’t let on a word of this to any sons of man....”

Off they went, and Hughie turned his back on them and the car, and stared at whatever was going on the other end of the fair. He hadn’t long to wait, before Heffernan and Barney and the dealer came out of the drink-tent. Hughie took a look at them out of the corner of his eye.

“Ah!” he said to himself, “all ‘purty-well-I-thank-ye!’ after what they drank inside! But, wait a bit, Mickey Heffernan....”

The three men went over to where Heffernan’s car was waiting. The boys were gone. The other two men helped Mickey to get his yoke ready. Then he got up, and they shook hands a good many times. Heffernan chucked at the reins and started off.

Hughie was watching, and when he saw how steadily the old mare picked her way down the steep boreen, he began to be afraid he hadn’t hit on such a very fine plan at all. And if Mickey had only had the wit to leave it all to the poor dumb beast, she might have brought him home safe enough.

But nothing would to him, only give a shout and a flourish of the whip, half-way down the hill. The mare started and gave a jump. She was big and awk’ard, much like Mickey himself. Still it was no fault of her that, when she got to the turn, the wheel came off, and rolled away to one side. Down came the car, Mickey fell off, and there he lay, till some people that saw what was going on ran down the hill after him, and got the mare on to her feet, and not a scratch on her.

But poor Mickey! It was easy to see with half an eye that he was badly hurt.

“Someone will have to drive him home, whatever,” said Barney, coming up the hill to look for more help, after doing his best to get Mickey to stand up; and sure, how was he to do that, upon a broken leg? “A poor thing it is, too, to see how a thing of the kind could occur so simple! and a decent man like Heffernan to be nigh hand killed....”

“‘Deed, and he is a decent man!” said Hughie; “and why wouldn’t he? I’d be a decent man meself if I had the Furry Farm and it stocked....”

“He’s in a poor way now, in any case,” said Barney. “I doubt will he ever get over this rightly! That’s apt to be a leg to him all his life!”

“Well, and so, itself!” said Hughie; “haven’t I two of them lame legs? and who thinks to pity Hughie?”

“It’s another matter altogether, with a man like Mr. Heffernan,” said Barney; “what does the like of you miss, by not being able to get about, compared with a man that might spend his time walking a-through his cattle, and looking at his crops growing, every day in the week?”

“To be sure, he could be doing all that!” said Hughie, “but when a thing of this kind happens out so awkward, it’s the will of God, and the will of man can’t abate that!”

Trinket’s Colt.

From “Some Experiences of an Irish R.M.”

By E. Œ. Somerville and Martin Ross.

It was petty sessions day in Skebawn, a cold, grey day in February. A case of trespass had dragged its burden of cross-summonses and cross-swearing far into the afternoon, and when I left the bench my head was singing from the bellowings of the attorneys, and the smell of their clients was heavy upon my palate.

The streets still testified to the fact that it was market day, and I evaded with difficulty the sinuous course of carts full of soddenly screwed people, and steered an equally devious one for myself among the groups anchored round the doors of the public-houses. Skebawn possesses, among its legion of public-houses, one establishment which timorously, and almost imperceptibly, proffers tea to the thirsty. I turned in there, as was my custom on court days, and found the little dingy den, known as the Ladies’ Coffee Room, in the occupancy of my friend Mr. Florence McCarthy Knox, who was drinking strong tea and eating buns with serious simplicity. It was a first and quite unexpected glimpse of that domesticity that has now become a marked feature in his character.

“You’re the very man I wanted to see,” I said, as I sat down beside him at the oilcloth covered table; “a man I know in England who is not much of a judge of character has asked me to buy him a four-year-old down here, and as I should rather be stuck by a friend than a dealer, I wish you’d take over the job.”

Flurry poured himself out another cup of tea, and dropped three lumps of sugar into it in silence.

Finally he said, “There isn’t a four-year-old in this country that I’d be seen dead with at a pig fair.”

This was discouraging, from the premier authority on horseflesh in the district.

“But it isn’t six weeks since you told me you had the finest filly in your stables that was ever foaled in the County Cork,” I protested; “what’s wrong with her?”

“Oh, is it that filly?” said Mr. Knox, with a lenient smile; “she’s gone these three weeks from me. I swapped her and £6 for a three-year-old Ironmonger colt, and after that I swapped the colt and £19 for that Bandon horse I rode last week at your place, and after that again I sold the Bandon horse for £75 to old Welply, and I had to give him back a couple of sovereigns luck-money. You see, I did pretty well with the filly after all.”

“Yes, yes—oh, rather,” I assented, as one dizzily accepts the propositions of a bimetallist; “and you don’t know of anything else——?”

The room in which we were seated was closed from the shop by a door with a muslin-curtained window in it; several of the panes were broken, and at this juncture two voices, that had for some time carried on a discussion, forced themselves upon our attention.

“Begging your pardon for contradicting you, ma’am,” said the voice of Mrs. McDonald, proprietress of the tea-shop, and a leading light in Skebawn Dissenting circles, shrilly tremulous with indignation, “if the servants I recommend you won’t stop with you, it’s no fault of mine. If respectable young girls are set picking grass out of your gravel, in place of their proper work, certainly they will give warning!”

The voice that replied struck me as being a notable one, well-bred and imperious.

“When I take a bare-footed slut out of a cabin, I don’t expect her to dictate to me what her duties are!”

Flurry jerked up his chin in a noiseless laugh. “It’s my grandmother!” he whispered. “I bet you Mrs. McDonald don’t get much change out of her!”

“If I set her to clean the pig-sty I expect her to obey me,” continued the voice in accents that would have made me clean forty pig-stys had she desired me to do so.

“Very well, ma’am,” retorted Mrs. McDonald, “if that’s the way you treat your servants, you needn’t come here again looking for them. I consider your conduct is neither that of a lady nor a Christian!”

“Don’t you, indeed?” replied Flurry’s grandmother. “Well, your opinion doesn’t greatly distress me, for, to tell you the truth, I don’t think you’re much of a judge.”

“Didn’t I tell you she’d score?” murmured Flurry, who was by this time applying his eye to the hole in the muslin curtain. “She’s off,” he went on, returning to his tea. “She’s a great character! She’s eighty-three, if she’s a day, and she’s as sound on her legs as a three-year-old! Did you see that old shandrydan of hers in the street a while ago, and a fellow on the box with a red beard on him like Robinson Crusoe? That old mare that was on the near side, Trinket her name is—is mighty near clean bred. I can tell you her foals are worth a bit of money.”

I had heard of old Mrs. Knox of Aussolas; indeed, I had seldom dined out in the neighbourhood without hearing some new story of her and her remarkable ménage, but it had not yet been my privilege to meet her.

“Well, now,” went on Flurry, in his low voice, “I’ll tell you a thing that’s just come into my head. My grandmother promised me a foal of Trinket’s the day I was one-and-twenty, and that’s five years ago, and deuce a one I’ve got from her yet. You never were at Aussolas? No, you were not. Well, I tell you the place there is like a circus with horses. She has a couple of score of them running wild in the woods, like deer.”

“Oh, come,” I said, “I’m a bit of a liar myself——”

“Well, she has a dozen of them, anyhow, rattling good colts, too, some of them, but they might as well be donkeys for all the good they are to me or any one. It’s not once in three years she sells one, and there she has them walking after her for bits of sugar, like a lot of dirty lapdogs,” ended Flurry with disgust.

“Well, what’s your plan? Do you want me to make her a bid for one of the lapdogs?”

“I was thinking,” replied Flurry, with great deliberation, “that my birthday’s this week, and maybe I could work a four-year-old colt of Trinket’s she has out of her in honour of the occasion.”

“And sell your grandmother’s birthday present to me?”

“Just that, I suppose,” answered Flurry, with a slow wink.

A few days afterwards a letter from Mr. Knox informed me that he had “squared the old lady, and it would be all right about the colt!” He further told me that Mrs. Knox had been good enough to offer me, with him, a day’s snipe shooting on the celebrated Aussolas bogs, and he proposed to drive me there the following Monday, if convenient, to shoot the Aussolas snipe bog when they got the chance. Eight o’clock on the following Monday morning saw Flurry, myself, and a groom packed into a dog-cart, with portmanteaus, gun-cases, and two rampant red setters.

It was a long drive, twelve miles at least, and a very cold one. We passed through long tracts of pasture country, filled for Flurry, with memories of runs, which were recorded for me, fence by fence, in every one of which the biggest dog-fox in the country had gone to ground, with not two feet—measured accurately on the handle of the whip—between him and the leading hound; through bogs that imperceptibly melted into lakes, and finally down and down into a valley, where the fir-trees of Aussolas clustered darkly round a glittering lake, and all but hid the grey roofs and pointed gables of Aussolas Castle.

“There’s a nice stretch of a demesne for you,” remarked Flurry, pointing downwards with the whip, “and one little old woman holding it all in the heel of her fist. Well able to hold it she is, too, and always was, and she’ll live twenty years yet, if it’s only to spite the whole lot of us, and when all’s said and done, goodness knows how she’ll leave it!”

“It strikes me you were lucky to keep her up to her promise about the colt,” said I.

Flurry administered a composing kick to the ceaseless strivings of the red setters under the seat.

“I used to be rather a pet with her,” he said, after a pause; “but mind you, I haven’t got him yet, and if she gets any notion I want to sell him I’ll never get him, so say nothing about the business to her.”

The tall gates of Aussolas shrieked on their hinges as they admitted us, and shut with a clang behind us, in the faces of an old mare and a couple of young horses, who, foiled in their break for the excitements of the outer world, turned and galloped defiantly on either side of us. Flurry’s admirable cob hammered on, regardless of all things save his duty.

“He’s the only one I have that I’d trust myself here with,” said his master, flicking him approvingly with the whip; “there are plenty of people afraid to come here at all, and when my grandmother goes out driving, she has a boy on the box with a basket full of stones to peg at them. Talk of the dickens, here she is herself!”

A short, upright old woman was approaching, preceded by a white woolly dog with sore eyes and a bark like a tin trumpet; we both got out of the trap and advanced to meet the Lady of the Manor.

I may summarise her attire by saying that she looked as if she had robbed a scarecrow; her face was small and incongruously refined, the skinny hand that she extended to me had the grubby tan that bespoke the professional gardener, and was decorated with a magnificent diamond ring. On her head was a massive purple velvet bonnet.

“I am very glad to meet you, Major Yeates,” she said, with an old-fashioned precision of utterance; “your grandfather was a dancing partner of mine in old days at the Castle, when he was a handsome young aide-de-camp there, and I was—you may judge for yourself what I was.”

She ended with a startling little hoot of laughter, and I was aware that she quite realised the world’s opinion of her, and was indifferent to it.

Our way to the bogs took us across Mrs. Knox’s home farm, and through a large field in which several young horses were grazing.

“There, now, that’s my fellow,” said Flurry, pointing to a fine-looking colt, “the chestnut with the white diamond on his forehead. He’ll run into three figures before he’s done, but we’ll not tell that to the ould lady!”

The famous Aussolas bogs were as full of snipe as usual, and a good deal fuller of water than any bogs I had ever shot before. I was on my day, and Flurry was not, and as he is ordinarily an infinitely better snipe shot than I, I felt at peace with the world and all men as we walked back, wet through, at five o’clock.

The sunset had waned and a big white moon was making the eastern tower of Aussolas look like a thing in a fairy tale or a play when we arrived at the hall door. An individual, whom I recognised as the Robinson Crusoe coachman, admitted us to a hall, the like of which one does not often see. The walls were panelled with dark oak up to the gallery that ran round three sides of it, the balusters of the wide staircase were heavily carved, and blackened portraits of Flurry’s ancestors on the spindle side, stared sourly down on their descendant as he tramped upstairs with the bog mould on his hobnailed boots.

We had just changed into dry clothes when Robinson Crusoe shoved his red beard round the corner of the door, with the information that the mistress said we were to stay for dinner. My heart sank. It was then barely half-past five. I said something about having no evening clothes, and having to get home early.

“Sure, the dinner’ll be in another half-hour,” said Robinson Crusoe, joining hospitably in the conversation; “and as for evening clothes—God bless ye!”

The door closed behind him.

“Never mind,” said Flurry, “I dare say you’ll be glad enough to eat another dinner by the time you get home,” he laughed. “Poor Slipper!” he added, inconsequently, and only laughed again when I asked for an explanation.

Old Mrs. Knox received us in the library, where she was seated by a roaring turf fire, which lit the room a good deal more effectively than the pair of candles that stood beside her in tall silver candlesticks. Ceaseless and implacable growls from under her chair indicated the presence of the woolly dog. She talked with confounding culture of the books that rose all round her to the ceiling; her evening dress was accomplished by means of an additional white shawl, rather dirtier than its congeners; as I took her in to dinner she quoted Virgil to me, and in the same breath screeched an objurgation at a being whose matted head rose suddenly into view from behind an ancient Chinese screen, as I have seen the head of a Zulu woman peer over a bush.

Dinner was as incongruous as everything else. Detestable soup in a splendid old silver tureen that was nearly as dark in hue as Robinson Crusoe’s thumb; a perfect salmon, perfectly cooked, on a chipped kitchen dish; such cut glass as is not easy to find nowadays; sherry that, as Flurry subsequently remarked, would burn the shell off an egg; and a bottle of port, draped in immemorial cobwebs, wan with age, and probably priceless. Throughout the vicissitudes of the meal Mrs. Knox’s conversation flowed on undismayed, directed sometimes at me—she had installed me in the position of friend of her youth, and talked to me as if I were my own grandfather—sometimes at Crusoe, with whom she had several heated arguments, and sometimes she would make a statement of remarkable frankness on the subject of her horse-farming affairs to Flurry, who, very much on his best behaviour, agreed with all she said, and risked no original remark. As I listened to them both, I remembered with infinite amusement how he had told me once that “a pet name she had for him was ‘Tony Lumpkin,’ and no one but herself knew what she meant by it.” It seemed strange that she made no allusion to Trinket’s colt or to Flurry’s birthday, but, mindful of my instructions, I held my peace.

As, at about half-past eight, we drove away in the moonlight, Flurry congratulated me solemnly on my success with his grandmother. He was good enough to tell me that she would marry me to-morrow if I asked her, and he wished I would, even if it was only to see what a nice grandson he’d be for me. A sympathetic giggle behind me told me that Michael, on the back seat, had heard and relished the jest.

We had left the gates of Aussolas about half-a-mile behind, when, at the corner of a by-road, Flurry pulled up. A short, squat figure arose from the black shadow of a furze bush and came out into the moonlight, swinging its arms like a cabman, and cursing audibly.

“Oh, murdher, oh, murdher, Misther Flurry! What kept ye at all? ‘Twould perish the crows to be waiting here the way I am these two hours—”

“Ah, shut your mouth, Slipper!” said Flurry, who, to my surprise, had turned back the rug and was taking off his driving coat, “I couldn’t help it. Come on, Yeates, we’ve got to get out here.”

“What for?” I asked, in not unnatural bewilderment.

“It’s all right. I’ll tell you as we go along,” replied my companion, who was already turning to follow Slipper up the by-road. “Take the trap on, Michael, and wait at the River’s Cross.” He waited for me to come up with him, and then put his hand on my arm. “You see, Major, this is the way it is. My grandmother’s given me that colt right enough, but if I waited for her to send him over to me I’d never see a hair of his tail. So I just thought that as we were over here we might as well take him back with us, and maybe you’ll give us a help with him; he’ll not be altogether too handy for a first go off.”

I was staggered. An infant in arms could scarcely have failed to discern the fishiness of the transaction, and I begged Mr. Knox not to put himself to this trouble on my account, as I had no doubt I could find a horse for my friend elsewhere. Mr. Knox assured me that it was no trouble at all, quite the contrary, and that, since his grandmother had given him the colt, he saw no reason why he should not take him when he wanted him; also, that if I didn’t want him he’d be glad enough to keep him himself; and, finally, that I wasn’t the chap to go back on a friend, but I was welcome to drive back to Shreelane with Michael this minute, if I liked.

Of course, I yielded in the end. I told Flurry I should lose my job over the business, and he said I could then marry his grandmother, and the discussion was abruptly closed by the necessity of following Slipper over a locked five-barred gate.

Our pioneer took us over about half-a-mile of country, knocking down stone gaps where practicable, and scrambling over tall banks in the deceptive moonlight. We found ourselves at length in a field with a shed in one corner of it; in a dim group of farm buildings; a little way off a light was shining.

“Wait here,” said Flurry to me in a whisper; “the less noise the better. It’s an open shed, and we’ll just slip in and coax him out.”

Slipper unwound from his waist a halter, and my colleagues glided like spectres into the shadow of the shed, leaving me to meditate on my duties as Resident Magistrate, and on the questions that would be asked in the House by our local member when Slipper had given away the adventure in his cups.

In less than a minute three shadows emerged from the shed, where two had gone in. They had got the colt.

“He came out as quiet as a calf when he winded the sugar,” said Flurry; “it was well for me I filled my pockets from grandmamma’s sugar basin.”

He and Slipper had a rope from each side of the colt’s head; they took him quickly across a field towards a gate. The colt stepped daintily between them over the moonlit grass; he snorted occasionally, but appeared on the whole amenable.

The trouble began later, and was due, as trouble often is, to the beguilements of a short cut. Against the maturer judgment of Slipper, Flurry insisted on following a route that he assured us he knew as well as his own pocket, and the consequence was, that in about five minutes I found myself standing on top of a bank hanging on to a rope, on the other end of which the colt dangled and danced, while Flurry, with the other rope, lay prone in the ditch, and Slipper administered to the bewildered colt’s hindquarters such chastisement as could be ventured on.

I have no space to narrate in detail the atrocious difficulties and disasters of the short cut. How the colt set to work to buck, and went away across a field, dragging the faithful Slipper, literally ventre-à-terre, after him, while I picked myself in ignominy out of a briar patch, and Flurry cursed himself black in the face. How we were attacked by ferocious cur dogs and I lost my eyeglass; and how, as we neared the river’s Cross, Flurry espied the police patrol on the road, and we all hid behind a rick of turf, while I realised in fulness what an exceptional ass I was, to have been beguiled into an enterprise that involved hiding with Slipper from the Royal Irish Constabulary.

Let it suffice to say that Trinket’s infernal offspring was finally handed over on the highroad to Michael and Slipper, and Flurry drove me home in a state of mental and physical overthrow.

I saw nothing of my friend Mr. Knox for the next couple of days, by the end of which time I had worked up a high polish on my misgivings, and had determined to tell him that under no circumstances would I have anything to say to his grandmother’s birthday present. It was like my usual luck that, instead of writing a note to this effect, I thought it would be good for my liver to walk across the hills to Tory Cottage and tell Flurry so in person.

It was a bright, blustery morning, after a muggy day. The feeling of spring was in the air, the daffodils were already in bud, and crocuses showed purple in the grass on either side of the avenue. It was only a couple of miles to Tory Cottage, by the way across the hills; I walked fast, and it was barely twelve o’clock when I saw its pink walls and clumps of evergreens below me. As I looked down at it, the chiming of Flurry’s hounds in the kennels came to me on the wind; I stood still to listen, and could almost have sworn that I was hearing the clash of Magdalen bells, hard at work on May morning.

The path that I was following led downwards through a larch plantation to Flurry’s back gate. Hot wafts from some hideous cauldron at the other side of a wall apprised me of the vicinity of the kennels and their cuisine, and the fir-trees round were hung with gruesome and unknown joints. I thanked heaven that I was not a master of hounds, and passed on as quickly as might be to the hall door.

I rang two or three times without response; then the door opened a couple of inches, and was instantly slammed in my face. I heard the hurried paddling of bare feet on oilcloth, and a voice, “Hurry, Bridgie, hurry! There’s quality at the door!”

Bridgie, holding a dirty cap on with one hand, presently arrived and informed me that she believed that Mr. Knox was out about the place. She seemed perturbed, and she cast scared glances down the drive while speaking to me.

I knew enough of Flurry’s habits to shape a tolerably direct course for his whereabouts. He was, as I had expected, in the training paddock, a field behind the stable-yard, in which he had put up practice jumps for his horses. It was a good-sized field with clumps of furze in it, and Flurry was standing near one of these with his hands in his pockets, singularly unoccupied. I supposed that he was prospecting for a place to put up another jump. He did not see me coming, and turned with a start as I spoke to him. There was a queer expression of mingled guilt and what I can only describe as divilment in his grey eyes as he greeted me. In my dealings with Flurry Knox, I have since formed the habit of sitting tight, in a general way, when I see that expression.

“Well, who’s coming next, I wonder!” he said, as he shook hands with me; “it’s not ten minutes since I had two of your d——d peelers here searching the whole place for my grandmother’s colt!”

“What!” I exclaimed, feeling cold all down my back; “do you mean the police have got hold of it?”

“They haven’t got hold of the colt, anyway,” said Flurry, looking sideways at me from under the peak of his cap, with the glint of the sun in his eye. “I got word in time before they came.”

“What do you mean?” I demanded; “where is he? For Heaven’s sake don’t tell me you’ve sent the brute over to my place!”

“It’s a good job for you I didn’t,” replied Flurry, “as the police are on their way to Shreelane this minute to consult you about it. You!” He gave utterance to one of his short, diabolical fits of laughter. “He’s where they’ll not find him, anyhow. Ho! ho! It’s the funniest hand I ever played!”

“Oh, yes, it’s devilish funny, I’ve no doubt,” I retorted, beginning to lose my temper, as is the manner of many people when they are frightened; “but, I give you fair warning that if Mrs. Knox asks me any questions about it, I shall tell her the whole story.”

“All right,” responded Flurry; “and when you do, don’t forget to tell her how you flogged the colt out on to the road over her own bound’s ditch.”

“Very well,” I said, hotly, “I may as well go home and send in my papers. They’ll break me over this—”

“Ah, hold on, Major,” said Flurry, soothingly, “it’ll be all right. No one knows anything. It’s only on spec’ the old lady sent the Bobbies here. If you’ll keep quiet it’ll all blow over.”

“I don’t care,” I said, struggling hopelessly in the toils; “if I meet your grandmother, and she asks me about it, I shall tell her all I know.”

“Please God you’ll not meet her! After all, it’s not once in a blue moon that she——” began Flurry. Even as he said the words his face changed. “Holy fly!” he ejaculated, “isn’t that her dog coming into the field? Look at her bonnet over the wall! Hide, hide, for your life!” He caught me by the shoulder and shoved me down among the furze bushes before I realised what had happened.

“Get in there! I’ll talk to her.”

I may as well confess that at the mere sight of Mrs. Knox’s purple bonnet my heart had turned to water. In that moment I knew what it would be like to tell her how I, having eaten her salmon, and capped her quotations, and drunk her best port, had gone forth and helped to steal her horse. I abandoned my dignity, my sense of honour; I took the furze prickles to my breast and wallowed in them.

Mrs. Knox had advanced with vengeful speed; already she was in high altercation with Flurry at no great distance from where I lay; varying sounds of battle reached me, and I gathered that Flurry was not—to put it mildly—shrinking from that economy of truth that the situation required.

“Is it that curby, long-backed brute? You promised him to me long ago, but I wouldn’t be bothered with him.”

The old lady uttered a laugh of shrill derision. “Is it likely I’d promise you my best colt? And still more, is it likely that you’d refuse him if I did?”

“Very well, ma’am,” Flurry’s voice was admirably indignant. “Then I suppose I’m a liar and a thief.”

“I’d be more obliged to you for the information if I hadn’t known it before,” responded his grandmother with lightning speed; “if you swore to me on a stack of Bibles you knew nothing about my colt I wouldn’t believe you! I shall go straight to Major Yeates and ask his advice. I believe him to be a gentleman, in spite of the company he keeps!”

I writhed deeper into the furze bushes, and thereby discovered a sandy rabbit run, along which I crawled, with my cap well over my eyes, and the furze needles stabbing me through my stockings. The ground shelved a little, promising profounder concealment, but the bushes were very thick, and I had hold of the bare stem of one to help my progress. It lifted out of the ground in my hand, revealing a freshly-cut stump. Something snorted, not a yard away; I glared through the opening, and was confronted by the long, horrified face of Mrs. Knox’s colt, mysteriously on a level with my own.

Even without the white diamond on his forehead I should have divined the truth; but how in the name of wonder had Flurry persuaded him to couch like a woodcock in the heart of a furze brake? For a minute I lay as still as death for fear of frightening him, while the voices of Flurry and his grandmother raged on alarmingly close to me. The colt snorted, and blew long breaths through his wide nostrils, but he did not move. I crawled an inch or two nearer, and after a few seconds of cautious peering I grasped the position. They had buried him!

A small sandpit among the furze had been utilised as a grave; they had filled him in up to his withers with sand, and a few furze bushes, artistically disposed round the pit had done the rest. As the depth of Flurry’s guile was revealed, laughter came upon me like a flood; I gurgled and shook apoplectically, and the colt gazed at me with serious surprise, until a sudden outburst of barking close to my elbow administered a fresh shock to my tottering nerves.

Mrs. Knox’s woolly dog had tracked me into the furze, and was now baying the colt and me with mingled terror and indignation. I addressed him in a whisper, with perfidious endearments, advancing a crafty hand towards him the while, made a snatch for the back of his neck, missed it badly, and got him by the ragged fleece of his hind-quarters as he tried to flee. If I had flayed him alive he could hardly have uttered a more deafening series of yells, but, like a fool, instead of letting him go, I dragged him towards me, and tried to stifle the noise by holding his muzzle. The tussle lasted engrossingly for a few seconds, and then the climax of the nightmare arrived.

Mrs. Knox’s voice, close behind me, said, “Let go my dog this instant, sir! Who are you——”

Her voice faded away, and I knew that she also had seen the colt’s head.

I positively felt sorry for her. At her age there was no knowing what effect the shock might have on her. I scrambled to my feet and confronted her.

“Major Yeates!” she said. There was a deathly pause. “Will you kindly tell me,” said Mrs. Knox, slowly, “am I in Bedlam, or are you? And what is that?”

She pointed to the colt, and the unfortunate animal, recognising the voice of his mistress, uttered a hoarse and lamentable whinny. Mrs. Knox felt around her for support, found only furze prickles, gazed speechlessly at me, and then, to her eternal honour, fell into wild cackles of laughter.

So, I may say, did Flurry and I. I embarked on my explanation and broke down. Flurry followed suit and broke down, too. Overwhelming laughter held us all three, disintegrating our very souls. Mrs. Knox pulled herself together first.

“I acquit you, Major Yeates, I acquit you, though appearances are against you. It’s clear enough to me you’ve fallen among thieves.” She stopped and glowered at Flurry. Her purple bonnet was over one eye. “I’ll thank you, sir,” she said, “to dig out that horse before I leave this place. And when you’ve dug him out you may keep him. I’ll be no receiver of stolen goods!”

She broke off and shook her fist at him. “Upon my conscience, Tony, I’d give a guinea to have thought of it myself!”

The Wee Tea Table.

From “Irish Pastorals.”

By Shan Bullock (1865-).

Somewhere near the hill-hedge, with their arms bare, skirts tucked up, and faces peering from the depths of big sunbonnets, Anne Daly and Judy Brady were gathering the hay into long, narrow rows; one raking this side of a row, the other that, and both sweetening toil with laughter and talk. Sometimes Anne leaned on her rake and chattered for a while; now Judy said a word or two and ended with a titter; again, both bobbed heads and broke into merriment. I came nearer to them, got ready my rake, and began on a fresh row.

The talk was of a woman, of her and her absurdities.

“I’ve come to help you to laugh, Anne,” said I. “What friend is this of yours and Judy’s that you’re stripping of her character?”

“The lassie,” said Anne, “we were talkin’ about is a marrit woman—one Hannah Breen be name—an’ she lives in a big house on the side of a hill over there towards the mountain. The husband’s a farmer—an easy-goin’, bull-voiced, good-hearted lump of a man, wi’ a good word for ould Satan himself, an’ a laugh always ready for iverything. But the wife, Hannah, isn’t that kind. Aw, ‘deed she isn’t. ’Tisn’t much good-speakin’ or laughin’ Hannah’ll be doin’; ’tisn’t herself’d get many cars to follow her funeral in these parts. Aw, no. ’Tisn’t milkin’ the cows, an’ makin’ the butter, an’ washin’ John’s shirts, an’ darnin’ his socks, an’ mendin’ her own tatters, an’ huntin’ the chickens from the porridge-pot, Hannah was made for. Aw, no. It’s a lady Hannah must be, a real live lady. It’s step out o’ bed at eight o’clock in the mornin’, Hannah must do, an’ slither down to her tay an’ have it all in grandeur in the parlour; it’s sittin’ half the day she must be, readin’ about the doin’s o’ the quality, an’ the goin’s on o’ the world, an’ squintin’ at fashion-pictures, an’ fillin’ her mind wi’ the height o’ nonsense an’ foolery; it’s rise from the table in a tantrum she must do because John smacks his lips, an’ ates his cabbage wi’ his knife; it’s worry the poor man out o’ his mind she’d be after because he lies and snores on the kitchen table, an’ smokes up to bed, an’ won’t shave more’n once a week, an’ says he’d rather be hanged at once nor be choked up in a white shirt an’ collar o’ Sundays. An’ for herself—aw, now, it’d take me from this till sunset to tell ye about all her fooleries. If you’d only see her, Mr. John, stalkin’ in through the chapel gates, wi’ her skirts tucked up high enough to show the frillin’ on her white petticoat, an’ low enough to hide the big tear in it; an’ black kid gloves on her fists; an’ a bonnet on her wi’out a string to it; an’ light shoes on her; an’ a big hole in the heel o’ her stockin’; and her nose in the air; an’ her sniffin’ at us all just as if we were the tenants at the butter-show an’ herself My Lady come to prance before us all an’ make herself agreeable for five minutes or so.... Aw, Lord, Lord,” laughed Anne, “if ye could only see her, Mr. John.”

“An’ to see her steppin’ down Bunn Street,” Anne went on, as we turned at the hedge, and set our faces once more towards the river, “as if the town belonged to her—a ribbon flutterin’ here, an’ a buckle shinin’ there, an’ a feather danglin’ another place—steppin’ along wi’ her butter-basket on her arm, an’ big John draggin’ at her heels, an’ that look on her face you’d expect to see on the face o’ the Queen o’ France walkin’ on a gold carpet, in goold slippers, to a goold throne! An’ to see the airs of her when someone’d spake; an’ to see the murderin’ look on her when someone’d hint at a drop o’whiskey for the good of her health; an’ to hear the beautiful talk of her to the butter-buyers—that soft an’ po-lite; an’ to see her sittin’ in the ould ramshackle of a cart goin’ home, as straight in the back an’ as stiff as a ramrod, an’ her face set like a plaster image, an’ her niver lettin’ her eye fall on John sittin’ beside her, an’ him as drunk an’ merry as a houseful o’ fiddlers! Aw, sure,” cried Anne, flinging up a hand, “aw, sure, it’s past the power o’ mortial tongue to tell about her.”

“Yours, Anne, makes a good attempt at the telling, for all that,” said I.

“Ach, I’m only bleatherin’,” said Anne. “If ye only knew her—only did.”

“Well, tell me all about her,” said I, “before your tongue gets tired.”

“Ah, sure, an’ I will,” replied she; “sure, an’ I’ll try me hand at it.”

“One day, then, sometime last summer, Hannah—beggin’ her ladyship’s pardon,” said Anne, a sudden note of scorn rasping in her voice, “but I meant Mrs. Breen—decks herself out, ties on her bonnet, pulls on her kid gloves, an’ steps out through the hall door. Down she goes, over the ruts an’ the stones, along the lane, turns down the main road; after a while comes to the house o’ Mrs. Flaherty—herself that told me—crosses the street, an’ knocks po-lite on the door.

“‘Aw, is Mrs. Flaherty at home, this fine day?’ axes Hannah when the door opens, an’ wee Nancy put her tattered head between it an’ the post. ‘Is Mrs. Flaherty at home?’ says she.

“‘She is so,’ answers Nancy; ‘but she’d be out at the well,’ says the wee crature.

“‘I see,’ says Hannah, ‘I see. Then, if you please, when she comes back,’ says she, ‘would you be kindly handin’ her that, wi’ Mrs. Breen’s compliments’—an’ out of her pocket Hannah pulls a letter, gives it to Nancy, says good evenin’ to the wee mortial, gathers up her skirt, an’ steps off in her grandeur through the hens an’ ducks back to the road. Well, on she goes another piece, an’ comes to the house of Mary Dolan; an’ there, too, faith, she does the genteel an’ leaves another letter an’ turns her feet for the house of Mrs. Hogan; an’ at Sally’s she smiles, an’ bobs her head, an’ pulls another letter from her pocket, an’ leaves it at the door; then twists on her heel, turns back home an’ begins dustin’ the parlours, an’ arrangin’ her trumpery an’ readin’ bleather from the fashion papers.

“Very well, childer. Home Jane comes from the well, an’ there’s Nancy wi’ the letter in her fist. ‘What the divil’s this?’ says Jane, an’ tears it open; an’ there, lo an’ behold ye, is a bit of a card—Jane swears ’twas a piece of a bandbox, but I’d be disbelievin’ her—an’ on it an invite to come an’ have tay with me bould Hannah, on the next Wednesday evenin’ at five o’clock p.m.—whativer in glory p.m. may be after meanin’; when Mary Dolan opens hers, there’s the same invite; an’ when Sally Hogan opens hers, out drops the same bit of a card on the floor; an’ Sally laughs, an’ Mary laughs, an’ Jane laughs, an’ the three o’ them, what wi’ the quareness o’ the business, an’ the curiosity of them to see Hannah at her capers, put their heads together, an’ laughs again, an’ settles it that sorrow take them, but go they’ll go. An’ go they did. Aw, yis ... Aw, Lord, Lord,” laughed Anne, turning up her eyes. “Lord, Lord!”

“Aw, childer, dear,” giggled Judy, with a heaving of her narrow shoulders. “Aw, go they did!”

“Good girl, Anne,” said I, and slapped my leg “my roarin’ girl! Aw, an’ go they did, Judy—go they did.”

“Well, hearts alive,” Anne went on, “Wednesday evenin’ comes at last; an’ sharp at five o’clock up me brave Jane Flaherty steps along the lane, crosses the yard, an’ mindin’ her manners, knocks twice on Hannah’s back door—then turns, an’ wi’ the dog yelpin’ at her, an’ the gander hissin’ like a wet stick on a fire, waits like a beggarwoman on the step. But divil a one comes to the door; aw, not a one. An’ sorrow a soul budged inside; aw, not a soul. So round turns Jane, lifts her fist again, hits the door three thundering bangs, an’ looks another while at the gander. Not a budge in the door, not a move inside; so Jane, not to be done out of her tay, lifts the latch,—an’, sure as the sun was shinin’, but the bolt was shot inside. ‘Well, dang me,’ says Jane, an’ hits the door a kick, ‘but this is a fine way to treat company,’ says she, an’ rattles the latch, an’ shakes it. At last, in the divil of a temper, spits on the step, whips up her skirts, an’ cursin’ Hannah high up an’ low down, starts for home.

“She got as far as the bend in the lane, an’ there meets Mary Dolan.

“‘What’s up?’ axes Mary. ‘What’s floostered ye, Jane Flaherty? Aren’t ye goin’ to have your tay, me dear?’ says Mary.

“‘Aw, may the first sup she swallows choke the breath in her,’ shouts Jane, an’ goes on to tell her story; an’ before she’d said ten words, up comes Sally Hogan.

“‘Am I too late?’ says Sally, ‘or am I too early?’ says she, ‘or what in glory ails the two o’ ye?’

“‘Ails?’ shouts Jane. ‘Ye may well say that, Sally Hogan. Ye may turn on your heel,’ says she, an’ begins her story again; an’ before she was half through it Sally laughs out, and takes Jane by the arm, an’ starts back to the house.

“‘Come away,’ says she; ‘come away an’ have your tay, Jane; sure, ye don’t know Hannah yet.’

“So back the three goes—but not through the yard. Aw, no. ’Twas through the wee green gate, an’ down the walk, an’ slap up to the hall door Sally takes them; an’ sure enough the first dab on the knocker brings a fut on the flags inside, an’ there’s Kitty, the servant girl, in her boots an’ her stockin’s, an’ her Sunday dress an’ a white apron on her, standin’ before them.

“‘Aw, an’ is that you, Kitty Malone,’ says Sally. ‘An’ how’s yourself, Kitty, me dear? An’ wid Mrs. Breen be inside?’ says she.

“‘She is so, Mrs. Hogan,’ answers Kitty, an’ bobs a kind of curtsy. ‘Wid ye all be steppin’ in, please?’

“‘Aw, the Lord’s sake,’ gasps Sally on the door step, at all this grandeur; ‘the Lord’s sake,’ says she, an’ steps into the hall; an’ in steps Mary Dolan, an’ in steps Jane Flaherty, an’ away the three o’ them goes at Kitty’s heels up to the parlour.... ‘Aw, heavenly hour,’ cried Anne, and turned up her eyes.

“Well, dears,” Anne went on, “in the three walks, bonnets an’ all, an’ sits them down along the wall on three chairs, an’ watches Kitty close the door; then looks at each other in a puzzled kind o’ way, an’, after that, without openin’ a lip, casts their eyes about the room. ’Twas the funniest kind of a place, Jane allowed, that iver she dropped eyes on. There was a sheep-skin, lyin’ woolly side up, in front o’ the fireplace, an’ a calf-skin near the windy, an’ a dog’s skin over be the table, an’ the floor was painted brown about three fut all round the walls. There was pieces of windy-curtain over the backs o’ the chairs; there was a big fern growin’ in an ould drain-pipe in the corner; there was an ould straw hat o’ John’s stuffed full o’ flowers an’ it hangin’ on the wall, an’ here an’ there, all round it an’ beside it were picters cut from the papers an’ then tacked on the plaster. Ye could hardly see the mantelshelf, Jane allowed, for all the trumpery was piled on it, dinglum-danglums of glass an’ chaney, an’ shells from the say, an’ a sampler stuck in a frame, an’ in the middle of all a picter of Hannah herself got up in all her finery. An’ there was books, an’ papers, an’ fal-lals, an’ the sorrow knows what, lyin’ about; an’ standin’ against the wall, facin’ the windy, was a wee table, wi’ a cloth on it about the size of an apron, an’ it wi’ a fringe on it, no less, an’ it spread skew-wise an’ lookin’ for all the world like a white ace o’ diamonds; an’ on the cloth was a tray wi’ cups an’ saucers, an’ sugar an’ milk, an’ as much bread an’ butter, cut as thin as glass, as you’d give a sick child for its supper.... ‘Aw, heavenly hour,’ cried Anne, ‘heavenly hour!’

“Aw, childer, dear,” cried Judy.

“Aw, woman alive,” said I. “Aw, Judy, dear.”

“Well, childer, the three looks at all, an’ looks at each other, an’ shifts on their chairs, an’ looks at each other again, an’ says Mary Dolan at last:—

“‘We’re in clover, me dears,’ says she, ‘judgin’ be the spread beyont’—and she nods at the wee table.

“‘Ah that’il do for a start,’ says Sally Hogan; ‘but where in glory are we all to put our legs under that wee table? Sure it’l be an ojus squeeze.’

“‘It will so,’ says Jane Flaherty, ‘it will so. But isn’t it powerful quare o’ Hannah to keep us sittin’ here so long in our bonnets an’ shawls, an’ us dreepin’ wi’ the heat?’

“‘It’s the quarest hole I iver was put in,’ says Mary Dolan, ‘an’ if this is grandeur, give me the ould kitchen at home wi’ me feet on the hearth an’ me tay on a chair.... Phew,’ says Mary, an’ squints round at the windy, ‘phew, but it’s flamin’ hot! Aw,’ says she, an’ makes a dart from her chair, ‘dang me, but I’ll burst if I don’t get a mouthful o’ fresh air.’ An’ just as she had her hand on the sash to lift it, the door opens an’ in steps me darlin’ Hannah.

“‘Good evenin’, ladies all,” says Hannah, marchin’ in wi’ some kind of a calico affair, made like a shroud wi’ frills on it, hangin’ on her, ‘Good evenin’, ladies,’ says she, an’ wi’ her elbow cocked up in the air as if she was strivin’ to scrape it against the ceilin’, goes from one to another an’ shakes hands. ‘It’s a very pleasant afternoon’ (them was the words), says she, makin’ for a chair beside the wee table; ‘an’ I’m very pleased to see ye all,’ says she.

“‘Aw, an’ the same here,’ says Mary Dolan, in her free way, ‘the same here; an’ ojus nice ye look in that sack of a calico dress, so ye do,’ says Mary, wi’ a wink at Jane Flaherty. ‘But it’s meself’d feel obliged to ye if so be ye’d open the windy an’ give us a mouthful o’ fresh air,’ says Mary.

“An’ Hannah sits down in her shroud wi’ the frills on it, an’ smiles, an’ says she, ‘I’m rather delicate’ (them were the words) ‘this afternoon, Mrs. Dolan, an’ afeered o’ catchin’ cold; an’, forby that,’ says she, ‘the dust is so injurious for the parlour.’

“‘Aw, just so,’ answers Mary, ‘just so. Sure, I wouldn’t for worlds have ye spoil your parlour for the likes of us. But I’ll ax your leave, Mrs. Breen, seein’ ye don’t ax me yourself, to give me own health a chance,’ says she, ‘be throwin’ this big shawl off me shoulders.’

“‘But it’s afternoon tay, Mrs. Dolan,’ answers Hannah, in her cool way; ‘an’ it’s not fashionable at afternoon tay for ladies to remove—’

“‘Then afternoon tay be danged,’ says Mary, an’ throws the shawl off her across the back of her chair; ‘an’ it’s meself’ll not swelter for all the fashions in the world,’ says she, an’ pushes her bonnet back an’ lets it hang be the strings down her back. ‘Aw, that’s great,’ says she, wi’ a big sigh; an’ at that off goes Jane’s shawl an’ bonnet, an’ off goes Sally’s; an’ there the three o’ them sits, wi’ Hannah lookin’ at them disgusted as an ass at a field of thistles over a gate.... Aw, glory be,” cried Anne.

“Aw, me bould Anne,” cried Judy; “me brave girl.”

“Well, dears, Hannah sits her down, puts her elbow on a corner o’ the ace o’ diamonds, rests her cheek on her hand, an’ goes on talking about this and that. She hoped Mrs. Flaherty, an’ Mrs. Dolan, an’ Mrs. Hogan were well an’ prosperous; she hoped the crops were turnin’ out well; she hoped all the childer were in the best o’ good health. Aw, like the Queen o’ Connaught Hannah talked, an’ smiled, an’ aired herself an’ her beautiful English, but sorrow a move did she make to shift her elbow off the wee table-cloth, an’ divil a sign or smell o’ tay was there to be seen. Aw, not a one. Ten minutes went, an’ twenty, an’ half an hour; an’ at that, up Mary Dolan stretched her arms, gives a powerful big yawn, an’, says she, ‘Och, dear Lord,’ says she, ‘dear Lord, but the throat’s dry in me! Och, och,’ says she—an’ with the hint up gets Hannah in her frilled shroud, crosses the calf-skin, opens the door, an’ calls for Kitty. ‘Yis, Mrs. Breen,’ answers Kitty from the Kitchen. ‘Serve tay,’ calls Hannah; then closes the door an’ steps back to her chair by the wee table.

“In about ten minutes, here comes me darlint Kitty, boots an’ stockin’s an’ all; carries the taypot on a plate over to the table, an’ plants it down slap in the middle o’ the ace o’ diamonds. Up jumps Hannah wi’ a bounce.

“‘What are you doin’ Kitty?’ says she, with a snap of her jaw, an’ lifts the taypot, an’ glares at the black ring it had made on her brand new cloth. ‘D’ye see what you’ve done?’ says she, pointin’ her finger, ‘stand back and mend your manners, ye ignorant little baggage, ye!’—

“‘Yis, ma’am,’ answers Kitty, an’ stands back; then turns her head, when she gets to the calf-skin, an’ winks at the three sittin’ by the wall; an’ out Mary Dolan bursts into a splutter of a laugh.

“‘Aw, Lord,’ says Mary, an’ holds her ribs; ‘aw, dear Lord,’ says she. But Hannah, standin’ pourin’ tay into the wee cups, just kept her face as straight as if Mary was a dummy, an’ in a minute she turns round to Kitty.

“‘Hand the cups to the ladies,’ says she, an’ sits her down.

“Well, childer dear, Kitty steps from the calf-skin, lifts two cups an’ saucers from the tray, carries them across the floor, an’ offers one to Jane Flaherty, wi’ this hand, an’ t’other to Sally Hogan wi’ that hand. An’ Sally looks at the cup, an’ then at Kitty; an’ Jane looks at Kitty, an’ then at the cup, an’ says Sally:

“‘Is it take it from ye you’d have me do, Kitty Malone?’ says she.

“‘It is so,’ answers Kitty wi’ a grin.

“‘An’ where in glory wid ye have me put it, Kitty Malone?’ asks Sally an’ looks here an’ there. ‘Sure—sure, there’s no table next or near me,’ says she.

“‘It’s afternoon tay, Mrs. Hogan,’ says Hannah across the floor; ‘an’ at afternoon tay, tables aren’t fashionable,’ says she, an’ grins to herself.

“‘Well, thank God, Hannah Breen,’ says Mary Dolan, ‘that afternoon tay, as ye call it, has only come my way once in me life. Take the cup in your fist, Sally Hogan,’ says Mary, ‘an’ if ye break it, bad luck go with it, an’ if ye don’t, you’ve been a lady for once in your life; an’ when you’re done, stick it there on the floor. I’m obliged to ye, Kitty Malone,’ says Mary again, an’ takes a cup; ‘an’ if so be I choke meself wi’ the full o’ this thimble wi’ a handle on it,’ says Mary, an’ squints at the cup, ‘you’ll do me the favour to tell Pat I died a fool. An’ if such things go well wi’ afternoon tay, Kitty, agra, I’d trouble ye for a look at a spoon.’ “... Aw, me bould Mary,” cried Anne and laughed in her glee. “Ye were the girl for Hannah, so ye were.”

“Aw, ‘deed ay,” cried Judy, and tittered most boisterously. “Aw, me brave Hannah.”

“Then begins the fun, me dears. First of all, Sally Hogan, in trying to lift a bit o’ bread an’ butter from a plate that Kitty held before her, must spill her tay over her lap an’ start screechin’ that she was kilt. Then Mary Dolan must finish her cup at a gulp, an’ forgettin’ it was in Hannah’s parlour she was at afternoon tay, an’ not at home in the kitchen, must give the dregs a swirl an’ sling them over her shoulder against the wall. Then Sally Hogan again, in tryin’ to keep back a laugh at the tay leaves on the wall, an’ the glare of Hannah across at them, must get a crumb in her throat an’ bring the whole room to thump her on the back.

“Then Jane Flaherty gets a second cup wi’ no sugar in it, an’ makes a face like a monkey’s, an’ gives a big splutter, an’ sets Kitty Malone off into a fit o’ laughin’; an’ Kitty sets Jane off, an’ Jane sets Mary off, an’ Mary sets Sally off; an’ there sits Hannah in her calico shroud, beside the ace of diamonds, wi’ a face on her like a child cuttin’ its teeth, an’ her arm out, an’ her shoutin’ for Kitty to take herself out o’ the room. An’ in the middle o’ the whole hubbub the door opens, an’ in tramps big John in his dirty boots, wi’ his shirt-sleeves turned up, an’ hay ropes round his legs, an’ his hat on the back o’ his head, an’ his pipe in his mouth—in steps John, an’ stands lookin’ at them all.

“‘Ho, ho,’ roars John, an’ marches across the calf-skin. ‘What have we here? A tay party,’ says he, ‘as I’m a livin’ sinner—an’ me not to know a thing about it! Well, better late nor niver,’ says he, then turns an’ looks at Hannah. ‘Aw, how d’ye do, Mrs. Breen? says he, wi’ a laugh. ‘I hope I see ye well in your regimentals. An’ how the blazes are the rest o’ ye, me girls?’ says he to the three along the wall. ‘I’m glad to see ye all so hearty an’ merry, so I am. But what in glory are ye all doin’ over there, away from the table? Why don’t ye sit an’ have your tay like Christians?’ says he. ‘Come over, girls—come over this mortial minute,’ says John,’an’ I’ll have a cup wi’ ye meself, so I will.’

“Then Hannah rises in her calico shroud.

“‘John,’ says she, ‘it’s afternoon tay it’ll be, an tables—’

“‘Aw, sit ye down, Hannah,’ shouts John, ‘sit ye down, woman, an’ be like another for once in a way.’

“‘John,’ says Hannah, again, an’ looks knives an’ forks at him, ‘where’s your manners the day?’

“‘Aw, manners be danged,’ roars John, an’ throws his hat into the corner; ‘give us a cup o’ tay an’ quit your nonsense. Come on, girls,’ says he to the women, ‘come over, an’ have a cup in comfort wi’ me here at the table.’

“‘John!’ says Hannah again, ‘ye can’t sit at this table; it’s—it’s too small,’ says she.

“‘Then pull it out from the wall,’ roars John, ‘pull it out and let us get round it. Come on,’ says he, an’ grips an end o’ the table, ‘give it a lift across the floor!’

“‘No, no, John,’ shouts Hannah, an’ grips t’other end to keep it from goin’; ‘ye mustn’t, John!’

“‘Out wi’ it,’ roars John again.

“‘No, no,’ shouts Hannah, ‘ye can’t—aw, ye can’t—aw, ye mustn’—no, no, John!’

“‘Aw, to glory wi’ you an’ it,’ shouts John. ‘Here let me at it meself!...’

“An’ the next minute Hannah was screechin’ in her shroud; an’ there was a clatter o’ crockery, like as if a bull had gone slap at a dresser; an’ John was standin’ like as if he was shot, in the middle of the floor; an’ lyin’ at his feet was the wee table, an’ the ace of diamonds, an’ the whole o’ Hannah’s cups an’ saucers, an’ the taypot, an’ all, in a thousand pieces.... Aw, heart alive ... heart alive!...”

Anne leant upon her rake and bowed her head in laughter. Two minutes grace she had; then said I:

“What had happened, Anne?”

She looked at me. “Happened? Sure, the table was only an ould dressin’-table, an’ had only three legs, an’ was propped wi’ the lame side against the wall; an’ when John put it down in the middle of the floor—Aw, now,” cried Anne, “that’s enough, that’s enough.... Aw, me sides—me sides.”

“Aw, me sides—me sides,” cried Judy, shaking below her big sun-bonnet. “Te-he!”

“Aw, women alive,” cried I, sinking back on the hay. “Haw, haw!”

The Interpreters.

From “The Adventures of Dr. Whitty.”

By George A. Birmingham.

At the end of January, after three weeks of violently stormy weather, the American barque, “Kentucky,” went ashore at Carrigwee, the headland which guards the northern end of Ballintra. She struck first on some rocks a mile from the shore, drifted over them and among them, and was washed up, frightfully shattered, on the mainland. The captain and the crew were saved, and made their way into the town of Ballintra. They were dispatched thence to Liverpool, all of them, except one sailor, a forecastle hand, whose right leg had been broken by a falling spar. This man was brought into Ballintra in a cart by Michael Geraghty, and taken to the workhouse hospital. He arrived in a state of complete collapse, and Dr. Whitty was sent for at once.

The sailor turned out to be a man of great strength and vigour. He recovered from the effects of the long exposure rapidly, had his leg set, and was made as comfortable as the combined efforts of the whole workhouse hospital staff could make him. Then it was noticed that he did not speak a word to anyone, and was apparently unable to understand a word that was said to him. The master of the workhouse, after a consultation with the matron and the nurse, came to the conclusion that he must be a foreigner. Dr. Whitty was sent for again and the fact reported to him.

“I was thinking,” said the master, “that you might be able to speak to him, doctor, so as he’d be able to understand what you said.”

“Well, I can’t,” said the doctor. “I’m not a professional interpreter, but I don’t see that it much matters whether you’re able to talk to him or not. Give him his food. He’ll understand the meaning of a cup of tea when it’s offered him, whatever language he’s accustomed to speak. That’s all you need care about. As a matter of fact, he’ll be just as well off without having you and the nurse and the matron sitting on the end of his bed and gossiping with him all day long.”

“What’s troubling me,” said the master, “is that I’ve no way of finding out what religion he is.”

“I don’t see,” said the doctor, “that his religion matters in the least to us. He’s not going to die.”

“I know that. But I have to enter his religion in the book. It’s the rule that the religion of every inmate of the house or the hospital must be entered, and I’ll get into trouble after if I don’t do it.”

“Well,” said the doctor, “there’s no use asking me about it. I can’t talk to him any better than you can, and there isn’t any way of telling by the feel of a man’s leg whether he’s a Catholic or a Protestant.”

“That may be,” said the master, who disliked this sort of flippant materialism, “but if I was to enter him down as a Catholic, and it turned out after that he was a Protestant, there’d be a row I’d never hear the end of; and if I was to have him down as a Protestant, and him being a Catholic all the time, there’d be a worse row.”

Dr. Whitty was a good-natured man, and was always ready to help anyone who was in a difficulty. He felt for the master of the workhouse. He also had a natural taste for solving difficult problems, and the question of the sailor’s religion attracted him.

“Tell me this, now,” he said. “Had he any kind of a Prayer Book or a religious emblem of any sort on him when you were taking the clothes off him?”

“Not one. I looked myself, and the nurse went through his pockets after. Barring a lump of ship’s tobacco and an old knife, there wasn’t a thing on him.”

“That’s not much use to us,” said the doctor. “I never heard of a religion yet that forbid the use of tobacco or objected to people carrying penknifes. If you’d found a bottle of whiskey on him, now, it might have helped us. We’d have known then that he wasn’t a Mohammedan.”

“What’ll I do at all?”

“I’ll tell you what it is,” said the doctor. “I’ll go round the town and I’ll collect all the people in it that can speak any language besides English. I’ll bring them up here and let them try him one by one. It’ll be a queer thing if we can’t find somebody that will be able to make him understand a simple question.”

Dr. Whitty called first at the Imperial Hotel, and had an interview with Lizzie Glynn.

“Lizzie,” he said, “you’ve had a good education at one of the most expensive convents in Ireland. Isn’t that a fact?”

“It is,” she said. “And I took a prize one time for playing the piano.”

“It’s not piano-playing that I expect from you now,” said the doctor, “but languages. You speak French, of course?”

“I learned it,” said Lizzie, “but I wouldn’t say I could talk it very fast.”

“Never mind how slow you go,” said the doctor, “so long as you get it out in the end. Are you good at German?”

“I didn’t learn German.”

“Italian?”

“There was one of the sisters that knew Italian,” said Lizzie, “but it wasn’t taught regular.”

“Russian? Spanish? Dutch?”

Lizzie shook her head.

“That’s a pity. Never mind. I’ll put you down for French, anyway. I’ll take you up with me to the workhouse hospital at six o’clock this evening. I want you to speak French to a man that’s there, one of the sailors out of the ship that was wrecked.”

“I mightn’t be fit,” said Lizzie, doubtfully.

“Oh, yes, you will. Just look up the French for religion before you start, and get off the names of the principal kinds of religion in that language. All you have to do is to ask the man, ‘What is your religion?’ and then understand whatever it is he says to you by the way of an answer.”

Dr. Whitty next called on Mr. Jackson and explained the situation to him. The rector, rather unwillingly, offered French, and seemed relieved when he was told that that language was already provided for.

“I thought,” said the doctor, “that you’d be sure to know Greek.”

“I do,” said the Rector, “but not modern Greek.”

“Is there much difference?”

“I don’t know. I fancy there is.”

“Well, look here, come up and try the poor fellow with ancient Greek. I expect he’ll understand it if you talk slowly. All we want to get out of him is whether he’s a Protestant or a Catholic.”

“If he’s a Greek at all,” said the rector, “he’ll probably not be either the one or the other.”

“He’s got to be one or the other while he’s here. He can choose whichever happens to be the nearest thing to his own religion, whatever that is. Does Mrs. Jackson know Italian or Spanish?”

“No. I rather think she learned German at school, but I expect——”

“Capital. I’ll put her down for German.”

“I’m sure she’s forgotten it now.”

“Never mind. She can brush it up. There’s not much wanted and she has till six o’clock this evening. I shall count on you both. Good-bye.”

“By the way, doctor,” said Mr. Jackson on the doorstep, “now I come to think of it, I don’t believe there’s a word in ancient Greek for Protestant.”

“There must be. It’s one of the most important and useful words in any language. How could the ancient Greeks possibly have got on without it?”

“There isn’t. I’m perfectly sure there isn’t.”

“That’s awkward. But never mind, you’ll be able to get round it with some kind of paraphrase. After all, we can’t leave the poor fellow without the consolations of religion in some form. Good-bye.”

“And—and—Catholic in ancient Greek will mean something quite different, not in the least what it means now.”

The doctor was gone. Mr. Jackson went back to his study and spent two hours wrestling with the contents of a lexicon. He arrived at the workhouse in the evening with a number of cryptic notes, the words lavishly accented, written down on small slips of paper.

Father Henaghan was the next person whom Dr. Whitty visited. At first he absolutely declined to help.

“The only language I could make any shift at speaking,” he said “is Latin. And that would be no use to you. There isn’t one sailor out of every thousand, outside of the officers of the Royal Navy, that would know six words of Latin.”

“They tell me,” said the doctor, “that there’s no great difference between Latin and Spanish or Italian. Anyone that knows the one will make a pretty good push at understanding the others.”

“Whoever told you that told you a lie,” said the priest; “and, anyway, I’m not going near that man until I’m sure he’s a Catholic.”

“Don’t be hard-hearted, Father. Think of the poor fellow lying there and not being able to tell any of us what religion he belongs to.”

“I’ll tell you why I won’t go,” said the priest. “There was one time when I was a curate in Dublin, I used to be attending one of the hospitals. People would be brought in suffering from accidents and dying, and you wouldn’t know what they were, Catholic and Protestant. I got into the way of anointing them all while they were unconcious, feeling it could do them no harm, even if they were Protestants. Well, one day I anointed a poor fellow that they told me was dying. What did he do but recover. It turned out then that he was a Protestant, and, what’s more, an Orangeman, and when he heard what was done he gave me all sorts of abuse. He said his mother wouldn’t rest easy in her grave when she heard of it, and more talk of the same kind.”