Furlong answered in the negative.

"Och! murder! murder! I'm sorry I told you."

"Is it so _vewy_ pa'ticula', then?" inquired Furlong.

"Oh, you'll find out that, and more too, if you live long enough," was the answer. Then turning to the tinker, he said, "Have you any milliner work in hand, Fogy?"

"To be sure I have," answered the tinker; "who has so good a right to know that as yourself? Throth, you've little to do, I'm thinkin', when you ax that idle question. Oh, you're nate lads! And would nothin' sarve you but brakin' the weatherc.o.c.k?"

"Oh, 't was such a nice c.o.c.k-shot; 't was impossible not to have a shy at it," said Ratty, chuckling.

"Oh, you're nice lads!" still chimed in the tinker.

"Besides," said Ratty, "Gusty bet me a bull-dog pup against a rabbit, I could not smash it in three goes."

"Faix, an' he ought to know you betther than that," said the tinker; "for you'd make a fair offer[17] at anything, I think, but an answer to your schoolmasther. Oh, a nate lad you are--a nate lad!--a nice clargy you'll be, your _rivirence_. Oh, if you hit off the tin commandments as fast as you hit off the tin weatherc.o.c.k, it's a good man you'll be--an'

if I never had a headache till then, sure it's happy I'd be!"

[17] A "fair offer" is a phrase amongst the Irish peasantry, meaning a successful aim.

"Hold your prate, old Growly," said Ratty; "and why don't you mend the weatherc.o.c.k?"

"I must mend the kittle first--and a purty kittle you made of it!--and would nothing sarve you but the best kittle in the house to tie to the dog's tail? Ah, Masther Ratty, you're terrible boys, so yiz are!"

"Hold your prate, you old thief!--why wouldn't we amuse ourselves?"

"And huntin' the poor dog, too."

"Well, what matter!--he was a strange dog."

"That makes no differ in the _crulety_."

"Ah, bother! you old humbug!--who was it blackened the rag-woman's eye?--ha! Fogy--ha! Fogy--dirty Fogy!"

"Go away, Masther Ratty, you're too good, so you are, your rivirince.

Faix, I wondher his honour, the Squire, doesn't murdher you sometimes."

"He would, if he could catch us," replied Ratty, "but we run too fast for him, so divil thank him!--and you, too, Fogy,--ha, old Growly! Come along, Mr. Furlong, here's Gusty;--bad scran to you, Fogy!" and he slammed the door as he quitted the tinker.

Gustavus, followed by two younger brothers, Theodore and G.o.dfrey (for O'Grady loved high-sounding names in baptism, though they got twisted into such queer shapes in family use), now led the way over the park towards the river. Some fine timber they pa.s.sed occasionally; but the axe had manifestly been busy, and the wood seemed thinned rather from necessity than for improvement; the paths were choked with weeds and fallen leaves, and the rank moss added its evidence of neglect. The boys pointed out anything _they_ thought worthy of observation by the way, such as the best places to find a hare, the most covered approach to the river to get a shot at wild ducks, or where the best young wood was to be found from whence to cut a stick. On reaching their point of destination, which was where the river was less rapid, and its banks sedgy and thickly grown with flaggers and bulrushes, the sport of spearing for eels commenced. Gusty first undertook the task, and, after some vigorous plunges of his implement into the water, he brought up the prey, wriggling between its barbed p.r.o.ngs. Furlong was amazed, for he thought this, like the salmon-fishing, was intended as a quiz, and, after a few more examples of Gusty's prowess, he undertook the sport; a short time, however, fatigued his unpractised arm, and he relinquished the spear to Theodore, or Tay, as they called him, and Tay shortly brought up his fish, and thus, one after another, the boys, successful in their sport, soon made the basket heavy.

Then, and not till then, they desired Furlong to carry it; he declared he had no curiosity whatever in that line, but the boys would not let him off so easy, and told him the practice there was, that every one should take his share in the day's sport, and as he could not catch the fish he should carry it. He attempted a parley, and suggested he was only a visitor; but they only laughed at him--said that might be a very good Dublin joke, but it would not pa.s.s in the country. He then attempted laughingly to decline the honour; but Ratty, turning round to a monstrous dog, which hitherto had followed them, quietly said, "Here!

b.l.o.o.d.ybones; here! boy! at him, sir!--make him do his work, boy!" The bristling savage made a low growl, and fixed his eyes on Furlong, who attempted to remonstrate; but he very soon gave _that_ up, for another word from the boys urged the dog to a howl and a crouch, preparatory to a spring, and Furlong made no further resistance, but took up the basket amid the uproarious laughter of the boys, who continued their sport, adding every now and then to the weight of Furlong's load; and whenever he lagged behind, they cried out, "Come along, man-Jack!" which was the complimentary name they called him by for the rest of the day. Furlong thought spearing for eels worse sport than fishing for salmon, and was rejoiced when a turn homeward was taken by the party; but his annoyances were not yet ended. On their return, their route lay across a plank of considerable length, which spanned a small branch of the river; it had no central support, and consequently sprang considerably to the foot of the pa.s.senger, who was afforded no protection from handrail, or even a swinging rope, and this rendered its pa.s.sage difficult to an unpractised person. When Furlong was told to make his way across, he hesitated, and, after many a.s.surances on his part that he could not attempt it, Gusty said he would lead him over in security, and took his hand for the purpose; but when he had him just in the centre, he loosed himself from Furlong's hold, and ran to the opposite side. While Furlong was praying him to return, Ratty stole behind him sufficiently far to have purchase enough on the plank, and began jumping till he made it spring too high for poor Furlong to hold his footing any longer; so squatting on the plank, he got astride upon it, and held on with his hands, every descending vibration of the board dipping his dandy boots in the water.

"Well done, Ratty!" shouted all the boys.

"Splash him, Tay!" cried Gusty. "Pull away, Goggy."

The three boys now began pelting large stones into the river close beside Furlong, splashing him so thoroughly, that he was wringing wet in five minutes. In vain Furlong shouted, "Young gentlemen! young gentlemen!" and, at last, when he threatened to complain to their father, they recommenced worse than before, and vowed they'd throw him into the stream if he did not promise to be silent on the subject; for, to use their own words, if they _were_ beaten, they might as well duck him at once, and have the "worth of their licking." At last, a compromise being effected, Furlong stood up to walk off the plank.

"Remember," said Ratty, "you won't tell we hoised[18] you?"

[18] A vulgarism for "hoisted."

"I won't indeed," said Furlong and he got safe to land.

"But I will!" cried a voice from a neighbouring wood; and Miss O'Grady appeared, surrounded by a crowd of little pet-dogs. She shook her head in a threatening manner at the offenders, and all the little dogs set up a yelping bark, as if to enforce their mistress's anger. The snappish barking of the pets was returned by one hoa.r.s.e bay from "b.l.o.o.d.ybones,"

which silenced the little dogs, as a broadside from a seventy-four would dumbfounder a flock of privateers, and the boys returned the sister's threat by a universal shout of "Tell-tale!"

"Go home, tell-tale!" they all cried; and with an action equally simultaneous, they stooped one and all for pebbles, and pelted Miss Augusta so vigorously, that she and her dogs were obliged to run for it.

CHAPTER XVI

Having recounted Furlong's out-door adventures, it is necessary to say something of what was pa.s.sing at Neck-or-Nothing Hall in his absence.

O'Grady, on leaving the breakfast-table, retired to his justice-room to transact business, a princ.i.p.al feature in which was the examination of Handy Andy, touching the occurrences of the evening he drove Furlong to Merryvale; for though Andy was clear of the charge for which he had been taken into custody, namely, the murder of Furlong, O'Grady thought he might have been a party to some conspiracy to drive the stranger to the enemy's camp, and therefore put him to the question very sharply. This examination he had set his heart upon; and reserving it as a _bonne bouche_, dismissed all preliminary cases in a very off-hand manner, just as men carelessly swallow a few oysters preparatory to dinner.

As for Andy, when he was summoned to the justice-room, he made sure it was for the purpose of being charged with robbing the post-office, and cast a sidelong glance at the effigy of the man hanging on the wall, as he was marched up to the desk where O'Grady sat in magisterial dignity; and, therefore, when he found it was only for driving a gentleman to a wrong house all the pother was made, his heart was lightened of a heavy load, and he answered briskly enough. The string of question and reply was certainly an entangled one, and left O'Grady as much puzzled as before whether Andy was stupid and innocent, or too knowing to let himself be caught--and to this opinion he clung at last. In the course of the inquiry, he found Andy had been in service at Merryvale; and Andy, telling him he knew all about waiting at table, and so forth, and O'Grady being in want of an additional man-servant in the house while his honourable guest, Sackville Scatterbrain, should be on a visit with him, Andy was told he should be taken on trial for a month. Indeed, a month was as long as most servants could stay in the house--they came and went as fast as figures in a magic lantern.

Andy was installed in his new place, and set to work immediately scrubbing up extras of all sorts to make the reception of the honourable candidate for the county as brilliant as possible, not only for the honour of the house, but to make a favourable impression on the coming guest; for Augusta, the eldest girl, was marriageable, and to her father's ears "The Honourable Mrs. Sackville Scatterbrain" would have sounded much more agreeably than "Miss O'Grady."

"Well--who knows?" said O'Grady to his wife; "such things have come to pa.s.s. Furbish her up, and make her look smart at dinner--he has a good fortune, and will be a peer one of these days--worth catching. Tell her so."

Leaving these laconic observations and directions behind him, he set off to the neighbouring town to meet Scatterbrain, and to make a blow-up at the post-office about the missing letters. This he was the more anxious to do, as the post-office was kept by the brother of M'Garry, the apothecary; and since O'Grady had been made to pay so dearly for thrashing him, he swore eternal vengeance against the whole family. The post-master could give no satisfactory answer to the charge made against him, and O'Grady threatened a complaint to headquarters, and prophesied the postmaster's dismissal. Satisfied for the present with this piece of prospective vengeance, he proceeded to the inn, and awaited the arrival of his guest.

In the interim, at the Hall, Mrs. O'Grady gave Augusta the necessary hints, and recommended a short walk to improve her colour; and it was in the execution of this order that Miss O'Grady's perambulation was cut short by the pelting her sweet brothers gave her.

The internal bustle of the establishment caught the attention of the dowager, who contrived to become acquainted with its cause, and set about making herself as fascinating as possible; for though, in the ordinary routine of the family affairs, she kept herself generally secluded in her own apartments, whenever any affair of an interesting nature was pending, nothing could make her refrain from joining any company which might be in the house;--nothing;--not even O'Grady himself. At such times, too, she became strangely excited, and invariably executed one piece of farcical absurdity, of which, however, the family contrived to confine the exercise to her own room. It was wearing on her head a tin concern, something like a chimney-cowl, ornamented by a small weatherc.o.c.k, after the fashion of those which surmount church-steeples; this, she declared, influenced her health wonderfully, by indicating the variation of the wind in her stomach, which she maintained to be the grand ruling principle of human existence. She would have worn this head-dress in any company, had she been permitted, but the terrors of her son had sufficient influence over her to have this laid aside for a more seemly _coiffure_ when she appeared at dinner or in the drawing-room; but while she yielded really through fear, she affected to be influenced through tenderness to her son's infirmity of temper.

"It is very absurd," she would say, "that Gustavus should interfere with my toilette; but, poor fellow, he's very queer, you know, and I _humour_ him."

This at once explains why Master Ratty called the tinker "the milliner."

It will not be wondered at that the family carefully excluded the old lady from the knowledge of any exciting subject; but those who know what a talkative race children and servants are, will not be surprised that the dowager sometimes got scent of proceedings which were meant to be kept secret. The pending election, and the approaching visit of the candidate, somehow or other, came to her knowledge, and of course she put on her tin chimney-pot. Thus attired, she sat watching the avenue all day; and when she saw O'Grady return in a handsome travelling carriage with a stranger, she was quite happy, and began to attire herself in some ancient finery, rather the worse for wear, and which might have been interesting to an antiquary.

The house soon rang with bustle--bells rang, and footsteps rapidly paced pa.s.sages, and pattered up and down stairs. Andy was the nimblest at the hall-door at the first summons of the bell; and, in a livery too short in the arms and too wide in the shoulders, he bustled here and there, his anxiety to be useful only putting him in everybody's way, and ending in getting him a hearty cursing from O'Grady.

The carriage was unpacked, and letter-boxes, parcels, and portmanteaus strewed the hall. Andy was desired to carry the latter to "the gentleman's room," and, throwing the portmanteau over his shoulder, he ran upstairs. It was just after the commotion created by the arrival of the _Honourable_ Mr. Scatterbrain that Furlong returned to the house, wet and weary.

He retired to his room to change his clothes, and fancied he was now safe from further molestation, with an inward protestation that the next time the Master O'Gradys caught him in their company, they might bless themselves; when he heard a loud sound of hustling near his door, and Miss Augusta's voice audibly exclaiming, "Behave yourself, Ratty!--Gusty, let me go!"--when, as the words were uttered, the door of his room was shoved open, and Miss Augusta thrust in, and the door locked outside.

Furlong had not half his clothes on. Augusta exclaimed, "Gracious me!"--first put up her hands to her eyes, and then turned her face to the door.

Furlong hid himself in the bed-curtains, while Ratty, the vicious little rascal, with a malicious laugh, said, "Now, promise you'll not tell papa, or I'll bring him up here--and then, how will you be?"

"Ratty, you wretch!" cried Augusta, kicking at the door, "let me out!"