‘Keep it up!’ bawled the boatsteerer to a couple of Irishmen who happened to enter at the moment; and so it appeared that the sum and substance of all that was in this man’s cranium could be expressed in those simple words ‘Keep it up,’ a phrase that he continued to utter periodically throughout the entire evening.
But neither the Englishman nor the two Irishmen obeyed the summons on this occasion. They had ‘kept it up’ too often and too long to be peculiarly enthusiastic at the sound of a fiddle. The two latter especially seemed to have other matter in hand, and seating themselves upon one corner of a bench near the door, they thus exchanged thoughts in a sotto voice which, in the uproar that prevailed, was completely inaudible to any but themselves.
‘Have you aver seed him since then?’ was the question propounded by the shorter of the two.
‘Faith! and only once, and then I drawed a trigger on him from behind the bush, Patrick, but a lump of a gal com’d out and stood in the way, or I’d kilt him at wunst; but there was no use of getting up a yell from the gal that wud have brought all the payple in the house about my ears.’
‘An’ I b’lieve you are right, Jamie, for them Vigilance Committees is kaping a bright look-out, now, for the like o’that; and I seed one of ’em up in the Boomerang jist when I was cooming down—’
‘Ay, faith, Patrick, and it’s on account of Montgomery that they’re shying around this way, I’m thinking; but they will look a great while before they—’
‘Ah! hush jist now! don’t name it, for yees don’t know what ears is open, if you was only to spake of the sand hills—’
‘Hush, noo, Patrick! would ye be after revaling it all, and we sworn on the howly ’vangellers too?’
‘But as for the Monteagle there, Jamie, there must something be done, for Montgomery swears he’ll have his life, for the taking the safe from him, the bloody robber!’
‘Faith, boy, make yourself parfectly easy, then, for there’s another way to kill a cat besides the putting of a slug into her countenance, sure,’ and Jamie winked sagaciously. ‘You’ll know then that Mister Blodget is going to undertake for him.’