"Is it lost now," said I, "that I'd be gittin, an' me uncle as great a navigator at iver steered a ship across the thrackless say! Not a bit of it, though I'm obleeged to ye for your kind advice, an thank yez for the ride."
An' wid that he drove off an' left me alone. I shouldered my bundle bravely, an' whistling a bit of tune for company like, I pushed into the bush. Well, I went a long way over bogs, and turnin' round among the bush and trees till I began to think I must be well nigh to Dennis's. But, bad cess to it! all of a sudden, I came out of the woods at the very identical spot where I started in, which I knew by an ould crotched tree that seemed to be standin' on its head an' kicking up its heels to make divarsion of me. By this time it was growing dark, and as there was no time to lose, I started in a second time, determined to keep straight south this time and no mistake. I got on bravely for awhile, but och hone! och hone! it got so dark I couldn't see the trees, and I bumped me nose and barked me shins, while the miskaties bit me hands and face to a blister; and after tumblin' and stumblin' around till I was fairly bamfoozled, I sat down on a log, all of a trimble, to think that was lost intirely, and that maybe a lion or some other wild craythur would devour me before morning.
Just then I heard somebody a long way off say, "Whip poor Will!" "Bedad!" sez I, "I'm glad it isn't Jamie that's got to take it, though it seems its more in sorrow than in anger they're doin' it, or why should they say, 'poor Will?' and sure they can't be Injin, haythen, or naygur, for its plain English they're afther spakin?"
Maybe they might help me out o' this, so I shouted at the top of my voice,
"A lost man!" Thin I listened. Prisintly an answer came.
"Who: Whoo! Whooo!"
"Jamie Butler, the waiver," sez I, as loud as I could roar, an' snatchin' up me bundle an' stick, I started in the direction of the voice. Whin I thought I had got near the place I stopped and shouted again, "A lost man!"
"Who! Whoo! Whooo!" said a voice right over my head.
"Sure," thinks I, "it's a quare place for a man to be at this time of night; maybe it's some settler scrapin' sugar off a sugar bush for the childher's breakfast in the mornin'. But where's Will and the rest of them?" All this wint through me head like a flash, an' thin I answered his enquiry.
"Jamie Butler, the waiver," sez I; "and if it wouldn't inconvanience your honour, would yez be kind enough to step down and show me the way to the house of Dennis O'Dowd?"
"Who! Whoo! Whooo!" sez he.