On Dec. 16, notice was served on Patrick McCarthy that at the fortnightly sessions to be held at Ballyblank on the first Tuesday after Christmas, it was the intention of George Macgrabb, Esq., J. P., agent to Lord Clonboy, D. L., J. P., etc., to apply for a decree of ejectment against the said Patrick McCarthy for arrears of rent and costs, and the said Patrick McCarthy was required to attend and show cause, if any, why such decree should not be granted. Still no response from the obnoxious tenant.
On Christmas morning the agent drove over to the barracks.
“Constable,” said he, “I expect I shall require your assistance in a day or two. I’ll get the ejectment to-morrow. I haven’t heard a word from McCarthy. I suppose he means to claim the rent, and say the receipt was stolen during your search. It will be useless. Those copies of the Irish World found in his desk have turned every magistrate on the bench against him. They won’t believe him on a million oaths. We landlords stick to each other. I’ll get the decree, and by G—d, I’ll put it in execution in twenty-four hours unless Miss Nelly says she’ll be Mrs. MacG. and Master Harry clears out to America or Hong-Kong. Have every available man ready. McCarthy’s a popular man with the other rapscallions of tenants, and they might show fight. We’ll shoot them down, if they do, the dogs. I’ll telegraph to the county town for more men.”
“It won’t be necessary,” growled Gallagher, showing his teeth like a vicious cat. “They haven’t forgotten Malone’s eviction. By Jupiter, didn’t we scatter the women that day! Killed one. She had twenty grains of buckshot in her. Never fired a cleaner shot in my life. They made a fuss about it, of course. What good did it do the fools? Did it save young Dermody when he kicked so about us turning his old mother out? He’ll remember the taste of my bayonet, if he lives long enough. Then look how the crowds gathered when we executed the writ against O’Brien. Lord! how we peppered them. Do you mind—”
The brutal reminiscences over which both the crowbar heroes sat gloating and smacking their lips were interrupted by the entrance of a sub with a hamper and a note. The constable gazed at both with surprise. To the hamper was attached a card:—
“A Christmas Box—From Harry McCarthy.”
“Don’t touch it! Take it away! It’s dynamite!” screamed the magistrate, with blue lips and pallid features. But at that moment there came from the box a “Quack! Quack!” so loud, so unmistakable, that both Gallagher and Macgrabb exclaimed in one whisper, “The goose! Great Heavens, the goose!”
They opened the basket with trembling fingers, and there, sure enough, as scraggy, as bony, as void of everything but skin and feathers as ever, was Macgrabb’s Christmas peace-offering to the other limb of the law.
The constable turned to the note with dilating eyes. It was some time before he could read its contents:—
My poor Gallagher,—I do not wish to deprive you of your Christmas repast. The thought of your misery, if doomed to a cold collation of bread and cheese, has overcome my resentment at your last visit. But I would appeal to you not to sacrifice the bird. It has been a most interesting visitor to me. It is not so much its exploring turn of mind that I admire—though certainly it is the most inquisitive goose I ever saw. During its stay with me I confined its tours of investigation indoors. It would have been well for you to have done the same. If you had kept its intellect employed in the kitchen or the guard-room, and limited its digestive experiments to crockery ware, old hats, paper collars, and ink-bottles, as I have done, you would possibly be happier to-day. Its thirst for knowledge is positively alarming. I discovered that when I found it making a meal off one of my most valued surgical books. After that I kept it in my bedroom, and it has at this moment stowed away in its ravenous recesses a pair of blankets, three sheets, a choice assortment of carpet and hearth-rug, and a wash-hand basin. I think it would have been better for you to have sacrificed a linen-draper’s shop, and kept your goose at home. When it came round our farm on a voyage of discovery with a blue rent receipt in its bill, I recognized the mistake you committed in not treating it as a suspect or a treason-felony prisoner. I succeeded in rescuing the document, which it proposed studying, I have no doubt, when it could spare time from its topographical surveys. I shall have the pleasure of exhibiting the autograph in which the animal took such an absorbing interest at the Petty Sessions Court to-morrow to its original author. My respects to Macgrabb. If you feel no further curiosity in the goose, perhaps he might be inclined to preserve it in his ancestral halls. If he wrote a history of its connection with a strategic stroke of policy he recently indulged in, the perusal would be both edifying and instructive to his descendants and dependants, as representative of one of which classes, perhaps both, I tender you my profound sympathy, and remain,