'Twas the evening of the Christmas Fair of Castletown, and the forge in Balnagore was almost full of men and boys. A fine, frosty night it promised to be, and the roads getting every moment more slippery, some of the men who had made long journeys were waiting for their turn to get their horses' shoes sharpened, as a precaution against accidents. The majority, though, of those who stood or sat around the fire, where Ned M'Grane was working at his best, were the young fellows of the neighbourhood, who, as usual, had dropped in to smoke or chat, and mayhap, if their lucky star happened to be in the ascendant, to hear one of his entertaining stories from Ned o' the Forge.
Well, one by one those who had far to travel were attended to and took their departure and then, with a big sigh of relief, Ned threw down the hammer, drew on his coat and took his pipe from his pocket.
"What sort was the fair, boys?" he asked, when the first wreath of smoke from his pipe had ascended towards the ceiling.
"'Twas good, Ned," answered Joe Clinton; "but, indeed, everybody was sayin' on the way home that Castletown Christmas Fair is nothin' now to what it used to be."
"I remember the time," said Ned, "when the whole town, from where the new Post Office is now to the railway gates, used to be so full o' people an' cattle an' trick-o'-the-loops an' everythin', that you'd have to fight your way through them."
"I heard my father sayin' to James Clancy an' we waitin' to be paid by the jobber," said Bartle Nolan, "that bacon isn't as dear now as the day Jimmy the Thrick doubled the grain of oats on the Belfast jobber, an' they were laughin' over it. What was that about, Ned?"
We became as mute as mice after this last question of Bartle's, and Ned M'Grane was silent also for a moment or two. Then when we saw him folding his arms and leaning back against the bellows we knew that a story was coming, and that Bartle had played a trump card.
"It's many's the trick Jimmy played in his day," said Ned, with a smile, "but the doublin' o' the grain of oats was one of his best, an' one that brought him a bit o' money, too. The way it happened was this:
"It was a plan o' Jimmy's sometimes at fairs an' markets to let on that he was a bit of an amadán, an' he'd talk so simple an' queer an' foolish that strange jobbers that didn't know him or his ways used to take great delight in talkin' to him, an' havin' a laugh at him, an' in the heel o' the hunt Jimmy used to knock out the best penny in the fair for whatever he'd be sellin'. But he was caught nappin' one day, an' in revenge for that he doubled the grain of oats.
"He was at the Christmas Fair o' Castletown (it's well over twenty year ago now) tryin' to sell two pigs—a white one an' a black one—an', of course, as usual, he was playin' the fool an' crackin' jokes with every jobber that came the way, an' seemed in no hurry to sell the pigs at all. At last up comes a quiet, tidy bit of a man, an' says he, nice an' easy, an' seemin' to care little whether he got an answer or not: