“Bad luck to ye!” cried he, apostrophizing the off-horse, a tall, raw-boned beast, with a Roman nose, a dipped back, and a tail ragged and jagged like a hand-saw,—“bad luck to ye! there never was a good one of your color!”
This, for the information of the “unjockeyed,” I may add, was a species of brindled gray.
“How did it happen, Patsey; how did it happen, my lad?”
“It was the heap o’ stones they left in the road since last autumn; and though I riz him at it fairly, he dragged the ould mare over it and broke the pole. Oh, wirra, wirra!” cried he, wringing his hands in an agony of grief, “sure there’s neither luck nor grace to be had with ye since the day ye drew the judge down to the last assizes!”
“Well, what’s to be done?”
“Sorra a bit o’ me knows; the shay’s ruined intirely, and the ould divil there knows he’s conquered us. Look at him there, listening to every word we’re saying! You eternal thief, may be its ploughing you’d like better!”
“Come, come,” said I, “this will never get us forward. What part of the country are we in?”
“We left Banagher about four miles behind us; that’s Killimur you see with the smoke there in the hollow.”
Now, although I did not see Killimur (for the gray mist of the morning prevented me recognizing any object a few hundred yards distant), yet from the direction in which he pointed, and from the course of the Shannon, which I could trace indistinctly, I obtained a pretty accurate notion of where we were.
“Then we are not very far from Portumna?”