“And then we 'd be rid of yez all,” chimed in a third.
“He's rich now,” whined out an old beggar-man that often had eaten his potatoes at our fireside. “He's rich now, the chap is; he 'll marry a lady!”
This was the hardest to bear of all the slights, for not alone had I lost all pretension to my father's property, but the raggedness of my clothes and the general misery of my appearance might have saved me from the reproach of what is so forcibly termed “blood-money.”
“Come over to me this evening,” said Father Rush; and they were the only words of comfort I heard from any side. “Come over to me about six o'clock, Con, for I want to speak to you.”
They were long hours that intervened between that and six. I could not stay in the town, where every one I met had some sneer or scoff against me; I could not go home, I had none! and so I wandered out into the open country, taking my course towards a bleak common, about two miles off, where few, if any one, was like to be but myself.
This wild and dreary tract lay alongside of the main road to Athlone, and was traversed by several footpaths, by which the country people were accustomed to make “short cuts” to market, from one part of the road to another; for the way, passing through a bog, took many a winding turn as the ground necessitated.
There is a feeling of lonely desolation in wide far-stretching wastes that accords well with the purposeless vacuity of hopelessness; but, somehow or other, the very similitude between the scene without and the sense of desolation within, establishes a kind of companionship. Lear was speaking like a true philosopher when he uttered the words, “I like this rocking of the battlements.”
I had wandered some hours “here and there” upon the common; and it was now the decline of day when I saw at a little distance from me the figure of a young man whose dress and appearance bespoke condition, running along at a brisk pace, but evidently laboring under great fatigue.
The instant he saw me he halted, and cried out, “I say, my boy, is that Kilbeggan yonder, where I see the spire?”
“Yes, sir.”