I supped comfortably, and then walked out to the stable to see Charcoal. “Get her corn; you'll see if she don't, eat it in less than winkin',” said the ostler; “and if she wor my beast, she'd never taste another feed till she had her nose in the manger at Croft's Gulley.”
“And where is Croft's Gulley?”
“It's the bottoms after you pass the larch wood; the road dips a bit, and is heavy there, and it's a good baitin' place, just eighteen miles from here.”
“On the road to Austin?”
He nodded. “Ye see,” he said, “the moon's a risin'; there's no one out this time. Ye know what I said afore.”
“I'll take the advice, then. Get the traps ready; I'll pack the saddle-bags and set out.”
If any one had asked me why I was in such haste to reach Austin, my answer would have been, “To join the expedition;” and if interrogated, “With what object then?” I should have been utterly dumbfoundered. Little as I knew of its intentions, they must all have been above the range of my ability and means to participate in. True, I had a horse and a rifle; but there was the end of my worldly possessions, not to say that my title, even to these, admitted of litigation. A kind of vague notion possessed me that, once up with the expedition, I should find my place “somewhere,”—a very Irish idea of a responsible situation. I trusted to the “making myself generally useful” category for employment, and to a ready-wittedness never cramped nor restrained by the petty prejudices of a conscience.
The love of enterprise and adventure is conspicuous among the springs of action in Irish life, occasionally developing a Wellesley or a Captain Rock. Peninsular glories and predial outrage have just the same one origin,—a love of distinction, and a craving desire for the enjoyment of that most fascinating of all excitements,—whatever perils life.
Without this element, pleasure soon palls; without the cracked skulls and fractured “femurs,” fox-hunting would be mere galloping; a review might vie with a battle, if they fire blank cartridge in both! Who 'd climb the Peter Bot, or cross the “petit mulets” of Mont Blanc, if it were not that a false step or a totter would send him down a thousand fathoms into the deep gorge below. This playing hide-and-seek with Death seems to have a great charm, and is very possibly the attraction some folks feel in playing invalid, and passing their lives amid black draughts and blue lotions!
I shrewdly suspect this luxury of tempting peril distinguishes man from the whole of the other animal creation; and if we were to examine it a little, we should see that it opens the way to many of his highest aspirings and most noble enterprises. Now, let not the gentle reader ask, “Does Mr. Cregan include horse-stealing in the list of these heroic darings?” Believe me, he does not; he rather regarded the act of appropriation in the present case in the light some noble lords did when voting away church property,—“a hard necessity, but preferable to being mulct oneself!” With many a thought like this, I rode out into the now silent town, and took my way towards Austin.