While bursting through the crowd came a strange, odd-looking figure, in a huntsman's coat and cap, but both so patched and tattered, it was difficult to detect their colour. 'Here's Joe, your honour,' cried he, putting his hand to his mouth at the same moment. 'Tally-ho! ye ho! ye yo!' he shouted, with a mellow cadence I never heard surpassed. 'Yow! yow! yow!' he cried, imitating the barking of dogs, and then uttering a long, low wail, like the bay of a hound, he shouted out, 'Hark away t hark away!' and at the same moment pranced into the thickest of the crowd, upsetting men, women, and children as he went—the curses of some, the cries of others, and the laughter of nearly all ringing through the motley mass, making their misery look still more frightful.
Throwing what silver I had about me amongst them, I made my way towards the hotel—not alone, however, but heading a procession of my ragged friends, who, with loud praises of my liberality, testified their gratitude by bearing me company. Arrived at the porch, I took my luggage from the carrier, and entered the house. Unlike any other hotel I had ever seen, there was neither stir nor bustle, no burly landlord, no buxom landlady, no dapper waiter with napkin on his arm, no pert-looking chambermaid with a bedroom candlestick. A large hall, dirty and unfurnished, led into a kind of bar, upon whose unpainted shelves a few straggling bottles were ranged together, with some pewter measures and tobacco-pipes; while the walls were covered with placards, setting forth the regulations for the Grand Canal Hotel, with a list, copious and abundant, of all the good things to be found therein, with the prices annexed; and a pressing entreaty to the traveller, should he not feel satisfied with his reception, to mention it in a 'book kept for that purpose by the landlord.' I cast my eye along the bill of fare so ostentatiously put forth—I read of rump-steaks and roast-fowls, of red rounds and sirloins, and I turned from the spot resolved to explore farther. The room opposite was large and spacious, and probably destined for the coffee-room, but it also was empty; it had neither chair nor table, and save a pictorial representation of a canal-boat, drawn by some native artist with a burnt stick upon the wall, it had no decoration. Having amused myself with the Lady Caher—such was the vessel called—I again set forth on my voyage of discovery, and bent my steps towards the kitchen. Alas! my success was no better there. The goodly grate, before which should have stood some of that luscious fare of which I had been reading, was cold and deserted; in one corner, it was true, three sods of earth, scarce lighted, supported an antiquated kettle, whose twisted spout was turned up with a misanthropic curl at the misery of its existence. I ascended the stairs, my footsteps echoed along the silent corridor, but still no trace of human habitant could I see, and I began to believe that even the landlord had departed with the larder.
At this moment the low murmur of voices caught my ear. I listened, and could distinctly catch the sound of persons talking together at the end of the corridor. Following along this, I came to a door, at which, having knocked twice with my knuckles, I waited for the invitation to enter. Either indisposed to admit me, or not having heard my summons, they did not reply; so turning the handle gently, I opened the door, and entered the room unobserved. For some minutes I profited but little by this step; the apartment, a small one, was literally full of smoke, and it was only when I had wiped the tears from my eyes three times that I at length began to recognise the objects before me.
Seated upon two low stools, beside a miserable fire of green wood, that smoked, not blazed, upon the hearth, were a man and a woman. Between them a small and rickety table supported a tea equipage of the humblest description, and a plate of fish whose odour pronounced them red herrings. Of the man I could see but little, as his back was turned toward me; but had it been otherwise, I could scarcely have withdrawn my looks from the figure of his companion. Never had my eyes fallen on an object so strange and so unearthly. She was an old woman, so old, indeed, as to have numbered nearly a hundred years; her head, uncovered by cap, or quoif, displayed a mass of white hair that hung down her back and shoulders, and even partly across her face, not sufficiently, however, to conceal two dark orbits, within which her dimmed eyes faintly glimmered; her nose was thin and pointed, and projecting to the very mouth, which, drawn backwards at the angles by the tense muscles, wore an expression of hideous laughter. Over her coarse dress of some country stuff she wore, for warmth, the cast-off coat of a soldier, giving to her uncouth figure the semblance of an aged baboon at a village-show. Her voice, broken with coughing, was a low, feeble treble, that seemed to issue from passages where lingering life had left scarce a trace of vitality; and yet she talked on, without ceasing, and moved her skinny fingers among the tea-cups and knives upon the table, with a fidgety restlessness, as though in search of something.
'There, acushla, don't smoke; don't now! Sure it is the ruin of your complexion. I never see boys take to tobacco this way when I was young.'
'Whisht, mother, and don't be bothering me,' was the cranky reply, given in a voice which, strange to say, was not quite unknown to me.