'Ay, and you on the top of them.'
'You don't know how heavy I am,' said I laughingly.
'Begorra, I wish you was heavier.'
'And why so, Joe?'
'Because one that was so good to the poor is worth his weight in goold any day.'
I do not pretend to say whether it was the flattery, or the promise these words gave me of an agreeable companion en route; but, certain it is, I at once closed with his proposal, and, with a ceremonious bow to the Grand Canal Hotel, took my departure, and set out for Loughrea.
CHAPTER XXI. LOUGHREA
With the innate courtesy of his country, my humble companion endeavoured to lighten the road by song and story. There was not a blackened gable, not a ruined tower, not even a well we passed, without its legend. The very mountains themselves, that reared their mighty peaks towards the clouds, had their tale of superstitious horror; and, though these stories were simple in themselves, there was something in the association of the scene, something in the warm fervour of his enthusiasm that touched and thrilled my heart.
Like a lamp, whose fitful glare flickers through the gloomy vault of some rocky cavern, too feeble to illumine it, but yet calling up wild and goblin shapes on every side, and peopling space with flickering spectres, so did the small modicum of intellect this poor fellow possessed enable him to look at life with strange, distorted views. Accustomed to pass his days in the open air—the fields, the flowers, the streams, his companions—he had a sympathy in the eddying current that flowed on beneath—in the white cloud that rolled above him. Happy—for he had no care—he journeyed about from one county to another. In the hunting season he would be seen lounging about a kennel, making or renewing his intimacy with the dogs, who knew and loved him; then he was always ready to carry a drag, to stop an earth, or do a hundred other of those minor services that are ever wanted. Many who lived far from a post-town knew the comfort of falling in with poor 'Tipperary Joe.' for such was he called. Not more fleet of foot than honest in heart, oftentimes was a letter intrusted to his keeping that with any other messenger would have excited feelings of anxiety. His was an April-day temperament—ever varying, ever changing. One moment would he tell, with quivering lip and broken voice, some story of wild and thrilling interest; the next, breaking suddenly off, he would burst out into some joyous rant, generally ending in a loud 'tally-ho,' in which all his enthusiasm would shine forth, and in his glistening eye and flushed cheek one could mark the pleasure that stirred his heart He knew every one, not only in this, but in the surrounding counties; and they stood severally classed in his estimation by their benevolence to the poor, and their prowess in the hunting-field. These, with him, were the two great qualities of mankind. The kind man, and the bold rider, made his beau-ideal of all that was excellent, and it was strange to watch with what ingenuity he could support his theory.