The Major, however, seemed not fully to enjoy the priest's anecdotical powers, but sipped his glass with a grave and sententious air. 'Very true, Tom,' said he at length, breaking silence; 'you have seen a fair share of these things for a man of your cloth. But where's the man living—show him to me, I say—that has had my experience, either as principal or second? Haven't I had my four men out in the same morning?'
'Why, I confess,' said I meekly, 'that does seem an extravagant allowance.'
'Clear waste, downright profusion, du luxe, mon cher, nothing else,' observed Father Tom.
Meanwhile, the Major rolled his eyes fearfully at me, and fidgeted in his chair with impatience to be asked for his story; and as I myself had some curiosity on the subject, I begged him to relate it.
'Tom, here, doesn't like a story at supper,' said the Major pompously; for, perceiving our attitude of attention, he resolved on being a little tyrannical before telling it.
The priest made immediate submission; and, slyly hinting that his objection only lay against stories he had been hearing for the last thirty years, said he could listen to the narration in question with much pleasure.
'You shall have it, then,' said the Major, as he squared himself in his chair, and thus began:—
'You have never been in Castle Connel, Hinton? Well, there is a wide bleak line of country there, that stretches away to the westward, with nothing but large round-backed mountains, low boggy swamps, with here and there a miserable mud hovel, surrounded by, maybe, half an acre of lumpers, or bad oats; a few small streams struggle through this on their way to the Shannon, but they are brown and dirty as the soil they traverse; and the very fish that swim in them are brown and smutty also.
'In the very heart of this wild country, I took it into my head to build a house. A strange notion it was, for there was no neighbourhood and no sporting; but, somehow, I had taken a dislike to mixed society some time before that, and I found it convenient to live somewhat in retirement; so that, if the partridges were not in abundance about me, neither were the process-servers; and the truth was, I kept a much sharper look-out for the sub-sheriff than I did for the snipe.
'Of course, as I was over head and ears in debt, my notion was to build something very considerable and imposing; and, to be sure, I had a fine portico, and a flight of steps leading up to it; and there were ten windows in front, and a grand balustrade at the top; and 'faith, taking it all in all, the building was so strong, the walls so thick, the windows so narrow, and the stones so black, that my cousin Darcy Mahon called it Newgate; and not a bad name either—and the devil another it ever went by. And even that same had its advantages; for when the creditors used to read that at the top of my letters, they'd say, “Poor devil! he has enough on his hands: there's no use troubling him any more.” Well, big as Newgate looked from without, it had not much accommodation when you got inside. There was, 'tis true, a fine hall, all flagged; and, out of it, you entered what ought to have been the dinner-room, thirty-eight feet by seven-and-twenty, but which was used for herding sheep in winter. On the right hand, there was a cosy little breakfast-room, just about the size of this we are in. At the back of the hall, but concealed by a pair of folding-doors, there was a grand staircase of old Irish oak, that ought to have led up to a great suite of bedrooms, but it only conducted to one—a little crib I had for myself. The remainder were never plastered nor floored; and, indeed, in one of them, that was over the big drawing-room, the joists were never laid—which was all the better, for it was there we used to keep our hay and straw. Now, at the time I mention, the harvest was not brought in, and instead of its being full, as it used to be, it was mighty low; so that, when you opened the door above the stairs, instead of finding the hay up beside you, it was about fourteen feet down beneath you.