'I can't help boring you with all these details; first, because they are essential to my story; and next, because, being a young man, and a foreigner to boot, it may lead you to a little better understanding of some of our national customs. Of all the partialities we Irish have, after lush and the ladies, I believe our ruling passion is to build a big house, spend every shilling we have, or that we have not, as the case may be, in getting it half finished, and then live in a corner of it, “just for grandeur,” as a body may say. It's a droll notion, after all; but show me the county in Ireland that hasn't at least six specimens of what I mention.
'Newgate was a beautiful one; and although the she lived in the parlour, and the cows were kept in the blue drawing-room, Darby Whaley slept in the boudoir, and two bull-dogs and a buck goat kept house in the library—'faith, upon the outside it looked very imposing; and not one that saw it, from the highroad to Ennis—and you could see it for twelve miles in every direction—didn't say, “That Mahon must be a snug fellow: look what a beautiful place he has of it there!” Little they knew that it was safer to go up the “Reeks” than my grand staircase, and it was like rope-dancing to pass from one room to the other.
'Well, it was about four o'clock in the afternoon of a dark lowering day in December that I was treading homewards in no very good-humour; for except a brace and a half of snipe, and a grey plover, I had met with nothing the whole day. The night was falling fast; so I began to hurry on as quickly as I could, when I heard a loud shout behind me, and a voice called out—
'“It's Bob Mahon, boys! By the Hill of Scariff, we are in luck!”
'I turned about, and what should I see but a parcel of fellows in red coats—they were the Blazers. There was Dan Lambert, Tom Burke, Harry Eyre, Joe M'Mahon, and the rest of them—fourteen souls in all. They had come down to draw a cover of Stephen Blake's about ten miles from me; but, in the strange mountain country, they lost the dogs, they lost their way and their temper; in truth, to all appearance, they lost everything but their appetites. Their horses were dead beat too, and they looked as miserable a crew as ever you set eyes on.
'“Isn't it lucky, Bob, that we found you at home?” said Lambert.
'“They told us you were away,” says Burke.
'“Some said that you were grown so pious that you never went out except on Sundays,” added old Harry, with a grin.
'“Begad,” said I, “as to the luck, I won't say much for it; for here's all I can give you for your dinner”; and so I pulled out the four birds and shook them at them; “and as to the piety, troth, maybe you'd like to keep a fast with as devoted a son of the Church as myself.”
'“But isn't that Newgate up there?” said one.