'You shall hear it, and it isn't a bad story in its way. But don't you think the night-air is a little too much for you? Shall we close the window?'
'If it depend on me, father, pray leave it open.'
'Ha, ha! I was forgetting again,' said the old fellow, laughing roguishly—'Stella sunt amantium oculi, as Pharis says. There now, don't be blushing, but listen to me.
'It was somewhere about last November that Bob got a quiet hint from some one at Daly's that the sooner he got out of Dublin the more conducive it would be to his personal freedom, as various writs were flying about the capital after him. He took the hint, and set off the same night, and reached his beautiful château of Newgate without let or molestation—which having victualled for the winter, he could, if necessary, sustain in it a reasonable siege against any force the law was likely to bring up. The house had an abundant supply of arms. There were guns that figured in '41, pikes that had done good service a little later, swords of every shape, from the two-handed weapon of the twelfth century to a Roman pattern made out of a scythe by a smith in the neighbourhood; but the grand terror of the country was an old four-pounder of Cromwell's time, that the Major had mounted on the roof, and whose effects, if only proportionately injurious to the enemy to the results nearer home, must indeed have been a formidable engine, for the only time it was fired—I believe to celebrate Bob's birthday—it knocked down a chimney with the recoil, blew the gardener and another man about ten feet into the air, and hurled Bob himself through a skylight into the housekeeper's room. No matter for that; it had a great effect in raising the confidence of the country-people, some of whom verily believed that the ball was rolling for a week after.
'Bob, I say, victualled the fortress; but he did more, for he assembled all the tenants, and in a short but pithy speech told them the state of his affairs, explaining with considerable eloquence what a misfortune it would be for them if by any chance they were to lose him for a landlord.
'“See, now, boys,” said he, “there's no knowing what misfortune wouldn't happen ye; they'd put a receiver on the property—a spalpeen with bailiffs and constables after him—that would be making you pay up the rent, and 'faith I wouldn't say but maybe he 'd ask you for the arrears.”
'“Oh, murther, murther! did any one ever hear the like!” the people cried on every side; and Bob, like a clever orator, continued to picture forth additional miseries and misfortunes to them if such a calamitous event were to happen, explaining at the same time the contemptible nature of the persecution practised against him.
'“No, boys,” cried he, “there isn't a man among them all that has the courage to come down and ask for his money, face to face; but they set up a pair of fellows they call John Doe and Richard Roe—there's names for you! Did you ever hear of a gentleman in the country with names like that? But that's not the worst of it, for you see even these two chaps can't be found. It's truth I'm telling you, and some people go so far as to say that there is no such people at all, and it's only a way they have to worry and annoy country gentlemen with what they call a fiction of the law; and my own notion is, that the law is nothing but lies and fiction from beginning to end.”
'A very loud cheer from Bob's audience proclaimed how perfectly they coincided in his opinion; and a keg of whisky being brought into the lawn, each man drained a glass to his health, uttering at the same time a determination with respect to the law-officers of the crown that boded but little happiness to them when they made a tour in the neighbourhood.
'In about a week after this there was a grand drawing-home: that's, you understand, what we call in Ireland bringing in the harvest. And sure enough, the farmyard presented a very comely sight, with ricks of hay, and stacks of corn and oats and barley, and outhouses full of potatoes, and in fact everything the country produces, besides cows and horses, sheep, pigs, goats, and even turkeys; for most of the tenants paid their rents in kind, and as Bob was an easy landlord, very few came without a little present—a game-cock, a jackass, a ram, or some amusing beast or other. Well, the next day—it was a fine dry day with a light frost, and as the bog was hard, Bob sent them all away to bring in the turf. Why, then, but it is a beautiful sight, Captain, and I wish you saw it—maybe two or three hundred cars all going as fast as they can pelt, on a fine bright day, with a blue sky and a sharp air, the boys standing up in the kishes driving without rein or halter, always at a gallop—for all the world like Ajax, Ulysses, and the rest of them that we read of; and the girls, as pretty craytures as ever you threw an eye upon, with their short red petticoats, and their hair plaited and fastened up at the back of their heads: on my conscience the Trojan women was nothing to them!