‘Why don’t I drive on, is it?’ asked he, in a voice of despair. ‘Sure, there’s no road.’
‘And does it stop here?’ cried Walpole in horror, for he now perceived that the road really came to an abrupt ending in the midst of the bog.
‘Begorra, it’s just what it does. Ye see, your honour,’ added he, in a confidential tone, ‘it’s one of them tricks the English played us in the year of the famine. They got two millions of money to make roads in Ireland, but they were so afraid it would make us prosperous and richer than themselves, that they set about making roads that go nowhere. Sometimes to the top of a mountain, or down to the sea, where there was no harbour, and sometimes, like this one, into the heart of a bog.’
‘That was very spiteful and very mean, too,’ said Walpole.
‘Wasn’t it just mean, and nothing else! and it’s five miles we’ll have to go back now to the cross-roads. Begorra, your honour, it’s a good dhrink ye’ll have to give me for this day’s work.’
‘You forget, my friend, that but for your own confounded stupidity, I should have been at Kilgobbin Castle by this time.’
‘And ye’ll be there yet, with God’s help!’ said he, turning the horse’s head. ‘Bad luck to them for the road-making, and it’s a pity, after all, it goes nowhere, for it’s the nicest bit to travel in the whole country.’
‘Come now, jump up, old fellow, and make your beast step out. I don’t want to pass the night here.’
‘You wouldn’t have a dhrop of whisky with your honour?’
‘Of course not.’