“Tell us all about it, Maurice, my boy,—are you a lord, or a bishop?” cried the tall fellow, with an eagerness of face that told his own sad bereavement, for he was deranged in intellect from a fall from one of the cliffs on the coast. “By my conscience, I think I must change my politics myself soon; my best pantaloons is like Nat Fitzgibbon,—it has resigned its sate! Out with a bit of silver here!—quick, I didn't kiss the King's face this ten days.”
To all these entreaties Darcy seemed perfectly deaf; if his eyes wandered over the crowd, they noticed nothing there, nor did he appear to listen to a word around him, while he again asked why the horses were not coming.
“We're doing our best, your honor,” cried a postboy, “but it's mighty hard to get through these divils; they won't stir till the beasts is trampling them down.”
“Drive on, then, and let them take care of themselves,” said the Knight, sternly.
“O blessed Father! there's a way to talk of the poor! O heavenly Vargin! but you are come back cruel to us, after all!”
“Drive on!” shouted out Darcy, in a voice of angry impatience.
The postboys sprang into their saddles, cracked their whips, and dashed forward, while the mob, rent in a hundred channels, fled on every side, with cries of terror and shouts of laughter, according as the distance suggested danger or security. All escaped safely, except the poor idiot, Flury, who, having one foot on the step when the carriage started, was thrown backward, when, to save himself, he grasped the spring, and was thus half dragged, half carried along to the end of the street, and there, failing strength and fear combining, he relinquished his hold and fell senseless to the ground, where the wheel grazed but did not injure him as he lay.
With a cry of terror, the Knight called out “Stop!” and, flinging wide the door, sprang out. To lift the poor fellow up to a sitting posture was the work of a second, while he asked, in accents the very kindest, if he were hurt.
“Sorra bit, Maurice,” said the fellow, whose faculties sooner rallied than if they were habitually under better control. “I was on the wrong side of the coach, that's all; 't is safer to be within. The clothes is not the better of it,” said he, looking at his sleeve, now hanging in stripes.
“Never mind that, Flury; we'll soon repair that misfortune; it does not signify much.”