“Though iron bolts may rust and rot,
And stone and mortar crumble,
Freney, beware! for well I wot
Your pride may have a tumble.”
“Devil a lie in that, anyhow, sir,” said the other, laughing heartily; “and an uglier tumble a man needn't have than to slip through Tom Galvin's fingers. But I see the fire is out now; so I 'll be jogging homeward. Good-night, sir.”
“Good-night,” said Darcy; and then, as the other moved away, turning to the landlord, he asked if he knew the stranger.
“No, sir,” was the reply; “he came up with some others to have a look at the fire.”
“Well, I 'll to my bed,” said Darcy; “let me be awakened at four o'clock. I see I shall have but a short sleep; the day is breaking already.”
CHAPTER IX. BOARDING-HOUSE CRITICISM.
It was not until after the lapse of several days that Darcy's departure was made known to the denizens of Port Ballintray.
If the event was slow of announcement, they endeavored to compensate for the tardiness of the tidings by the freedom of their commentary on all its possible and impossible reasons. There was not a casualty, in the whole catalogue of human vicissitudes, unquoted; deaths, births, and marriages were ransacked in newspapers; all sudden and unexpected turns of fortune were well weighed, accidents and offences scanned with cunning eyes, and the various paragraphs to which editorial mysteriousness gave an equivocal interpretation were commented on with a perseverance and an ingenuity worthy of a higher theme.
It may be remarked that no class of persons are viewed more suspiciously, or excite more sharp criticism from their neighbors, than those who, with evidently narrow means, prefer retirement and estrangement from the world to mixing in the small circle of some petty locality. A hundred schemes are put in motion to ascertain by what right such superiority is asserted,—why, and on what grounds, they affect to be better than their neighbors, and so on; the only offence all the while consisting of an isolation which cannot with truth imply any such imputation.