“Shut up, you implicating tadpole! Wasn't I ordhered to hold convarse wid me prisoner? Spake win Ye're spoke ter and be civil, Or I'll jolt the teeth troo your hat!”
Tim jogged on, and the led horse bearing Tsing Hi jogged after. Tsing Hi bumped until he was fain to lean heavily on his precious swag, trying to discover by sensation an' unbruised part of his body on which to jolt.
“Hi! hi!” he shouted. “Horsey, him no goo'! You l'me walk!”
Tim whistled and jogged. Tsing Hi jolted and whimpered. The hot miles wriggled slowly past. Dust lay a foot deep on the track. It was a windless day. Tsing Hi, gripping with fearful intensity his swag, could not lift a finger to wipe the stains which stood for many tears and coursed down his cheeks in tiny rivulets, making puddles on his cramped hands. He, the dandy, smothered in dust, weeping, sore in every bone, blistered and scalded, pondered over his petty sins, moaned continuously, and longed for the hard floor of the gaol.
He, a disciple of Confucius, found no present relief in the tags of the master's philosophy that he could call to mind. Tears made him a grim spectacle. The beautiful yellow waistcoat was indistinguishable beneath dirt and dust. His carefully tended queue shook out in disordered loops, and finally dangled, dust-soiled, behind. His trousers worked and wrinkled up to the knees, chafed his unaccustomed skin, and still Tim in a cloud of dust jogged on singing:
“Until that day, plase God, I'll shtick
To the wearin' o' the green.”
It was a poor little prisoner, but his first and his own, and Tim was elated, and when a true Irishman is happy he becomes poetically patriotic. But happy though he undoubtedly was, even Tim was not sorry when the chance came of stretching his legs and incidentally sluicing down the dust. The halfway house looked cool and clean to him. In fact it was neither. It must have appeared a celestial scene to moaning Tsing Hi. The rough upright slabs (once rich yellow, now dingy) promised some sort of refuge from the dust, and the narrow strip of verandah a thin slice of shade. The mound of broken bottles at the rear betokened the drinks of the past, while the mind dwelt lovingly on those of the present. Three panting goats, all aslant, but tressed themselves determinedly against the end of the house, and two boys, long since dust immune, occasionally hunted the goats into the sun and away among the ant-hills. But when Tsing Hi slid from the horse and into the shade, he felt like a saint in bliss. They gave him water, and he wailed until Tim silenced him with threats of jolts and locked the manacles round the middle post.
Tim sighed profoundly as he scented beer. “I do belave I'm dhry, Jerry. Give's a long un. I've swallowed mud by the bucket. Give the wee little divil outside a pannikin o' tay. Maybe it'll revoive, him!”
Tim drank long and well.
“I've heard about the case,” Jerry said, as he filled the thick glass a third time. “Fancy the little beggar, an' him commin' and goin' as flash as ye make 'ern, and pickin' and thavin' all the time. Maybe he got the ear-rings the missis is after missin'.”