"Faith I did so!" says me lad, "and he was the most courageous thief of a fox ever ye seen!"
I went up to the lad.
"Where did ye get the two coats, ye're afther throwing behind the wall?" says I.
"'Tis aiqual to you where I got them," says me lad, "ax no questions and ye'll be told no lies!"
"Faith, there's no occasion," says I, "sure it's you is good-natured to be carryin' the two coats that was on my two sons this morning," says I, "and you bloated with running," says I.
Divil a word he said, but away with him.
"Thim two young lads o' mine will be apt to get a bating before night!" says I to meself, "and they're in the want of it!"
"Forrad! Forrad!" says Johnny to the dogs, that was whining most peevish round and about, and you'd think if he never had a nose on him he'd get the smell o' the paraffin oil, it was that parsevarin'.
Two mile we legged it then, and the biggest walls in the counthry was in it, and God help them that had to be building them afther us! Comin' up Milleenavillen, William and a few more of us turned about round the butt o' the hill, for fear we'd be bet out entirely, and it wasn't long till we met with a great mountaineer of a big bank down in the widow Brinckley's land. Meself dhrew out back a couple o' fields, and knocked a few sticks that was in a gap, but me brave William didn't do but to let a roar to the Shan Bui, and to land him two clouts in the jaw comin' into the bank. The Shan Bui lepped up on to it, as loose as a hare, with the fright, but what'd be before him only posts that the widow Brinckley had dhrove in the far side o' the bank, and ropes on them, and clothes hangin' out on them. He put a hump on himself like a ferret when he seen them, but if all the polis in Ireland was below mindin' the clothes, he'd have to change his feet and lep out on to them, with the gallop he had on him, and he cot the two hind legs in the ropes, and himself and William and the clothes was threwn down in the field.
"He's dead!" says I. "'Twould kill him if he was a bull!"