This exclamation was caused by the sight of a man walking in a direction at right angles to his own, and only a rod or two in advance. He was walking leisurely, like some one who was returning from a wearisome hunt; and, what surprised Teddy, he was certainly a white man, rather young in years.
“Hilloa, I say!” called out the Irishman, again.
The stranger abruptly paused, and looked inquiringly toward him.
“Well, what is it ye want?”
“Who the blazes be yees?”
“I don’t know as that concerns you,” replied the stranger, resuming his walk, and almost immediately disappearing in the darkness.
The exasperated Teddy shouted to him to hold on, calling him a coward, and seeking by every means imaginable to bring him back. Had it not been that he was so heavily loaded, he would have sought to follow and bring him to terms; but the Irishman scarcely had time to rise to his feet, when the man had vanished.
“Jist me luck!” he growled, as he sunk back again to finish his rest. “I once walked siven miles to attind the wake of Micky McMaghaghoghmoghlan, and whin I got there, found he hadn’t died at all; and so, whin I was felicytaterin’ mesilf on a fight wid this impudent spalpeen, he walks away, widout exchanging a crack of the head wid me. Bad luck to him! but I’ll have a muss wid somebody, if it’s wid old Stebbins or Black Tom, and then I’ll be sure to get whopped, which is better nor not fightin’ at all, at all.”
Teddy was about to resume his walk, when a peculiar sound, something like the bark of a dog, caught his ear.
“What the dooce is that?” he exclaimed, staring about him. “Who’s got dogs in this part of the world?”