The duel might now have been postponed—perhaps even prevented altogether—had it not been for the self-devotion of Mr. Isaacs.
“The gentlemen shall not be disappointed,” said Ike—“I’ll see fair, and hold the candle for both of ’em.”
“Where will you stand?” asked Major O’Toole.
“Halfway between ye,” replied the daring Englishman, “and take the chance of both of ye missing me. Give us a lantern, though,” he added; “for the wind’s rising from the south-west.”
“Faith, if it’s a bull’s-eye,” quoth Bounceable, “I’ll be safe to snuff it out; and we’ll be worse in the dark than ever, for a second shot.”
So Mr. Isaacs placed himself in a cross-fire, at five paces’ distance from the muzzle of each pistol; and it is not surprising that one bullet should have gone through the tail of his coat, and the other grazed his elbow, so as to incapacitate him for ever for that hard work to which he had always shown such a profound disinclination.
After this truly Hibernian satisfaction had been given and received, the party all sat down again, and drank claret till church-time.
But these days could not last for ever. One rainy morning, Ike’s good-humoured patron sent for his old nurse, his huntsman, his trainer, and the parish priest, bid the three first an affectionate farewell, and took his own departure very peaceably under the offices of the last. He left a handsome amount of debt, accumulated during many years, but no ready money, except a crooked sixpence on his watch-chain. Mr. Isaacs, returning to England without a shilling, became plain “Ike” once more.
He tried life in towns, under many different characters. As a billiard-marker, a light porter, an assistant-ostler, and a penny-postman; but the temptation to the copses and hedgerows was too strong for him, and the receipt of regular wages so unnatural as to be almost unpleasant. Even the tinker’s nomadic profession, which he adopted for a time, was of too settled and business-like a nature; and he gave it up ere long, in a fit of impatience and disgust.
This wandering trade, however, brought him one winter into the neighbourhood of Soakington; and a day with the Castle-Cropper hounds, beginning on the old pony that drew his cart, and ended on his own active and enduring feet, revived all his smouldering passion for the chase.