“That in your face and the hair aff your head,” said Shon; “it’s little you know a tobogan ride when you see one. I’ll take my share of the grog, by the same token.”
The Honourable uncorked his flask. Shon threw back his head with a laugh.
“For it’s rest when the gallop is over, me men!
And it’s here’s to the lads that have ridden their last;
And it’s here’s—”
But Shon had fainted with the flask in his hand and this snatch of a song on his lips.
They reached shelter that night. Had it not been for the accident, they would have got to their destination in the Valley; but here they were twelve miles from it. Whether this was fortunate or unfortunate may be seen later. Comfortably bestowed in this mountain tavern, after they had toasted and eaten their venison and lit their pipes, they drew about the fire.
Besides the four, there was a figure that lay sleeping in a corner on a pile of pine branches, wrapped in a bearskin robe. Whoever it was slept soundly.
“And what was it like—the gold-pan flyer—the tobogan ride, Shon?” remarked Jo Gordineer.
“What was it like?—what was it like”? replied Shon. “Sure, I couldn’t see what it was like for the stars that were hittin’ me in the eyes. There wasn’t any world at all. I was ridin’ on a streak of lightnin’, and nivir a rubber for the wheels; and my fingers makin’ stripes of blood on the snow; and now the stars that were hittin’ me were white, and thin they were red, and sometimes blue—”
“The Stars and Stripes,” inconsiderately remarked Jo Gordineer.
“And there wasn’t any beginning to things, nor any end of them; and whin I struck the snow and cut down the core of it like a cat through a glass, I was willin’ to say with the Prophet of Ireland—”