In dressing, Mahony reassured Polly, and instructed her what to say to people who came inquiring after him; it was unlikely he would be back before afternoon. Most of the patients could wait till then. The one exception, a case of typhoid in its second week, a young Scotch surgeon, Brace, whom he had obliged in a similar emergency, would no doubt see for him—she should send Ellen down with a note. And having poured Doyle out a nobbler and put a flask in his own pocket, Mahony reopened the front door to the howl of the wind.
The lantern his guide carried shed only a tiny circlet of light on the blackness; and the two men picked their steps gingerly along the flooded road. The rain ran in jets off the brim of Mahony's hat, and down the back of his neck.
Having climbed into the buggy they advanced at a funeral pace, leaving it to the sagacity of the horse to keep the track. At the creek, sure enough, the water was out, the bridge gone. To reach the next bridge, five miles off, a crazy cross-country drive would have been necessary; and Mahony was for giving up the job. But Doyle would not acknowledge defeat. He unharnessed the horse, set Mahony on its back, and himself holding to its tail, forced the beast, by dint of kicking and lashing, into the water; and not only got them safely across, but up the steep sticky clay of the opposite bank. It was six o'clock and a cloudless morning when, numb with cold, his clothing clinging to him like wet seaweed, Mahony entered the wooden hut where the real work he had come out to do began.
Later in the day, clad in an odd collection of baggy garments, he sat and warmed himself in the sun, which was fast drawing up in the form of a blankety mist the moisture from the ground. He had successfully performed, under the worst possible conditions, a ticklish operation; and was now so tired that, with his chin on his chest, he fell fast asleep.
Doyle wakened him by announcing the arrival of the buggy. The good man, who had more than one nobbler during the morning could not hold his tongue, but made still another wordy attempt to express his gratitude. "Whither me girl lives or dies, it'll not be Mat Doyle who forgits what you did for him this night, doctor! An' if iver you want a bit o' work done, or some one to do your lyin' awake at night for you, just you gimme the tip. I don't mind tellin' you now, I'd me shootin'-iron here"—he touched his right hip—"an' if you'd refused—you was the third, mind you,—I'd have drilled you where you stood, God damn me if I wouldn't!"
Mahony eyed the speaker with derision. "Much good that would have done your wife, you fathead! Well, well, we'll say nothing to MINE, if you please, about anything of that sort."
"No, may all the saints bless 'er and give 'er health! An' as I say, doctor...." In speaking he had drawn a roll of bank-notes from his pocket, and now he tried to stuff them between Mahony's fingers.
"What's this? My good man, keep your money till it's asked for!" and Mahony unclasped his hands, so that the notes fluttered to the ground.
"Then there let 'em lay!"
But when, in clothes dried stiff as cardboard, Mahony was rolling townwards—his coachman, a lad of some ten or twelve who handled the reins to the manner born—as they went he chanced to feel in his coat pocket, and there found five ten-pound notes rolled up in a neat bundle.