Warwick Woodlands: Things as they Were There Twenty Years Ago

by Henry William Herbert

Pulling short up where a jog across the road, constructed--after the damnable mode adopted in all the hilly portions of the interior--in order to prevent the heavy rains from channelling the descent, afforded him a chance of stopping on the hill, so as to slack his traces. "How now," he exclaimed; "what the deuce ails you now, you old rhinoceros?"

"Oh, Archer, I feels bad; worst sort, by Judas! It's that milk punch, I reckon; it keeps a raising--raising, all the time like..."

"And you want to lay it, I suppose, like a ghost, in a sea of whiskey; well, I've no especial objection! Here, Tim, hand the case bottle, and the dram cup! No! no! confound you, pass it this way first, for if Tom once gets hold of it, we may say good-bye to it altogether. There," he continued, after we had both taken a moderate sip at the superb old Ferintosh, "there, now take your chance at it, and for Heaven's sake do leave a drop for Jem and Garry; by George now, you shall not drink it all!" as Tom poured down the third cup full, each being as big as an ordinary beer-glass. "There was above a pint and a half in it when you began, and now there's barely one cup-full between the two of them. An't you ashamed of yourself now, you greedy old devil?"

"It doos go right, I swon!" was the only reply that could be got out of him.

"That's more a plaguy sight than the bullets will do, out of your old tower musket; you're so drunk now, I fancy, that you couldn't hold it straight enough to hit a deer at three rods, let alone thirty, which you are so fond of chattering about."

"Do tell now," replied Tom, "did you, or any other feller, ever see me shoot the worser for a mite of liquor, and as for deer, that's all a no sich thing; there arnt no deer a this side of Duckseedar's. It's all a lie of Teachman's and that Deckering son of a gun."

"Holloa! hold up, Tom--recollect yesterday!--I thought there had been no cock down by the first bridge there, these six years; why you're getting quite stupid, and a croaker too, in your old age."

"Mayhap I be," he answered rather gruffly; "mayhap I be, but you won't git no deer to-day, I'll stand drinks for the company; and if we doos start one, I'll lay on my own musket agin your rifle."

"Well! we'll soon see, for here we are," Harry replied, as after leaving the high-road just at the summit of the Bellevale mountain, he rattled down a very broken rutty bye-road at the rate of at least eight miles an hour, vastly to the discomfiture of our fat host, whose fleshy sides were jolted almost out of their skin by the concussion of the wheels against the many stones and jogs which opposed their progress.

"Here we are, or at least soon will be. It is but a short half mile through these woods to Teachman's cottage. Is there a gun loaded, Tim? It's ten to one we shall have a partridge fluttering up and treeing here directly; I'll let the dogs out--get away, Flash! get away, Dan! you little rascals. Jump out, good dogs, Shot, Chase--hie up with you!" and out they went rattling and scrambling through the brush-wood all four abreast!