“What! when that beam is hanging there? Why, if you touched that rope the beam would come down.”
“Sure an I forgot that for the moment, so I did,” said Pat, dejectedly.
“Strange we didn’t notice that the beam was rotten,” said Bart, mournfully. “It looked sound enough.”
“It looked as sound as a nut, so it did; and how it managed to howld on till I jarked it bates me intirely, so it does.”
“It must have been sagging down and cracking all the time. The only wonder is, that it didn’t give way when we were higher up. If it had, there’d have been an end of us.”
“Sure ‘n you niver spoke a truer word in your life, so you didn’t; an, be the same token, it’s a good sign, so it is, an a fine thing intirely, that we’re down here now at this blissid minute, wid our bones not broke to smithereens. Sure but it makes me fairly shiver whin I think of you an me, one after the other, hangin away up there from that bit of rotten stick that was broken all the time.”
“If this wasn’t quite so wide,” Said Bart, “we might stretch our legs across, and get up that way. I’ve seen men go down into wells as easy as you please, just by stretching their legs across.”
“Sure an meself it is that’s seen that same,” said Pat, briskly; “an I wondher whether, afther all, our legs mightn’t be long enough to do it.”
“O, no,” said Bart; “it’s too wide altogether.”
“Sure an we might then; an there’s nothin like tryin.”