CHAPTER XXIII
Said Patsy:
"There isn't very much to tell, but this is how it happened.
"About two weeks before your dog died myself and the girl were tramping up towards Dublin. We hadn't got the ass with us that time, for it was in pawn to a woman that peddled fish in the south-west of Connemara. She was keeping the ass and cart for us while we were away, and she was going to give us something for their loan at the heel of the season. She was an old rip, that one, for she sold the ass on us to one man and she sold the cart to another man, and we had the trouble of the world getting the pair of them together again—but that's no matter.
"One morning, fresh and early, we were beating along a road that comes down from the mountains and runs away into Donnybrook. I had just picked up a little goose that I found walking along with its nose up, and I thought maybe we could sell the creature to some person in the city who wanted a goose.
"We turned a bend in the road (it's a twisty district), and there I saw two men sitting on the grass on each side of the path. The two men were sitting with the full width of the road between them, and they were clean, stark, stone naked.
"They hadn't got as much as a shirt; they hadn't a hat; they hadn't got anything at all on them barring their skins.
"'Whoo!' said I to myself, and I caught a grip of the girl. 'We'll be taking another road,' said I, and round we sailed with the goose and all.
"But the two men came after us, and what with the goose and the girl, they caught up on us too.