“Did you see any man pass the road, friend?” said he to the postilion.
“Oh! who would I see? or why would I tell?” replied Larry in a sulky tone.
“Come, come, be smart!” said the man with the silver whip, offering to put half-a-crown into the postilion’s hand; “point me which way he took.”
“I’ll have none o’ your silver! don’t touch me with it!” said Larry. “But, if you’ll take my advice, you’ll strike across back, and follow the fields, out to Killogenesawce.”
The exciseman set out again immediately, in an opposite direction to that which the man who carried the still had taken. Lord Colambre now perceived that the pretended informer had been running off to conceal a still of his own.
“The gauger, plase your honour,” said Larry, looking back at Lord Colambre; “the gauger is a still-hunting!”
“And you put him on a wrong scent!” said Lord Colambre.
“Sure, I told him no lie: I only said, ‘If you’ll take my advice.’ And why was he such a fool as to take my advice, when I wouldn’t take his fee?”
“So this is the way, Larry, you give a lift to the laws!”
“If the laws would give a lift to me, plase your honour, may be I’d do as much by them. But it’s only these revenue laws I mean; for I never, to my knowledge, broke another commandment: but it’s what no honest poor man among his neighbours would scruple to take—a glass of potsheen.”