“Not so cur’ous neither,” replied the man, with some feeling; “it’s my opinion, the further a man goes from the owld country, and the rougher he becomes wi’ scrapin’ up and down through the world, the more tinder his heart gits when he thinks o’ his mother. Me own mother died whin I wos a bit spalpeen, an’ I lived wi’ me grandmother, bliss her heart, ever since,—at laste till I took to wanderin’, which was tin years past.”
“So long! Pat, you must have wandered far in that time. Have you ever been away far into the interior of this country, among the mountains, in the course of your wanderings!”
“Among the mountains, is it? Indeed I have, just; an’ a most tree-mendous beautiful sight it is. Wos ye goin’ there?”
“I’ve been thinking about it. Is the shooting good?”
“Shootin’, ah! av ye’d bin wi’ me an’ Bill Simmons, two summers ago, ye’d have had more nor enough o’ shootin’. The grizzlies are thick as paes, and the buffaloes swarm in the valleys like muskaitoes, not to mintion wolves, and beavers, and badgers, and deer, an’ sich like—forby the red Injuns; we shot six o’ them critters about the legs an’ arms in self defence, an’ they shot us too—they put an arrow dane through the pint o’ Bill’s nose, an’ wan ripped up me left arm, it did.” (Pat bared the brawny limb, and exhibited the wound as he spoke.) “Shootin’, is it? faix there’s the hoith o’ shootin’ there, an’ no end o’ sainery.”
The conversation was interrupted at this point by the door being burst violently open, and several men rushing into the hut. They grasped the Irishman by the arms, and attempted to drag him out, but Pat seized hold of the plank on the edge of which he sat, and refused to move at first.
“Come along, boy,” cried one, boisterously; “we’re goin’ to lynch a doctor, an’ we want you to swear to him.”
“Ay, an’ to swear at him too, if ye like; he’s a rig’lar cheat; bin killin’ us off by the dozen, as cool as ye like, and pretendin’ to be an M.D. all the time.”
“There’s more than wan,” cried another man, seizing Pat again by the arm; “won’t ye come, man?”
“Och! av coorse I will; av it’s to do any good to the public, I’m yer man. Hooray! for the people, an’ down wi’ the aristock-racy.”