Who wear the jackets green!”
—all lolling and carousing around a slopping wet table—all save Murtagh Skeel, who, seated near the empty fireplace with his white face buried between his fingers, never stirred from his attitude of stony immobility.
“There’s Soane!” whispered Barres, “that man who just got up!”
It was Soane, his cap cocked aslant on his curly head, his green jacket unbuttoned, a tumbler aloft in his unsteady clutch.
“Whurroo!” he yelled. “Gu ma slan a chi mi!—fear a’ Bhata!” And he laid a reckless hand on Skeel’s cloaked shoulder. But the latter never stirred; and Soane, winking at the company, flourished his tumbler aloft and broke into “The Risin’ o’ the Moon”:
“Oh, then tell me, Shawn O’Ferrall,
Phwere the gatherin’ is to be!
In th’ ould shpot be the river;—
Sure it’s known to you an’ me!”