It so happened that the two roads from Merryvale and Neck-or-Nothing Hall met at an acute angle, at the same end of the town, and it chanced that the rival candidates and their retinues arrived at this point about the same time.
"There they are!" said Murphy, who presided in the cart full of fiddlers like a leader in an orchestra, with a shillelah for his baton, which he flourished over his head as he shouted, "Now give it to them, your sowls!—rasp and lilt away, boys!—slate the gridirons, Mike!—smaddher the tay-tray, Tom!"
The uproar of strange sounds that followed, shouting included, may be easier imagined than described; and O'Grady, answering the war-cry, sung out to his band—"What are you at, you lazy rascals?—don't you hear them blackguards beginning?—fire away, and be hanged to you!" His rascals shouted, bang went the drum, and clang went the cymbals, the clarionet squeaked, and the fife tootled, but the trumpet—ah!—the trumpet—their great reliance—where was the trumpet? O'Grady inquired in the precise words, with a diabolical addition of his own. "Where the d—— is the trumpet?" said he; he looked over the side of the carriage as he spoke, and saw the trumpeter spitting out a mouthful of beer which had run from the instrument as he lifted it to his mouth.
"Bad luck to you, what are you wasting your time there for?" thundered O'Grady in a rage; "why didn't you spit out when you were young, and you'd be a clean old man? Blow and be d—— to you!"
The trumpeter filled his lungs for a great blast, and put the trumpet to his lips—but in vain; Andy had bottled his music for him. O'Grady, seeing the inflated cheeks and protruding eyes of the musician, whose visage was crimson with exertion, and yet no sound produced, thought the fellow was practising one of his jokes upon him, and became excessively indignant; he thundered anathemas at him, but his voice was drowned in the din of the drum and cymbals, which were plied so vigorously, that the clarionet and fife shared the same fate as O'Grady's voice. The trumpeter could judge of O'Grady's rage from the fierceness of his actions only, and answered him in pantomimic expression, holding up his trumpet and pointing into the bell, with a grin of vexation on his phiz, meant to express something was wrong; but this was all mistaken by the fierce O'Grady, who only saw in the trumpeter's grins the insolent intention of jibing him.
"Blow, you blackguard, blow!" shouted the Squire. Bang went the drum.
"Blow—or I'll break your neck!" Crash went the cymbals.
"Stop your banging there, you ruffians, and let me be heard!" roared the excited man; but as he was standing up on the seat of the carriage, and flung his arms about wildly as he spoke, the drummer thought his action was meant to stimulate him to further exertion, and he banged away louder than before.
"By the hokey, I'll murder some o' ye!" shouted the Squire, who, ordering the carriage to pull up, flung open the door and jumped out, made a rush at the drummer, seized his principal drumstick, and giving him a bang over the head with it, cursed him for a rascal for not stopping when he told him; this silenced all the instruments together, and O'Grady, seizing the trumpeter by the back of the neck, shook him violently, while he denounced with fierce imprecations his insolence in daring to practise a joke on him. The trumpeter protested his innocence, and O'Grady called him a lying rascal, finishing his abuse by clenching his fist in a menacing attitude, and telling him to play.
"I can't, yer honour!"