“Your sarvant, ma'am!”
“Who are yiz at all, gintleman, that comes to my place at this time o' night, and what's your business?”
“We want the loan o' that young woman there, ma'am,” said the ruffian.
Andy and his mother both uttered small squalls.
“And as for who we are, ma'am, we're the blessed society of Saint Joseph, ma'am—our coat of arms is two heads upon one pillow, and our motty, 'Who's afraid?—Hurroo!'” shouted the savage, and he twirled his stick and cut another caper. Then coming up to Andy, he addressed him as “young woman,” and said there was a fine strapping fellow whose heart was breaking till he “rowled her in his arms.”
Andy and the mother both acted their parts very well. He rushed to the arms of the old woman for protection, and screeched small, while the widow shouted “millia murther!” at the top of her voice, and did not give up her hold of the make-believe young woman until her cap was torn half off, and her hair streamed about her face. She called on all the saints in the calendar, as she knelt in the middle of the floor and rocked to and fro, with her clasped hands raised to heaven, calling down curses on the “villains and robbers” that were tearing her child from her, while they threatened to stop her breath altogether if she did not make less noise, and in the midst of the uproar dragged off Andy, whose struggles and despair might have excited the suspicion of soberer men. They lifted him up on a stout horse, in front of the most powerful man of the party, who gripped Andy hard round the middle and pushed his horse to a hand gallop, followed by the rest of the party. The proximity of Andy to his cavaliero made the latter sensible to the bad odour of the pig's bed, which formed Andy's luxurious bust and bustle; but he attributed the unsavoury scent to a bad breath on the lady's part, and would sometimes address his charge thus:—
“Young woman, if you plaze, would you turn your face th' other way;” then in a side soliloquy, “By Jaker, I wondher at Jack's taste—she's a fine lump of a girl, but her breath is murther intirely—phew—young woman, turn away your face, or by this and that I'll fall off the horse. I've heerd of a bad breath that might knock a man down, but I never met it till now. Oh, murther! it's worse it's growin'—I suppose 't is the bumpin' she's gettin' that shakes the breath out of her sthrong—oh, there it is again—phew!”
It was as well, perhaps, for the prosecution of the deceit, that the distaste the fellow conceived for his charge prevented any closer approaches to Andy's visage, which might have dispelled the illusion under which he still pushed forward to the hills and bumped poor Andy towards the termination of his ride. Keeping a sharp look-out as he went along, Andy soon was able to perceive they were making for that wild part of the hills where he had discovered the private still on the night of his temporary fright and imaginary rencontre with the giants, and the conversation he partly overheard all recurred to him, and he saw at once that Oonah was the person alluded to, whose name he could not catch, a circumstance that cost him many a conjecture in the interim. This gave him a clue to the persons into whose power he was about to fall, after having so far defeated their scheme, and he saw he should have to deal with very desperate and lawless parties. Remembering, moreover, the herculean frame of the inamorato, he calculated on an awful thrashing as the smallest penalty he should have to pay for deceiving him, but was, nevertheless, determined to go through the adventure with a good heart, to make deceit serve his turn as long as he might, and at the last, if necessary, to make the best fight he could.
As it happened, luck favoured Andy in his adventure, for the hero of the blunderbuss (and he, it will be remembered, was the love-sick gentleman) drank profusely on the night in question, quaffing deep potations to the health of his Oonah, wishing luck to his friends and speed to their horses, and every now and then ascending the ladder from the cave, and looking out for the approach of the party. On one of these occasions, from the unsteadiness of the ladder, or himself, or perhaps both, his foot slipped, and he came to the ground with a heavy fall, in which his head received so severe a blow that he became insensible, and it was some time before his sister, who was an inhabitant of this den, could restore him to consciousness. This she did, however, and the savage recovered all the senses the whisky had left him; but still the stunning effect of the fall cooled his courage considerably, and, as it were, “bothered” him so, that he felt much less of the “gallant gay Lothario” than he had done before the accident.
The tramp of horses was heard overhead ere long, and Shan More, or Big John, as the Hercules was called, told Bridget to go up to “the darlin',” and help her down.