“Honour!” cried Dick, as he vanished round the corner.
“That devil will keep his word,” muttered Murphy, as he closed the window—“I may bid good bye to that pair of boots—bad luck to him!” And yet the merry attorney could not help laughing at Dick making him a sufferer by his own trick.
Dick did keep his word; and after, with particular delight, sinking Murphy's boots with the rest, he, as it was preconcerted, returned to the cottage of Barny, and with his assistance drew the upset gig from the ditch, and with a second set of harness, provided for the occasion, yoked the servant's horse to the vehicle and drove home.
Murphy, meanwhile, was bent on more mischief at the inn; and lest the loss of the boots and shoes might not be productive of sufficient impediment to the movements of the enemy, he determined on venturing a step further. The heavy sleeping of the weary and tipsy travellers enabled him to enter their chambers unobserved, and over the garments they had taken off he poured the contents of the water-jug and water-bottle he found in each room, and then laying the empty bottle and a tumbler on a chair beside each sleeper's bed, he made it appear as if the drunken men had been dry in the night, and, in their endeavours to cool their thirst, had upset the water over their own clothes. The clothes of the little man, in particular, Murphy took especial delight in sousing more profusely than his neighbour's, and not content with taking his shoes, burnt his stockings, and left the ashes in the dish of the candlestick, with just as much unconsumed as would show what they had been. He then retired to the parlour, and with many an internal chuckle at the thought of the morning's hubbub, threw off his clothes and flinging himself on the shake-down Mrs. Kelly had provided for him, was soon wrapt in the profoundest slumber, from which he never awoke until the morning uproar of the inn aroused him. He jumped from his lair and rushed to the scene of action, to soar in the storm of his own raising; and to make it more apparent that he had been as great a sufferer as the rest, he only threw a quilt over his shoulders and did not draw on his stockings. In this plight he scaled the stairs and joined the storming party, where the little man was leading the forlorn hope, with his candlestick in one hand and the remnant of his burnt stocking between the finger and thumb of the other.
“Look at that, sir!” he cried, as he held it up to the landlord.
The landlord could only stare.
“Bless me!” cried Murphy, “how drunk you must have been to mistake your stocking for an extinguisher!”
“Drunk, sir—I wasn't drunk!”
“It looks very like it,” said Murphy, who did not wait for an answer, but bustled off to another party who was wringing out his inexpressibles at the door of his bed-room, and swearing at the gossoon that he must have his boots.
“I never seen them, sir,” said the boy.