“But wait till I tell you how it was, sure;” and then Andy began an account of the condition in which the voters lay at the inn but between the impatience of those who heard, and the confused manner of Andy's recital, it was some time before matters were explained; and then Andy was desired to ride back to the inn again, to tell the electors shoes should be forwarded after him in a post-chaise, and requesting their utmost exertions in hastening over to the town, for that the election was going against them. Andy returned to the inn; and this time, under orders from head quarters, galloped in good earnest, and brought in his horse smoking hot, and indicating lameness. The day was wearing apace, and it was so late when the electors were enabled to start that the polling-booths were closed before they could leave the town; and in many of these booths the requisite number of electors had not been polled that day to keep them open; so that the next day nearly all those outlying electors, about whom there had been so much trouble and expense, would be of no avail. Thus, Murphy's trick was quite successful, and the poor pickled electors were driven back to their inn in dudgeon.
Andy, when he went to the stable to saddle his steed, for a return to Neck-or-Nothing Hall, found him dead lame, so that to ride him better than twelve miles home was impossible. Andy was obliged to leave him where he was, and trudge it to the hall; for all the horses in Kelly's stables were knocked up with their day's work.
As it was shorter by four miles across the country than by the road, Andy pursued the former course; and as he knew the country well, the shades of evening, which were now closing round, did not deter him in the least. Andy was not very fresh for the journey to be sure, for he had ridden upwards of thirty miles that day, so the merry whistle, which is so constantly heard from the lively Irish pedestrian, did not while away the tedium of his walk. It was night when Andy was breasting up a low ridge of hills, which lay between him and the end of his journey; and when in silence and darkness he topped the ascent, he threw himself on some heather to rest and take breath. His attention was suddenly caught by a small blue flame, which flickered now and then on the face of the hill, not very far from him; and Andy's fears of fairies and goblins came crowding upon him thick and fast. He wished to rise, but could not; his eye continued to be strained with the fascination of fear in the direction he saw the fire, and sought to pierce the gloom through which, at intervals, the small point of flame flashed brightly and sunk again, making the darkness seem deeper. Andy lay in perfect stillness, and in the silence, which was unbroken even by his own breathing, he thought he heard voices underground. He trembled from head to foot, for he was certain they were the voices of the fairies, whom he firmly believed to inhabit the hills.
“Oh! murdher, what'll I do?” thought Andy to himself: “sure I heerd often, if once you were within the sound of their voices, you could never get out o' their power. Oh! if I could only say a pather and ave, but I forget my prayers with the fright. Hail, Mary! The king o' the fairies lives in these hills, I know—and his house is undher me this minit, and I on the roof of it—I'll never get down again—I'll never get down again—they'll make me slater to the fairies; and sure enough I remember me, the hill is all covered with flat stones they call fairy slates. Oh! I am ruined—God be praised!” Here he blessed himself, and laid his head close to the earth. “Guardian angels—I hear their voices singin' a dhrinking song—Oh! if I had a dhrop o' water myself, for my mouth is as dhry as a lime-burner's wig—and I on the top o' their house—see—there's the little blaze again—I wondher is their chimbley afire—Oh! murther, I'll die o' thirst—Oh! if I had only one dhrop o' wather—I wish it would rain or hail—Hail, Mary, full o' grace—whisht! what's that?” Andy crouched lower than before, as he saw a figure rise from the earth, and attain a height which Andy computed to be something about twenty feet; his heart shrank to the size of a nut-shell, as he beheld the monster expand to his full dimensions; and at the same moment, a second, equally large, emerged from the ground.
Now, as fairies are notoriously little people, Andy changed his opinion of the parties into whose power he had fallen, and saw clearly they were giants, not fairies, of whom he was about to become the victim. He would have ejaculated a prayer for mercy, had not terror rendered him speechless, as the remembrance of all the giants he had ever heard of, from the days of Jack and the Bean-stalk down, came into his head; but though his sense of speaking was gone, that of hearing was painfully acute, and he heard one of the giants say—
“That pot is not big enough.”
“Oh! it howlds as much as we want,” replied the other.
“O Lord,” thought Andy; “they've got their pot ready for cooking.”
“What keeps him?” said the first giant.
“Oh! he's not far off,” said the second.