“‘Don’t scorch me, Ned Sheehy, you vagabond,’ says the man on the spit.
“‘And my lord, sir, and ar’n’t you dead, sir,’ says I, ‘and your honour taken out of the coffin and all?’
“‘I ar’n’t,’ says he.
“‘But surely you are, sir,’ says I, ‘for ’tis to no use now for me denying that I saw your honour, and I up in the tree.’
“‘I ar’n’t,’ says he again, speaking quite short and snappish.
“So I said no more, until presently he called out to me to turn him easy, or that may be ’twould be the worse turn for myself.
“‘Will that do, sir?’ says I, turning him as easy as I could.
“‘That’s too easy,’ says he: so I turned him faster.
“‘That’s too fast,’ says he; so finding that, turn him which way I would, I could not please him, I got into a bit of a fret at last, and desired him to turn himself, for a grumbling spalpeen as he was, if he liked it better.
“Away I ran, and away he came hopping, spit and all, after me, and he but half-roasted. ‘Murder!’ says I, shouting out; ‘I’m done for at long last—now or never!’—when all of a sudden, and ’twas really wonderful, not knowing where I was rightly, I found myself at the door of the very little cabin by the road-side that I had bolted out of from Jack Myers; and there was Modderaroo standing hard by.