“Oh ullagone, ullagone! this is a wide world, but what will we do in it, or where will we go?” muttered Bill Doody, as he sat on a rock by the Lake of Killarney. “What will we do? to-morrow’s rent-day, and Tim the Driver swears if we don’t pay up our rent, he’ll cant every ha’perth we have; and then, sure enough, there’s Judy and myself, and the poor little grawls,[33] will be turned out to starve on the high road, for the never a halfpenny of rent have I!—Oh hone, that ever I should live to see this day!”
Thus did Bill Doody bemoan his hard fate, pouring his sorrows to the reckless waves of the most beautiful of lakes, which seemed to mock his misery as they rejoiced beneath the cloudless sky of a May morning. That lake, glittering in sunshine, sprinkled with fairy isles of rock and verdure, and bounded by giant hills of ever-varying hues, might, with its magic beauty, charm all sadness but despair; for alas,
“How ill the scene that offers rest,
And heart that cannot rest, agree!”
Yet Bill Doody was not so desolate as he supposed; there was one listening to him he little thought of, and help was at hand from a quarter he could not have expected.
“What’s the matter with you, my poor man?” said a tall portly-looking gentleman, at the same time stepping out of a furze-brake. Now Bill was seated on a rock that commanded the view of a large field. Nothing in the field could be concealed from him, except this furze-brake, which grew in a hollow near the margin of the lake. He was, therefore, not a little surprised at the gentleman’s sudden appearance, and began to question whether the personage before him belonged to this world or not. He, however, soon mustered courage sufficient to tell him how his crops had failed, how some bad member had charmed away his butter, and how Tim the Driver threatened to turn him out of the farm if he didn’t pay up every penny of the rent by twelve o’clock next day.
“A sad story indeed,” said the stranger; “but surely, if you represented the case to your landlord’s agent, he won’t have the heart to turn you out.”
“Heart, your honour! where would an agent get a heart!” exclaimed Bill. “I see your honour does not know him: besides, he has an eye on the farm this long time for a fosterer of his own; so I expect no mercy at all at all, only to be turned out.”
“Take this, my poor fellow, take this,” said the stranger, pouring a purse-full of gold into Bill’s old hat, which in his grief he had flung on the ground. “Pay the fellow your rent, but I’ll take care it shall do him no good. I remember the time when things went otherwise in this country, when I would have hung up such a fellow in the twinkling of an eye!”
These words were lost upon Bill, who was insensible to every thing but the sight of the gold, and before he could unfix his gaze, and lift up his head to pour out his hundred thousand blessings, the stranger was gone. The bewildered peasant looked around in search of his benefactor, and at last he thought he saw him riding on a white horse a long way off on the lake.
“O’Donoghue, O’Donoghue!” shouted Bill; “the good, the blessed O’Donoghue!” and he ran capering like a madman to show Judy the gold, and to rejoice her heart with the prospect of wealth and happiness.