“Why, what would ail his honour?” said Mick; “sure it is no later than yesterday morning that I was talking to him, and he stout and hearty; and says he to me, Mick, says he—”
“Stout and hearty was he?” answered Madden; “and was he not out with me in the kennel last night, when I was feeding the dogs; and didn’t he come out to the stable, and give a ball to Peg Pullaway with his own hand, and tell me he’d ride the old General to-day; and sure,” said Dan, wiping his eyes with the sleeve of his coat, “who’d have thought that the first thing I’d see this morning was the mistress standing at my bed-side, and bidding me get up and ride off like fire for Doctor Galway; for the master had got a fit, and”—poor Dan’s grief choked his voice—“oh, Mick! if you have a heart in you, run over yourself, or send the gossoon for Kate Finnigan, the midwife; she’s a cruel skilful woman, and may be she might save the master, till I get the doctor.”
Dan struck his spurs into the hunter, and Michael Noonan flung off his newly-mended brogues, and cut across the fields to Kate Finnigan’s; but neither the doctor nor Katty was of any avail, and the next night’s moon saw Ballygibblin—and more’s the pity—a house of mourning.
THE DEATH COACH.
XXVIII.
’Tis midnight!—how gloomy and dark!
By Jupiter there’s not a star!—
’Tis fearful!—’tis awful!—and hark!
What sound is that comes from afar?
Still rolling and rumbling, that sound
Makes nearer and nearer approach;
Do I tremble, or is it the ground?—
Lord save us!—what is it?—a coach!—
A coach!—but that coach has no head;
And the horses are headless as it:
Of the driver the same may be said,
And the passengers inside who sit.
See the wheels! how they fly o’er the stones!
And whirl, as the whip it goes crack:
Their spokes are of dead men’s thigh bones,
And the pole is the spine of the back!