‘Before me! faith that ye did; and ye deserve to be hanged for it too, ye thieving loon. Why did you run awa’ that gait?’
‘Och, sir!’ groaned the other, ‘can you be telling me where the baiste is?’
‘Beast! what beast, idiot? I ken only one on the moor besides yon brute now feeding up there. I shouldn’t wonder if he took it into his head to run off with the rest of my property.’
‘No, no, sir; the nathair! the nathair! we’ll shust be going back to be look for her.’
‘Gude’s me, but I begin to think after a’ that the puir chiel’s demented,’ observed the other with a look of pity.
At length, with an appearance of great anxiety, the lad, accompanied by the exciseman, returned to the spot from which they started, where writhing in the agonies of death, from the blow the former had instinctively, but almost unconsciously, given it, lay the snake or nathair. It was only now that the gauger began to comprehend what had happened to his guide. When Eachainn saw the snake on the spot where he had left it, now quite dead, his joy became as great as previously had been his dejection.
‘Ah, sir!’ he said, turning to the other, ‘it’s all right, and I’m shust quite safe.’
‘Pray how is that?’ returned the stranger, ‘I should like to know by what process of reasoning ye make that out?’
‘I’ll shust be telling you, sir. You see if a body will be stung by a nathair, and if they’ll be clever to the water, and drink of it before the nathair (and she’ll be very clever at running herself, too), the mans will be quite better, and the nathair will die and burst; but if the nathair will be get to the water first, then the mans will die and burst.’
‘And do you believe all this nonsense?’