It was the summer after the great election—and that was in the year ninety-one—and a fine evening it was. At that time, care was far from my Heart, and I was taking a dance in the barn with Mary Regan, my lady’s maid, when out comes Sir Thomas’s own man to say that I was wanted in the parlour. “Run, bad luck to ye,” says he, “and I’ll finish the jig for ye! Arrah, make haste, man! Some etarnal villin has slipt a paper under the gate, and the ould master’s fit to be tied. I never saw him so mad since he was chased home from Galway.” Away I goes; and when I got into the parlour, there I found Sir Thomas, God rest his soul! Father Pat Butler, the parish priest—and the driver, Izzy Blake.
Sir Thomas was sittin’ in the big armed chair he always sate in. He wasn’t to say much the worse for liker; but it was asy to persave that he had been lookin’ at somebody that was drinkin’. The priest, och! what a head he had! was cool as a cowcumber, and only Izzy’s nose was a deeper purple than when he sate down, you wouldn’t know he had a drop in. It was quite plain the party were in trouble; for, to smother grief, the ould master had slipped a second glass of poteeine into his tumbler just as I came in.
“Asy, Sir Thomas!—Drink asy!” said the priest. “The whisky’s killin’ ye by inches!”
“Arrah, balderdash! Pat Butler, won’t ye let me take the colour of death off the water, man, and me threatened with the gout? It’s the law that’s fairly murderin’ me. Bad luck attend all consarned with the same! At the blast of the mail horn my heart bates like a bird; for within the last two years I have got as many lattitats by post, as would paper the drawin’-room. Shemus Rhua,” says he, turning to me,—“did ye see a black-lookin’ thief about the place, when ye were hunting the young setters on the moor?”
“Arrah, Sir Thomas, if I did, don’t ye think I would have been after askin’ him what he was doin’ there?”
“Sibby Byrn saw him thrust these d____d papers under the gate, and then cut over the bog as if the divil was at his heels. Well—small blame to him for runnin’—for, by all that’s beautiful, if I had gripped him, he would have gone back to the villain that employs him, lighter by both lugs. Sit down, Shemus. Izzy Blake, fill the boy a glass.” And then he began, poor ould gentleman, askin’ me about the dogs; but before I could answer him, he gave a sigh. “Arrah,” says he, “what need I be talkin’ about dogs, when, after November next, the divil a four-footed baste will be left upon Killcrogher, good nor bad!”
“Something must be done immediately,” said the priest. “If they foreclose the mortgage, and get a recaver on the estate, we’re done for.”
“If we could only raise five thousand to pay that cursed claim, we might stave off the other things till some good luck would turn up,” said the driver.
Sir Thomas sighed. Troth, an enemy would have pitied him!
“Arrah, Izzy Blake—that day will never come! Don’t talk of good luck, that’s over with me,” says he. “O Lord! to be baten by Peter Daly—and his grandmother before him, keepin’ a huxtery in Loughrea—and then to be hunted home afterwards, like a tithe-proctor! It’s enough to drive a man to drink, or make a quaker kick his own mother.”