He began mutterin’ something about a mistake, and talked about blue bonnets and yalla ones.
“What are we to do?” says I, interruptin’ him. “Arrah, have done wid yer balderdash an’ yer bonnets;—havn’t ye made a pretty gommoque * of yerself? Where are we to head to? and how are we to chate the gallows? Blessed Bridget!—to be hanged in the flower of my youth, for runnin’ away with the mother of a family!”
* Anglice—an idiot.
Before I had done spakin’, we hears a carriage cornin’ up at splittin’ speed. We ducked into the ditch to let it pass—and at one look I knew it to be the very chay we had brought with us on our unfortunit expedition. The horses had run off; and as they passed us at a gallop, we heard the tailor’s wife shoutin’ a thousand murders.
“Arrah! what’s to be done at all at all,” says I, as the carriage cantered on. “I haven’t the ghost of a rap about me. What money have you, Dick?”
“Five or six shillins,” says he, “to pay the turnpikes, and a light guinea for the marriage money.”
“Ah, then, ye won’t require it, Dick, avourneeine,” says I. “Any little job in future ye want from the clargy, they’ll trate ye to it for nothin’. It’s a comfort when a man comes to the gallows, that he’s provided with a priest.”
But what need I bother ye with all the misfortune that kem over us? Half the time we lay out in barns, or under hay-stacks; for if we ventured into the parlour of a publie-house, the divil a thing ye would hear talked of but the attempt upon the tailor’s wife—with a reward of fifty pound for the intended murderers, and a description of their persons.
At last we were fairly worn out with hunger and fatigue, without a shoe to our feet, or a scurrick in our pockets, and nothing was left for us but to list. Accordingly, we joined the first party that we met, and the sergeant gave us plinty of entertainment, and two pound a man. We were to be attested the next mornin’; but as he didn’t like our looks, he put us in the room where the corplar slept, and took care to lock the door carefully behind him. I guessed as much, and, feaks, I determined the divil another yard we would keep company, if I could help it; and maybe I didn’t succeed? When we were locked in, I produces a bottle of rum, and the corplar—who was a drunken divil—and I finished it by moonlight, hand to fist. I lifts him into bed blind drunk; and when the house was quiet, I wakens Dick Mac-namara, and we opened the windy fair and asy, and lowered ourselves by the blankets to the ground. We travelled night an’ day—exchanged our clothes for stable-jackets—and at last, we had the luck to be taken into the yard of an inn, and there get employment as helpers—and when at Killcrogher they thought we were travellin’ homeward in our own coach, it’s most likely we were grazing the wheels of his chay for some travellin’ bagman.
Well, Dick was wispin’ a horse—and the only two things in this world he could do dacently was to warm one after a fox, and wisp him dry afterwards—when in comes one of a recruitin’ party to ask some question about his officer. When he went away I says to Dick in Irish:—