“The divil welcome the last visitor. Wheniver I see a bunch of ribbons in a sodger’s cap, I always get a start, and think that it’s one of the lads we listed with, that’s comin’ to look after his own.”
“Feaks! an’ I’m not overly asy in their company ather,” says Dick back to me—and him and I continues talkin’ and laughin’ at how stupid the corplar looked in the mornin’, when he found an open windy and an empty bed.
“And so,” says a voice at our elbow, “ye gave his majesty leg-bail, boys!”
We gave a start, and looked round, and who was standin’ close to us but a-little dark-visaged gentleman, with a twist in the eyes that didn’t improve him much—and by the whole look of him, the very last man you would meet in a day’s walk, that ye would borrow money to spend in company with.
You maybe sure that Dick and I were scared enough. “Egad,” thought I, “we are ketched at last, and this dark divil will split upon us—and then the first march will be to the black-hole for desarchin’; and the second, to the gallows, for the murder of a tailor’s wife, only that we didn’t kill her. Well, I struv to put it off as a joke, but the wee black fellow was too deep for it and he spoke the best of Irish too.
“Badershin!” says he, with a wink of one of his quare eyes, “Tig-gum tigue Tiggeeine! * It won’t do, boys, I’m not in the recruitin’ line, so ye needn’t be afeerd of me. But, as ye have been on the tramp, in the coorse of yer rambles did ye happen to hear anything about Sir Richard Macnamara?”
Be the powers of pewter! the question made its start.
* These terms being rendered into common English, mean—
“Be quiet—you can’t humbug me.”
“No, Sir,” says I; “but if you had inquired after ould Sir Thomas, I could have given ye a better answer.”
“What Sir Thomas?” says he.