“It is,” he replied; “I have got the faver. I had to lave school; none o' them would take me home, an' I doubt I must die in a Christian counthry under the open canopy of heaven. Oh, for God's sake, don't lave me! Bring me to some hospital, or into the next town, where people may know that I'm sick, an' maybe some kind Christian will relieve me.”
The moment he mentioned “faver,” the men involuntarily drew back, after having laid him reclining against the green ditch.
“Thin, thundher an' turf, what's to be done?” exclaimed one of them, thrusting his spread fingers into his hair. “Is the poor boy to die widout help among Christyeens like us?”
“But hasn't he the sickness?” exclaimed another: “an' in that case, Pether, what's to be done?”
“Why, you gommoch, isn't that what I'm wantin' to know? You wor ever and always an ass, Paddy, except before you wor born, an' thin you wor like Major M'Curragh, worse nor nothin'. Why the sarra do you be spakin' about the sickness, the Lord protect us, whin you know I'm so timersome of it?”
“But considher,” said another, edging off from Jemmy, however, “that he's a poor scholar, an' that there's a great blessin' to thim that assists the likes of him.”
“Ay, is there that, sure enough, Dan; but you see—blur-an-age, what's to be done? He can't die this way, wid nobody wid him but himself.”
“Let us help him!” exclaimed another, “for God's sake, an' we won't be apt to take it thin.”
“Ay, but how can we help him, Frank? Oh, bedad, it 'ud be a murdherin' shame, all out, to let the crathur die by himself, widout company, so it would.”
“No one wul take him in, for fraid o' the sickness. Why, I'll tell you what we'll do:—Let us shkame the remainder o' this day off o' the Major, an' build a shed for him on the road-side here, jist against the ditch. It's as dhry as powdher. Thin we can go through the neighbors, an' git thim to sit near him time about, an' to bring him little dhreeniens o' nourishment.”