Now I'm coming near the end of my story—no bad news that, you'll say:—Pat was tortured for a long time by Larry, “like a toad under the harrow,” as the story goes, till he could scarcely scrape enough together to get on with from week's end to week's end. At last and in the long run, what does Larry do,—like others like him, who, trying to make the most of their villany, ruin all outright,—what does he do, but insist upon Pat's paying him half the allowance he got from my lady, to hould his peace?—Doolan knocked him down with a goose he had in his hand at the time; jumped on his garron; and if you want to know the rate he came home at, ask the people by the road-side. Grogy, his little garron, wondered whether Ireland was sinking, or what was the matter,—and no blame to him.
When Doolan got home, he tould the wife how he had ruined himself by knocking down Larry. “You've done well,” says she, “and it was high time you did.”—Didn't you ever remark, that when a man gets at his wits' end, and don't know which way to turn, how well a woman will carry him through? I'm sure you have; and seen the courage of the poor creatures too, when men are cowed, and can't look the danger that threatens them full in the face. “You shall be under the thumb no longer, Pat,” says she:—“you've done that by me I don't like, but it's forgiven, if not forgot; and let the worst come to the worst, we'll be as well as we are:—so, come with me at once.”
“Where'll I go?” says Doolan, staring at her, and drawing back, for he half suspected what she intinded. But Sally was resolute; she took the child in her hand, and half persuaded, half dragged Pat away, up to my lady at The Beg. Doolan went down on his knees, while his wife tould her ladyship the whole story; and when it was done, Pat got such a lecture as he never had before; no—not even from his wife after Larry's first visit.
“Look at the fruits,” said my lady; “look at the consequences, Patrick Doolan, of your misdoings:—didn't you know that sin is always followed by sorrow?—that deceit can never long plaster up iniquity? You have richly merited your sufferings, Pat. I shall, of course, stop the allowance, and take away the child from you. When I find you are so far deserving, you shall have my protection, and the little girl again; till then, I withdraw both.”
Terribly downcast was Pat, to be sure, as you may guess but he was no longer under the thumb. Besides, he'd a hope left, of getting into grace again by good conduct so to work he went like a Trojan. Larry came down as hard as he could after Pat, determined to ruin him or make him knock under again: but when he got to the village, Pat was back from The Beg, and had tould all his neighbours what he'd been doing; so that they hadn't much the laugh of him; and as Pat wasn't disliked, the boys and girls made such a mudlark of Larry, nobody could tell the colour of his coat.
Pat began to prosper, and, by-and-by, got on well enough: in a year or two after, the little girl walked into his cabin one day, with a goulden guinea in her hand, and has lived under Pat's roof ever since. Among us, she is, as I tould you, much admired for her beauty,—to say nothing of her being an heiress.
People generally trate a fable as the boys do a dog sometimes,—tie a moral tay-kittle to its tail; and so would I, if my story was a fable: but it's neither a story nor a fable, but the downright truth, and if I made a moral to it, you'd suspect 'twas a fable; as the boys suspect the dog, if they meet him with a kittle in his train, to be a suspicious and a stray dog,—don't you see?—and so despise and pelt him. However, for all that, there can't be much harm in just mentioning that a man will do well to take warning by Paddy Doolan, and do nothing in the wide world that may bring him under the thumb.
