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THE MUSHROOM.
About six o'clock, or, may be, a quarter less, on a wet summer's evening, all of a sudden the sun peeped out from behind a cloud,—as Corney Carolan said,—looking half ashamed to shew his face, after his bad behaviour all day,—and just cast a glance across the bog, to see who was that so merry and musical in Luke Fogarty's car, bating the garron that dragged it along, with his wooden leg in lieu of a whip. Who was it, then, but the piper of Drogheda, Coraey Carolan himself, coming from a wedding, away somewhere in the hills, where he'd been drinking whiskey galore, and playing his pipes, night and morning, for the biggest half of a week! Luke Fogarty had sent his son Rory with the car that morning, to bring home the piper, dead or alive; for it was whispered by many, that great things would be doing in a day or two at our place here; who by, or why for, nobody well knew; but there was to be drinking and dancing:—and what would drinking or dancing be without himself?—I mane Corney the piper.
The sun drew in his horns again,—if you'd believe Carolan,—as soon as he saw it was his ould friend the piper; but he shone quite long enough for Corney to discover that the big mile-stone, put up at the edge of the bog, by mad Henniker, years ago, to judge by the shadow it cast across the road, wasn't anything like its ordinary shape. Corney couldn't make out at all what it meant, or why it was; but, as the car got nearer the mile-stone, the piper perceived that it carried an umbrella.
“Well, to be sure, it's rainy enough, so it is,” says Corney; “but mile-stones, I thought, was made to stand wind and weather. Is that any one's umbrella there on Henniker's mile-stone?—Be-kase if it's nobody's, why, then, I'll get it.”
The umbrella began to move, and presently Corney discovered that a gentleman and his dog was beneath it. There they sat, shivering, dirty, and making themselves as little as possible, on the top of the stone; and barely able, the one to keep his tail, and the other the skirts of his coat, and the lower part of his legs, out of the water; which, after it rained unusually hard,—as it did that day,—got together in a pool round the stone, and sometimes rose over it entirely.
“Come out o' that,” said Corney to the gentleman; “come away at once, sir; and don't be sitting that way on Henniker's folly all night! May be you're Henniker himself, though,—and then, no wonder.”
The gentleman replied, as well as his shivering would let him, that Corney was mistaken.