"Matter, is it?" he repeated, scornfully; "I tells ye that if a hair of these two gintlemen's is hurted, I'll lick the whole of ye, blackguards that ye is."
A roar of laughter followed this speech, which excited the Irishman's indignation to its fullest extent.
"Ye laugh, do ye? It's little ye would laugh if ye saw these two gintlemen dressing the cuts and sores of poor miners who had divil a ha'penny to pay the doctor with. It's little ye would laugh if ye had seed this gintleman standing up and having a crack at old Pete Burley, the bully of Ballarat; and by me faith, he brought him down in less time than ye can descend a shaft with the crank broken."
The allusion to the expeditious manner in which miners sometimes went down a shaft, much against their will, and at a great loss to their personal dignity, was received with rounds of laughter.
"You know those men, then?" cried a fellow who had been remarkably officious during the disturbance.
"Men, are they?" cried our indignant champion, and he raised one of his huge fists and dropped it with full force upon the head of the speaker, and down he went, as though shot.
"Call them gintlemen, hereafter, or by the powers, I strike ye, the next time I hit ye."
There was another good-natured laugh at the expense of the fallen man, and at the Irishman's wit.
"Are these the two Americans who have recently arrived, and who were concerned in that duel with Burley?"
"Of coorse they is; and haven't they been giving a number of us poor divils medicine and good advice? O, by the powers, let me say the man that wants to hurt 'em, that's all!"