XI
OWENEEN THE SPRAT
I was labouring under the slough of Christmas letters and bills, whenmy wife came in and asked me if I would take her to the Workhouse.
MY WIFE CAME AND ASKED ME IF I WOULD TAKE HER TO THEWORKHOUSE]
"My dear," I replied, ponderously, but, I think, excusably, "you have,as usual, anticipated my intention, but I think we can hold out untilafter Christmas."
Philippa declined to pay the jest the respect to which its age entitledit, and replied inconsequently that I knew perfectly well that shecould not drive the outside car with the children and the Christmastree. I assented that they would make an awkward team, and offered, asa substitute for my services, those of Denis, the stopgap.
Those who live in Ireland best know the staying powers of stopgaps.Denis, uncle of Michael Leary the Whip, had been imported into thekennels during my ministry, to bridge a hiatus in the long dynasty ofthe kennel-boys, and had remained for eighteen months, a notableinstance of the survival of what might primarily have been consideredthe unfittest. That Denis should so long have endured his nephew'srule was due not so much to the tie of blood, as to the privilegedirresponsibility of a stopgap. Nothing was expected of him, and hepursued an unmolested course, until the return of Flurry Knox fromSouth Africa changed the general conditions. He then remainedsubmerged until he drifted into the gap formed in my own establishmentby Mr. Peter Cadogan's elopement.
Philippa's workhouse-tea took place on Christmas Eve. We were stillhurrying through an early luncheon when the nodding crest of theChristmas tree passed the dining-room windows. My youngest sonimmediately upset his pudding into his lap; and Philippa hustled forthto put on her hat, an operation which, like the making of an omelette,can apparently only be successfully performed at the last moment. Withfeelings of mingled apprehension and relief I saw the party drive fromthe door, the Christmas tree seated on one side of the car, Philippa onthe other, clutching her offspring, Denis on the box, embosomed, like awood-pigeon, in the boughs of the spruce fir. I congratulated myselfthat the Quaker, now white with the snows of many winters, was in theshafts. Had I not been too deeply engaged in so arranging the rug thatit should not trail in the mud all the way to Skebawn, I might havenoticed that the lamps had been forgotten.
It was, as I have said, Christmas Eve, and as the afternoon wore on Ibegan to reflect upon what the road from Skebawn would be in anotherhour, full of drunken people, and, what was worse, of carts steered bydrunken people. I had assured Philippa (with what I believe shedescribes as masculine _esprit de corps_) of Denis's adequacy as adriver, but that did not alter the fact that in the last rays of thesetting sun, I got out my bicycle and set forth for the Workhouse.When I reached the town it was dark, but the Christmas shoppers showedno tendency to curtail their operations on that account, and thestreets were filled with an intricate and variously moving tide ofpeople and carts. The paraffin lamps in the shops did their best,behind bunches of holly, oranges, and monstrous Christmas candles, andpartially illumined the press of dark-cloaked women, and more or lessdrunken men, who swayed and shoved and held vast conversations on thenarrow pavements. The red glare of the chemist's globe transformed theleading female beggar of the town into a being from the Brocken; herusual Christmas family, contributed for the festival by the neighbours,as to a Christmas number, were grouped in fortunate ghastliness in thegreen light. She extracted from me her recognised tribute, and pursuedby her assurance that she would forgive me now till Easter (_i.e._ thatfurther alms would not be exacted for at least a fortnight), I made myway onward into the outer darkness, beyond the uttermost link in thechain of public-houses.
AN INTRICATE AND VARIOUSLY MOVING TIDE OF PEOPLE]
The road that led to the Workhouse led also to the railway station; aquarter of a mile away the green light of a signal-post stood high inthe darkness, like an emerald. As I neared the Workhouse I recognisedthe deliberate footfall of the Quaker, and presently his long pale faceentered the circle illuminated by my bicycle-lamp. My family were notat all moved by my solicitude for their safety, but, being in want ofan audience, were pleased to suggest that I should drive home withthem. The road was disgustingly muddy; I tied my bicycle to the backof the car with the rope that is found in wells of all outside cars.It was not till I had put out the bicycle lamp that I noticed that thecar-lamps had been forgotten, but Denis, true to the convention of histribe, asseverated that he could see better without lights. I took theplace vacated by the Christmas tree, the Quaker pounded on at his usualstone-breaking trot, and my offspring, in strenuous and entangled duet,declaimed to me the events of the afternoon.
It was without voice or warning that a row of men was materialised outof the darkness, under the Quaker's nose; they fell away to right andleft, but one, as if stupefied, held on his way in the middle of theroad. It is not easy to divert the Quaker from his course; we swung tothe right, but the wing of the car, on my side, struck the man full inthe chest. He fell as instantly and solidly as if he were a stonepillar, and, like a stone, he lay in the mud. Loud and inebriate howlsrose from the others, and, as if in answer, came a long and distantshriek from an incoming train. Upon this, without bestowing aninstant's further heed to their fallen comrade, the party took to theirheels and ran to the station. It was all done in a dozen seconds; bythe time the Quaker was pulled up we were alone with our victim, andDenis was hoarsely suggesting to me that it would be better to driveaway at once. I have often since then regretted that I did not takehis advice.
The victim was a very small man; Denis and I dragged him to the side ofthe road, and propped him up against the wall. He was of an alarminglimpness, but there was a something reassuring in the reek of whiskythat arose as I leaned over him, trying to diagnose his injuries by theaid of a succession of lighted matches. His head lay crookedly on hischest; he breathed heavily, but peacefully, and his limbs seemeduninjured. Denis at my elbow, did not cease to assure me, tremulously,that there was nothing ailed the man, that he was a stranger, and thatit would be as good for us to go home. Philippa, on the car, strove asbest she might with the unappeasable curiosity of her sons and with thepigheaded anxiety of the Quaker to get home to his dinner. At thisjuncture a voice, fifty yards away in the darkness, uplifted itself insong--
"Heaven's refle-hex! Killa-ar-ney!"
it bawled hideously.
It fell as balm upon my ear, in its assurance of the proximity ofSlipper.
"Sure I know the man well," he said, shielding the flame of a match inhis hand with practised skill. "Wake up, me _bouchaleen_!" He shookhim unmercifully. "Open your eyes, darlin'!"
The invalid here showed signs of animation by uttering an incoherentbut, as it seemed, a threatening roar. It lifted Denis as a feather islifted by a wind, and wafted him to the Quaker's head, where heremained in strict attention to his duties. It also lifted Philippa.
"Is he very bad, do you think?" she murmured at my elbow. "Shall Idrive for the doctor?"
"Arrah, what docthor?" said Slipper magnificently. "Give me ahalf-a-crown, Major, and I'll get him what meddyceen will answer him asgood as any docthor! Lave him to me!" He shook him again. "I'llregulate him!"
The victim here sat up, and shouted something about going home. He wasundoubtedly very drunk. It seemed to me that Slipper's ministrationswould be more suitable to the situation than mine, certainly thanPhilippa's. I administered the solatium; then I placed Denis on thebox of the car with the bicycle-lamp in his hand, and drove my familyhome.
After church next day we met Flurry Knox. He approached us with thegreen glint in his eye that told that game was on foot, whatever thatgame might be.
"Who bailed you out, Mrs. Yeates?" he said solicitously. "I heard youand the Major and Denis Leary were all in the lock-up for furiousdriving and killing a man! I'm told he was anointed last night."
Philippa directed what she believed to be a searching glance atFlurry's face of friendly concern.
"I d
on't believe a word of it!" she said dauntlessly, while a verybecoming warmth in her complexion betrayed an inward qualm. "Who toldyou?"
"The servants heard it at first Mass this morning; and Slipper had melate for church telling me about it. The fellow says if he lives he'sgoing to take an action against the Major."
I listened with, I hope, outward serenity. In dealings with FlurryKnox the possibility that he might be speaking the truth could neversafely be lost sight of. It was also well to remember that hegenerally knew what the truth was.
I said loftily, that there had been nothing the matter with the man butChristmas Eve, and inquired if Flurry knew his name and address.
"Of course I do," said Flurry, "he's one of those mountainy men thatlive up in the hill behind Aussolas. Oweneen the Sprat is the name hegoes by, and he's the crossest little thief in the Barony. Never mind,Mrs. Yeates, I'll see you get fair play in the dock!"
"How silly you are!" said Philippa; but I could see that she was shaken.
Whatever Flurry's servants may have heard at first Mass, was apparentlyequalled, if not excelled, by what Denis heard at second. He asked menext morning, with a gallant attempt at indifference, if I had had anyword of "the man-een."
"'Twas what the people were saying on the roads last night that hecould have the law of us, and there was more was saying that he'd neverdo a day's good. Sure they say the backbone is cracked where the wheelof the car went over him! But didn't yourself and the misthress swearblack and blue that the wheel never went next or nigh him? And didn'tMichael say that there wasn't a Christmas this ten years that that onehadn't a head on him the size of a bullawawn with the len'th of dhrink?"
In spite of the contributory negligence that might be assumed in thecase of any one with this singular infirmity, I was not without asecret uneasiness. Two days afterwards I received a letter, written oncopybook paper in a clerkly hand. It had the Aussolas post-mark, inaddition to the imprint of various thumbs, and set forth the injuriesinflicted by me and my driver on Owen Twohig on Christmas Eve, andfinally, it demanded a compensation of twenty pounds for the same.Failing this satisfaction the law was threatened, but a hope wasfinally expressed that the honourable gentleman would not see a poorman wronged; it was, in fact, the familiar mixture of bluff and whine,and, as I said to Philippa, the Man-een (under which title he hadpassed into the domestic vocabulary) had of course got hold of a letterwriter to do the trick for him.
In the next day or so I met Flurry twice, and found him so rationallyinterested, and even concerned, about fresh versions of the accidentthat had cropped up, that I was moved to tell him of the incident ofthe letter. He looked serious, and said he would go up himself to seewhat was wrong with Oweneen. He advised me to keep out of it for thepresent, as they might open their mouths too big.
The moon was high as I returned from this interview; when I wheeled mybicycle into the yard I found that the coach-house in which I was wontto stable it was locked; so also was the harness-room. Attempting toenter the house by the kitchen door I found it also was locked; agabble of conversation prevailed within, and with the mountingindignation of one who hears but cannot make himself heard, I bangedferociously on the door. Silence fell, and Mrs. Cadogan's voiceimplored heaven's protection.
"Open the door!" I roared.
A windlike rush of petticoats followed, through which came sibilantlythe words, "Glory be to goodness! 'Tis the masther!"
The door opened, I found myself facing the entire strength of myestablishment, including Denis, and augmented by Slipper.
"They told me you were asking afther me, Major," began Slipper,descending respectfully from the kitchen table, on which he had beenseated.
I noticed that Mrs. Cadogan was ostentatiously holding her heart, andthat Denis was shaking like the conventional aspen.
"What's all this about?" said I, looking round upon them. "Why is thewhole place locked up?"
"It was a little unaisy they were," said Slipper, snatching theexplanation from Mrs. Cadogan with the determination of the skilledleader of conversation; "I was telling them I seen two men below in theplantation, like they'd be watching out for some one, and poor Mr.Leary here got a reeling in his head after I telling it----"
"Indeed the crayture was as white, now, as white as a masheroon!" brokein Mrs. Cadogan, "and we dhrew him in here to the fire till your Honourcame home."
"Nonsense!" I said angrily, "a couple of boys poaching rabbits! Uponmy word, Slipper, you have very little to do coming here andfrightening people for nothing."
"What did I say?" demanded Slipper, dramatically facing his audience,"only that I seen two men in the plantation. How would I know whatbusiness they had in it?"
"Ye said ye heard them whishling to each other like curlews through thewood," faltered Denis, "and sure that's the whishle them Twohigs hasalways----"
"Maybe it's whistling to the girls they were!" suggested Slipper, withan unabashed eye at Hannah.
I told him to come up with me to my office, and stalked from thekitchen, full of the comfortless wrath that has failed to find asuitable victim.
The interview in the office did not last long, nor was it in any wayreassuring. Slipper, with the manner of the confederate who had wadedshoulder to shoulder with me through gore, could only tell me thatthough he believed that there was nothing ailed the Man-een, hewouldn't say but what he might be sevarely hurted. That I wasn't gonefive minutes before near a score of the Twohigs come leathering downout of the town in two ass-butts (this term indicates donkey-carts ofthe usual dimensions), and when Oweneen felt them coming, he let themost unmarciful screech, upon which Slipper, in just fear of theTwohigs, got over the wall, and executed a strategic retreat upon therailway station, leaving the Twohigs to carry away their wounded to themountains. That for himself he had been going in dread of them eversince, and for no one else in the wide world would he have put a handto one of them.
I preserved an unshaken front towards Slipper, and I was subsequentlysarcastic and epigrammatic to Philippa on the subject of the curlewswho were rabbiting in the plantation, but something that I justified tomyself as a fear of Philippa's insatiable conscientiousness, made meresolve that I would, without delay, go "back in the mountain," andinterview Oweneen the Sprat.
New Year's Day favoured my purpose, bringing with it clear frost andiron roads, a day when even the misanthropic soul of a bicycle awakensinto sympathy and geniality. I started in the sunny vigour of theearly afternoon, I sailed up the hills with the effortless speed of aseagull, I free-wheeled down them with the dive of a swallow, and, asit seemed to me, with a good deal of its grace. Had Oweneen the Sprathad the luck to have met me, when, at the seventh milestone fromShreelane, I realised that I had beaten my own best time by sevenminutes, he could practically have made his own terms. At that point,however, I had to leave the high road, and the mountain lane thatensued restored to me the judicial frame of mind. In the first twentyyards my bicycle was transformed from a swallow to an opinionated andsemi-paralysed wheelbarrow; struggling in a species of dry watercourseI shoved it up the steep gradients of a large and brown country ofheather and bog, silent save for the contending voices of the streams.A family of goats, regarding me from a rocky mound, was the first hintof civilisation; a more reliable symptom presently advanced in theshape of a lean and hump-backed sow, who bestowed on me a side glanceof tepid interest as she squeezed past.
The _bohireen_ dropped, with a sudden twist to the right, and revealeda fold in the hillside, containing a half dozen or so of little fields,crooked, and heavily walled, and nearly as many thatched cabins, flungabout in the hollows as indiscriminately as the boulders upon thewastes outside. A group of children rose in front of me like a flightof starlings, and scudded with barefooted nimbleness to the shelter ofthe houses, in a pattering, fluttering stampede. I descended upon thenearest cabin of the colony. The door was shut; a heavy padlocklinking two staples said Not at Home, and the nose of a dog showed in ahole above the sil
l, sniffing deeply and suspiciously. I rememberedthat the first of January was a holy-day, and that every man in thecolony had doubtless betaken himself to the nearest village. The nextcottage was some fifty yards away, and the faces of a couple ofchildren peered at me round the corner of it. As I approached theyvanished, but the door of the cabin was open, and blue turf smokebreathed placidly outwards from it. The merciful frost had glazed theinevitable dirty pool in front of the door, and had made practicablethe path beside it; I propped my bicycle against a rock, and projectedinto the dark interior an inquiry as to whether there was any one in.
I had to repeat it twice before a small old woman with white hair and alemon-coloured face appeared; I asked her if she could tell me whereOwen Twohig lived.
"Your Honour's welcome," she replied, tying the strings of her capunder her chin with wiry fingers, and eyeing me with concentratedshrewdness. I repeated the question.
She responded by begging me to come in and rest myself, for this was across place and a backwards place, and I should be famished with thecold--"sure them little wheels dhraws the wind."
I ignored this peculiarity of bicycles, and, not without exasperation,again asked for Owen Twohig.
"Are you Major Yeates, I beg your pardon?" I assented to what she knewas well as I did.
"Why then 'tis here he lives indeed, in this little house, and a poorplace he have to live in. Sure he's my son, the crayture--" her voiceat once ascended to the key of lamentation--"faith, he didn't rise tillto-day. Since Christmas Eve I didn't quinch light in the house withhim stretched in the bed always, and not a bit passed his lips night orday, only one suppeen of whisky in its purity. Ye'd think the tonguewould light out of his mouth with the heat, and ye'd see the blaze ofdarkness in his face! I hadn't as much life in me this morning as thatI could wash my face!"
I replied that I wanted to speak to her son, and was in a hurry.
"He's not within, asthore, he's not within at all. He got the lend ofa little donkey, and he went back the mountain to the bonesetter, totry could he straighten the leg with him."
"Did Dr. Hickey see him?" I demanded.
"Sure a wise woman came in from Finnaun, a' Stephen's Day," pursuedMrs. Twohig swiftly, "and she bet three spits down on him, and she saidit's what ailed him he had the Fallen Palate, with the dint o' the blowthe car bet him in the poll, and that any one that have the FallenPalate might be speechless for three months with it. She took threeribs of his hair then, and she was pulling them till she was in apasspiration, and in the latther end she pulled up the palate." Shepaused and wiped her eyes with her apron. "But the leg is what has himdestroyed altogether; she told us we should keep sheep's butter rubbedto it in the place where the thrack o' the wheel is down in it."
The blush of a frosty sunset was already in the sky, and the childrenwho had fled before me had returned, reinforced by many others, tocluster in a whispering swarm round my bicycle, and to group themselvesattentively in the rear of the conversation.
"Look here, Mrs. Twohig," I said, not as yet angry, but in usefulproximity to it, "I've had a letter from your son, and he and hisfriends have been trying to frighten my man, Denis Leary; he can comedown and see me if he has anything to say, but you can tell him from methat I'm not going to stand this sort of thing!"
If the Widow Twohig had been voluble before, this pronouncement had theeffect of bringing her down in spate. She instantly, and at the top ofher voice, called heaven to witness her innocence, and the innocence ofher "little boy"; still at full cry, she sketched her blameless career,and the unmerited suffering that had ever pursued her and hers; how,during the past thirty years, she had been drooping over her littleorphans, and how Oweneen, that was the only one she had left to do ahand's turn for her, would be "under clutches" the longest day thathe'd live. It was at about this point that I gave her five shillings.It was a thoroughly illogical act, but at the moment it seemedinevitable, and Mrs. Twohig was good enough to accept it in the samespirit. I told her that I would send Dr. Hickey to see her son (whichhad, it struck me, a somewhat stemming effect upon her eloquence), andI withdrew, still in magisterial displeasure. I must have been halfway down the lane before it was revealed to me that a future oncrutches was what Mrs. Twohig anticipated for her son.
By that night's post I wrote to Hickey, a strictly impartial letter,stating the position, and asking him to see Owen Twohig, and to let mehave his professional opinion upon him. Philippa added a postscript,asking for a nerve-tonic for the parlour-maid, a Dublin girl, who,since the affair of the curlews in the plantation, had lost all colourand appetite, and persisted in locking the hall door day and night, tothe infinite annoyance of the dogs.
Next morning, while hurrying through an early breakfast, preparatory tostarting for a distant Petty Sessions, I was told that Denis wished tospeak to me at the hall door. This, as I before have had occasion topoint out, boded affairs of the first importance. I proceeded to thehall door, and there found Denis, pale as the Lily Maid of Astolat,with three small fishes in his hand.
"There was one of thim before me in my bed lasht night!" he said in ahoarse and shaken whisper, "and there was one in the windy in theharness-room, down on top o' me razor, and there was another nelt tothe stable door with the nail of a horse's shoe."
I made the natural suggestion that some one had done it for a joke.
"Thim's no joke, sir," replied Denis, portentously, "thim's Sprats!"
"THIM'S NO JOKE, SIR, THIM'S SPRATS!"]
"Well, I'm quite aware of that," I said, unmoved by what appeared to bethe crushing significance of the statement.
"Oweneen the _Sprat_!" murmured Philippa, illuminatingly, emerging fromthe dining-room door with her cup of tea in her hand, "it's Hannah,trying to frighten him!"
Hannah, the housemaid, was known to be the humorist of the household.
"He have a brother a smith, back in the mountain," continued Denis,wrapping up the sprats and the nail in his handkerchief; "'twas for atoken he put the nail in it. If he dhraws thim mountainy men down onme, I may as well go under the sod. It isn't yourself or the misthressthey'll folly; it's meself." He crept down the steps as deplorably asthe Jackdaw of Rheims, "and it's what Michael's after telling me, theyhave it all through the country that I said you should throw Twohig inthe ditch, and it was good enough for the likes of him, and I said toMichael 'twas a lie for them, and that we cared him as tender as if hewas our mother itself, and we'd have given the night to him only forthe misthress that was roaring on the car, and no blame to her; surethe world knows the mother o' children has no courage!"
This drastic generality was unfortunately lost to my wife, as she hadretired to hold a court of inquiry in the kitchen.
The inquiry elicited nothing beyond the fact that since Christmas DayDenis was "using no food," and that the kitchen, so far from indulgingin practical jokes at his expense, had been instant throughout insympathy, and in cups of strong tea, administered for the fortificationof the nerves. All were obviously deeply moved by the incident of thesprats, the parlour-maid, indeed, having already locked herself intothe pantry, through the door of which, on Philippa's approach, she gavewarning hysterically.
The matter remained unexplained, and was not altogether to my liking.As I drove down the avenue, and saw Denis carefully close the yardgates after me, I determined that I would give Murray, the DistrictInspector of Police, a brief sketch of the state of affairs. I did notmeet Murray, but, as it happened, this made no difference. Things werealready advancing smoothly and inexorably towards their preordainedconclusion.
I have since heard that none of the servants went to bed that night.They, including Denis, sat in the kitchen, with locked doors, drinkingtea and reciting religious exercises; Maria, as a further precaution,being chained to the leg of the table. Their fears were in no degreeallayed by the fact that nothing whatever occurred, and the mostimmediate result of the vigil was that my bath next morning boiled asit stood in the can, and dimmed the room wit
h clouds of steam--acircumstance sufficiently rare in itself, and absolutely withoutprecedent on Sunday morning. The next feature of the case was a letterat breakfast time from a gentleman signing himself "Jas. Fitzmaurice."He said that Dr. Hickey having gone away for a fortnight's holiday, he(Fitzmaurice) was acting as his locum tenens. In that capacity he hadopened my letter, and would go and see Twohig as soon as possible. Heenclosed prescription for tonic as requested.
It was a threatening morning, and we did not go to church. I noticedthat my wife's housekeeping _seance_ was unusually prolonged, and evenwhile I smoked and read the papers, I was travelling in my meditationsto the point of determining that I would have a talk with the priestabout all this infernal nonsense. When Philippa at length rejoined me,I found that she also had arrived at a conclusion, impelled thereto bythe counsels of Mrs. Cadogan, abetted by her own conscience.
Its result was that immediately after lunch, long before the Sundayroast beef had been slept off, I found myself carting precariousparcels--a jug, a bottle, a pudding-dish--to the inside car, in whichPhilippa had already placed herself, with a pair of blankets andvarious articles culled from my wardrobe (including a pair of boots towhich I was sincerely attached). Denis, pale yellow in complexion andshrouded in gloom, was on the box, the Quaker was in the shafts. Therewas no rain, but the clouds hung black and low.
It was an expedition of purest charity; so Philippa explained to meover again as we drove away. She said nothing of propitiation ordiplomacy. For my part I said nothing at all, but I reflected on thepeculiar gifts of the Dublin parlour-maid in valeting me, and decidedthat it might be better to allow Philippa to run the show on her ownlines, while I maintained an attitude of large-minded disapproval.
The blankets took up as much room in the car as a man; I had to hold inmy hand a jug of partly jellified beef tea. A sourer Lady Bountifulnever set forth upon an errand of mercy. To complete establishment--inthe words of the _Gazette_--Maria and Minx, on the floor of the car,wrought and strove in ceaseless and objectless agitation, an inflictiondue to the ferocity of a female rival, who terrorised the high roadwithin hail of my gates. I thanked heaven that I had at least beenfirm about not taking the children; for the dogs, at all events, themoment of summary ejectment would arrive sooner or later.
Seven miles in an inside car are seven miles indeed. The hills thathad run to meet my bicycle and glided away behind it, now sat in theirplaces to be crawled up and lumbered down, at such a pace as seemedgood to the Quaker, whose appetite for the expedition was, if possible,less than that of his driver. Appetite was, indeed, the last thingsuggested by the aspect of Denis. His drooping shoulders anddeplorable countenance proclaimed apology and deprecation to themountain tops, and more especially to the mountainy men. Looking backon it now, I recognise the greatness of the tribute to my valour andomnipotence that he should have consented thus to drive us into theheart of the enemy's country.
A steep slope, ending with a sharp turn through a cutting, reminded methat we were near the mountain _bohireen_ that was our goal. I got outand walked up the hill, stiffly, because the cramp of the covered carwas in my legs. Stiff though I was, I had outpaced the Quaker, and wasnear the top of the hill, when something that was apparently a browncroquet-ball rolled swiftly round the bend above me, charged into therock wall of the cutting with a clang, and came on down the hill with aweight and venom unknown to croquet-balls. It sped past me, missed theQuaker by an uncommonly near shave, and went on its way, hotly pursuedby the two dogs, who, in the next twenty yards, discovered with horrorthat it was made of iron, a fact of which I was already aware.
I have always been as lenient as the law, and other circumstances,would allow towards the illegal game of "bowling." It consists inbowling an iron ball along a road, the object being to cover thegreatest possible distance in a given number of bowls. It demandsconsiderable strength and skill, and it is played with a zest muchenhanced by its illegality and by its facilities as a medium forbetting. The law forbids it, on account of its danger to theunsuspecting wayfarer, in consideration of which a scout is usuallyposted ahead to signal the approach of the police, and to give warningto passers by. The mountainy men, trusting to their isolation, hadneglected this precaution, with results that came near being serious tothe Quaker, and filled with wrath, both personal and official, I tookthe hill at a vengeful run, so as to catch the bowler red-handed. Atthe turn in the cutting I met him face to face. As a matter of fact henearly ran into my arms, and the yelp of agony with which he dodged myimpending embrace is a life-long possession. He was a very small man;he doubled like a rabbit, and bolted back towards a swarm of men whowere following the fortunes of the game. He flitted over the wall bythe roadside, and was away over the rocky hillside at a speed that evenin my best days would have left me nowhere.
The swarm on the road melted; a good part of it was quietly absorbed bythe lane up which I had dragged my bicycle two days before, theremainder, elaborately uninterested and respectable, in their dark blueSunday clothes, strolled gravely in the opposite direction. A man on abicycle met them, and dismounted to speak to the leaders. I wonderedif he were a policeman in plain clothes on the prowl. He came on tomeet me, leading his bicycle, and I perceived that a small blackleather bag was strapped to the carrier. He was young, and apparentlyvery hot.
"I beg your pardon," he said in the accents of Dublin, "I understandyou're Major Yeates. I'm Dr. Hickey's 'Locum,' and I've come out tosee the man you wrote to me about. From what you said I thought itbetter to lose no time."
I was rather out of breath, but I expressed my sense of indebtedness.
"I think there must be some mistake," went on the "Locum." "I've justasked these men on the road where Owen Twohig lives, and one ofthem--the fellow they call Skipper, or some such name--said Owen Twohigwas the little chap that's just after sprinting up the mountain. Heseemed to think it was a great joke. I suppose you're sure Owen wasthe name?"
"Perfectly sure," I said heavily.
The eyes of Dr. Fitzmaurice had travelled past me, and were regardingwith professional alertness something farther down the road. Ifollowed their direction, dreamily, because in spirit I was far away,tracking Flurry Knox through deep places.
On the hither side of the rock cutting the covered car had come to astandstill. The reins had fallen from Denis's hands; he was obviouslyhaving the "wakeness" appropriate to the crisis. Philippa, on the stepbelow him, was proffering to him the jug of beef tea and the bottle ofport. He accepted the latter.
"He knows what's what!" said the "Locum."
"HE KNOWS WHAT'S WHAT!" SAID THE LOCUM]
]
Further Experiences of an Irish R.M. Page 12
