pho! nonsense!"

Through all this scene of uproar, as Murphy pa.s.sed to and fro, whenever he encountered the landlord, that worthy individual threw him a knowing look; and the exclamation of, "Oh, Misther Murphy--by dad!" given in a low chuckling tone, insinuated that the landlord not only smoked but enjoyed the joke.

"You must lend me a pair of boots, Kelly!" said Murtough.

"To be sure, sir--ha! ha! ha!--but you are the quare man, Misther Murphy--"

"Send down the road and get my gig out of the ditch."

"To be sure, sir. Poor devils! purty hands they got into," and off went the landlord, with a chuckle.

The messengers sent for the gig returned, declaring there was no gig to be seen anywhere.

Murphy affected great surprise at the intelligence--again went among the bamboozled electors, who were all obliged to go to bed for want of clothes; and his bitter lamentations over the loss of his gig almost reconciled them to their minor troubles.

To the fears they expressed that they should not be able to reach the town in time for polling that day, Murphy told them to set their minds at rest, for they would be in time on the next.

He then borrowed a saddle as well as the pair of boots from the landlord, and the little black mare bore Murphy triumphantly back to the town, after he had securely impounded Scatterbrain's voters, who were anxiously and hourly expected by their friends. Still they came not. At last, Handy Andy, who happened to be in town with Scatterbrain, was despatched to hurry them, and his orders were not to come back without them.

Handy, on his arrival at the inn, found the electors in bed, and all the fires in the house employed in drying their clothes. The little man, wrapped in a blanket, was superintending the cooking of his own before the kitchen grate; there hung his garments on some cross sticks suspended by a string, after the fashion of a roasting-jack, which the small gentleman turned before a blazing turf fire; and beside this contrivance of his swung a goodly joint of meat, which a bouncing kitchen wench came over to baste now and then.

Andy was answering some questions of the inquisitive little man, when the kitchen maid, handing the basting-ladle to Andy, begged him to do a good turn and just to baste the beef for her, for that her heart was broke with all she had to do, cooking dinner for so many.

Andy, always ready to oblige, consented, and plied the ladle actively between the troublesome queries of the little man; but at last, getting confused with some very crabbed questions put to him, Andy became completely bothered, and lifting a br.i.m.m.i.n.g ladle of dripping, poured it over the little man's coat instead of the beef.

A roar from the proprietor of the clothes followed, and he implanted a kick at such advantage upon Andy, that he upset him into the dripping-pan; and Andy, in his fall, endeavouring to support himself, caught at the suspended articles above him, and the clothes, and the beef, and Andy, all swam in gravy.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Andy's Cooking extraordinary]

CHAPTER XXV

While disaster and hubbub were rife below, the electors up-stairs were holding a council whether it would not be better to send back the "Honourable's" messenger to the town and request a supply of shoes, which they had no other means of getting. The debate was of an odd sort; they were all in their several beds at the time, and roared at each other through their doors, which were purposely left open that they might enjoy each other's conversation; number seven replied to number three, and claimed respect to his arguments on the score of seniority; the blue room was completely controverted by the yellow; and the double-bedded room would, of course, have had superior weight in the argument, only that everything it said was lost by the two honourable members speaking together. The French king used to hold a council called a "bed of justice," in which neither justice nor a bed had anything to do, so that this Irish conference better deserved the t.i.tle than any council the Bourbon ever a.s.sembled. The debate having concluded, and the question being put and carried, the usher of the black counterpane was desired to get out of bed, and, wrapped in the robe of office whence he derived his t.i.tle, to go down-stairs and call the "Honourable's" messenger to the "bar of the house," and there order him a pint of porter, for refreshment after his ride; and forthwith to send him back again to the town for a supply of shoes.

The house was unanimous in voting the supplies. The usher reached the kitchen and found Andy in his shirt sleeves, sc.r.a.ping the dripping from his livery with an old knife, whose hackled edge considerably a.s.sisted Andy's own ingenuity in the tearing of his coat in many places, while the little man made no effort towards the repair of his garment, but held it up before him, and regarded it with a piteous look.

To the usher of the black counterpane's question, whether Andy was the "Honourable's messenger," Andy replied in the affirmative; but to the desire expressed, that he would ride back to the town, Andy returned a decided negative.

"My ordhers is not to go back without you," said Andy.

"But we have no shoes," said the usher; "and cannot go until we get some."

"My ordher is not to go back without you."

"But if we can't go?"

"Well, then, I can't go back, that's all," said Andy.

The usher, the landlord, and the landlady all hammered away at Andy for a long time, in vain trying to convince him he ought to return, as he was desired; still Andy stuck to the letter of his orders, and said he often got into trouble for not doing _exactly_ what he was bid, and that he was bid "not to go back without them, and he would not--so he wouldn't-- divil a fut."

At last, however, Andy was made to understand the propriety of riding back to the town; and was desired to go as fast as his horse could carry him, to gallop every foot of the way; but Andy did no such thing; he had received a good thrashing once for being caught galloping his master's horse on the road, and he had no intention of running the risk a second time, because "_the stranger_" told him to do so. "What does he know about it?" said Andy to himself; "'faith, it's fair and aisy I'll go, and not disthress the horse to plaze any one." So he went back his ten miles at a reasonable pace only; and when he appeared without the electors, a storm burst on poor Andy.

"There! I knew how it would be," said he, "and not my fault at all."

"Weren't you told not to return without them?"

"But wait till I tell you how it was, sure;" and then Andy began an account of the condition in which the voters lay at the inn but between the impatience of those who heard, and the confused manner of Andy's recital, it was some time before matters were explained; and then Andy was desired to ride back to the inn again, to tell the electors shoes should be forwarded after him in a post-chaise, and requesting their utmost exertions in hastening over to the town, for that the election was going against them. Andy returned to the inn; and this time, under orders from head quarters, galloped in good earnest, and brought in his horse smoking hot, and indicating lameness. The day was wearing apace, and it was so late when the electors were enabled to start that the polling-booths were closed before they could leave the town; and in many of these booths the requisite number of electors had not been polled that day to keep them open; so that the next day nearly all those outlying electors, about whom there had been so much trouble and expense, would be of no avail. Thus, Murphy's trick was quite successful, and the poor pickled electors were driven back to their inn in dudgeon.

Andy, when he went to the stable to saddle his steed, for a return to Neck-or-Nothing Hall, found him dead lame, so that to ride him better than twelve miles home was impossible. Andy was obliged to leave him where he was, and trudge it to the hall; for all the horses in Kelly's stables were knocked up with their day's work.

As it was shorter by four miles across the country than by the road, Andy pursued the former course; and as he knew the country well, the shades of evening, which were now closing round, did not deter him in the least.

Andy was not very fresh for the journey to be sure, for he had ridden upwards of thirty miles that day, so the merry whistle, which is so constantly heard from the lively Irish pedestrian, did not while away the tedium of his walk. It was night when Andy was breasting up a low ridge of hills, which lay between him and the end of his journey; and when in silence and darkness he topped the ascent, he threw himself on some heather to rest and take breath. His attention was suddenly caught by a small blue flame, which flickered now and then on the face of the hill, not very far from him; and Andy's fears of fairies and goblins came crowding upon him thick and fast. He wished to rise, but could not; his eye continued to be strained with the fascination of fear in the direction he saw the fire, and sought to pierce the gloom through which, at intervals, the small point of flame flashed brightly and sunk again, making the darkness seem deeper. Andy lay in perfect stillness, and in the silence, which was unbroken even by his own breathing, he thought he heard voices underground. He trembled from head to foot, for he was certain they were the voices of the fairies, whom he firmly believed to inhabit the hills.

"Oh! murdher, what'll I do?" thought Andy to himself: "sure I heerd often, if once you were within the sound of their voices, you could never get out o' their power. Oh! if I could only say a _pather_ and _ave_, but I forget my prayers with the fright. Hail, Mary! The king o' the fairies lives in these hills, I know--and his house is undher me this minit, and I on the roof of it--I'll never get down again--I'll never get down again--they'll make me slater to the fairies; and sure enough I remember me, the hill is all covered with flat stones they call fairy slates. Oh! I am ruined--G.o.d be praised!" Here he blessed himself, and laid his head close to the earth. "Guardian angels--I hear their voices singin' a dhrinking song--Oh! if I had a dhrop o' water myself, for my mouth is as dhry as a lime-burner's wig--and I on the top o' their house --see--there's the little blaze again--I wondher is their chimbley afire --Oh! murther, I'll die o' thirst--Oh! if I had only one dhrop o' wather --I wish it would rain or hail--Hail, Mary, full o' grace--whisht!

what's that?" Andy crouched lower than before, as he saw a figure rise from the earth, and attain a height which Andy computed to be something about twenty feet; his heart shrank to the size of a nut-sh.e.l.l, as he beheld the monster expand to his full dimensions; and at the same moment, a second, equally large, emerged from the ground.

Now, as fairies are notoriously little people, Andy changed his opinion of the parties into whose power he had fallen, and saw clearly they were giants, not fairies, of whom he was about to become the victim. He would have e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed a prayer for mercy, had not terror rendered him speechless, as the remembrance of all the giants he had ever heard of, from the days of Jack and the Bean-stalk down, came into his head; but though his sense of speaking was gone, that of hearing was painfully acute, and he heard one of the giants say--

"That pot is not big enough."

"Oh! it howlds as much as we want," replied the other.

"O Lord," thought Andy; "they've got their pot ready for cooking."

"What keeps him?" said the first giant.

"Oh! he's not far off," said the second.

A clammy shivering came over Andy.

"I'm hungry," said the first, and he hiccupped as he spoke.

"It's only a false appet.i.te you have," said the second, "you're drunk."

This was a new light to Andy, for he thought giants were too strong to get drunk. "I could ate a young child, without parsley and b.u.t.ther," said the drunken giant. Andy gave a faint spasmodic kick.

"And it's as hot as ---- down there," said the giant.

Andy trembled at the horrid word he heard.

"No wonder," said the second giant; "for I can see the flame popping out at the top of the chimbley; that's bad: I hope no one will see it, or it might give them warning. Bad luck to that young divil for making the fire so sthrong."

What a dreadful hearing this was for Andy: young devils to make their fires; there was no doubt what place they were dwelling in. "Thunder and turf!" said the drunken giant; "I wish I had a slice of--"

Andy did not hear what he wished a slice of, for the night wind swept across the heath at the moment, and carried away the monster's disgusting words on its pure breath.