trick of yours to delude me.”
“Upon my honour and conscience, sir, it isn't,” says Nick; “I couldn't
get a doctor any where, for I've tried, or I wouldn't trouble you. It's
my belief, Jack will die if you don't come at once.”
“Go away,” says Surgeon Anderson; “go away, Nick; get out of that
entirely!--Wasn't I sent for last winter, to a gentleman at the Roebuck,
who had broken his leg?--and wasn't it yourself there, and the dirty bit
of stick you stand upon tied up with a piece of rope?--and didn't you
capture me that time, you blackguard?”
“I did, I did: I'm sorry for that; but pray--”
“And didn't you get a boy to bring me out o' my bed once, to a woman he
said was at death's door?--and didn't I go, Nick?”
“You did, you did.”
“Ah! you facetious rogue! I know you're laughing at me now if I could
see you:--and who should I meet, at the corner of the street, but your
own sweet self, waiting for me?--And didn't you show me a woman lying
asleep and drunk at the door of little Paddy Death, that keeps the
whiskey shop, in Patrick street?--and, says you, with a grin, 'There's
the woman at Death's door I'--didn't you, Nick?”
“I know I did; but as I'm a living soul, sir--”
“Go away, Nick go home and read the story of the boy and the wolf; and
if harm happens your son, as it did him, it's your own doings, Nick! so
good night! for I'm not to be had,--don't you see?”
With that he shut the window, and wouldn't come; but, as luck would have
it, when Timberleg got home, Jack was better, and didn't want physic
till morning. It's often Nick threatened Surgeon Anderson, but he never
had the luck to get him again; for when the surgeon heard that Nick's
story was true, and was told of his threats, some say he strove hand and
foot to keep out of Nick's clutches for fear, and so got on in the
world dating his rise from the night Jack Forester wanted physic, and he
wouldn't get up to give it him.
But we mustn't forget Pierce Veogh,--though 'tisn't he is my hero
exactly, but Timberleg still I can't go on without him, no more than the
man in the book could play on the organ but for the boy that blowed the
bellows. Well, Pierce, as I tould you, had the bailiffs about for him
and as Timberleg seemed to have taken up his abode by The Beg,--which
was Pierce's place, you'll recollect,--why, Pierce thought he couldn't
do better than sneak off, if he could, to the town Nick came from, and
stay there for a day or two: for Pierce was trying his utmost to raise
money, and hoped to receive letters, post after post, to tell him things
were settled; and a day's delay was worth everything to him;--to say
nothing of the horror he felt, in common with most of us, to being shut
up between four walls.--Not that a prison, when you're used to it, is
the worst place in the world perhaps; for I know a man that hated the
name of it, and after he got into one at last, he liked it so well, that
when he could, he wouldn't come out of it, but turned turnkey, and kept
his post behind the gate, with the key in his hand, doing nothing but
opening and shutting the door, and never stirring out of the place,
which had grown a world to him, till death came one day, and removed
him to closer confinement within six boards, nailed together,--and that
manes a coffin.--Now, a coffin's a thing, allow me to remark, that we
all hate the sight of; and yet there's not one in ten thousand of us but
hopes to come to it at last;--for who'd like to be buried any way but
in a box?--And that's a feeling that's laughable to one who looks
two inches below the surface of things; for what is it, but a fear of
letting the cold clay come to us for a few years?--And come it will, you
know, at last, whether a man's buried in a large 'sheet of paper, a big
hollow stone, or a lead coffin. And what matters time to the dead?--Or
where's the difference, let me ask, between two minutes and twenty
thousand years, to them that's under the turf?--Do what we will, the
blackguard worms ates us all up at last; and they that takes pains to
preserve their bodies, don't do well, as I think: for, while all that
remains of me, after being buried in a dacent and ordinary way, some
time hence, becomes a part of the big earth, and can't be distinguished
from what it's mixed up with,--the visible and touchable nose of a
pickled emperor, a thousand years after he's dead, gets pulled by some
puppy that opens his grave, and don't happen to approve of what he did
when alive: or, what's worse, the bones of the arm that awed multitudes,
gets cut into drunken men's dominos; or the boys and girls of a tenth
generation plays with them for sugar-plums, in the shape of two a-penny
tetotums, and so forth. Therefore, let me, when I die, have no armour
about me; let the worms come, and good luck to them, say I;--the sooner
they walk away with every inch of me, the better.
But we'll never get through at this rate; and such grave discourse as
I've led myself into, turns the edge of one's appetite for fun,--doesn't
it?--But, _na bocklish_,--forget what I've said, and listen to what
Pierce Veogh did. Like the goose that took refuge near the fox's den,
when the fox himself was watching for her near her nest, Pierce got away
one night, and wint off to the town: there he remained in great safety
for some days, as Timberleg didn't know he'd escaped, and so wouldn't
raise the legal siege of The Beg House,--why should he?
No letters came; and, at last, Pierce determined to get away altogether,
and cut the country for a time, if he could: so one morning, at
day-break, he left the little lodgings he had hired for the sake of
being private, and was walking off, the nearest way out of town, when
just as he came within five feet of a corner, what should he see but
Nick Forester's dog,--the dog I described to you, that was always a few
feet before, or oftener a yard or so behind, Nick himself.--“Oho!” says
Pierce, turning back and taking to his heels; for well enough he knew
the dog it's himself that did then;--for often he saw him, bating round
The Beg, and Nick not far behind him. “Oho!” says he; and “Bowwow!” says
the dog; and “My grief!” says Timberleg, who just then came round the
corner, and saw the young legs of Pierce carrying him off five miles
an hour faster than Nick could run. Nick wasn't fool enough to go after
Pierce;--no, no,--not he, then! He turned on his heel, and walked back
the way he came,--giving the game up for lost, out-and-out; and he
struck his dog Benjie two or three times, with his leg, for not keeping
to his heel.
Now what did Pierce do, think you?--Why, he ran as if he'd everything
fearful behind him, and fancied he heard the stump of Nick's wooden
leg keeping time with the gallop of his own pulse. Running seemed to
be safety to him, no matter which way he ran; for “if Timberleg and
Benjie's behind me, it matters not what's before me, so that the way's
clear,” thinks he;--or rather, he didn't think at all, but wint on, and
you'll hear how it ended.
By-and-by, Pierce came to a corner again, with one leg before and the
other behind him, as if he'd little Powsett's seven-leagued boots on;
or, to spake within compass, the foot that was forward the whole length
of his leg more advanced than his body. Now here's the point of my
story:--Nick Forester was much nearer Pierce than Pierce expected; to
spake out at once, he was close to the corner, only the other side of
it; and, as one may say, in a right direction to cross his course. Well,
just as Pierce had put his foot that was forward to the ground, about
four inches beyond the corner, Nick Forester, quite unconscious of his
good luck, was, at that instant, going to put his timber-toe on the
flags in a transverse direction. Down it came, pat upon Pierce's foot;
the whole weight of Nick's body followed directly after; and the next
moment, Pierce found himself within an inch and a half of Nick's nose,
staring his enemy full in the face, who looked quite as wonder-struck,
but not half so grievous, as himself; for the end of Nick's leg covered
a couple of Pierce's worst corns.
This wasn't the first time in the world a man ran into the lion's mouth.
Nick put out his paw upon Pierce, and from that day, people called him
“Timberleg Toe-Trap.”
Pierce lay in Nick's custody for above a month; he then got out by
scraping together all he could, and flew off to England for safety: but
it was just out of the frying-pan into the fire with him; for,--though
a man's good deeds have wings of lead, or just none at all, and travel
like the tortoise,--such things as make against him, go at the rate
of twelve knots an hour, to every point of the compass at once; or, at
least, to all the points he wouldn't have them go, if he could help
it; and, by this rule, the news of Pierce's being taken for debt by
Timberleg, got to England, before he reached it himself; and he wasn't
well landed and recovered from his sea-sickness, when one of his
creditors had a bailiff to give him a grip by the shoulder. As soon as a
man gets clawed, long bills generally come pouring in upon him from
all quarters:--it was just this way with Pierce; and his prospects in
perspective were almost as unpleasant as his enemies could wish.
We'll leave him now though, if you please; and I'll tell you what more
happened him by-and-by, and how it all ended; if you don't fall asleep,
and by your snoring, give me a hint that it isn't quite so entertaining
you find me, as may be I think you ought. But, we'll see.
[Illustration: 214]
BAT BOROO.
IF you're passing at early morning, above there, beyond The Claugh, you
may see Bat, with his back leaning against Mick Maguire's door,--'tis
there where he lodges,--smoking his pipe, and looking out under his
eye-brows at you, as fierce as a grenadier at a Frenchman. There's
nothing warlike about Bat but braggadocio, and a cut across his
chin,--barring that he's wasted and worn, you'd think; for his broad
shoulders seem to have been better covered with flesh one day than they
now are. When he condescends to spake to any of us, Bat talks of the
wars, as though he'd been in them; and says he has wounds besides that
one on his chin, but they're under his clothes; and then he gives a bit
of a cough, and says he's asthmatic, and might catch harm if he stripped
himself to shew them. So that nobody has seen Bat's wounds but himself;
but no doubt he has many of them: though, to be sure, that on his chin
looks as though it was done by the blunt razor of a barber, rather than
a grenadier's baggonet, or a dragoon's sabre. However, all's one for
that.
Bat's too high and mighty to be much liked by the people about; and a
boy says he peeped in at a hole in the cabin one day, and saw something
on Bat's back, that looked as if the military cat had been scratching
it. But doesn't the boy play the rogue now and then?--Faith! he does;
and, may be, Bat is belied by him. How the blade lives, nobody knows;
nor why he came here to this place, which is at the very back of God's
speed, we can't say. May be, he's a pensioner:--why not?--And, may be
too, as some think, he's a native of these parts, and one of the sons
of that same ould Dick Boroo, who lived in a cabin on the very same spot
where Mick Maguire's now stands. Dick wint to the dogs, long ago, and he
and the whole seed and breed of him run the country; and nobody has seen
a ha'p'orth of them since; except this is one o' them, come here after
the wars, to bluster away, where he used to be beaten; and die one day
where he first drew breath.
Bat won't own he's a Boroo; but we all call him that name in the face
of him; and when he goes off,--what will they write on the stone by his
grave, if he gets one, think you?--Why, then, “Here lies Bat Boroo, who
died of doing nothing.”
And, faith! it's nothing he does, but walk about like a half-sir as he
is,--smoking his pipe the whole blessed morning, for the sake, he says,
of getting himself an appetite for dinner. But he needn't take the
trouble; for it's just as needless, in my mind, as whistling to the
sea, when the tide's coming in; and come it will, like Bat's appetite,
whether you whistle or no, devouring almost everything in its way.
Without a word of a lie, Bat's the biggest eater in all the barony,
and the biggest brag,--that is, he was,--to the tail o' that. But, poor
fellow! he don't know his infirmity; and thinks his appetite a sign of
weakness, instead of sound health: it's the only living thing he takes
on about. “There's nothing, Jimmy Fitzgerald,” says he, to me, one day;
“there's nothing, in the universal world, I can keep on my stomach,--bad
luck to the bit!--for if I ate half a rack of mutton, with peeathees
and milk, or a pound of pig's face, or eight or ten red herrings, for my
breakfast,--it's hungry I am, in an hour or two again, as though nothing
had happened to me that day in the way of provision.”--What think you of
that for digestion?
There's three things Bat thinks about, and that's all first, his
belly;--secondly, making believe he's not to be frightened, by man or
beast, nor even the good people that lives in the moats, and frolics
away all night on the heath, and goes to bed in the butter-cups and
daisies--it's a wonder to some they've played no tricks with him yet and
lastly, that he has much better blood in his body than the people about
him.
Now I'll tell you what happened Bat. 'While ago,--three or four
years back,--we'd a cunning woman came here,--and it's but little she
got,--how would she, when there was little to give?--it was going to a
goat's house to look for wool: and plenty of bad luck she prophesied,
for nobody had enough to pay for better. Some of it came true enough;
and if she spoke truth, there's more mischief behind. She said to me,
I'd have my roof down; but it's safe yet, for I trusted in Providence,
and put a new beam across it the week after she wint. At last, when
she'd tould a power of ill-tidings to many, and no one would go near her
for fear, and she'd stood by the abbey-wall for a long hour, waiting for
customers, with the people,--men, women, and children,--making a circle
about her, who should come up but Misther Bat Boroo, just after taking
a good dinner with Paddy Doolan?--“What's the murther here?” says he.
So they up and tould him, that nobody dared to have their fates from the
cunning-woman.
This was a windfall for Bat,--a glorious occasion for making much of
himself. Up he marched to the woman, as though he was going to attack
an entrenchment, and crossing her ould yellow hand with the copper,--the
best his pocket could afford,--he desired she'd say what would happen
him. “Speak bouldly,” says he, “for Bat Muggleburgh isn't the man that's
to be frightened by a bulrush.”
“Man,” says she, looking up to him, “you've been a soldier.”
“What then?” says he.
“Here's a line in your hand,”--says she, “a line which tells me, that
before another year has gone over your head, you'll be more frightened
by a bulrush than ever you was by a baggonet;--and that's saying much.”
Bat bullied her, but bit his lip for vexation; and, by-and-by, you'll
hear how he got on, and what came of the cunning-woman's foreboding. But
wait a little, for I'm before my story, and must go back.--You heard me
say, Bat called himself by the name of Bat Muggleburgh, awhile ago; and
so he did: for, as I tould you, he denied the name of Boroo, because
he said he'd no call to it; and that Muggleburgh was what he'd a right
to,--and he'd own to it, and nothing else. Now, all this may be true
enough; Bat's name may be Muggleburgh, and he Dick Boroo's son for all
that:--for did any one ever know, or take the trouble to inquire, what
was ould Dick's rale name--if he had one--besides Dick?--Boroo was
a nick-name he got for some saying or prank, that was past by and
forgotten entirely in my time, though the name still stuck to him. He
wasn't an Irishman; but where he came from,--except he was a bit of a
Dutch smuggler or something in his young days,--myself neither knows nor
cares.
It's often he brags,--Bat does,--of the brave coat of arms that belongs
to him, if he had his rights; and what great men the Muggleburghs was
in times gone by. But that's no matter at all:--there's a regular
descendant of the honourable kings of Meath sells butter at Cashel,
and is as big a rogue as one here and there. I myself came from a fine
family by my mother's side; but what's all the famous blood of her
ancestors now?--One of the grandfathers of the worm you trod on o'
Monday, had some of the best of it; and for my own part, I don't value
that of great Bryan himself a rush and a half: but my mother didn't
think so, poor thing,--rest her soul!
Well, by this time, you must be pretty well acquainted with Bat,--and,
may be, tired of him; but wait till you hear what happened him.--Many
months, but not a year, after Bat had his fortune tould in the manner
I mentioned, we'd a poor scholar--a stripling of sixteen or so--with us
here, for two, or it might be, three days, at the most. Good luck follow
him! He was a lad we all loved, high and low,--and it's not very high
the best of us is, sure enough,--for the boy behaved beautifully, though
he'd a spice of the wag in him--And why not?--wasn't he young?--and
isn't young days the best of days with us? And if we ar'n't merry then,
when will we, I'd like to know?
Bat didn't like the poor scholar, and used to abuse him, because he
convinced us all he knew more of the geography of foreign parts than
Bat, who had been among them, as he said. And the night before the lad
left us, Bat threatened to baste him, for smiling while he was preaching
about the Muggleburgh arms, and bewailing the state of his digestive
organs: and he would too, if it was not for this crutch of mine, and
Mick Maguire's gun, and the piper of Drogheda's wooden leg, and one or
two other impediments;--not to mention a feeling of goodness that came
over him then in the poor scholar's favour;--for if Bat's a bully and a
cormorant, he hasn't a bad heart, when all comes to all:--but the poor
scholar didn't forget it to him.
The next morning, those who were up, and passed by Bat's door before he
was awake, saw as fine a coat of arms figured out with chalk upon it,
as the best of the Muggleburghs, in the height of their glory,--if ever
they had any,--could well wish to look upon. And could any one thing
suit Bat better?--Faith! then, nothing in the wide world. In the middle,
was a dish instead of a shield, with a fat goose--Bat's favourite
food--quartered upon it; and each side of the dish, what do you think
there was, but a knife and fork for supporters; and, to crown all,
perched upon the top was a _swallow_, for a crest! Then, at the foot,
there was a table-cloth finely festooned, and words written upon it, by
way of motto, which ran thus:--“Boroo _edax rerum?_” I remember them very
well: first, there was Boroo; then came the name of my lady's steward,
Misther Dax, with a little _e_ before it;--then, after a blank, followed
a _re_; and it ended, like a slave-driver's dinner, with _rum:--Boroo
edax rerum_;--signifying, as the worthy coadjutor informed us, that Bat,
like ould father Time, who takes a tower for his lunch, and a city for
his supper, was a devourer of all things. The hand that can draw could
make its master understood, where the tongue that spakes seven languages
couldn't do a ha'p'orth; or so thinks Jimmy Fitzgerald,--that's me.
Now, though we couldn't make out the motto, all of us down to the boys
themselves knew what the figures of the goose, and the swallow, and so
forth, stood for; and great was the shouting but Bat had a glass in his
head, and didn't wake.
By-and-by, down he came with the pipe in his mouth; and, suspecting
nothing at all, shut the door after him, and leaned his back against it
as usual. When his backy was smoked, he threw away his pipe with an air,
and strutted off through the place; and, behold! there was the chalk
from the door on him, and he, not knowing it, bearing his arms on his
own coat. Will I tell you how many boys and girls he had at his tail in
ten minutes?--
I couldn't, without reckoning every living soul of them, within
half-a-mile of this, or I would. For a long time, Bat didn't know what
it was all about, and looked before and both sides of him to find out
where the fun was, but he couldn't. “Look behind you!” says somebody.
Bat looked, and there was the boys and girls laughing, and that was all:
so he wint on again.
This couldn't last long though. After awhile Bat found out what made the
boys follow him, as the little birds do the cuckoo; and then his rage
wasn't little:--describe it I won't, for I can't; but I'll tell you what
he did:--he suspected the scholar had played him that trick,--which was
the truth,--and he found out which road he took; and you'll be sorry to
hear he soon came within sight of his satchel.
Whether the boy heard Bat blowing and blustering I don't know, but he
luckily glanced behind him, and seeing Bat and his big stick, did what
any one in his place would, if he could,--put a hedge between him and
his enemy. Bat followed him, vowing vengeance in the shape of a great
basting, from one field to another; until, in the end,--he didn't know
how,--he found he'd lost the boy, and discovered the prudence of taking
to his heels himself; for there he was, in the midst of a meadow, and a
fine, fierce-looking bull making up to him at a fast trot. Seeing this,
Bat began to make calculations, and perfectly satisfied himself that
before he could reach the hedge he came over, the bull would come up
with him, and, in all probability, attack his rear. Bat couldn't very
well like this: there wasn't much time for pros and cons with him; so he
threw his stick at the beast, and away he wint, at a great rate towards
a gate he saw in the nearest corner of the field. Though the bull wasn't
far behind him, he contrived to reach and climb up the gate-post without
being harmed but, musha!--what did he see, think you, when he got
there?--
If ever man was in a dilemma, it was Bat. The gate led into the yard
before young Pierce Veogh's kennel, and just below Bat, was a brace of
as promising dogs for a bull-bait as you'd like to see, trying all they
could to get a snap at Bat's leg, that was hanging their side of
the gate-post. The dogs looked, and really were, more furious than
usual,--which was needless for it happened to be just at the time when
Pierce was away in the safe custody of Timberleg the bailiff, and they
weren't fed in his absence quite so regularly as they'd wish. Bat
knew this; and, thinks he, they'd make but little bones of a man of my
weight, if they had me;--so that it wouldn't have been wise in him to
have ventured into the yard. The gate wint close up to the garden-wall.
But there was three impediments to Bat's going that way first, the gate
was well spiked; next, if he didn't mind that, one of the dogs could
reach him aisily from the top of their kennel as he passed; thirdly and
lastly, if he defied the spikes, and escaped with a bite or two, and got
to the garden-wall, there was a board, with “steel-traps” and so
forth, staring in the face of him. And what other way had he of getting
off?--Divil a one but two. One was, by dropping into the meadow again
and that he might do well enough, but for the bull, who was bellowing
below to get a rush at him;--the other, I think, was jumping off the
post into the stream, upon the edge of which it was planted. The water
wasn't wide, but it was deep, and Bat couldn't swim: and there he was,
depend upon it, in as nice a dilemma as man had need be.--If you don't
credit what I say, draw a map of his position as he sat on the post with
the beasts on both sides, the spikes behind, and the water before him,
and then tell me what you think.
Bat bellowed, and so did the bull, and the noises wint for one, and the
dogs barked, but nobody came. By-and-by Bat saw a figure walking along
the opposite bank, and who should it be but the ould cunning-woman! “Is
that yourself, Bat?” says she.
“I think it is;--worse luck!” says he.
“That post of yours isn't the pleasantest post in the world I think,”
says she.
“I think not,” says he.
“Didn't I tell you, Bat--”
“Bad luck to every bit of you!” says he, interrupting her; “bad luck to
you and your _bull-rushes_ too, and all them that plays upon words! I
know well enough of what you're going to remind me.”
“Bat,” says she, “it isn't a year since I--”