The Absentee Part 20

'All's safe!'

'Pray, my good friend, may I ask what that is you have on your shoulder?' said Lord Colambre.

PLASE your honour, it is only a private still, which I've just caught out yonder in the bog; and I'm carrying it in with all speed to the gauger, to make a discovery, that the JANTLEMAN may benefit by the reward; I expect he'll make me a compliment.'

'Get up behind, and I'll give you a lift,' said the postillion.

'Thank you kindly--but better my legs!' said the man; and turning down a lane, off he ran again as fast as possible.

'Expect he'll make me a compliment,' repeated Lord Colambre, 'to make a discovery!'

Ay, plase your honour; for the law is,' said Larry, 'that, if an unlawful still, that is, a still without license for whisky, is found, half the benefit of the fine that's put upon the parish goes to him that made the discovery; that's what that man is after, for he's an informer.'

'I should not have thought, from what I see of you,' said Lord Colambre, smiling, 'that you, Larry, would have offered an informer a lift.'

'Oh, plase your honour!' said Larry, smiling archly, 'would not I give the laws a lift, when in my power?'

Scarcely had he uttered these words, and scarcely was the informer out of sight, when across the same bog, and over the ditch, came another man, a half kind of gentleman, with a red silk handkerchief about his neck, and a silver-handled whip in his hand.

'Did you see any man pa.s.s the road, friend?' said he to the postillion.

'Oh! who would I see? or why would I tell?' replied Larry, in a sulky tone.

'Came, come, be smart!' said the man with the silver whip, offering to put half a crown into the postillion's hand; 'point me which way he took.'

'I'll have none a' your silver! don't touch me with it!' said Larry.

'But, if you'll take my advice, you'll strike across back, and follow the fields, out to Killogenesawee.'

The exciseman set out again immediately, in an opposite direction to that which the man who carried the still had taken. Lord Colambre now perceived that the pretended informer had been running off to conceal a still of his own.

'The gauger, plase your honour,' said Larry, looking back at Lord Colambre; 'the gauger is a STILL-HUNTING!'

'And you put him on a wrong scent!' said Lord Colambre.

'Sure, I told him no lie; I only said, "If you'll take my advice." And why was he such a fool as to take my advice, when I wouldn't take his fee?'

'So this is the way, Larry, you give a lift to the laws!'

'If the laws would give a lift to me, plase your honour, maybe I'd do as much by them. But it's only these revenue laws I mean; for I never, to my knowledge, broke another commandment; but it's what no honest poor man among his neighbours would scruple to take--a gla.s.s of POTSHEEN.'

'A gla.s.s of what, in the name of Heaven?' said Lord Colambre.

POTSHEEN, plase your honour;--becaase it's the little whisky that's made in the private still or pot; and SHEEN, becaase it's a fond word for whatsoever we'd like, and for what we have little of, and would make much of: after taking the gla.s.s of it, no man could go and inform to ruin the CRATURES, for they all shelter on that estate under favour of them that go shares, and make rent of 'em--but I'd never inform again'

'em. And, after all, if the truth was known, and my Lord Clonbrony should be informed against, and presented, for it's his neglect is the bottom of the nuisance--'

'I find all the blame is thrown upon this poor Lord Clonbrony,' said Lord Colambre.

'Becaase he is absent,' said Larry. 'It would not be so was he PRISINT.

But your honour was talking to me about the laws. Your honour's a stranger in this country, and astray about them things. Sure, why would I mind the laws about whisky, more than the quality, or the judge on the bench?'

'What do you mean?'

'Why! was not I PRISINT in the court-house myself, when the JIDGE on the bench judging a still, and across the court came in one with a sly jug of POTSHEEN for the JIDGE himself, who prefarred it, when the right thing, to claret; and when I SEEN that, by the laws! a man might talk himself dumb to me after again' potsheen, or in favour of the revenue, or revenue-officers. And there they may go on, with their gaugers, and their surveyors, and their supervisors, and their WATCHING-OFFICERS, and their coursing-officers, setting 'em one after another, or one over the head of another, or what way they will--we can baffle and laugh at 'em.

Didn't I know, next door to our inn, last year, ten WATCHING-OFFICERS set upon one distiller, and he was too cunning for them; and it will always be so, while ever the people think it no sin. No, till then, not all their dockets and permits signify a rush, or a turf. And the gauging rod even! who fears it? They may spare that rod, for it will never mend the child.'

How much longer Larry's dissertation on the distillery laws would have continued, had not his ideas been interrupted, we cannot guess; but he saw he was coming to a town, and he gathered up the reins, and plied the whip, ambitious to make a figure in the eyes of its inhabitants.

This TOWN consisted of one row of miserable huts, sunk beneath the side of the road, the mud walls crooked in every direction; some of them opening in wide cracks, or zigzag fissures, from top to bottom, as if there had just been an earthquake--all the roofs sunk in various places--thatch off, or overgrown with gra.s.s--no chimneys, the smoke making its way through a hole in the roof, or rising in clouds from the top of the open door--dunghills before the doors, and green standing puddles--squalid children, with scarcely rags to cover them, gazing at the carriage.

'Nugent's town,' said the postillion, 'once a snug place, when my Lady Clonbrony was at home to whitewash it, and the like.'

As they drove by, some men and women put their heads through the smoke out of the cabins; pale women with long, black, or yellow locks--men with countenances and figures bereft of hope and energy.

'Wretched, wretched people!' said Lord Colambre.

'Then it's not their fault neither,' said Larry; 'for my own uncle's one of them, and as thriving and hard a working man as could be in all Ireland, he was, AFORE he was tramped under foot, and his heart broke. I was at his funeral, this time last year; and for it, may the agent's own heart, if he has any, burn--'

Lord Colambre interrupted this denunciation by touching Larry's shoulder, and asking some question, which, as Larry did not distinctly comprehend, he pulled up the reins, and the various noises of the vehicle stopped suddenly.

I did not hear well, plase your honour.'

'What are those people?' pointing to a man and woman, curious figures, who had come out of a cabin, the door of which the woman, who came out last, locked, and carefully hiding the key in the thatch, turned her back upon the man, and they walked away in different directions: the woman bending under a huge bundle on her back, covered by a yellow petticoat turned over her shoulders; from the top of this bundle the head of an infant appeared; a little boy, almost naked, followed her with a kettle, and two girls, one of whom could but just walk, held her hand and clung to her ragged petticoat; forming, altogether, a complete group of beggars. The woman stopped, and looked back after the man.

The man was a Spanish-looking figure, with gray hair; a wallet hung at the end of a stick over one shoulder, a reaping-hook in the other hand; he walked off stoutly, without ever casting a look behind him.

'A kind harvest to you, John Dolan,' cried the postillion, 'and success to ye, Winny, with the quality. There's a luck-penny for the child to begin with,' added he, throwing the child a penny. 'Your honour, they're only poor CRATURES going up the country to beg, while the man goes over to reap the harvest in England. Nor this would not be, neither, if the lord was in it to give 'em EMPLOY. That man, now, was a good and a willing SLAVE in his day: I mind him working with myself in the shrubberies at Clonbrony Castle, when I was a boy--but I'll not be detaining your honour, now the road's better.'

The postillion drove on at a good rate for some time, till he came to a piece of the road freshly covered with broken stones, where he was obliged again to go slowly.

They overtook a string of cars, on which were piled up high, beds, tables, chairs, trunks, boxes, bandboxes.

'How are you, Finnucan? you've fine loading there--from Dublin, are you?'

'From Bray.'

'And what news?'

'GREAT news and bad, for old Nick, or some belonging to him, thanks be to Heaven! for myself hates him.'

'What's happened him?'

'His sister's husband that's failed, the great grocer that was, the man that had the wife that OW'D [Owned] the fine house near Bray, that they got that time the Parliament FLITTED, and that I seen in her carriage flaming--well, it's all out; they're all DONE UP.

'Tut! is that all? then they'll thrive, and set up again grander than ever, I'll engage; have not they old Nick for an attorney at their back?

a good warrant!'

'Oh, trust him for that! he won't go security nor pay a farthing for his s.h.i.+STER, nor wouldn't was she his father; I heard him telling her so, which I could not have done in his place at that time, and she crying as if her heart would break, and I standing by in the parlour.'

'The NEGER! [NEGER, quasi negro; meo periculo, n.i.g.g.aRD] And did he speak that way, and you by?'