Fardorougha, The Miser: The Works of William Carleton, Volume OneCarleton, William
General
Fardorougha, The Miser: The Works of William Carleton, Volume One
Carleton, William
Ireland -- Social life and customs -- Fiction
We must now beg our readers to accompany us to a scene of a different
description from any we have yet drawn. The night of a November day had
set in, or rather had advanced so far as nine o'clock, and towards the
angle of a small three-cornered field, called by a peculiar coincidence
of name, Oona's Handkerchief, in consequence of an old legend connected
with it, might be seen moving a number of straggling figures, sometimes
in groups of fours and fives; sometimes in twos or threes as the case
might be, and not unfrequently did a single straggler advance, and,
after a few private words, either join the others or proceed alone to a
house situated in the angular corner of the field to which we allude. As
the district was a remote one, and the night rather dark, several shots
might be heard as they proceeded, and several flashes in the pan seen
from the rusty arms of those who were probably anxious to pull a trigger
for the first time. The country, at the period we write of, be it
observed, was in a comparative state of tranquility, and no such thing
as a police corps had been heard of or known in the neighborhood.
At the lower end of a long, level kind of moor called the Black Park,
two figures approached a* kind of gate or pass that opened into it.
One of them stood until the other advanced, and, in a significant tone,
asked who comes there?
“A friend to the guard,” was the reply.
“Good morrow,” said the other.
“Good morrow mornin' to you.”
“What age are you in?”
“In the end of the Fifth.”
“All right; come on, boy; the true blood's in you, whoever you are.”
“An' is it possible you don't know me, Dandy?”
“Faix, it is; I forgot my spectacles tonight. Who the dickins are you at
all?”
“I suppose you purtind to forget Ned M'Cormick?”
“Is it Nogher's son?”
“The divil a other; an', Dandy Duffy, how are you, man alive?”
“Why, you see, Ned, I've been so long out of the counthry, an' I'm now
so short a time back, that, upon my sowl, I forget a great many of my
ould acquaintances, especially them that wor only slips when I wint
acrass. Faith, I'm purty well considherin, Ned, I thank you.”
“Bad luck to them that sint you acrass, Dandy; not but that you got
off purty well on the whole, by all accounts. They say only that Rousin
Redhead swore like a man you'd 'a' got a touch of the Shaggy Shoe.”
“To the divil wid it all now, Ned; let us have no more about it; I don't
for my own part like to think of it. Have you any notion of what we're
called upon for to--night?”
“Divil the laste; but I believe, Dandy, that Bartle's not the
white-headed boy wid you no more nor wid some more of us.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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