The party of Merryvale was in motion for the place of action about the same time, and a merrier pack of rascals never was on the march. Murphy, in accordance with his preconceived notion of a "fine effect," had literally "a cart full of fiddlers;" but the fiddlers hadn't it all to themselves, for there was another cart full of pipers; and, by way of mockery to the grandeur of Scatterbrain's band, he had four or five boys with gridirons, which they played upon with pokers, and half a dozen strapping fellows carrying large iron tea-trays, which they whopped after the manner of a Chinese gong. It so happened that the two roads from Merryvale and Neck-or-Nothing Hall met at an acute angle, at the same end of the town, and it chanced that the rival candidates and their retinues arrived at this point about the same time. "There they are!" said Murphy, who presided in the cart full of fiddlers like a leader in an orchestra, with a shillelah for his _baton_, which he flourished over his head as he shouted, "Now give it to them, your sowls!--rasp and lilt away, boys!--slate the gridirons, Mike!--smaddher the tay-tray, Tom!" The uproar of strange sounds that followed, shouting included, may be easier imagined than described; and O'Grady, answering the war-cry, sung out to his band--"What are you at, you lazy rascals?--don't you hear _them_ blackguards beginning?--fire away, and be hanged to you!" His rascals shouted, bang went the drum, and clang went the cymbals, the clarionet squeaked, and the fife tootled, but the trumpet--ah!--the trumpet--their great reliance--where was the trumpet? O'Grady inquired in the precise words, with a diabolical addition of his own. "Where the d---- is the trumpet?" said he; he looked over the side of the carriage as he spoke, and saw the trumpeter spitting out a mouthful of beer which had run from the instrument as he lifted it to his mouth. "Bad luck to you, what are you wasting your time there for?" thundered O'Grady in a rage; "why didn't you spit out when you were young, and you'd be a clean old man? Blow and be d---- to you!"