Lady Maude, however, had not yet arrived, and even if she had, how should she ever hear of an adventure in the Bog of Allen! But was there to be an adventure? and, if so, what sort of adventure? Irishmen, Walpole had heard, had all the jealousy about their women that characterises savage races, and were ready to resent what, in civilised people, no one would dream of regarding as matter for umbrage. Well, then, it was only to be more cautious--more on one’s guard--besides the tact, too, which a knowledge of life should give-- ‘Eh, what’s this? Why are you stopping here?’ This was addressed now to the driver, who had descended from his box, and was standing in advance of the horse. ‘Why don’t I drive on, is it?’ asked he, in a voice of despair. ‘Sure, there’s no road.’ ‘And does it stop here?’ cried Walpole in horror, for he now perceived that the road really came to an abrupt ending in the midst of the bog. ‘Begorra, it’s just what it does. Ye see, your honour,’ added he, in a confidential tone, ‘it’s one of them tricks the English played us in the year of the famine. They got two millions of money to make roads in Ireland, but they were so afraid it would make us prosperous and richer than themselves, that they set about making roads that go nowhere. Sometimes to the top of a mountain, or down to the sea, where there was no harbour, and sometimes, like this one, into the heart of a bog.’ ‘That was very spiteful and very mean, too,’ said Walpole. ‘Wasn’t it just mean, and nothing else! and it’s five miles we’ll have to go back now to the cross-roads. Begorra, your honour, it’s a good dhrink ye’ll have to give me for this day’s work.’ ‘You forget, my friend, that but for your own confounded stupidity, I should have been at Kilgobbin Castle by this time.’ ‘And ye’ll be there yet, with God’s help!’ said he, turning the horse’s head. ‘Bad luck to them for the road-making, and it’s a pity, after all, it goes nowhere, for it’s the nicest bit to travel in the whole country.’ ‘Come now, jump up, old fellow, and make your beast step out. I don’t want to pass the night here.’ ‘You wouldn’t have a dhrop of whisky with your honour?’ ‘Of course not.’ ‘Nor even brandy?’ ‘No, not even brandy.’ ‘Musha, I’m thinking you must be English,’ muttered he, half sulkily. ‘And if I were, is there any great harm in that?’ ‘By coorse not; how could ye help it? I suppose we’d all of us be better if we could. Sit a bit more forward, your honour; the belly band does be lifting her, and as you’re doing nothing, just give her a welt of that stick in your hand, now and then, for I lost the lash off my whip, and I’ve nothing but this!’ And he displayed the short handle of what had once been a whip, with a thong of leather dangling at the end. ‘I must say I wasn’t aware that I was to have worked my passage,’ said Walpole, with something between drollery and irritation.