“Well, ma'am, Wednesday morning came, and at six o'clock my grandfather
was on the way to Ballyriggan, and at nine he was in the wood, posted
at the very spot M'Claverty told him, as happy as any man could be whose
expectations were so overwhelming. A long hour passed over, and another;
nobody passed but a baker's boy with a bull-dog after him, and an old
woman that was stealing brushwood in the shrubbery. My grandfather
remarked her well, and determined to tell his Grace of it; but his own
business soon drove that out of his head, for eleven o'clock came, and
now there was no knowing the moment the Duke might appear. With his
watch in his hand, he counted the minutes, ay, even the seconds; if he
was a thief going to be hanged, and looking out over the heads of the
crowd for a fellow to gallop in with a reprieve, he could n't have
suffered more: his heart was in his mouth. At last, it might be about
half-past eleven, he heard a footstep on the gravel, and then a loud,
deep cough,--'a fine kind of cough,' my grandfather afterwards called
it. He peeped out; and there, sure enough, at about sixty paces, coming
down the walk, was a large, grand-looking man,--not that he was dressed
as became him, for, strange as you may think it, the Lord-Lieutenant had
on a shooting-jacket, and a pair of plaid trousers, and cloth boots, and
a big lump of a stick in his hand,--and lucky it was that my grandfather
knew him, for he bought a picture of him. On he came nearer and nearer;
every step on the gravel-walk drove out of my grandfather's head half
a dozen of the fine things he had got off by heart to say during the
interview, until at last he was so overcome by joy, anxiety, and a kind
of terror, that he could n't tell where he was, or what was going to
happen to him, but he had a kind of instinct that reminded him he was to
jump out when the Duke was near him; and 'pon my conscience so he did,
clean and clever, into the middle of the walk, right in front of his
Grace. My grandfather used to say, in telling the story, that he
verily believed his feelings at that moment would have made him burst a
blood-vessel if it wasn't that the Duke put his hands to his sides and
laughed till the woods rang again; but, between shame and fright, my
grandfather did n't join in the laugh.
“'In Heaven's name!' said his Grace, 'who or what are you?--this isn't
May-day.'
“My grandfather took this speech as a rebuke for standing so bold in his
Grace's presence; and being a shrewd man, and never deficient in tact,
what does he do but drops down on his two knees before him? 'My Lord,'
said he, 'I am only Dodd and Dempsey.'
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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