THE VALLEY OF THE INNOCENTS.
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usha! bad cess to you, Darby Dillon! Och, wirra! wirra! is id goin to brake the doore in ye are wid hammerin? By the blessed light one id think ye had a goat’s horn on every knuckle! Ha—ha—ha! yer at it agin, ye dirty baste! Ugh! I suppose I must let you in.”
Knock, knock—rattle, rattle.
“Hurry, hurry wid ye, Thade alanna!—hurry, I say. Tell the gintleman in the big beard that I’m off, but’ll wait a start for him if he’s purty lively.”
Post-horn: turroo-turroo-turroo-too! ad lib.
Thus was I awoke out of a most delightful slumber, during which I had pleasantly travelled through all the pleasant paths of dreamland. A rude awakening it was, but its accompaniments were worse. The rain poured in torrents—enough, as I heard Darby, the mail-driver, soliloquise outside, “to pelt holes in the hide of a runosceros!” The tempest raged in fury, an inky darkness pervaded, and I had the prospect of an eight hours’ drive before me into the heart of the kingdom of Kerry.
There was nothing else for it; so, with the resolution of despair, I sprang from my turf smoke-perfumed couch, nearly upsetting Thade as he rushed into my room.
“Och! murther, yer honor! I’m ruined intirely. I overslep mysel, and there’s that villin Darby has come too airly, a purpose—”
“Just give Darby my compliments, and ask him would not a drop of hot water, with the insects in it scalded with a drop of whiskey, make him weather-proof this morning?”
“Begar, jest the thing to keep the old baste from growlin his liver out, yer honor!” was the delighted answer of the shock-headed little waiter of the principal house of entertainment for man and beast in the good town of Tralee.
I peeped through the window, and could just discern the outline of the vehicle upon which I was about to undergo an amount of bodily suffering which none but those who have travelled on an Irish mail-car can at all appreciate. Perched upon the apex of a rectangularly-shaped box, appeared a bulky mass of shiny wet oilskin garments: naught of the “human form divine” could be seen save a red button of a nose, and about an inch of brickdust-coloured cheek, revealed by the occasional flashings from the bowl of a “dudheen;” with a thing called a hat set well forward to meet the driving rain, and the car drawn close to the door, so that he could reach it with the butt of his whip—there sat Darby Dillon, one of the rarest specimens of an Irish driver it ever fell to my lot to encounter.
After fortifying the inner man, and disposing of Thade and his fee, which he acknowledged with a “God bless yer honor—ids yerself I always found to be a raale ossifer; and sure ye never lave us bud I’m wishin ye back agin!” which certainly puzzled me, as I had never set eyes upon him before, and mentally hoped I never might again; I proceeded to mount, and we rattled out of the town, getting an occasional “thug” from a rut or a stone about the size of a thirty-two pound shot, occasioning a shock which sent a throe of agony through the fag-ends of one’s teeth, when Darby opened fire.
“Does yer honor iver take a blast of the pipe?” he inquired, with a patronising bend of his bullet-shaped cranium.
“Often, Darby, mabouchal!” said I; for there is nothing will open an Irishman’s heart like entering into his ways at once.
“Here ye are thin, alanna!” returned he. “Niver be afraid uv id; ids good for the lungs, bewtiful to privint ketching a cowld, and whin yer inclined in the way of miditation, bedad ids quare what castles ye can build up out uv the smoke uv a dudheen.”
Accepting Darby’s philosophy, I was speedily occupied in dispersing volumes from the generous weed; during which we overtook a tall, shambling-gaited individual, clothed in black, a cross between a distressed tradesman and an unfrocked parson.
“D’ye see that chap?” inquired Darby.
“Yes; what of him?”
“Well now, if that was a daycint fellow, I’d give him a lift this blake mornin,—but. Morrow—morrow, kindly!” he exclaimed to the individual in question, “but as I was sayin, yer honor, he’s one uv them snaking Soupers!”
“What the plague is that, Darby?” I inquired, for he might just as well have catechised me in pagan nomenclature.
“Ye see how it is, yer honor, that ther’s some people in this world when ther well off don’t know it, and can’t keep thimselves to thimselves, and lave ther neighbours to make ther pace wid heaven afther ther own notions; but begor if they find out that you dig wid the left foot, they’ll want to make ye dig wid the right, and so the