ruffians have been and stolen them from me the day!”
The unhappy man’s broad fat face was now perfectly crimson with excitement; indeed, so imminent did the danger of apoplexy appear to Manus O’Flaherty, the younger of the brothers, that he retreated hastily to avoid the possible consequences of the stout man’s collapse. At that moment, however, a “boy,” the waiter of some half-century’s standing at the Ballinasloe Hotel, rushed, bareheaded and breathless, on the platform, exclaiming as he did so:
“Is the jintleman in it as slept in the big room with the small little bed in the corner of it?”
“Shure it’s mysel’ was in it,” responded the stout man, leaning forward, and speaking with great eagerness.
“And did ye be laving anything afther ye at all?”
“I did—some notes, shurely.”
“Was it two hunder pound, now?”
“It was.”
“Shure it’s mysel’ ’as found ’em a-rowling on the flure.”
“And is it along wid ye, ye have them?”
“It is—in my fhist, bedad!”
The stout man held out his hand, and grasping the notes which the honest old waiter placed unsuspectingly within them, he turned them over rapidly, in order to ascertain if the dirty, crumpled paper which he held were actually identical with his missing treasure.
“Bedad, an’ it’s all right!” was his joyous exclamation when the examination was concluded; and then, thrusting the money deep into his huge breeches-pocket, he buttoned it up with an air as though he would say, “They’ve got the better of me once, but they’ll be wide awake if they do it a second time, and be hanged to ’em!”
But during the second or two wasted in this imaginary Saxon soliloquy, the exceptional inn waiter—for may he not well be called so?—stood gazing on the man he had so signally befriended, with a face compounded of mystification and remonstrance. Small time had he, however, to put his looks into words, for, ere his mouth could open, the train was set in motion, and Paddy—totally unrewarded for his disinterestedness, and the considerable trouble he had taken—was left standing on the platform, regretting, in all probability, his lost opportunity, and telling himself in his own language that honesty is not always the best policy. And now—although I do not look upon myself as a peculiarly sensitive individual—I must confess that I should not exactly like to have stood either in the shoes or the situation of Mr. John Burke—for such was the “snug man’s” name—that day. Public opinion is a tremendous engine, and public opinion was hard at work against him. It is true it was only expressed in the countenances of five common-place and second-class men whom he might never set eyes on again in the course of his mortal career; but still, for the nonce—that is to say, for several hours probably—those contemptuous faces were turned upon him, and, what is more, the niggardly traveller was painfully aware of the fact. But whilst shrinking, in spite of his self-importance, from the glances of those opposite to him, it was in reality of the Galway brothers that John Burke stood most in awe, for he had caught a word or two of whispered commentary far from complimentary to himself, and the farmer had not now to learn to what lengths the spirits of frolicsome Irish youths of the O’Flaherty stamp are capable of carrying their possessors. Still Mr. Burke, to the best of his power, put a good face on the matter; and, after telling himself more than once that his money was his own, and that he had a right to do what he liked with it, he, soothed doubtless by the previous imbibing of sundry glasses of whisky, yielded his ponderous person to the embraces of Morpheus, and slept as soundly as though he had been both just and generous. It appeared, however, that even in his slumbers the imagination of the fortunate owner of the “brown hunter’s” price, was still running on his almost miraculously restored property, for his fingers sought the solace of its agreeable touch, and, diving into the lowest recesses of the pocket where the dirty specimens of filthy lucre were reposing, they brought the flimsy paper gradually, but all unwittingly, to the orifice, where the thick brown hand was so lovingly lingering. Not long, however, did those protecting fingers retain their hold, for as the slumbers of the unconscious man grew more intense his grasp relaxed, and the hand falling inertly by his side, the precious paper was left exposed—a considerable portion of the roll of notes actually protruding from the pocket of their slumbering owner.
Manus and Val O’Flaherty caught sight at one and the same moment of this unexpected apparition, and a thought—the offspring of fun and frolic—flashed in an instant through the minds of each.
“The mane fellow!” said Val in a whisper to his brother—although the precaution of low speaking was wholly unnecessary from the fact that all the other inhabitants of the carriage were sleeping soundly under the influence of fatigue and whisky. “The mane fellow! nivir so much as to offer the poor boy a sixpence, and he running fit to knock the life out of him!”
“The dirty schroundrel!” responded Manus, in the same tone. “It’s myself ’ud like to play him a thrick about the money.”
“I’d just like to give him the fright,” said Val, who was seated the farthest from the object of their animadversions. “Shure, thin, an’ it ’ud be grate foon enthirely to make him shake agin the day! An’ wouldn’t I like to see the big long face he’d be making for the minute when he’d wake up, and find his notes gone astray on him agin, the spalpeen!”
They were scarcely more than boys, and the love of a joke was almost irresistibly strong within them, or they would never have yielded so instantaneously to the temptation into which they had been led. They took no time, indeed, for thought, or the consideration of consequences, for Manus’s hand was already on the roll of notes, and, gently drawing it from the pocket of the unconscious farmer, he held it triumphantly towards his brother.
Val had looked on at the operation with dilated