LITMIR.BIZ

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you abounds in kindness and good-nature!” said he, in an accent of sarcastic bitterness.

      “And who’ll say the reverse?” answered a voice from behind, and, turning, he beheld the little hunchbacked fellow who carried the mail on foot from Oughterard, a distance of sixteen miles, over a mountain, and who was popularly known as “Billy the Bag,” from the little leather sack which seemed to form part of his attire. “Who ‘ll stand up and tell me it’s not a fine country in every sense, – for natural beauties, for antiquities, for elegant men and lovely females, for quarries of marble and mines of gould?”

      Craggs looked contemptuously at the figure who thus declaimed of Ireland’s wealth and grandeur, and, in a sneering tone, said, —

      “And with such riches on every side, why do you go barefoot – why are you in rags, my old fellow?”

      “Is n’t there poor everywhere? If the world was all gould and silver, what would be the precious metals – tell me that? Is it because there’s a little cripple like myself here, that them mountains yonder is n’t of copper and iron and cobalt? Come over with me after I lave the bags at the office, and I ‘ll show you bits of every one I speak of.”

      “I’d rather you’d show me a doctor, my worthy fellow,” said Craggs, sighing.

      “I’m the nearest thing to that same going,” replied Billy. “I can breathe a vein against any man in the barony. I can’t say, that for any articular congestion of the aortic valves, or for a sero-pulmonic diathesis – d’ye mind? – that there isn’t as good as me; but for the ould school of physic, the humoral diagnostic touch, who can beat me?”

      “Will you come with me across the lough, and see my lord, then?” said Craggs, who was glad even of such aid in his emergency.

      “And why not, when I lave the bags?” said Billy, touching the leather sack as he spoke.

      If the Corporal was not without his misgivings as to the skill and competence of his companion, there was something in the fluent volubility of the little fellow that overawed and impressed him, while his words were uttered in a rich mellow voice, that gave them a sort of solemn persuasiveness.

      “Were you always on the road?” asked the Corporal, curious to learn some particulars of his history.

      “No, sir; I was twenty things before I took to the bags. I was a poor scholar for four years; I kept school in Erris; I was ‘on’ the ferry in Dublin with my fiddle for eighteen months; and I was a bear in Liverpool for part of a winter.”

      “A bear!” exclaimed Craggs. “Yes, sir. It was an Italian – one Pipo Chiassi by name – that lost his beast at Manchester, and persuaded me, as I was about the same stature, to don the sable, and perform in his place. After that I took to writin’ for the papers – ‘The Skibbereen Celt’ – and supported myself very well till it broke. But here we are at the office, so I ‘ll step in, and get my fiddle, too, if you ‘ve no objection.”

      The Corporal’s meditations scarcely were of a kind to reassure him, as he thought over the versatile character of his new friend; but the case offered no alternative – it was Billy or nothing – since to reach Clifden on foot would be the labor of many hours, and in the interval his master should be left utterly alone. While he was thus musing, Billy reappeared, with a violin under one arm and a much-worn quarto under the other.

      “This,” said he, touching the volume, “is the ‘Whole Art and Mystery of Physic,’ by one Fabricius, of Aquapendente; and if we don’t find a cure for the case down here, take my word for it, it’s among the morba ignota, as Paracelsus says.”

      “Well, come along,” said Craggs, impatiently, and set off at a speed that, notwithstanding Billy’s habits of foot-travel, kept him at a sharp trot. A few minutes more saw them, with canvas spread, skimming across the lough, towards Glencore.

      “Glencore – Glencore!” muttered Billy once or twice to himself, as the swift boat bounded through the hissing surf. “Did you ever hear Lady Lucy’s Lament?” And he struck a few chords with his fingers as he sang: —

      “‘I care not for your trellised vine,

      I love the dark woods on the shore,

      Nor all the towers along the Rhine

      Are dear to me as old Glencore.

      The ragged cliff, Ben Creggan high,

      Re-echoing the Atlantic roar,

      Are mingling with the seagull’s cry

      My welcome back to old Glencore.’

      And then there’s a chorus.”

      “That’s a signal to us to make haste,” said the Corporal, pointing to a bright flame which suddenly shot up on the shore of the lough. “Put out an oar to leeward there, and keep her up to the wind.”

      And Billy, perceiving his minstrelsy unattended to, consoled himself by humming over, for his own amusement, the remainder of his ballad.

      The wind freshened as the night grew darker, and heavy seas repeatedly broke on the bow, and swept over the boat in sprayey showers.

      “It’s that confounded song of yours has got the wind up,” said Craggs, angrily; “stand by the sheet, and stop your croning!”

      “That’s an error vulgaris, attributing to music marine disasters,” said Billy, calmly; “it arose out of a mistake about one Orpheus.”

      “Slack off there!” cried Craggs, as a squall struck the boat, and laid her almost over.

      Billy, however, had obeyed the mandate promptly, and she soon righted, and held on her course.

      “I wish they’d show the light again on shore,” muttered the Corporal; “the night is black as pitch.”

      “Keep the top of the mountain a little to windward, and you ‘re all right,” said Billy. “I know the lough well; I used to come here all hours, day and night, once, spearing salmon.”

      “And smuggling, too!” added Craggs.

      “Yes, sir; brandy, and tay, and pigtail, for Mister Sheares, in Oughterard.”

      “What became of him?” asked Craggs.

      “He made a fortune and died, and his son married a lady!”

      “Here comes another; throw her head up in the wind,” cried Craggs.

      This time the order came too late; for the squall struck her with the suddenness of a shot, and she canted over till her keel lay out of water, and, when she righted, it was with the white surf boiling over her.

      “She’s a good boat, then, to stand that,” said Billy, as he struck a light for his pipe, with all the coolness of one perfectly at his ease; and Craggs, from that very moment, conceived a favorable opinion of the little hunchback.

      “Now we’re in the smooth water, Corporal,” cried Billy; “let her go a little free.”

      And, obedient to the advice, he ran the boat swiftly along till she entered a small creek, so sheltered by the highlands that the water within was still as a mountain tarn.

      “You never made the passage on a worse night, I ‘ll be bound,” said Craggs, as he sprang on shore.

      “Indeed and I did, then,” replied Billy. “I remember – it was two days before Christmas – we were blown out to say in a small boat, not more than the half of this, and we only made the west side of Arran Island after thirty-six hours’ beating and tacking. I wrote an account of it for the ‘Tyrawly Regenerator,’ commencing with —

      “‘The elemential conflict that with tremendious violence raged, ravaged, and ruined the adamantine foundations of our western coast, on Tuesday, the 23rd of December – ‘”

      “Come along, come along,” said Craggs; “we’ve something else to think of.”

      And with this admonition, very curtly bestowed, he stepped out briskly on the path towards Glencore.

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