Handy Andy Volume I Part 36

"By the hokey," said Mick, "I never see him in sitch a tattherin'

rage!"--bang went the bell again--"Ow, ow!" cried Mick, bolting a piece of fat bacon, wiping his mouth on the sleeve of his livery, and running up-stairs.

"Misses Cook, ma'am," said Andy, shoving back his chair from the table; "thank you, ma'am, for your good supper. I think I'll be goin' now."

"Sure, you're not done yet, man alive."

"Enough is as good as a feast, ma'am," replied Andy.

"Augh! sure the morsel you took is more like a fast than a feast," said the cook, "and it's not Lent."

"It's not lent, sure enough," said Larry Hogan, with a sly grin; "it's not _lent_, for you _gave_ it to him."

"Ah, Misther Hogan, you're always goin' on with your conundherums,"

said the cook; "sure, that's not the lent I mane at all--I mane Good Friday Lent."

"Faix, every Friday is good Friday that a man gets his supper," said Larry.

"Well, you _will_ be goin' on, Misther Hogan," said the cook. "Oh, but you're a witty man; but I'd rather have a yard of your lace, any day, than a mile o' your discourse."

"Sure, you ought not to mind my goin' _on_, when you're lettin'

another man go _off_, that-a-way," said Larry, pointing to Andy, who, hat in hand, was quitting the kitchen.

"Faix an' he mustn't go," said the cook; "there's two words to that bargain;" and she closed the door, and put her back against it.

"My mother's expectin' me, ma'am," said Andy.

"Throth, if 't was your wife was expectin' you, she must wait a bit,"

said the cook; "sure you wouldn't leave the thirsty curse on my kitchen?--you must take a dhrop before you go; besides the dogs outside the place would ate you onless there was some one they knew along wid you: and sure, if a dog bit you, you couldn't dhrink wather afther, let alone a dhrop o' beer, or a thrifle o' sper'ts: isn't that thrue, Misther Hogan?"

"Indeed an' it is, ma'am," answered Larry; "no one can dhrink afther a dog bites them, and that's the rayson that the larn'd fackleties calls the disaise high-_dhry_----"

"High-dhry what?" asked the cook.

"That's what I'm thinkin' of," said Larry.

"High-dhry--high-dhry--something."

"There's high-dhry snuff," said the cook.

"Oh, no--no, no, ma'am!" said Larry, waving his hand and shaking his head, as if unwilling to be interrupted in endeavouring to recall

"Some fleeting remembrance;"

"high-dhry--po--po--something about po; 'faith, it's not unlike popery," said Larry.

"Don't say popery," cried the cook; "it's a dirty word! Say Roman Catholic when you spake of the faith."

"Do you think _I_ would undhervalue the faith?" said Larry, casting up his eyes. "Oh, Missis Mulligan, you know little of me; d' you think I would undhervalue what is my hope, past, present, and to come?--_what_ makes our hearts light when our lot is heavy?--_what_ makes us love our neighbour as ourselves?"

"Indeed, Misther Hogan," broke in the cook, "I never knew any one fonder of calling in on a neighbour than yourself, particularly about dinner-time----"

"What makes us," said Larry, who would _not_ let the cook interrupt his outpouring of pious eloquence--"what makes us fierce in prosperity to our friends, and meek in adversity to our inimies?"

"Oh! Misther Hogan!" said the cook, blessing herself.

"What puts the leg undher you when you are in throuble? why, your faith: what makes you below desait, and above reproach, and on neither side of nothin'?" Larry slapped the table like a prime minister, and there was no opposition. "Oh, Missis Mulligan, do you think I would desaive or bethray my fellow-crayture? Oh, no--I would not wrong the child unborn,"--and this favourite phrase of Larry (and other rascals) was, and is, unconsciously, true; for people, most generally, must be born before they _can_ be much wronged.

"Oh, Missis Mulligan," said Larry, with a devotional appeal of his eyes to the ceiling, "be at war with sin, and you'll be at paice with yourself!"

Just as Larry wound up his pious peroration, Mick shoved in the door, against which the cook supported herself, and told Andy the Squire said he should not leave the Hall that night.

Andy looked aghast.

Again Larry Hogan's eye was on him.

"Sure I can come back here in the mornin'," said Andy, who at the moment he spoke was conscious of the intention of being some forty miles out of the place before dawn, if he could get away.

"When the Squire says a thing, it must be done," said Mick. "You must sleep here."

"And pleasant dhrames to you," said Larry, who saw Andy wince under his kindly worded stab.

"And where must I sleep?" asked Andy, dolefully.

"Out in the big loft," said Mick.

"I'll show you the way," said Larry; "I'm goin' to sleep there myself to-night, for it would be too far to go home. Good night, Mrs.

Mulligan--good night, Mickey--come along, Andy."

Andy followed Hogan. They had to cross a yard to reach the stables; the night was clear, and the waning moon shed a steady though not a bright light on the enclosure. Hogan cast a lynx eye around him to see if the coast was clear, and satisfying himself it was, he laid his hand impressively on Andy's arm as they reached the middle of the yard, and setting Andy's face right against the moonlight, so that he might watch the slightest expression, he paused for a moment before he spoke; and when he spoke, it was in a low mysterious whisper--low, as if he feared the night breeze might betray it,--and the words were few, but potent, which he uttered; they were these--"_Who robbed the post-office?_"

The result quite satisfied Hogan; and he knew how to turn his knowledge to account. O'Grady and Egan were no longer friends; a political contest was pending; letters were missing; Andy had been Egan's servant; and Larry Hogan had enough of that mental chemical power, which, from a few raw facts, unimportant separately, could make a combination of great value.

Soon after breakfast at Merryvale the following morning, Mrs. Egan wanted to see the Squire. She went to his sitting-room--it was bolted.

He told her, from the inside, he was engaged just then, but would see her by-and-by. She retired to the drawing-room, where f.a.n.n.y was singing.

"Oh, f.a.n.n.y," said her sister, "sing me that dear new song of 'The Voices,' 't is so sweet, and must be felt by those who, like me, have a happy home."

f.a.n.n.y struck a few notes of a wild and peculiar symphony, and sang her sister's favourite.

THE VOICE WITHIN

I

You ask the dearest place on earth, Whose simple joys can never die; 'T is the holy pale of the happy hearth, Where love doth light each beaming eye.

With snowy shroud Let tempests loud Around my old tower raise their din;-- What boots the shout Of storms without, While voices sweet resound within?

O dearer sound For the tempests round, The voices sweet within!

II

I ask not wealth, I ask not power; But, gracious Heaven, oh grant to me That, when the storms of Fate may lower, My heart just like my home may be!