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Pat looked in the desired direction, but misapprehended the object to be the western sky, where an overblown fiery rose seemed to have scattered all its petals broadcast. “Sure, that’s on’y the sun settin’ red like,” he explained, indifferently, and would have resumed his excavations if he had not been seized and hustled half-way up the cliff before he could disengage his mind from his brigades and batteries. Both heads soon bobbed up over the edge without accident; for Pat climbed like a monkey when once he had grasped the situation. His grandmother’s attitude toward Joe McEvoy constrained her to receive him effusively as prey snatched from the foaming jaws of death; but it was out of Mrs. Fottrel’s pocket that a peppermint-drop came to sweetly seal his new lease of life.

“And what are you after now, Mick?” she said, observing that, instead of drawing himself up to level ground, he stood poised on an uncomfortable perch, and looked back the steep way he had come.

“I’m thinkin’ to slip down agin,” he said, “and see if be any manner of manes I could huroosha th’ ould baste round the rocks yonder. The wather mightn’t be altogither too deep there yit; at all evints, she’s between the divil and the deep say where she is now; it’s just a chanst.”

“Sorra a much,” said Joe, disconsolately; “scarce worth breakin’ your bones after, any way.”

“Bones, how are you? Sure, there’s no call to be breakin’ bones in the matter,” said Mick, beginning to descend. This was true enough, if he had minded what he was about; but then he did not. So far from it, he was saying to himself, “One ‘ud ha’ thought now she might ha’ took a sort of pride in it,” when the bottom of the world seemed to drop away from under his feet, and his irrelevant meditations ended in a shattering thud down on the rocky pavement a long way below. He never heard the shouts and shrieks which the incident occasioned above his head. Once only he became dimly conscious of a quivering network of prismatic flashes, which he could not see through, and a booming throb in his ears, which made him murmur dazedly: “Wirra, I thought I’d got beyond hearin’ of them drums.” In another moment: “What’s took me?” he said, with a start. But the depths he sank among remain always dark and silent.

Next day messengers from Tullykillagin told Mrs. Doherty that the Lord had “took” her son Mick, and that “he had gone out to say wid the tide, before they could get anybody to him, and there was no tellin’ where he might be swep’ up, if ever he came to shore at all.”

“And the quarest part of it was that Joe McEvoy’s ould cow that he went after had legged herself up, somehow, on the rocks out of reach, and niver a harm on her when they found her in the mornin’. But she’d been all of a could quiver ever since, and himself doubted if she’d rightly git over it–might the divil mend her, and she after bein’ the death of a fine young man. Sure, every sowl up at Tullykillagin was rale annoyed about it. Even ould Biddy Duggan, that was as cross-tempered as a weasel, did be frettin’ for the lad; and Joe McEvoy was sittin’ crooched like an ould wet hen, over his fire block out, that he hadn’t the heart to be lightin’.”

Mrs. Doherty said she didn’t know what talk they had of the Lord and the say and the ould cow; but she’d known well enough the way it was when Mick niver come home last night. He’d just took off after the souldiers, as he’d a great notion one time.

She was, as may have been observed, rather a dull-witted woman, and proportionately hard to convince against her will.

“A great notion intirely,” she said; “on’y she’d scarce have thought he’d go do such a thing on her in airnest. And I runnin’ away indoors yisterday out of the heighth of the divarsion, when the band-music was a thrate to be hearin’, just to see his bit of supper wouldn’t be late on him. And the grand little pitaty-cake I had for him; I may be throwin’ it to the hins now, unless Molly might fancy a bit; for we ‘ll not be apt to set eyes on him this three year. Och, wirra! and he that contint at home, and niver a word out of him about the souldierin’ this long while. If it had been poor Thady itself, ‘t would ha’ been diff’rint; but Mick–I’d scarce ha’ thought it of him; for he’d a dale of good-nature, Mrs. Geoghegan, ma’am.”

“He had so, tub-be sure, woman dear,” said Mrs. Geoghegan, “or he might be sittin’ warm in here this minnit.”

“The back of me hand to thim blamed ould throopers,” said Mrs. Doherty, “that sets the lads wild wid their thrampin’ around.”

“Poor Mick would be better wid them than where he is now–God have mercy on his soul!” said a neighbour, solemnly.

But Mick’s mother continued to bewail herself: “And I missin’ the best of all the tunes they played, so Molly was tellin’ me, for ‘fraid he ‘d be kep’ waitin’ for his supper, and he comin’ home to me hungry; and now–There’s a terrible len’th of time in three year. I wouldn’t ha’ believed he’d ha’ done it on me.”