By beach and bog-land

For some time Johnny Quin of Letterard had been looking over the low stone wall at his bit of young oats, which you could almost see grow in the midsummer sunshine, when he was pulled by the sleeve, and, turning round, beheld little Joe O’Hea with a grey kid tugging at the other end of a string.

“Johnny, man,” said Joe, “couldn’t you take and give the baste a lift up there for me? She’d get grand grazin’ on it.” Joe spoke remonstrantly, as if Johnny had been neglecting an obvious duty; and he pointed to the roof of Felix Moriarty’s cabin, which stood just across the lane.

The cabin was very small, with one tiny window-pane in its mud-walls, which were deeply weather-stained under the eaves, and from which the whitewash had worn off, leaving large brown patches. But its worst point, considering it as a dwelling-house, was the roof, for the thatch undulated in hillocks and hollows, and also bore a luxuriant crop of grass, almost as long and thick and green as the thriving oats over the way. This seemed to little Joe a desirable pasture for his kid, whose browsings along the stone-dyked lane were but scanty, and hence his appeal to his taller friend.

Johnny, however, was of a different opinion, and replied: “Sure not at all. The crathur’s over small sized to be cockin’ up that height off the ground. It’s breakin’ her four legs she’s apt to be before you’d get her down safe. Or belike she’d be losin’ herself in the long grass. Or maybe it’s puttin’ his roof up for a meadow Moriarty is all the while. Ay, bedad, you may depind that’s what he’s doin’. So just keep along the road wid her steady, me son, and niver mind anythin’ growin’ where she’s no call to be trespassin’.” Accordingly Joe and the kid sauntered on, leaving Johnny to his oats.

But Johnny’s attention had caught on Felix Moriarty’s thatch, and did not disengage itself quickly. His own pleasantry, too, about Moriarty’s meadow had taken his fancy, and he continued to repeat and elaborate it in his thoughts. At last, the forenoon being long and employment scarce, he actually went so far as to climb, sickle in hand, up on the waving roof, where he was presently slashing vigorously.

“Bedad now,” he said, surveying the tufts which had fallen round him, “I’m after knockin’ that same down in fine style: I did so, and wasn’t long about it either.” Nor did he stop here.

Having raked together the crop, and added a few bundles of grass from the bank, he carefully built up on an inconveniently sloping base a symmetrical little cock. This he secured with a rope scientifically twisted of the withered bents along the border of his oats, and then, jumping down noisily into the lane, contemplated his handiwork with complacent pride. Only one element was wanting in his satisfaction with it. There were no spectators to share his amusement and admire his wit. The key of the locked cabin door lurked hidden in some crevice of the thatch, for Felix Moriarty was away at the haymaking in a district where work seemed less slack. Nobody was about in the neighbouring fields. Even Joe O’Hea and the kid were out of sight round the corner.

“Sure now it’s a grand joke,” Johnny repeated to himself more than once, “and it looks as comical as anythin’ sittin’ there up over the man’s door as if it consaited it was in the middle of a sivin-acre field. Anybody ’ud be laughin’ at it that seen it, passin’ by.”

But of passers-by there appeared to be small prospect, as this lonely upland lane led no-whither in particular, and the nearest dwelling was merely his own cottage, the topmost thatch of which peered just visibly over the edge of a long slope.

“It ’ill be twinty pities,” Johnny declared, “twinty pities and a half if nobody sees it before it’s blew away wid the win’.” At that moment all these pities sadly threatened to come about.

Still Johnny had a daring and ingenious turn of mind. Early the next morning, in Rathbeg, a village some few miles from Letterard, much excitement was awakened by the discovery of certain handbills which had been posted up on walls and doors in several conspicuous places. They were white foolscap sheets, written upon in a large round hand to the following effect:—

These placards must have been affixed during the night, and nobody in Rathbeg knew anything about the matter, a secrecy which, together with the shortness of the notice given, suggested that some peculiar urgency in Felix Moriarty’s affairs made it expedient to render him the required assistance without incurring the observation of the constabulary. Such a state of things was not by any means unprecedented, and would in itself strongly dispose the men of Rathbeg to be active on his behalf, although none of them were acquainted with Moriarty except vaguely by name, or indeed knew much more about little, out-of-the-way Letterard than that it had for proprietor an ill-reputed landowner. On the other hand most people were just then too busy getting in their hay to spare easily even the fag-end of the lingering daylight, especially as the unsettled aspect of the weather made every dry hour doubly precious. And to be sure, it was a long step from Rathbeg to Letterard. Hence there were abundant materials, for the debate which was carried on in and about Finucane’s public for a considerable time after the finding of the summons.

Theig Ahern, the village orator, urged eloquently that it would be a good job to lend anybody a helping hand “against the likes of such a notorious, ould, black-hearted, naygurly, exterminatin’, widow-robbin’, childer-starvin’ miscreant of a land-grabber as ould Warden, himself and his sheriff’s writs.” But then Timothy Dolan argued briefly, yet effectively, that there were plenty of as good jobs, and better, to be done in their own bits of fields, without tramping half a dozen miles over the country after them. The hearers who said “Ay, bedad,” and “Thrue for you,” to this sentiment seemed nearly as numerous as those who received it with murmurs of “mane-spirited” and “unmanly.” So the issue remained doubtful.

Meanwhile, the originator of the discussion, seated at his favourite post on the wall of his Letterard oat-field, was speculating about the result. Not many hours had passed since Johnny Quin had made his way home under the waning moonlight, through dewy fields, from his stealthy bill-sticking at Rathbeg. He had himself composed and written and copied the notices over-night in the emptied National schoolroom, with some assistance from his old friend, Peter Cleary, the teacher, to whom he did not communicate their contents. Mr Cleary, however, though he preferred to be discreetly ignorant, may have guessed at their purport from the words which he was occasionally called upon to spell. “Och not at all, Johnny. There does be but one r in ‘tyrant,’ and all the i’s you have is a y and an a. You always made an oncommon bad offer at the orthography.”

And now Johnny, blinking half-drowsily in the sunshine, spent most of the day in looking forward hopefully to the success of his plot. It had occurred to him yesterday, when enjoying his own wittiness embodied in the absurd haycock, and feeling how much that enjoyment would be enhanced by the presence of spectators. To assemble these by a stratagem which would “raise the laugh on them” for coming was a project with a twofold charm, and it fully occupied his mind from the moment of its first conception until he had evolved and, so far as lay in his power, carried out all the details.

If he had been asked what he expected to gain in case things happened as he hoped, he might have truthfully replied, a fine shindy entirely, for that outcome was undoubtedly uppermost in his anticipations. Suppose that a dozen or so of the Rathbeg men were moved by his bogus summons to tramp over with their scythes in the evening, and, upon arriving, found their job was nothing more than simply the removal of the pygmy cock from its ridiculous site. “Bejabers, it’s ragin’ mad they all ’ill be as sure as sure,” Johnny said, chuckling as he rehearsed the scene. “‘Where’s Moriarty’s meadow that’s evicted?’ says they, ‘and that we’re come to mow for?’ ‘Is it, where is it?’ says I. ‘Musha, where else but here,’ I says—for on the roof I’ll be—‘up over your fools’ heads. And I’ll bet me brogues it’s the quarest little meadow ever a man was evicted out of,’ says I. Leppin’ they’ll be.”

About the incidents of this promising fray Johnny felt no anxiety at all. He did not, of course, propose to encounter the exasperated visitors quite single-handed. The stir of their advent would, he knew, bring plenty of the neighbours flocking to see what was up, and there would be no lack of Letterard lads to side with him. What did cause him some uneasiness was the doubt whether any party would actually come. His appeal might have been disregarded. The Rathbeg farmers might be too busy for such expeditions; or they might know enough about Letterard affairs to be aware that there was in reality no talk of evicting Felix Moriarty, and so perceive the hoax. For this reason Johnny kept his own council, lest the failure of his joke should “raise the laugh” on him.

But while the sunset was still unfurling in the west a wide fan of pink-flushed feathery cloudlets, which seemed to be waving off a misty little moon, like a white rose-leaf, fluttering up out of the faint green east, Johnny’s fears were dispersed by what he deemed a very joyful sight. From his coign of vantage he espied coming up the lane something which he presently ascertained to be a troop of men, several among whom carried scythes or sickles. And, more than this, along with them moved a brilliant blue and scarlet object, drawn by a pair of horses.

“Glory be! if it isn’t a mowin’-machine they’re after bringin’!” he said in high delight. “Well now, that bangs Banagher.” And he laughed so uncircumspectly that he almost lost his footing on the slope of Moriarty’s thatch, to which he had mounted. A mowing-machine it was, the fact being that Theig Ahern, the orator, in the absence of his elder brother, a well-to-do farmer, had taken upon himself, contrary to advice, to borrow it for the demonstration against the evictors.

With his torn straw hat flapping in the gusty breeze, Johnny stood up tall beside his dumpy haycock, and surveyed the approach of the cavalcade, smiling his broadest smile. But there were no smiles on the faces that looked up at him. The party from Rathbeg were by this time distinctly out of humour. They had failed to get any satisfactory information about Moriarty’s meadow from the following of unoccupied gossoons whom their progress had attracted, and this led them to apprehend that they had somehow blundered about the road. No suspicion of a trick had as yet occurred to them; but they were not by any means in a mood to take one in good part.

Therefore when Johnny, grinning more broadly than ever, replied to inquiries: “Is it Moriarty’s meadow you was lookin’ for? Sure amn’t I meself standin’ on it before your eyes? And a grand big one it is. Only I dunno will yous find it very handy drivin’ your pair-horse yoke into it. Maybe it’s lucky I done the mowin’ meself,” his answer evoked looks and language sufficiently threatening to make him glance round rapidly, singling out the friendly faces, as he took a firmer grip of the sturdy blackthorn, which he had providently hidden behind the haycock.

An excited parley ensued, growing momentarily angrier and louder, while Farmer Ahern’s fiery chestnuts fumed and fidgeted, spurning the rough road, and flashing the set blades of their machine in restless starts to and fro. Then on a brief pause a voice rose clear and shrill. It proceeded from little Dan Molloy, who had perched himself on a wall adjoining the cabin, and it said,—

“Sure, now, if he’s so fond of mowin’”—Dan pointed to Johnny—“mightn’t you take your fine yoke in there”—he pointed across to the open gate of Johnny’s oat-field—“and give it a turn through his bit of oats?”

This suggestion, which was received with an assenting laugh, roused acute horror in Johnny, such peril did it threaten to his thriving crop, the very core of his hope and pride. Down he hurled himself with a clatter to prevent the outrage, aiming, as he passed, at the mischievous visage of Dan Molloy a resentful cuff, which Dan adroitly ducked. But Johnny’s action only precipitated the event he was dreading. For the restless horses, scared by his abrupt rush towards their heads, broke away from all control and bolted straight into the field.

Alas for the lovely young oats as four pairs of galloping hoofs and a pair of wide-rimmed iron wheels burst wildly into them, followed by a throng of trampling feet which wrought hardly less grievous havoc. Every moment was destroying among the soft green blades and haulms with their silken ears the work of many days’ sunshine and dewy air, when suddenly, before the careering runaways had been brought to a standstill, another yet more alarming object diverted the attention of their pursuers.

Johnny’s reserve on the subject of his jest had known one exception, very unfortunately for his confidante’s peace of mind. She was his mother, a little old widow woman, prematurely aged and crippled by rheumatism, so that she had to be carried to and fro between her bed and her armchair, her only journeys. Her son Johnny was most kind to her. It had been with the best intentions that he enlivened their morning meal by telling her all about the grand trick he had just played on the Rathbeg lads, and how infuriated they would be when they landed over with their scythes to cut nothing good or bad, and what a laugh it would raise on them, and what a splendid row was certain to follow. “It’s much,” he said, “if somebody’s head isn’t broke over it.” And then he had gone off whistling in the highest spirits, leaving little Mrs Quin a prey to the blackest forebodings.

All the long, lonely day she brooded uninterruptedly upon the dreadful possibilities of the coming encounter, in which crooked, shining scythe-blades, wielded by rash and wrathful hands, might play a part as fatal as if they were flashes from a murky cloud. “They’ll be murdherin’ one another up there,” she said to herself, “and me sittin’ here all the while like an ould tabby-cat in comfort by the chimney-corner, and no abler to do a hand’s turn agin’ it.”

Johnny’s fear that nobody might come formed her sole hope, and of that she was bereft about the pink sunset time, when little Joe O’Hea ran in to her with a jug of sour milk and the news that he had just seen a great lot of men carrying scythes, and a quare big yoke of a mowin’-machine going along up the lane towards Felix Moriarty’s. At these tidings Mrs Quin’s heart sank. Then her mind swiftly caught at and grasped a desperate resolution. “Joe, sonny,” she said to Joe, who was on the point of racing off for another view of the remarkable machine, “do you see that bucket of wather?” It was a zinc bucket set brimful near the door. “I want you,” she continued, “to take a couple of standin’ leps in the middle of it.”

“But sure, ma’am, wouldn’t I be splashin’ it all over the floor and dhrowndin’ everythin’?” Joe objected, amazed.

“Never you mind, sonny; do as I bid you like a good boy. Lep away, and I’ll give you a penny,” said Mrs Quin. Whereupon Joe, although still puzzled, by no means loth, did jump so energetically that the contents of the bucket were speedily dispersed in sparkling showers, a bountiful share of which thoroughly drenched his own garments.

“That’s an iligant child,” Mrs Quin said approvingly, “ne’er a dhry stitch there’s on you at all. Now come here till I tell you what else I’m wantin’ you to do. You know, Joey, it’s a terrible wicked thing,” she went on impressively, as he stood by her, dripping and expectant, “it’s a terrible wicked, dangerous thing for childer to get meddlin’ wid the fire.”

“I don’t ever meddle wid it,” Joe hastened to protest. “Biddy and Paddy does be at it of an odd while, and I do be biddin’ them let it alone and not be burnin’ themselves up.”

“To be sure, avic, to be sure, so you would. But now, just for this very once, and you’re to not ever go do such a thing again at all in the len’th of your life’s days, I want you—may goodness forgive me—to take the little matchbox you’ll find behind the blue jug on the dresser, and run out to the back of the house, where you can aisy raich to the thatch from the high bank of the field, and strike a few of the blue heads of the matches, jewel, on the rough side of the box—och but I’m the ould sinner!—and stick them lightin’ into the thatch here and there, as if you was stickin’ pins in a pincushion, and you’ll see the fine flare-up there’ll be directly. It’s as dry as tinder.”

This commission was surprisingly to the taste of six-year-old Joe. “And what more’ll I do after that, ma’am?” he said, eager for further agreeable instructions. “There’s the pigsty—”

“Sure, then, you might be runnin’ up the field and screechin’ fire and thieves and all manner,” said Mrs Quin; “it’s a sort of game, you see.”

But as Joe gleefully darted out, armed with the small yellow box, she shook her head stiffly. “Och now meself’s the wicked ould woman. But deed it’s murdherin’ themselves they’d be—and Johnny. And if I sent them only a message,” she argued, “sure they might be apt to think the crathur was romancin’, and just keep on fightin’; but seein’s believin’. And the child’s drippin’ wet, forby his clothes bein’ woollen every thread. He couldn’t set himself alight anyhow. May goodness forgive me. It’s killin’ me his poor mother had a right to be for puttin’ such divilment in the crathur’s head.”

So we can easily understand how it came to pass that in the midst of chasing the driverless mowing-machine several people became aware of a thick smoke column rising on the edge of the slope below them, and of red flames shooting up through the blue cloud, growing rapidly stronger and brighter in the faded daylight. At the same time they observed a small figure rushing about with shrill shrieks in the adjacent field. Joe, in fact, had been so much scared by the sudden huge blaze of the dry thatch that he performed his screaming lustily.

Among the first to see was Johnny Quin. “Mercy around!” he said, “there’s our house blazin’ wild, and Herself inside it.”

He outstripped all the others in their rush down-hill, and reached the scene of the conflagration none too soon, for the kitchen was a smother of smoke, through which wisps of fiery straw had already begun to drop fiercely about the helpless old woman as she sat distracted by conflicting terrors. She could hardly realise her relief when she found herself where she could breathe and see, and in the arms of her Johnny safe and sound.

Nevertheless the mother and son spent that night uncomfortably enough, huddled in a corner of their devastated dwelling, under an extemporised shelter of potato-sacks, while all around them hummed and plashed through their charred rafters the drops of a downpour which had arrived just too late to save their roof. Johnny sat in mournful meditation.

“Well now,” he said at last, “it’s quare bad luck. There’s me oats destroyed, that was grand, and the machine smashed, and the horse’s leg cut woeful, and our bit of good thatch ruinated over our heads—and all wid intendin’ a joke.”

“It’s on your knees you ought to be, me lad,” said Mrs Quin, the incendiary, “thankin’ goodness that the feet of you aren’t raped off wid them hijjis slashin’ scythes, and meself not burned into ashes and cinders schemin’ to purvint yous doin’ murdher, instead of talkin’ about bad luck.”

But Johnny’s gratitude remained undemonstrative. “I’m thinkin’,” he said, “it’s a fool’s work to be raisin’ a laugh on any people. For you never can rightly tell what else mayn’t take and rise up along wid it. Ay, bedad—and apter than not somethin’ you won’t like.”