Matilda Charlotte Houstoun

“ The words had scarcely passed the lips of Manus O’Flaherty when the train for Longford moved slowly away, and he was left on the platform alone! In a moment the full horror, not only of his own, but of his unlucky brother’s situation flashed across his mind. To have left the carriage with another man’s two hundred pounds (and how obtained was a reflection that now filled his brain with dismay unutterable) , to have left his seat, I say, under such circumstances, seemed now to him an act little short of madness. But what was now to be done to remedy the evil? ”

“ It’s them’s the lads as makes the money,” he added, in a lower tone, and pointing to a stout, middle-aged man who, with an air of conscious importance, was walking up and down the platform. The countryman whom the last speaker had been addressing had no time to reply, for at that moment the feeble apology for a whistle which is the best approach to that inspiring railway music which Irish skill has yet arrived at, gave warning of the train’s approach, and in another moment every one was engrossed in the struggle for places in the already nearly filled carriages. ”

“ All the world is there—all the Irish sporting and farming world at least; and they, and their stock together, are a sight worth coming some little distance to behold. The ground where the animals stand is a sea of mud of course—of mud up to the fetlocks of the horses; but nevertheless they trot and gallop gallantly through the same, urged thereto by the “boys,” who have a name, and a just one, all the world over for making the best of their “horse bastes,” and for understanding the art of circumventing their natural enemies, id est, the Saxon and the stranger. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ But we must leave the incarcerated student for awhile, in order to account for the absence of the actual perpetrator of the so-called robbery. He had small experience in railway travelling, that raw buckeen, who had scarcely ever left his native mountains, and to whom the “city of Dublin” was as yet a scene of only dreamt-of pleasure. ”

“ It was still early in the afternoon; but nevertheless not a few of those who had attended the fair, but who lived at a distance from Ballinasloe, had already betaken themselves to the railway station, and were waiting for the overdue train from the west which was to carry them and their gains to “Daublin.” There was, amongst the waiting crowd, none of the order and seeming patience, and certainly none of the taciturnity which is characteristic of the English traveller at a railway station ”

“ Sullivan, though a good-natured man, as well as an experienced magistrate, did not happen to see the matter in the same light, for, to set against a good deal of criminating evidence there was only the student’s very improbable story, to say nothing of the shabby hat and well-worn coat which, in order to save his only holiday suit, the prudent Val had deemed it wise to put on duty for the journey. ”

“ Well!—well!”
“It isn’t the likes of her that does be selling along wi’ the tip-top cattle for the gentle folks,” remarked another man—a snug farmer doubtless, for his “Carolina” hat was very new and tall, and his stout frieze coat of the thickest and the best. “It isn’t for a poor man’s baste a man would be coming to the fair. ”