them into
good humor nor even what the priest said. They then washed and claned
themselves, and accordingly went to their dinners.--Billy himself
marched with his terrible whip in his hand, and his long cavalry
spurs sticking near ten inches behind him, draggled to the tail like a
bantling cock after a shower. But, maybe, there was more draggled tails
and bloody noses nor poor Billy's, or even nor was occasioned by the
fight; for after Father Corrigan had come, several of them dodged up,
some with broken shins and heads and wet clothes, that they'd got on
the way by the mischances of the race, particularly at the Flush. But
I don't know how it was; somehow the people in them days didn't value
these things a straw. They were far hardier then nor they are now, and
never went to law at all at all. Why, I've often known skulls to be
broken, and the people to die afterwards, and there would be nothing
more about it, except to brake another skull or two for it; but neither
crowner's quest, nor judge, nor jury, was ever troubled at all about it.
And so sign's on it, people were then innocent, and not up to law and
counsellors as they are now. If a person happened to be killed in a
fight at a fair or market, why he had only to appear after his death to
one of his friends, and get a number of masses offered up for his sowl,
and all was right; but now the times are clane altered, and there's
nothing but hanging and transporting for such things; although that
won't bring the people to life again."

"I suppose," said Andy Morrow, "you had a famous dinner, Shane?"

"'Tis you that may say that, Mr. Morrow," replied Shane: "but the house,
you see, wasn't able to hould one-half of us; so there was a dozen or
two tables borrowed from the neighbors and laid one after another in two
rows, on the green, beside the river that ran along the garden-hedge,
side by side. At one end Father Corrigan sat, with Mary and myself, and
Father James at the other. There were three five-gallon kegs of whiskey,
and I ordered my brother to take charge of them; and there he sat beside
them, and filled the bottles as they were wanted--bekase, if he had left
that job to strangers, many a spalpeen there would make away with lots
of it. Mavrone, such a sight as the dinner was! I didn't lay my eye on
the fellow of it since, sure enough, and I'm now an ould man, though
I was then a young one. Why there was a pudding boiled in the end of a
sack; and troth it was a