"The puir callant's no cannie."
My husband turned hastily round to meet the intruder, and I raised
the candle from the table the better to distinguish his face; while
Bell, from her hiding-place, regarded him with unequivocal glances
of fear and mistrust, waving her hands to me, and pointing
significantly to the open door, as if silently beseeching me to tell
her master to turn him out.
"Shut the door, man," said Moodie, whose long scrutiny of the
strange being before us seemed upon the whole satisfactory;
"we shall be frozen."
"Thin faith, sir, that's what I am," said the lad, in a rich brogue,
which told, without asking, the country to which he belonged. Then
stretching his bare hands to the fire, he continued, "By Jove, sir,
I was never so near gone in my life!"
"Where do you come from, and what is your business here? You must be
aware that this is a very late hour to take a house by storm in this
way."
"Thrue for you, sir. But necessity knows no law; and the condition
you see me in must plade for me. First, thin, sir, I come from the
township of D - -, and want a masther; and next to that, bedad! I
want something to ate. As I'm alive, and 'tis a thousand pities that
I'm alive at all at all, for shure God Almighty never made sich a
misfortunate crather afore nor since; I have had nothing to put in
my head since I ran away from my ould masther, Mr. F - -, yesterday
at noon.
