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Neale got hold of the first tie thrown off the car. "Phwat the hell's ye're hurry!" protested his partner. This fellow was gnarled and knotted, brick-red in color, with face a network of seams, and narrow, sun-burnt slits for eyes. He answered to the name of Pat. They carried the tie out to the end of the rails and dropped it on the level road-bed.
The elder Riley, without having analyzed his son's characteristics to this extent, was intuitively conscious of a yielding to his appeal, and he was not slow to follow it up. "That's th' good la-ad, Jimmie," he said, coaxingly. "Ye knows how tight I keeps me mouth shut; an' phwat hits ye or Misther Robert hits me."
If any ould woman kin be placed in the froont rank av Frakes fer the rayson that her gran'son killed another ould woman, wull ye tell me, sor, phwat becomes av our janius an' harrud work?
Wanst I half-roused, an' begad the noise in my head was tremenjus roarin' and rattlin' an' poundin', such as was quite new to me. 'Mother av Mercy, thinks I, 'phwat a concertina I will have on my shoulders whin I wake! An' wid that I curls mysilf up to sleep before ut should get hould on me. Bhoys, that noise was not dhrink, 'twas the rattle av a thrain!" There followed an impressive pause.
An' s'posin' a wake wint by befoor th' boss c'd sind a man down to look up th' team he'd sint f'r a cook, wid orders to hurry back. An' s'posin' he found th' bum-legged driver froze shtiff on th' tote-road phwere he'd made out to hobble a few moiles on his crutch phwat thin? Why, th' man was a greener, an', not knowin' how to handle th' team, they'd got away from um."
Riley drew back, indecision mingled with a father's pride that a son of his could carry himself with such an air. "That's phwat brought ye here, is it? business wid Misther Robert ye!" he repeated. "Ah, Jimmie, I can't belave it, me la-ad. Are ye shure?"
"I want a job," repeated Dennis. "I nade wurk." There was no mistaking the peculiar burr in the utterance of the last two words, but the foreman continued to regard the speaker with suspicious amazement. "Phwat are ye, annyway?" he said with guarded brusqueness. "A poor man, sir; I nade wurk."
"Not yet," James replied, dwelling upon his words in such a way as to convince his hearer that the delay was wholly a matter of his own convenience. "Politics is movin' some, father, but 'tis in my private capacity that I'm makin' my present strides." "So," murmured Riley; "an' phwat may ye'er private capacity be, Jimmie?" "'Tis of a confidential nature," he replied, loftily.
James Riley was again the offending boy, and his father stern, severe, unrelenting in his own ideas of right and wrong held him in a grip he could not break. "Set there, damn ye," the elder Riley repeated, breathing hard from excitement and from the unusual exertion. "Now tell me phwat ye found out when ye was workin' on ye'er own account."
"In 'orsepittle," laconically replied Trooper Henry Hawker, late of Whitechapel, without looking up from the jack-boot he was polishing. "Phwat wid?" anxiously inquired the bereaved Phelim. "Wot wiv'? Wiv' callin' 'Threes abaht' after one o' the Young Jocks," was the literal reply. "Begob that same must be a good hand wid his fisties or was it a shillaleigh?" mused the Irishman.
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