by Seamus MacManus.
Author of "A Lad of the O'Frials," "The Lendin' Road to Donegal," &c., &c.
Originally published in The Novel Magazine (C. Arthur Pearson, Ltd.) vol.2 #11 (Feb 1906).
The story which Seumas MacManus, the well-known writer of delightful Irish stories, selects as his best is the first one he had accepted in America. His reasons for selecting it are (in his own words):
First, though I think I have written a few things not quite so bad as this, the story in them was less pointed, had less snap to it. Most of the things I have written are even worse than this one.
Second, many of my friends, both at home and abroad, have assured me that my "Allie Cannon" story is not as bad as usual. One, an American novelist, wrote me: "My husband is very sorry that you penned 'Allie Cannon's First and Last Duel,' because he would like to enjoy some more duels of Allie's."
And, third, because when, half-a-dozen years ago, having turned the key in the door of my little schoolhouse in the mountains of Donegal and, with a bagful of manuscripts and a heart full of faith—and little else—headed for the New World, and tempted Fate there, the "Allie Cannon" story first fetched me fortune. The kind and kindly editor of "Harper's" took the story from me, read it, remarked: "This is the sort of thing I want," and took up a cheque-book asking: "Will $100 for it satisfy you?" I am afraid I made him no answer, for he dumfounded me. I had thought of asking $15. I cashed that cheque with some haste, for I had a presentiment that Harper Brothers would soon discover their editor's blunder, and telephone their bankers to stop payment. Finding no hue and cry raised, however, I nervously ventured back again with some pocketfuls of other stories, and exchanged them for further cheques.
When, after another four months, I found the entrée to almost every important magazine in America, I looked to my "Allie Cannon" story, and said with affection: "It is surely my best."
"But, Aloysius," one of us said at length, "did it never happen to yourself to have to fight a duel in those days?"
Aloysius Cannon was seized with a great fit of laughter that agitated him like a shaking dog.
"Yes, yes," he said, as soon as he regained his self-possession. "Yes, I did fight a duel in them days—one."
"Let us hear of it—let us hear of it, by all means, Allie."
"Hear it!" "Hear it!" "Hear it!" was echoed around the room.
"Now, boys, don't gag me, for the Lord's sake! You have heard before this of my first and last duel."
"Not a word!"
"Sorra take the whisper!"
"Devil a breath!"
"That surprises me. Well, lads, charge your glasses, and drink to the grand old times."
When we had done this, Allie, unloosing another button in his vest, threw himself back in his chair, the very picture of red ripe content, and, his little eye twinkling with a reminiscent light, glanced around the board.
"There's half of a century gone since that, now," Allie began, "and it seems like last week to me. I was a stripling, then, of nineteen years—and a rollicking, devilish one, fit for all and any mischief. My head was chock-full of fun and tricks, and very little beside; for in them days the world, I assure you, boys, gave Allie Cannon very little trouble. Which I suppose accounts for me now in my grey hairs being the contented old sinner I am.
"I had gone down to Donegal on the ordnance survey, and at this particular time we were hanging out in the north of the county at Dunfanaghy. A merry place we found it during our stay. The people couldn't be kinder to us, or gayer than what they were. No end of feasting and drinking, routs and revels. Such a time of spreeing and dissipation we hadn't had for a long time; and we did enjoy it, I tell you.
"But it was within ten days of our coming that this happened which I tell you the story about. On a Monday night—I remember well it was Monday—we were to have our first Dunfanaghy dance. And it was a great event. Pretty girls in plenty—almost to surfeit—and flirting and courting go leor.
"There was a French Colonel there—a Colonel Ferry. He had been born and brought up in France; but his father was a native of Northern Donegal, and had gone to France half-a-century before. Colonel Ferry was a typical specimen, as I conceived it, of the French military dandy. There's little doubt about it, he was a fine figure of a man. His military dress and equipment, too, set him off to perfection; whilst his Frenchy airs and graces likewise helped not a little to impress the impressionable young females of Dunfanaghy. In short, there's no denying that he eclipsed every one of the rest of us most outrageously—yes, outrageously.
"But, fortunately for us, Colonel Ferry confided his attentions in a particular manner to one young lady. She was Miss Una MacSweeny, reputed heiress of a large house and landed property, and I don't know how many thousands of pounds. Independent of the glamour of her dowry, Miss MacSweeny would probably be reckoned fairly pretty, but with her dowry she was, of course, rated as an exquisitely beautiful girl. The Colonel danced constant attendance on Miss MacSweeny, and Miss MacSweeny seemed quite enamoured of the Colonel—as what girl there would not be?
"There were many of the lads present who considered they had a better claim upon Una MacSweeny's gracious smiles than the French Colonel, and who were accordingly stirred with green envy; but none of them cared to cross the Frenchman, for he was a regular fire-eater, and was said to have fought a duel for every moon he saw—and, moreover, always managed to come out of them with both honour and success.
"There was allowed to be no better swordsman in this country, whilst his skill with the pistol was excelled by only few. Little wonder it was, then, that his courting was comparatively smooth. Within as many weeks after his coming north he had fought half-a-dozen duels with his usual success, and with the result that his path in love, as well as in all other lines, was henceforth smooth beyond the ordinary.
"The first I saw of him was on this night—though it was far from being the first I had heard of him, and not the last either. After that dance there was nothing talked of but Colonel Ferry, Colonel Ferry, Colonel Ferry—and Miss Una MacSweeny. Too much, to my mind, was spoken of him, for, so far as I saw, though he was a handsome enough man, and probably a brave enough, he was too pompous and too supercilious by half, and put on far too many airs—seeming to look down on the rest of the lads as so much dirt.
"I had myself made up to Una MacSweeny at the ball, and, after some minutes' conversation, solicited the pleasure of the next dance. Miss MacSweeny—in a very nice and regretful way, indeed—was sorry to have to refuse me as she had promised the next to Colonel Ferry. The Colonel, who was right at my elbow, just then advanced and offered his arm to her, at the same time bestowing upon poor me a look which, he had little doubt, would wither me up into a pitch ball. But I was happy to be able to disappoint him; I had not any intention of being withered by any man's glance, or ill wish either. I gave the Colonel as good a look as I got—and, indeed, so far as I could judge, with just about the same effect. But the incident gave me a supreme contempt for the Frenchman.
"When next day reminiscences of the ball were rife, and, as usual, the Colonel's name was the beginning, the middle, and the end of the conversation, I told the boys of my rencontre with him, and they laughed right heartily, and made out to congratulate me on being alive to tell it. With a great deal of gravity, they advised me to be a deal more circumspect for the time to come, and not again to cross the fiery path of the Colonel, or I'd get badly singed.
"I had been giving the matter some thought myself, for, to tell truth, my little encounter with the Colonel made me more than anxious to circumvent him and to take the triumphant wag out of his tail. Says I to the boys: 'I have little mind to concern myself trying to avoid that gentleman, believe me.'
"'Take our advice, then, and do concern yourself, Allie, they said, 'in our interests, for we haven't any time to be fooling around funerals just now.'
"'Do you know what it is, boys,' I said–'this country, to the best of my belief, is too small for both the Frenchman and me.'
"The boys laughed again.
"'You'd better pack up, then,' they said.
"'But does it dawn on ye at all, boys, that it's maybe the Colonel who'll need to pack and go?' I said. And this gave the boys regular fits. 'Boys,' I said seriously, 'it's my intention to engage the Colonel in a duel.'
"'You?' they cried, astounded. 'You! To engage Colonel Ferry! And you never fought a duel in your life!'
"'Yes, me,' I said—'me to engage Colonel Ferry—even though I never did fight a duel before. It's not too late to begin, is it?'
"'Well, they said, 'you'd better get someone to tell you which side of a pistol the shot comes out of before you take the Colonel on your hands.'
"'As for that,' says I, 'I can give a shrewd guess. I intend knocking some of the proud feathers out of the Colonel's plumage.'
"'Are you jokin'?' says they. 'Or are ye only mad?'
"'That's to be seen,' says I.
"'Now, look here, Allie Cannon,' says the boys, 'you're young and only lately from your mother, and we're not going to stand by and let ye bring your death on yourself.'
"'Thanky very much,' says I.
"'Colonel Ferry,' they said, 'is the best swordsman and the best shot in Ireland.'
"'I think I've heard that once or twice,' I said a wee bit tartly, for everyone had been ding-donging it in my ears from the time I came to those quarters.
"'Ay, but it's so,' they said.
"'And I didn't say it wasn't, nor don't mean to say it, nor don't care whether or no.'
"'He's pinked fifty men in his time.'
"'Then he's pinked plenty, and will pink no more, with God's help.'
"'He's knocked out seven since he come here alone,' they said.
"'The less reason, then, he'll have to grumble if he's knocked out himself, now—' says I.
"'Now, Allie Cannon,' says they, 'tell us solemnly and seriously, do you mean to throw away your young life?'
"'Solemnly and seriously, says I back again, 'I don't mean at all, at all, to throw away my young life. I hope, with God's help, to scratch as grey a poll as any of you; but I do mean what I say—that, before I'm many days older, I'll be on the sod with the Colonel. Moreover,' says I, 'I mean, not only to meet the Colonel, but I mean likewise to chase him—ay, chase him, make him run, and, furthermore, to upset his intercourse with Una MacSweeny, and to spoil, once and for ever, his chances.'
"The boys, when they heard that, shook their heads and left me. And I laughed right hearty to myself when I was alone, for I had a plan in my noddle—I was always fertile of rascally plans and tricks—a plan in my noddle that was going to astonish them all!
"Right enough, the boys, though they pretended to think I was cracked, concluded in their own minds that it was only joking I was. But I didn't say much.
"It was the very next week, and on Monday night likewise, that old Cornelius MacSweeny, Una's pater, gave a dance. Myself and the boys were, of course, all invited—and, it is superfluous to state, all went. The Colonel, as usual, was the central figure of the dance—if we bar Miss Una. I had come with the positive intention of crossing him and coaxing a challenge out of him, and I was just bursting with mischief. I was not long waiting the opportunity.
"I succeeded in getting one dance—a polka—with Miss MacSweeny, and that just at a moment when I saw the Colonel stood haughtily by, with a scowl on his face. The second or third time that we polked in his direction I, to my great satisfaction, succeeded in dancing on his toe. As soon after the dance as he got the opportunity, the Colonel came up to me.
"'Sir, he said, blazing with anger, 'you trod upon my toe.'
"I was mopping my brow with my handkerchief when he came up. I paused respectfully to hear him, and then I went on with the mopping, as I said: 'Oh! no matter, Colonel, no matter. I beg you'll not trouble apologising, for I hardly felt the inconvenience at all.'
"Upon my word, he turned as black as thunder as he wheeled and marched off. I just succeeded in bottling my laughter. But, by-and-by, I got the boys in a quiet corner and told them the joke. Whether to laugh or cry they hardly knew; but, at length, they laughed, and that merrily. The Colonel didn't enjoy that night any more. What made it worse, one of the boys lost no time in telling Miss MacSweeny the sort of apology I had made to the Colonel; and she nearly broke her sides over the joke, and, hailing the Colonel, told him as best she could for the laughing what she had heard. This finished him outright as you may suppose.
"Well and good, I wasn't out of my bed the next morning when there was a knock at my bedroom door, and Barney, the boy, he come in, telling me that Mr. Latimer, of Ards, was below wanting to see me.
"'Tell Mr. Latimer, Barney,' says I, 'that I'm not out of my bed yet, but that, if he doesn't mind, he might step up and see me as I am.'
"Mr. Latimer had acted as the Colonel's friend in more than one delicate matter before, and I guessed well what was the bother to him this morning.
"'Good-morning, Mr. Latimer,' says I. 'How d'ye do? Take a—a'—I was going to say take a chair, but there wasn't such a thing in the room. 'Take a bed, Mr. Latimer, says I, indicating a spare bed that was in the room.
"Mr. Latimer smiled, and seated himself on the side of the bed. 'I'm much obliged,' says he. And says he: 'I suppose, Mr. Cannon, you know my business with you this morning?'
"'Well, hard feedin' to me if I do, Mr. Latimer,' says I.
"'Oh!' says he, 'I'm come from the Colonel. He's naturally upset about that unfortunate mistake of yours last night, and anxious to have it rectified.'
"'Oh! is that it?' says I. 'Faith, and, to tell you the truth, I'm feelin' upset about it myself. If his toe is anything the worse,' says I, 'tell him I said he could call in the dearest doctor in the country-side, and I'll pay the damage.'
"Latimer, he laughed at this, and went on to say it wasn't so much his toe as his moral feelings that was hurt.
"'Och, is that all?' says I, giving myself a roll in the bed and gathering in the blankets about me.
"'And, of course, says Latimer, 'he's wanting satisfaction. That's my business here this morning, Mr. Cannon, and if you will kindly refer me to a friend who will undertake to manage the matter in your behalf, I'll be obliged.'
"'Phew!' says I. 'Is that the way of it, Mr. Latimer? Surely,' says I, 'I'll be more than happy to oblige the Colonel, Mr. Latimer, if you give me the time to get up and shake myself, and look about me for a friend—I'll get him to call on you as soon after I've secured him as possible.'
"The minute Latimer was gone I was out of bed and had on my clothes, and ordered Barney to send me my breakfast and Tom Murnaghan as fast as the devil would allow him. And in a jiffy I had the breakfast served, and Tom on the heels of it. I managed, between mouthfuls, to convey to Tom how the land lay, and asked him would he be my friend; and Tom swore it would give him a deal of pleasure to stand by me while I'd be shot.
"'But it isn't going to be pistols, Tom, my son,' I said.
"'What then? Blunderbusses, ye don't say?' says he.
"'Blunderbusses, I don't say,' says I 'but swords. Tom,' says I, 'you must let me have my own way in this matter. It's going to be a signal and ignominious defeat for the Colonel. Tom sneered when he heard this. 'A signal and ignominious defeat, I say, for the Colonel,' I repeated quite coolly; 'and I must have the battle royal on an original plan of my own.'
"'And what plan's that?' says Tom, says he.
"'It's this,' says I. 'Ye must arrange for the duel to be fought with swords, as I said, and on horseback—'
"'What!' says Tom, says he.
"'Whist!' says I, 'till I'm finished. On horseback, and that it'll take place in a little inclosure just five minutes' walk out of the town on the west there, that they call Torlogh's Acre. The spectators may spectate from the top of the high clay fence that runs round the field; but you see yourself the necessity there is not to allow any inside the fences except ourselves and our seconds. And, moreover, the signal for the fight is to be the last chap of the church clock as it chaps out seven o'clock the morrow mornin'. Is that clear for you, Tom Murnaghan?' says I, and I took a long swig out of a cup of tea, fixing Tom with the white of my eye at the same time.
"'About as clear as mud,' says Tom, quite sarcastic. 'In the name of common-sense,' says he, 'sure you're not serious about all that blatherskitin'?'
"'Amn't I?' says I.
"'You're a fool,' says he.
"'Thanky,' says I; 'and I suppose I must be so when you say it, for, if there's one man in the north has a good right to pronounce upon the question of fools, it surely should be you.'
"'And a blatherskite,' says Tom.
"'I bow to your superior knowledge there again,' says I.
"'Allie Cannon,' says he, leanin' forward to me, 'do you mean what you say?'
"'Tom Murnaghan,' says I, 'I do mean what I say. Do you take me to be as great a fool as yourself?'
"'And them's the conditions of the duel?'
"'Them's the conditions—them and no others. If you can't see your way to arrange things in that way, why, Tom, all I can do is to look out for a second who'll fall in with my wishes.'
"Tom, he got up, and, putting his hands in his pockets, begun parading up and down the room without saying a word. And I went on finishing my breakfast.
"'Allie Cannon,' says Tom, says he, after he'd done five or six turns, 'of course, I'll stand to your back no matter how much blamed humbug you introduce into the affair; only I can't for the life of me see why you'll go making both yourself and me ridiculous. Besides,' says he, 'Colonel Ferry is certain to refuse to fight such a duel on such conditions; while ungenerous people—and there's plenty in Dunfanaghy, as there is elsewhere—'ll be sure to put their own construction on the matter, and say you only wanted the excuse to shirk the fight.'
"'Tom,' says I, 'I'd be hanged sorry if the Colonel didn't fight, for, as I warned you before, I'm going to chase him and disgrace him—chase him from the field and from the North of Ireland—hanged sorry I'd be; but, take my word for it, I've a string to my thumb, and all I've got to do is pull it, and the Colonel daren't refuse to fight if the conditions were ten times as uncommon.'
"'What's the string?' says Tom.
"'Miss Una MacSweeny,' says I, 'with all respect be it said, is the afore-mentioned string. Una will be rejoiced to know that there's going to be a duel about her; she isn't quite up in the niceties of the French duel, and, moreover, even if she was, she wouldn't stand by and see a good thing spoilt. She'll cut the Colonel's acquaintance or insist on his fighting. And, take my word for it, if the conditions was that we'd have to fight standing on the crown of our heads, with parlour tongs for weapons, the Colonel would give in sooner than lose Una's goodwill.'
"'There's something in that, surely,' says Tom, after a while. 'But, all the same,' says he, after studying it, 'I can't for the life of me see what you're to gain by imposing the conditions you do.'
"'Tom, my son,' says I, 'I daresay you don't—just yet. But when all's over you'll see what I'll have gained by these conditions; and I venture to prophesy you'll smack me on the back for being a deuced rascally clever fellow.'
"'I hope so,' says poor Tom—'I hope so. I'm off, then, to see Latimer—and, whist! but it's me'll have to suffer in the cause of friendship. I wish to goodness, Cannon, we could only swap places.'
"As Tom Murnaghan had predicted—as I could just as easily have predicted myself—Mr. Latimer, let alone the Colonel himself, wasn't for hearing of a duel in the way proposed.
"'It's outrageous, Mr. Murnaghan,' Latimer said—'outrageous.'
"And the Colonel he was ready to jump out of his skin when he heard the way the duel was proposed to be. But, as I told Tom, that would soon be rightified; and I was correct. For no sooner did the business get wind and come to Miss MacSweeny's ears, than she was quite enraptured with it, and insisted on Latimer making the Colonel accept Tom's terms and go ahead with the row by hook or by crook. It wasn't a bit of use for the Colonel to try to make her understand why he shouldn't, and couldn't, and wouldn't fight upon such conditions.
"Miss MacSweeny wouldn't lend herself to reason; she protested, and insisted that he should, and could, and would fight, and threatened to give the Colonel his dismissal if he refused to do that much for her. So the end of it was that the poor Colonel was ballyragged and coerced, against both will and conscience, into accepting the terms and agreeing to the fight.
"I was as glad as a goldfinch when I heard it. I took Tom Murnaghan into my plans instanter, and there and then told him in strictest secrecy how I meant to defeat the Colonel—
"'How, Allie?' he hastily interrupted.
"Said I: 'As I managed to keep my secret then, I guess I'll be able to keep it now. You'll hear it in its proper course.'
"Well, Tom, he certainly laughed a deal over it when he heard it. But, when he was tired laughing at it, he hemmed and hawed and shook his head a good deal. 'Now, for the Lord's sake, Tom Murnaghan,' says I, 'will you just do as you're bid and I'll take the blame—if any blame there is to be.'
"'In troth, Allie Cannon,' says he, 'ye'll only have your share of it. But—in for a penny, in for a pound—as I've been fool enough to be induced by you to put my finger in the pie at all, I'll go through with the business, and take pot-luck for how we'll come out of it.'
"And, to tell the truth, when Tom Murnaghan did commit himself to anything he went through it like a brick. So he now put himself into my hands and did my bidding, and carried out my orders like a black slave; and before he laid down his weary head to sleep that night he had everything in apple-pie order for me, and had me ready to be shoved into the field.
"And we were up with the lark next morning—that is, if we hadn't a step or two the foreway of it—and as brisk as a pair of bees, the both of us. As early as we were up—and we had thought ourselves nearly the first—there was a stream of people moving to the field already, for, to be sure, the day before the fact that the Colonel had another duel on his hands had run the country like a moor afire, and there wasn't a man or boy, able to creep, crawl, or walk, or drag himself on crutches, but was bent on seeing the fun.
"So, as it drew up to seven o'clock, you may guess far better than I can tell you the size of the tremendous crowd that lined the ditches round Torlogh's Acre. They were crushing, and crowding, and squabbling, and fighting, too, for seats on the ditch, and room to look on. They were from the furthest ends of the parish, and more than one or one hundred from the next parish to it. Such a crowd, in fact, wasn't seen together in these parts before for a long while.
"Some of them, I was told, had come the night before, with their breakfasts tied up in red handkerchiefs in their hand. They got the choice seats, and in the morning before the play commenced they sat there as content as flowers o' May, munching their meat out of their fists, and waiting with patience and cheerfulness for the fools that provided them with the fun.
"I packed Tom off to the field before me. And he met Latimer there, and talked things over with him and made the final arrangements. At ten minutes to seven, the Colonel, he arrived on a steed every bit as fiery and as haughty as himself—and that's saying a deal. Miss MacSweeny and the flower of the Dunfanaghy young ladies arrived, and were accommodated with good and prominent seats.
"The Colonel, he went prancing round the field looking very high and mighty entirely, and casting an odd, scornful glance at the open-mouthed crowd. Now and again he pranced up to Miss MacSweeny or some other of the young ladies, and passed a witty word or a compliment with them, and then off sidling and prancing again—a mighty sight to see, all gave in.
"There was a deal of pity expressed for me, I was told, everywhere round the field; it was taken for granted that the Colonel would make mincemeat of me, and that the wind of his sword would be enough for me. And when it crept up and up to seven o'clock, and still no sign of me putting in an appearance, the whisper began to go round that, after all, I had rued and run away; and some of the boys that had come far and fasting cursed me on the empty stomach (which, they say, is about the most vicious curse that could be given a man) for depriving them of their morning's diversion—it being the general opinion that I should have cheerfully consented to get butchered to make a Dunfanaghy holiday.
"But I did not intend depriving the poor fellows of their little innocent bit of diversion—and I didn't. When the church clock chapped out the first stroke of seven I hadn't put in an appearance, and I believe there was a deal of grumbling begun; and as the clock went on chapping, and still no sign of me, the grumbling grew louder; and the Colonel, he shook his head at Miss MacSweeny, and smiled knowingly, as much as to say, 'I'm not one bit surprised.'
"But, lo, and behold you! the instant the hammer of the clock was coming down on the seventh and last chap, into the field, by way of a narrow, hidden lane, and with a jingle and a jangle, and a clatter and a clang, enough to make the dead shoulder their tombstones and rise up, myself canters, mounted upon Shan the hawker's old mare, 'Jinny,' that was a walking picture of old age and misery, and "Jinny, moreover, all hung and strung round with the most tremendous collection of old tins, tin porringers, and tin cans that was ever yet seen outside a tinker's shop; and at every step "Jinny" gave ye would take your oath, if ye heard the clang and the clatter, that it was ten tinkers' shops rolling in the Bay of Biscay.
"The field was dazed for one minute, and then the next minute they let such a roar of laughter out of them as might have been heard on Tory Island, ten miles off. I myself looked as grave as a clergyman at the burial service; and, without losing any time, I clapped the spurs into "Jinny' and headed her for where the Colonel was seated on his horse, and both of them looked transfixed.
"And "Jinny" had such a peculiar gait of going—first tossing up her head and the front half of her body, and then her tail and the hinder half—that the tins jingled and jangled ten times louder, and the people roared and roared ten times harder than before. And ere I'd got within decent distance of the Colonel his steed began to fidget and shy, and at length took her head with her and turned tail across the field.
"I gave chase after my own fashion, but couldn't catch up, for the Colonel's mare went dancing, and prancing, and bolting like a mad thing all over the field, and would have gone in of a rabbit-hole, if she could only have got one convenient, to escape the tinker's shop that was coming thundering behind her.
"The Colonel was pulling and tugging at his steed for all he was worth, and cursing like a good one-cursing the mare, and cursing me, and cursing the crowd that yelled with the madness of the laughter. I still kept the countenance of a barrister, and pursued him with all the noise of a foundry from one quarter of the field to another, waving my sword over my head, and yelling on him to stand his ground and fight me like a man.
"The Colonel would have given half of all he was worth to be able to get at me and massacre me there and then; but though he pulled and tugged and walloped his mare to make her answer the rein, and frothed and fumed till he was white and black in the face, the mare would no more face me than a rabbit would face a battery of cannon.
"'Ho! ho! ho! ye coward, ye!' says I, shaking my sword at him and pretending to be thirsting for his blood, as I clapped the spur into 'Jinny,' and gave him another chase. 'Ho! ho! ho, ye dirty coward!' And this is the sort of courage you show, is it, when ye meet your match? Will ye not stand till I get even one polthogue of my sword at ye? I'll carve ye as neatly as that ye'll nearly feel proud of being the corpse that comes under my hand!'
"But the next dash I made at him his mare shook herself free of the last wee bit of control, he had over her, and made a clean burst for the gap and the lane I had come in by; and out with her at a bound, and me out after, as close on their heels as ever I could come, clanging and jangling, waving my sword, and roaring to him louder than ever; and the crowd, losing the last control of themselves, too, went into such fits with the pure dint of laughing, that several fainted, and had to be carried off the field.
"The Colonel's mare, getting rid of the field, and having a straight course before her, went off now right across the country like a puff of wind, carrying the poor, heart-broken Colonel without his hat, and his hair streaming behind him, till they soon disappeared from sight altogether.
"That I was what they call 'the hero of the hour,' there's little need to say. 'Jinny' was caught and led in triumph through Dunfanaghy, and I carried on the shoulders of the crowd. The poor Colonel he never pulled rein that morning till he stopped on the Diamond of Derry. And to Dunfanaghy he never came back. He paid his landlady by the mail carrier, and had his traps and fittings sent to him, and he decamped, none in Dunfanaghy knew where, for he did not as much as send a scrap of a letter even to Una MacSweeny—but it's likely he went to France with small delay.
"And, to tell truth, Una did not show any sign of breaking her heart at all after him, barring that it would be with the laughing-fits of which she took every time she thought of the Colonel and the duel. For myself, I was at once established as a persona grata with her; and if I'd only had the sense to mind my p's and q's, and to know that was good for me, I might now be a nice, respectable old retired shop keeper, telling this story to my little Dunfanaghy grandchildren, instead of the old bachelor fogey I am, telling my tale here for the amusement of the gang of reprobates I see about me—
"Pass that bottle, MacAnulty, confound you!"