The Unicorn from the Stars

given to dreams. A dream is a sort of a shadow, no profit in it to anyone at all. A coach, now, is a real thing and a thing that will last for generations and be made use of to the last, and maybe turn to be a hen-roost at its latter end. Father John I think Andrew told me it was a dream of Martin’s that led to the making of that coach. Thomas Well, I believe he saw gold in some dream, and it led him to want to make some golden thing, and coaches being the handiest, nothing would do him till he put the most of his fortune into the making of this golden coach. It turned out better than I thought, for some of the lawyers came looking at it at Assize time, and through them it was heard of at Dublin Castle⁠ ⁠… and who now has it ordered but the Lord Lieutenant! Father John nods. Ready it must be and sent off it must be by the end of the month. It is likely King George will be visiting Dublin, and it is he himself will be sitting in it yet. Father John Martin has been working hard at it, I know. Thomas You never saw a man work the way he did, day and night, near ever since the time six months ago he first came home from France. Father John I never thought he would be so good at a trade. I thought his mind was only set on books. Thomas He should be thankful to myself for that. Any person I will take in hand, I make a clean job of them the same as I would make of any other thing in my yard⁠—coach, half-coach, hackney-coach, ass-car, common-car, post-chaise, calash, chariot on two wheels, on four wheels. Each one has the shape Thomas Hearne put on it, and it in his hands; and what I can do with wood and iron, why would I not be able to do it with flesh and blood, and it in a way my own? Father John Indeed, I know you did your best for Martin. Thomas Every best. Checked him, taught him the trade, sent him to the monastery in France for to learn the language and to see the wide world; but who should know that if you did not know it, Father John, and I doing it according to your own advice? Father John I thought his nature needed spiritual guidance and teaching, the best that could be found. Thomas I thought myself it was best for him to be away for a while. There are too many wild lads about this place. He to have stopped here, he might have taken some fancies, and got into some trouble, going against the Government maybe the same as Johnny Gibbons that is at this time an outlaw, having a price upon his head. Father John That is so. That imagination of his might have taken fire here at home. It was better putting him with the Brothers, to turn it to imaginings of heaven. Thomas Well, I will soon have a good hardy tradesman made of him now that will live quiet and rear a family, and be maybe appointed coachbuilder to the Royal Family at the last. Father John At window. I see your brother Andrew coming back from the doctor; he is stopping to talk with a troop of beggars that are sitting by the side of the road. Thomas There, now, is another that I have shaped. Andrew used to be a bit wild in his talk and in his ways, wanting to go rambling, not content to settle in the place where he was reared. But I kept a guard over him; I watched the time poverty gave him a nip, and then I settled him into the business. He never was so good a worker as Martin, he is too fond of wasting his time talking vanities. But he is middling handy, and he is always steady and civil to customers. I have no complaint worth while to be making this last twenty years against Andrew. Andrew comes in. Andrew Beggars there outside going the road to the Kinvara fair. They were saying there is news that Johnny Gibbons is coming back from France on the quiet; the king’s soldiers are watching the ports for him. Thomas Let you keep now, Andrew, to the business you have in hand. Will the doctor be coming himself or did he send a bottle that will cure Martin? Andrew The doctor can’t come, for he’s down with the lumbago in the back. He questioned me as to what ailed Martin, and he got a book to go looking for a cure, and he began telling me things out of it, but I said I could not be carrying things of that sort in my head. He gave me the book then, and he has marks put in it for the places where the cures are⁠ ⁠… wait now.⁠ ⁠… Reads. “Compound medicines are usually taken inwardly, or outwardly applied; inwardly taken, they should be either liquid or solid; outwardly, they should be fomentations or sponges wet in some decoctions.” Thomas He had a right to have written it out himself upon a paper. Where is the use of all that? Andrew I think I moved the mark maybe⁠ ⁠… here, now, is the part he was reading to me himself.⁠ ⁠… “The remedies for diseases belonging to the skins next the brain, headache, vertigo, cramp, convulsions, palsy, incubus, apoplexy, falling sickness.” Thomas It is what I bid you to tell him that it was the falling sickness. Andrew Dropping book. O, my dear, look at all the marks gone out of it! Wait, now, I partly remember what he said⁠ ⁠… a blister he spoke of⁠ ⁠… or to be smelling hartshorn⁠ ⁠… or the sneezing powder⁠ ⁠… or if all fails, to try letting the blood. Father John All this has nothing to do with the real case. It is all waste of