Short Fiction

rooftree more. He wanders from house to house while daylight lasts; and no one cares to lock the harmless creature in the workhouse. And folk would rather not meet him after nightfall, for they think where he is there may be worse things near.”

A silence followed Tom’s story. He and I were alone in that large room; I was sitting near the open window, looking into the dark night air. I fancied I saw something white move across it; and I heard a sound like low talking that swelled into a discordant shriek⁠—“Hoo-oo-oo! Bowes, the devil! Over your shoulder. Hoo-oo-oo! ha! ha! ha!” I started up, and saw, by the light of the candle with which Tom strode to the window, the wild eyes and blighted face of the idiot, as, with a sudden change of mood, he drew off, whispering and tittering to himself, and holding up his long fingers, and looking at the tips like a “hand of glory.”

Tom pulled down the window. The story and its epilogue were over. I confess I was rather glad when I heard the sound of the horses’ hoofs on the courtyard, a few minutes later; and still gladder when, having bidden Tom a kind farewell, I had left the neglected house of Barwyke a mile behind me.

Hyacinth O’Toole

In the course of my life I have met with more accidents and assaults than twenty other men, and they never cost me any trouble to speak of⁠—cuts, prods, and gunshot, all came quite natural, and healed like enchantment. It was a murdering pity I was not a general. I could have stood any amount of hacking, and slashing, and riddling, and been never the worse man, nor a week on the sick-list. A shoemaker mistook me one day for a county Cork man that was paying attentions to his wife, and gave me a slice with his half-moon knife⁠—bad luck to that ugly instrument⁠—as I was walking down Petticoat Lane, no more thinking of his wife, I give you my solemn honour, than Saint Joseph of Arimathea was of Potiphar’s. The next thing was, Baron Dromdouski⁠—a Polish refugee of distinction, and a perfect gentleman, I will say, and played the guitar like an angel, though liable occasionally to be carried away by his feelings⁠—stuck me with an oyster-knife, while we were differing on politics, in the “Good Samaritan” in Exchange Street. I could count up fifty such unlucky catastrophes; but I think the worst was, what happened to me as I was whistling in the hall of my lodgings, where I was waiting to take Miss Doolan out for a walk.

I must tell you there’s nothing on earth I hate equal to a cat, and it is the only thing that walks on feet I was ever thoroughly affeard to look in the face. It’s a dread that was born with me, and it will never leave me; and I’d run into Nebuchadnezzar’s fiery furnace away from one, and I think I’d have jumped after Quintus Curtius into the bottomless abyss if there was a cat behind me.

Well the cause of this accident I’m going to mention, was our cook, poor thing, that was flighty and out of her mind for love of a private grenadier in the Buffs, and she drove a three-pronged iron toasting-fork, between the kitchen banisters, up to the hilt in the calf of my leg. I thought it was the cat that I saw there, looking like mischief, only a minute before, and I gave a screech and a jump, and I went flying into the hall with the toasting-fork stuck in my leg. “La! Mr. Toole, what’s that stuck in your leg?” cries Miss Doolan, who was that minute coming down the stairs.

“It’s the cat,” I roared, almost out of my senses, and away with me out of the hall-door, that chanced to be open, and down the street I pegged like a madman, knocking my hat off on an old gentleman’s face, that was looking out of his study-window, and never waiting to pick it up. I thought the beast would never let go, and my hair was standing up on my head, and I wish you saw the capers I cut, trying to shake it off.

“For the Lord’s sake,” I implored, dancing mad in the middle of the street, “will some of you pull it off my leg? I’ll give you a shilling, whoever does.”

“I’ll take it off,” says a good-natured scavenger, that thought I was mad⁠—and bedad I wasn’t far from it⁠—and he strove to catch hold of the handle of the fork; and I was so wild with fright I made a cut at the animal with my stick behind, and struck the scavenger right across the knuckles, and on I ran feeling the cat’s teeth and claws, as I thought, fast in me still.

“Bad luck to you, ye Turk!” says the scavenger, shying a stone at me, as big as a lemon, and knocking a carman out of his dicky with it, pipe, whip, caubeen, and all.

“Look what’s stuck in his leg, boys!” called out the blackguard little children, running after me. “See there, look, look, look what’s stuck in his leg!”

“Will some of you hit it, lick it, wallop it? It’s mad!” I holloaed.

By this time I was running up Grafton Street, and everyone looking after me, some wondering, some laughing, and some frightened.

“It’s fastened in my leg!” I roared. “Will none of you pull it off?”

“I will,” says one.

“Shoot it,” says I.

“I will,” says another.

“It’s mad,” said I.

“Stop your capers, man, and I’ll pull it out,” says another.

“Give it a lick,” said I, “break its back, stick a knife in it.”

“Arra! Bother ye. How much ironmongery do you want?” says another. “Stop aisy, and I’ll coax it out in a jiffy.”

“Do,” said I, “coax it; its name’s Mufti.”

It was a little thief that snatched it out at last, as it trailed along the ground, and