NOT THE MAN FOR GALWAY. 321 



he, the justice, appeared upon the battle-ground. 

 Hence, not a week elapsed but my nerves were tortured 

 by the arrival of a shooting- party, and probably further 

 agonised by hearing Mr. Bodkin hallooing to the butler, 

 ' Michael (sotto voce,) devil speed ye, Michael ! the 

 mistress desires ye to keep back dinner till the gentlemen 

 have done, and to present her compliments, and say, 

 that she expects the company of the survivor.' 



" All this was horrible to me ; in the evening to be 

 suddenly disturbed with pop ! pop ! and an outcry ; 

 or awakened before daylight by my lady's maid opening 

 the curtains with a curtsey, to know ' where the dead men 

 would be stritched.' It was, moreover, a desperate 

 tax upon my finances ; vagabonds, known and unknown, 

 lay for weeks together in my house, while their broken 

 bones were being re-united not a month passed but 

 there was some dying man in the state-room doctors 

 came and went as regularly as the post-boy and once 

 in each quarter the coroner,* if he had any luck, 

 empanelled a jury in our hall. 



" Nor were we less tormented with the Blazers. We 

 always had a lame horse or two in the stables ; and from 

 the time cub-hunting commenced, till the season ended, 

 of that redoubted community who hazard 



' Neck and spine, 



Which rural gentlemen call sport divine,' 



we never boasted fewer than a couple on the sick-list. 

 Once, when an inquest was holding in the house, a Blazer 

 in the best bed-room, a dying earth-stopper in the gate- 

 house, and four disabled horses, ' at rack and manger,' 

 I insinuated what a nuisance it was to have one's house 



* In Conn aught this useful officer is paid by the job, and the 

 number with which he occasionally debits the county is surprising. 



Y 



