on the road leading from the Curragh to Suncroft. The widow's husband
had but recently died, leaving her a pretty good farm, and, with the aid
of her family--one of them a fine, grown-up young man--she was able to
hold on to the land. But the ready cash she got from the Curragh men who
came to lodge with her was useful too. It was a good big house of the
kind, and the widow made use of every available inch of it, so that she
had about a dozen of us in all. Mrs. Walsh, though an easy-going soul
herself, had a fine bouncing girl to help her, but, with a dozen hungry
men coming with a rush at night, it used to be a scramble for the
cooking utensils, as we were largely left to our own devices. We used to
leave early in the morning for our work on the Curragh, taking with us
the materials for our breakfasts and dinners. As to the cooking, some
went to the canteen, while others got their meals wherever they happened
to be working. As there were plenty of chips and small cuttings of wood,
only fit for that purpose, we used to make of these big fires on the
short grass, and we boiled our water for tea or coffee and our eggs, and
frizzled our chops or bacon at the end of a long stick.

I have mentioned before that whenever one finds work particularly
laborious he is fairly certain to find Irishmen at it. It was so at the
Curragh. When a carpenter or joiner lays down the boarding of a floor,
if there is only a small quantity of it he planes it down himself to
make an even surface. But if there is a large quantity this does not
pay, and the contractor brings in another artist called a "flogger,"
who, in nine cases out of ten, in my time, was an Irishman. It was
generally given out as "piece work" to one man, the "master-flogger," as
you might term him, who employed the others. One of these, a very decent
Irishman, Tom Cassidy, whom I had known in Liverpool, had the contract
for the work at the Curragh Camp, and he had about a score of his
fellow-countrymen working for him.