afore daylight?' said I, yer honer; 'an' shure an' wasn't it black
night when we war here this blessed morning, and devil a fear of the
tizzy?' said I. But it's mortial cowld, an' it'd be asier fur uz to
be doing a spell of work than crouching about on our hunkers down on
the wet ground."

All this was true. It had been specially enjoined upon them to be
early at their work. An Irishman as a rule will not come regularly
to his task. It is a very difficult thing to secure his services
every morning at six o'clock: but make a special point,--tell him
that you want him very early, and he will come to you in the middle
of the night. Breakfast every morning punctually at eight o'clock is
almost impossible in Ireland; but if you want one special breakfast,
so that you may start by a train at 4 A.M., you are sure to be
served. No irregular effort is distasteful to an Irishman of the
lower classes, not if it entails on him the loss of a day's food and
the loss of a night's rest; the actual pleasure of the irregularity
repays him for all this, and he never tells you that this or that is
not his work. He prefers work that is not his own. Your coachman
will have no objection to turn the mangle, but heaven and earth put
together won't persuade him to take the horses out to exercise every
morning at the same hour. These men had been told to come early, and
they had been there on the road-side since five o'clock. It was not
surprising that they were cold and hungry, listless and unhappy.

And then, as young Fitzgerald was questioning the so-named gangmen
as to the instructions they had received, a jaunting car came up to
the foot of the hill. "We war to wait for the ongineer," Shawn Brady
had said, "an' shure an' we have waited." "An' here's one of Misther
Carroll's cars from Mallow," said Thady Molloy, "and that's the