ongineer hisself." Thady Molloy was right; this was the engineer
himself, who had now arrived from Mallow. From this time forth, and
for the next twelve months, the country was full of engineers, or of
men who were so called. I do not say this in disparagement; but the
engineers were like the yellow meal. When there is an immense
demand, and that a suddenly immense demand, for any article, it is
seldom easy to get it very good. In those days men became engineers
with a short amount of apprenticeship, but, as a rule, they did not
do their work badly. In such days as those, men, if they be men at
all, will put their shoulders to the wheel.

The engineer was driven up to where they were standing, and he
jumped off the car among the men who were to work under him with
rather a pretentious air. He had not observed, or probably had not
known, Herbert Fitzgerald. He was a very young fellow, still under
one-and-twenty, beardless, light-haired, blue-eyed, and fresh from
England. "And what hill is this?" said he to the driver.

"Ballydahan, shure, yer honer. That last war Connick-a-coppul, and
that other, the big un intirely, where the crass road takes away to
Buttevant, that was Glounthauneroughtymore. Faix and that's been the
murthering hill for cattle since first I knew it. Bedad yer honer
'll make it smooth as a bowling-green."

"Ballydahan," said the young man, taking a paper out of his pocket
and looking up the names in his list, "I've got it. There should be
thirty-seven of them here."

"Shure an' here we are these siven hours," said our friend of the
hoe, "and mighty cowld we are."