the landlord, with a chuckle.

The messengers sent for the gig returned, declaring there was no gig to be
seen anywhere.

Murphy affected great surprise at the intelligence--again went among the
bamboozled electors, who were all obliged to go to bed for want of
clothes; and his bitter lamentations over the loss of his gig almost
reconciled them to their minor troubles.

To the fears they expressed that they should not be able to reach the town
in time for polling that day, Murphy told them to set their minds at rest,
for they would be in time on the next.

He then borrowed a saddle as well as the pair of boots from the landlord,
and the little black mare bore Murphy triumphantly back to the town, after
he had securely impounded Scatterbrain's voters, who were anxiously and
hourly expected by their friends. Still they came not. At last, Handy
Andy, who happened to be in town with Scatterbrain, was despatched to
hurry them, and his orders were not to come back without them.

Handy, on his arrival at the inn, found the electors in bed, and all the
fires in the house employed in drying their clothes. The little man,
wrapped in a blanket, was superintending the cooking of his own before the
kitchen grate; there hung his garments on some cross sticks suspended by a
string, after the fashion of a roasting-jack, which the small gentleman
turned before a blazing turf fire; and beside this contrivance of his
swung a goodly joint of meat, which a bouncing kitchen wench came over to
baste now and then.