Part 8 (1/2)

_Tommy the Song._ I was praying that we might all soon die.

_Paddy c.o.c.kfight._ Die, is it?

_Charlie Ward._ Is it die and all that porter about? Well! you have done enough praying, go over there and look for the basket. Who was it set him praying, I wonder? I am thinking it is the first prayer he ever said in his life.

_Sabina Silver._ It's likely it was Paul. He's after talking to him through the length of an hour.

_Paul Ruttledge._ Maybe it was. Don't mind him. I said just now that when we were all dead and in heaven it would be a sort of drunkenness, a sort of ecstasy. There is a hymn about it, but it is in Latin. ”Et calix meus inebrians quam praeclarus est.” How splendid is the cup of my drunkenness!

_Charlie Ward._ Well, that is a great sort of a hymn. I never thought there was a hymn like that, I never did.

_Paddy c.o.c.kfight._ To think, now, there is a hymn like that. I mustn't let it slip out of my mind. How splendid is the cup of my drunkenness, that's it.

_Charlie Ward._ Have you found that old bird of mine?

_Tommy the Song._ [_Who has been searching among the baskets._] Here he is, in the basket and a lot of things over it.

_Charlie Ward._ Get out that new speckled bird of yours, Paddy, I've been wanting to see how could he play for a week past.

_Paul Ruttledge._ Where do you get the c.o.c.ks?

_Paddy c.o.c.kfight._ It was a man below Mullingar owned this one. The day I first seen him I fastened my two eyes on him, he preyed on my mind, and next night, if I didn't go back every foot of nine miles to put him in my bag.

_Paul Ruttledge._ Do you pay much for a good fighting c.o.c.k?

_Sabina Silver._ [_Laughs._] Do you pay much, Paddy?

_Paul Ruttledge._ Perhaps you don't pay anything.

_Sabina Silver._ I think Paddy gets them cheap.

_Charlie Ward._ He gets them cheaper than another man would, anyhow.

_Paddy c.o.c.kfight._ He's the best c.o.c.k I ever saw before or since.

Believe me, I made no mistake when I pitched on him.

_Tommy the Song._ I don't care what you think of him. I'll back the red; it's he has the lively eye.

_Molly the Scold._ Andy Farrell had an old c.o.c.k, and it bent double like himself, and all the feathers flittered out of it, but I hold you he'd leather both your red and your speckled c.o.c.k together. I tell ye, boys, that was the c.o.c.k!

[_Uproarious shouts and yells heard outside._

_Charlie Ward._ Those free drinks of yours, Paul, is playing the devil with them. Do you hear them now and every roar out of them? They're putting the c.o.c.ks astray. [_He takes out a c.o.c.k._] Sure they think it's thunder.

_Molly the Scold._ There's not a man of them outside there now but would be ready to knock down his own brother.

_Tommy the Song._ He wouldn't know him to knock him down. They're all blind. I never saw the like of it.

_Paul Ruttledge._ You in here stood it better than that.