“You’re to lie awake every night till the clock strikes twelve. One night in a day or two you’ll hear a tap at your bedroom windy, you’ll open the windy and I’ll come in; then you’ll go foreninst me and lead me to the ould lady’s bedroom. Don’t be thinking it’s her jewels I’m afther, I am only wishful to read tracts to her and see if she’s said her prayers. Now do you understand clear what you’ve got to do?”
“Well, then, repeat the form of the oath I’m going to tell you; say it after me sintince by sintince. Are yiz ready?”
“I, Patsy Rooney,” began the other, beating time with his stick, whilst Patsy followed him sentence by sentence, “bein’ in me sound mind and body, hereby swears to do all Mr Murphy bids me to do the uttermost farthin’ wid diligence and despatch. And if I don’t, may me eyes pop out of me head like burnin’ ches’nuts off a hob; may me tongue hang down to me heels and thrail in the dust and be dry ever after for want of a drink, and may me hair turn grey as a badger and fall off, leaving the head of me bald as a coot. May me lift hand be turned into me right hand, me feet twisted backwards, me legs stuck where me arms be, and the nose of me turned to the snout of a pig.”
“Ohone!” wailed Patsy, when he had finished this oath, “sure, it’s ruined I am entirely!” The mental picture of the figure he would cut, should he fail to carry out Mr Murphy’s biddings, stood before his mind’s eye with horrible distinctness.
No other form of oath, perhaps, could have had a more powerful effect on the half-savage mind of the boy.
“That’s what you’ll be if you do a hair’s-breadth beyond what I tell you,” said Mr Murphy. “You’ve swore to it now, and you’ll have to stick to it, or eat ever after out of a trough. And now I’m goin’ to brand you and make a freemason of you, so that you’ll know what’s in store for you if you fails to keep your oath.”
Mr Murphy was not joking in the least; he knew well the effect physical pain has in fixing an impression on the mind. He pulled Patsy’s sleeve up and was in the act of seizing a burning stick from the fire when Con Cogan, who was looking on and grinning, suddenly held up his hand and said:
The little clearing in which they were seated was quite close to the broad drive; one could see between the tree-boles anything passing along the drive, and something was coming now.