But Shon was looking with both eyes now at the collaborators, and he sang softly on:
“And it’s keen as the frost when the summer-time dies, That we rode to the glen and with never a fear.”
Then he added: “The end’s cut off, Joey, me boy; but what’s a tobogan ride, annyway?”
“Listen to that, Pierre. I’ll be eternally shivered if he knows what a tobogan ride is!”
“Hot shivers it’ll be for you, Joey, me boy, and no quinine over the bar aither,” said Shon.
“Tell him what a tobogan ride is, Pierre.”
And Pretty Pierre said: “Eh, well, I will tell you. It is like-no, you have the word precise, Joseph. Eh? What?”
Pierre then added something in French. Shon did not understand it, but he saw The Honourable smile, so with a gentle kind of contempt he went on singing:
“And it’s hey for the hedge, and it’s hey for the wall! And it’s over the stream with an echoing cry; And there’s three fled for ever from old Donegal, And there’s two that have shown how bold Irishmen die.”
The Honourable then said, “What is that all about, Shon? I never heard the song before.”
“No more you did. And I wish I could see the lad that wrote that song, livin’ or dead. If one of ye’s will tell me about your tobogan rides, I’ll unfold about Farcalladen Rise.”
Prince Levis passed the liquor. Pretty Pierre, seated on a candle-box, with a glass in his delicate fingers, said: “Eh, well, the Honourable has much language. He can speak, precise--this would be better with a little lemon, just a little,--the Honourable, he, perhaps, will tell. Eh?”
Pretty Pierre was showing his white teeth. At this stage in his career, he did not love the Honourable. The Honourable understood that, but he made clear to Shon’s mind what toboganing is.
And Shon, on his part, with fresh and hearty voice, touched here and there by a plaintive modulation, told about that ride on Farcalladen Rise; a tale of broken laws, and fight and fighting, and death and exile; and never a word of hatred in it all.
“And the writer of the song, who was he”? asked the Honourable.
“A gentleman after God’s own heart. Heaven rest his soul, if he’s dead, which I’m thinkin’ is so, and give him the luck of the world if he’s livin’, say I. But it’s little I know what’s come to him. In the heart of Australia I saw him last; and mates we were together after gold. And little gold did we get but what was in the heart of him. And we parted one day, I carryin’ the song that he wrote for me of Farcalladen Rise, and the memory of him; and him givin’ me the word, ‘I’ll not forget you, Shon, me boy, whatever comes; remember that. And a short pull of the Three-Star together for the partin’ salute,’ says he. And the Three-Star in one sup each we took, as solemn as the Mass, and he went away towards Cloncurry and I to the coast; and that’s the last that I saw of him, now three years gone. And here I am, and I wish I was with him wherever he is.”