Handy Andy, Volume One | Page 9

Egad, may be they'll hang him for this! What's best to be done? May be it will be the safest way to see whom they are for, and send them to the parties, and request they will say nothing: that's it."
The squire here took up the letters that lay before him, to read their superscriptions; and the first he turned over was directed to Gustavus Granby O'Grady, Esq., Neck-or-nothing Hall, Knockbotherum. This was what is called a curious coincidence. Just as he had been reading all about O'Grady's intended treachery to him, here was a letter to that individual, and with the Dublin post-mark too, and a very grand seal.
The squire examined the arms; and, though not versed in the mysteries of heraldry, he thought he remembered enough of most of the arms he had seen to say that this armorial bearing was a strange one to him. He turned the letter over and over again, and looked at it back and front, with an expression in his face that said, as plain as countenance could speak, "I'd give a trifle to know what is inside of this." He looked at the seal again: "Here's a--goose, I think it is, sitting on a bowl with cross-bars on it, and a spoon in its mouth: like the fellow that owns it, may be. A goose with a silver spoon in its mouth--well, here's the gable-end of a house, and a bird sitting on the top of it. Could it be Sparrow? There is a fellow called Sparrow, an under-secretary at the Castle. D----n it! I wish I knew what it's about."
The squire threw down the letter as he said, "D----n it!" but took it up again in a few seconds, and catching it edgewise between his forefinger and thumb, gave a gentle pressure that made the letter gape at its extremities, and then, exercising that sidelong glance which is peculiar to postmasters, waiting-maids, and magpies who inspect marrowbones, peeped into the interior of the epistle, saying to himself as he did so, "All's fair in war, and why not in electioneering?" His face, which was screwed up to the scrutinising pucker, gradually lengthened as he caught some words that were on the last turn-over of the sheet, and so could be read thoroughly, and his brow darkened into the deepest frown as he scanned these lines: "As you very properly and pungently remark, poor Egan is a spoon--a mere spoon." "Am I a spoon, you rascal?" said the squire, tearing the letter into pieces, and throwing it into the fire. "And so, Misther O'Grady, you say I'm a spoon!" and the blood of the Egans rose as the head of that pugnacious family strode up and down the room: "I'll spoon you, my buck!--I'll settle your hash! may be I'm a spoon you'll sup sorrow with yet!"
Here he took up the poker, and made a very angry lunge at the fire that did not want stirring, and there he beheld the letter blazing merrily away. He dropped the poker as if he had caught it by the hot end, as he exclaimed, "What the d----l shall I do? I've burnt the letter!" This threw the squire into a fit of what he was wont to call his "considering cap;" and he sat with his feet on the fender for some minutes, occasionally muttering to himself what he began with,--"What the d----l shall I do? It's all owing to that infernal Andy--I'll murder that fellow some time or other. If he hadn't brought it--I shouldn't have seen it, to be sure, if I hadn't looked; but then the temptation--a saint couldn't have withstood it. Confound it! what a stupid trick to burn it! Another here, too--must burn that as well, and say nothing about either of them:" and he took up the second letter, and, merely looking at the address, threw it into the fire. He then rang the bell, and desired Andy to be sent to him. As soon as that ingenious individual made his appearance, the squire desired him, with peculiar emphasis, to shut the door, and then opened upon him with--
"You unfortunate rascal!"
"Yis, your honour."
"Do you know that you might be hanged for what you did to-day?"
"What did I do, sir?"
"You robbed the post-office."
"How did I rob it, sir?"
"You took two letters that you had no right to."
"It's no robbery for a man to get the worth of his money."
"Will you hold your tongue, you stupid villain! I'm not joking: you absolutely might be hanged for robbing the post-office."
"Sure I didn't know there was any harm in what I done; and for that matther sure, if they're sitch wonderful value, can't I go back again wid 'em?"
"No, you thief! I hope you've not said a word to any one