Page:Triangles of life, and other stories.djvu/234

222 colour, and a starched white shirt and collar, which he kept in a gin case. He always put them all on when anything happened. On this occasion he fastened his braces over his waistcoat, and didn't notice it until he had gone some distance along the road.

There was great excitement at Foley's shanty—women and children crying, and neighbours hanging round.

Foley was lying on his face on a stretcher, while the young doctor was taking shot from the hairiest leg that Regan and Co. had ever seen on man or beast. The doctor said, afterwards, that some of the shot had only flattened inside the outer skin, and that others had a covering of hair twisted round them. When Foley was turned round to give his "dispositions," as Mahoney called them, they saw that he had enough hair on his chest to stuff a set of buggy cushions. He had red whiskers all over his face, rusty-red, spikey hair all over his head, and a big mouth and bloodshot eyes. He was the hairiest and ugliest man in the district.

His language was hardly understandable, partly because of the excitement he was still labouring under, and partly because of his peculiar shade of brogue. Where Mahoney said "shtone" Foley would say "stawn"—a brogue with a drawl which sounded ridiculous in an angry man. He drawled most over his oaths.

It seems that he was splitting fencing timber down "beyant the new cimitry," when the storm came on. He thought it would be the usual warm thunderstorm, and it was too far to run home. He didn't want to get wet, so he took his clothes off, and put them in a