Children of the Dead End: The Autobiography of an Irish Navvy. Patrick MacGill

most of the people when they met him. He had taken the money which might have saved my brother's life, and it was on account of him that I had now to set out to the Calvary of mid-Tyrone. I went out on the platform again and stole a glance at the man. He was small, thin-lipped, and ugly-looking. I did not think much of him, and I wondered why the Glenmornan people feared him so much.

      We stood huddled together like sheep for sale in the market-place of Strabane. Over our heads the town clock rang out every passing quarter of an hour. I had never in my life before seen a clock so big. I felt tired and placed my bundle on the kerbstone and sat down upon it. A girl, one of my own country-people, looked at me.

      "Sure, ye'll never get a man to hire ye if ye're seen sitting there," she said.

      I got up quickly, feeling very much ashamed to know that a girl was able to teach me things. It wouldn't have mattered so much if a boy had told me.

      There was great talk going on about the Omagh train. The boys who had been sold at the fair before said that the best masters came from near the town of Omagh, and so everyone waited eagerly until eleven o'clock, the hour at which the train was due.

      It was easy to know when the Omagh men came, for they overcrowded an already big market. Most of them were fat, angry-looking fellows, who kept moving up and down examining us after the manner of men who seek out the good and bad points of horses which they intend to buy.

      Sometimes they would speak to each other, saying that they never saw such a lousy and ragged crowd of servants in the market-place in all their life before, and they did not seem to care even if we overheard them say these things. On the whole I had no great liking for the Omagh men.

      A big man with a heavy stomach came up to me.

      "How much do ye want for the six months?" he asked.

      "Six pounds," I told him.

      "Shoulders too narrow for the money," he said, more to himself than to me, and walked on.

      Standing beside me was an old father, who had a son and daughter for sale. The girl looked pale and sickly. She had a cough that would split a rock.

      "Arrah, an' will ye whisth that coughin'!" said her brother, time and again. "Sure, ye know that no wan will give ye wages if ye go on in that way."

      The father never spoke. I suppose he felt that there was nothing to be said. During one of these fits of coughing an evil-faced farmer who was looking for a female servant came around and asked the old man what wages did he want for his daughter.

      "Five pounds," said the old man, and there was a tremble in his voice when he spoke.

      "And maybe the cost of buryin' her," said the farmer with a white laugh as he passed on his way.

      High noon had just passed when a youngish man, curiously old in appearance, stood in front of me. His shoulders were very broad, and one of them was far higher than the other. His waist was slender like a girl's, but his buttocks were heavy out of all proportion to his thin waist and slim slivers of shanks.

      "Six pounds!" he repeated when I told him what wages I desired. "It's a big penny to give a wee man. I'll give ye a five-pound note for the six months and not one white sixpence more."

      He struck me on the back while he spoke as if to test the strength of my spine, then ran his fingers over my shoulder and squeezed the thick of my arm so tightly that I almost roared in his face with the pain of it. After a long wrangle I wrung an offer of five pounds ten shillings for my wages and I was his for six months to come.

      "Now gi' me your bundle and come along," he said.

      I handed him my parcel of clothes and followed him through the streets, leaving the crowd of wrangling masters and obdurate boys fighting over final sixpences behind me. My master kept talking most of the time, and this was how he kept going on.

      "What is yer name? Dermod Flynn? A Papist?—all Donegals are Papists. That doesn't matter to me, for if ye're a good willin' worker me and ye 'ill get on grand. I suppose ye'll have a big belly. It'll be hard to fill. Are ye hungry now? I suppose yer teeth will be growin' long with starvation, so I'll see if I can get ye anything to ate."

      We turned up a little side street, passed under a low archway and went into an inn kitchen, where a young woman with a very red face was bending over a frying-pan on which she was turning many thick slices of bacon. The odour caused my stomach to feel empty.

      "This is a new cub that I got, Mary," said the man to the servant. "He's a Donegal like yerself and he's hungry. Give him some tay and bread."

      "And some butter," added Mary, looking at me.

      "How much is the butter extra?" asked my master.

      "Tuppence," said Mary.

      "I don't think that this cub cares for butter. D'ye?" he asked, turning to me.

      "I like butter," I said.

      "Who'd have thought of that, now?" he said, and he did not look at all pleased. "Ye can wait here," he continued, "and I'll come back for ye in a wee while and the two of us can go along to my farm together."

      He went out and left me alone with the servant. As he passed the window, on his way to the street, Mary put her thumb to her nose and spread her fingers out towards him.

      "I hate Orangemen," she said to me; "and that pig of a Bennet is wan of the worst of the breedin'. Ah, the old slobber-chops! See and keep up yer own end of the house with him, anyhow, and never let the vermint tramp over you."

      She made ready a pot of tea, gave me some bread and butter and two rashers of bacon.

      "Ate yer hearty fill now, Dermod," said the good-natured girl; "for ye'll not get a dacent male for the next six months."

      And I didn't.

CHAPTER VI BOYNE WATER AND HOLY WATER

       Table of Contents

      "Since two can't gain in the bargain,

      Then who shall bear the loss

      When little children are auctioned

      As slaves at the Market Cross?

      Come to the Cross and the Market,

      Where the wares of the world are sold,

      And the wares are little children,

      Traded for pieces of gold."

       —From Good Bargains.

      My master's name was Bennet—Joe Bennet. He owned a farm of some eighty acres and kept ten milch cows, two cart-horses, and twenty sheep. He possessed a spring-cart, but he seldom used it. It had been procured at one time for taking the family to church, but they were ashamed to put any of the cart-horses between the shafts, and no wonder. One of the horses was spavined and the other was covered with angleberries.

      He brought me home from Strabane on the old cart drawn by the spavined horse, and though it was well past midnight when we returned I had to wash the vehicle before I turned into bed. My supper consisted of buttermilk and potatoes, which were served up on the table in the kitchen. The first object that encountered my eye was a large picture of King William Crossing the Boyne, hung from a nail over the fireplace and almost brown with age. I hated the picture from the moment I set eyes on it, and though my dislikes are short-lived they are intense while they last. This picture almost assumed an orange tint before I left, and many a time I used to spit at it out of pure spite when left alone in the kitchen.

      The household consisted of five persons, Bennet, his father and mother, and two sisters. He was always quarrelling with his two sisters, who, in addition to being wasp-waisted and spider-shanked, were peppery-tongued and salt-tempered, but he never got the best of the argument. The two hussies could talk the head off a drum. The old father was