“We’re to start just as soon as we get the boys together,” said the Major, shaking hands.  “The crowd’s to be at Andrews’ by 4, and it’s fully that now; so come on at once.  We’ll go ’round by Munson’s and have Hi send a boy to look after your horse.  Come; and I want to introduce my friend here to you, and we’ll all want to smoke and jabber a little in appropriate seclusion.  Come on.”  And the impatient Major had linked arms with his hesitating ally and myself, and was turning the corner of the street.

“It’s an hour’s work I have yet wid the squawkers,” mildly protested Tommy, still hanging back and stepping a trifle high; “but, as one Irishman would say til another, ‘Ye’re wrong, but I’m wid ye!’”

And five minutes later the three of us had joined a very jolly party in a snug back room, with

  “The chamber walls depicted all around
  With portraitures of huntsman, hawk, and hound,
  And the hurt deer,”

and where, as well, drifted over the olfactory intelligence a certain subtle, warm-breathed aroma, that genially combatted the chill and darkness of the day without, and, resurrecting long-dead Christmases, brimmed the grateful memory with all comfortable cheer.

A dozen hearty voices greeted the appearance of Tommy and the Major, the latter adroitly pushing the jovial Irishman to the front, with a mock-heroic introduction to the general company, at the conclusion of which Tommy, with his hat tucked under the left elbow, stood bowing with a grace of pose and presence Lord Chesterfield might have applauded.

“Gintlemen,” said Tommy, settling back upon his heels and admiringly contemplating the group; “Gintlemen, I congratu-late yez wid a pride that shoves the thumbs o’ me into the arrum-holes of me weshkit!  At the inshtigation of the bowld O’Blowney—­axin’ the gintleman’s pardon—­I am here wid no silver tongue of illoquence to para-lyze yez, but I am prisent, as has been ripresinted, to jine wid yez in a stupendeous waste of gun-powder, and duck-shot, and ‘high-wines,’ and ham sand-witches, upon the silvonian banks of the ragin’ Kankakee, where the ‘di-dipper’ tips ye good-bye wid his tail, and the wild loon skoots like a sky-rocket for his exiled home in the alien dunes of the wild morass—­or, as Tommy Moore so illegantly describes the blashted birrud,—­

  ’Away to the dizhmal shwamp he shpeeds—­
    His path is rugged and sore,
  Through tangled juniper, beds of reeds,
  And many a fen where the serpent feeds,
  And birrud niver flew before—­
    And niver will fly any more

if iver he arrives back safe into civilization again—­and I’ve been in the poultry business long enough to know the private opinion and personal integrity of ivery fowl that flies the air or roosts on poles.  But, changin’ the subject of my few small remarks here, and thankin yez wid an overflowin’ heart but a dhry tongue, I have the honor to propose, gintlemen, long life and health to ivery mother’s o’ yez, and success to the ‘Duck-hunters of Kankakee.’”