At dusk the big Englishman, Belcher, would shift his long legs out of the ashes and say ‘Well, chums, what about it?’ and Noble and myself would say, ‘All right, chum’ (for we had picked up some of their curious expressions), and the little Englishman, Hawkins, would light the lamp and bring out the cards. Sometimes Jeremiah Donovan would come up and supervise the game, and get excited over Hawkins’s cards, which he always played badly, and shout at him as if he was one of our own, ‘Ah, you divil, why didn’t you play the tray?’ But ordinarily Jeremiah was a sober and contented poor devil like the big Englishman, Belcher,
and was looked up to only because he was a fair hand at documents, though he was slow even with them. He wore a small cloth hat and big gaiters over his long pants, and you seldom saw him with his hands out of his pockets. He reddened when you talked to him, tilting from toe to heel and back, and looking down all the time at his big farmer’s feet. Noble and myself used to make fun of his broad accent, because we were both from the town. I could not at the time see the point of myself and Noble guarding Belcher and Hawkins at all, for it was my belief that you could have planted that pair down anywhere from this to Claregalway and they’d have taken root there like a native weed. I never in my short experience saw two men take to the country as they did. Tey were passed on to us by the Second Battalion when the search for them became too hot, and Noble and myself, being young, took them over with a natural feeling of responsibility, but
