VIGNETTES. BY ELLA MACMAHON. VI. FLYNN. OFFICIAL records would describe him as "a person having no fixed occupation." But, as a matter of fact, his occupations and pre-occupations were manifold and various, while among them there was one quite fixed and immovable. That, alas, was what has been poetically described as the pursuit of the vine! Not that Flynn knew or cared much about the vine, or its succulent fruit, the grape, except in so far as the latter yielded liquid; anything liquid, he boasted, he could drink, with the sole exception of water. That he could not swallow. "Ye'll understand me," he would explain with ingenuous gravity, "that it's net because I'm the least objectin' to it, but because it turns me stomach." But it was to the golden liquor distilled by the famous firm of John Jameson that Flynn's heart was closely bound; although he was no bigot where whisky was eoncerned, and, failing the greater, would take of the lesser distillers with complete broadmindedness. During the interludes of his fixed pursuit, he worked about on people's places. In harvesttime, when autumn gardens needed digging and autumn leaves sweeping up, when the plough was going over the land, when the hay was making, when the "thrashers" and the threshing-machine were in the yard-on all these occasions Flynn found occupation. Withal he lived a somewhat vagrant existence, even though he dwelt in the house of his mother, who was a widow, and the mother of another son as well. This other, Flynn's brother, was a carpenter, and a person of aterling respectability. It was said, indeed, that in his extreme youth Flynn's brother "could take a drop," but that a "mission" had converted him. Gossip added that he was a pleasanter "fella" before that than he had ever been since. Be this as it may, geniality was certainly not a marked characteristic of Flynn's brother, nor did they dwell together as brethren in that unity extolled by the Paalmist. In company with his brother, Flynn had taken the pledge, being ever willing to oblige; but the luck, as he himself averred, being always "agin" him, he had had the misfortune to be caught, not long after his solemn renunciation, with the neck of a whisky-bottle sticking out of his coat pocket. In spite of this damning evidence, and the yet further evidence of the spirituous Ingenious though this may have been, it availed him nothing, and henceforth his relations with the olergy became slightly strained, war had eaten, his mother aroma exhaled by his breath, he added falsehood to his had died. He came back to broken pledge, in a solemn the old home to find her chair asseveration to the priest in empty, and not only her ohair question that the bottle con- but her feather-bed empty like. tained "nothing in the worrld wise. The brothers, still but a drop of holy water bachelors, were not better borrowed out of the chapel stable companions than of fer to oure the cough on his yore. Indeed, a raging conflict mother's chest." sprang up almost immediately over the mother's feather-bed. Flynn swore that from the time of his earliest childhood his mother had promised to leave him her feather - bed. Feather- beds in Ireland are domestie bequests of high value, forming as they often do the substantial part of a girl's dowry, or an offering meet from a bridegroom to his bride. The late Mrs Flynn's feather-bed was reckoned one of the finest in the whole barony. Possession being as we are assured nine points of the law, or if not, at any rate, a distinot advantage, Flynn's brother refused not only to give Flynn the feather-bed, but to allow him to sleep on it. Feeling ran high, fer there were not wanting many who supported Flynn's contention as against his brother, adding that "all the world knew' that Flynn had been his mother's favourite. For seme time this internecine strife, after the manner of its kind, found vent in verbal dispute of incessant and acrimonious repetition. In spite of what had gone before, Flynn had the temerity to appeal to the parish priest to support his claim; but the reverend gentleman seemed scarcely avid to arbitrate. Moreover, Flynn's Owing to eircumstances never elearly explained, Flynn got into the war. His brother declared that the police teok him when he was drunk, and he never knew another ha'porth about it till he woke up at the front! This explana. tion, although displaying on the face of it glaring improbabilities, possibly contained a germ of truth. The fact remains that Flynn enlisted in a service battalion of one of the Irish regiments, and in due course went forth with a certain Irish Division to find himself upon the stricken shore of Gallipoli. He lived through that hell to be taken prisoner by the Turks, but not before deeds of gallantry had won for him the Distinguished Conduct Medal. Some months after the Armistice our Flynn returned to us, decorated aforesaid, and demobbed, and bearing upon him the marks of honourable warfare in the shape of what he described as "the hur-rt to the limb," otherwise fragments of shrapnel in his right leg. During the years which the loeust of brother fell back not merely an' he powerless-with them "Ah, don't be botherin' me. Ye know well enough I never fought the Germans, nor wouldn't, for no one." "Augh! An' who did ye fight?" "I've told ye till I'm sick and tired of tellin' ye. I fought the Turks, haythen Tarks; 'faith ye'd fight them yerself if ye seen them comin' at ye in black haythen hordes, so ye would, for all yer so careful of yer ould yalla skin." "Ah, ye may say what ye like, ye have a dirty ould English medal in yer pocket!" "I have not; that's a lie anyhow. There's no medal in me pocket." There was not. It was in the pawnshop. "I don't care where it is: ye had it, and ye got it, and ye can't deny ye got it; an' what did ye get it for if it wasn't for "Ah, shut yer mouth; sure don't ye know very well 'twasn't my fault, I couldn't help gettin' it. Could I go and lave poor Tim Dooley leppin' divils of Turks firing on him! Could I lave him to be kilt dead, and poor Mary his wife and their innocent child cryin' their eyes out for him, and them never to see a sight of him again! Sure that was the whole of it all. Would ye have me run away and lave the poor good quiet Irishman to be conshamed entirely by them-them- black cannibals?" "Ah, ye may talk, but ye took their ould medal, say what ye like." "I took it! Glory be to God, and d'ye know anything in the earthly worrld about th' Army! Took it! Bedad, when ye get in there they don't ask ye if ye'll take anything, they give ye what they like, and that's all about it. Give me me mother's feather-bed, and hould yer whisht, and stop gabbin' of what ye know nothin' about." "Ye may go whistle for it, I'm tellin' ye." Thus it went on day in day out, until the day when Flynn ate his brother's dinner. The dinner in question happened to be a particularly good one, and had been specially prepared for the brother on his return from a long job some distance away. He was late, and Flynn, coming in, proceeded to wolf every bit of it alone. The last savoury mouthful was even yet in his throat when he for whom it had been destined arrived, and caught Flynn flagrante delicto. Thereupon, as the newspapers would express it, a scene of unfortunate man, who, so far as is known, had no personal enemies in the district, must inevitably have perished of cold and exposure, but that by some extraordinary stroke of good-fortune his brother happened to be passing through the wood at the time and came upon the miscreants and their viotim before the former were able to decamp. With great intrepidity this man-who, we understand, is an ex-soldier and fought with much gallantry in the late war, in which he was severely wounded, winning the D.C.M.-attacked his brother's assailants and actually beat them off. then lost no time in summoning the police, and with their aid conveyed his brother back to his home, where he lies suffering from shook. The occurrence has caused considerable excitement in the distriot. It is conjectured that the fact that Flynn had his soldier brother living with him recently, incurred for him the enmity of the local branch of Sinn Fein, which is very strong in this part of the country; He or it may have been one of the usual raids in search of arms, as the raiders-who, however, could find no weapons of any sort left the house in much disorder. Some articles of furniture have been broken or damaged, and some are missing, notably a large featherbed. . . . Interviewed by our representative to-day, the resoner, who is the D.C.M. hero already mentioned, was modestly reticent about his own prowess, though there is no doubt whatever that his brother owes his life to his brave intervention. As usual, no arrests have been made....' When I next met our Flynn I inquired for his brother, who was reported to be still "dawny," an adjective signifying weakness or tardy recovery. "It was a queer business,' I ventured. He looked at me with very open gaze. "It's the Curse workin', that's what it is": his accents were grave. "Ye can never defeat a Curse, an' annywan that tries-God help them!.. .” VOL. CCVIII.-NO. MCCLVII. E of feathers! How dare ye keep me out of me mother's feather-bed?" The Law, however, at length overtook Flynn with its preverbially long arm. Ninetysix hours in a place of detention restored him to sobriety and a sense of his situation. He was brought forth unresistingly and placed before the judgment-seat-in other words, the court of petty sessions presided over by a benevolent bevy of justices of the peace. Here, in due order, his case was called, and the enormity of his offence gravely detailed. Flynn, now ealm, confronted the "Binoh" with a deferential and even obsequious air. -There was not one of its eeeupants for whom he had not worked at some time or other and in varied capacity. They, for their part, knew him quite as well as he knew them. In the end, asked by the chairman what he had to say for himself, and why he had insulted his clergyman and broken the peace in a manner so disgraceful and unwarrantable, he replied with ingratiating candour "Yer honour's worship, 'tis an exthror-nary thing, but the fact of the matter is, that somehow or other, whenever I do have a drop of drink in me, it always turns to clerical abuse." The face of the "Bench" remained unmoved and composedly stern, nevertheless for the fraction of a second a ripple of light seemed to irradiate it with passing humour. The decision went in Flynn's |