It was really a gay rural sight.  The circular target stood, with its bright concentric rings, in conspicuous isolation, about a hundred yards away, against the green slope of the hill.  The competitors in their best Sunday suits, some armed with muskets and some with fowling pieces—­for they were not particular—­and with bunches of ribbons fluttering in their three-cornered hats, and sprigs of gay flowers in their breasts, stood in the foreground, in an irregular cluster, while the spectators, in pleasant disorder, formed two broad, and many-coloured parterres, broken into little groups, and separated by a wide, clear sweep of green sward, running up from the marksmen to the target.

In the luminous atmosphere the men of those days showed bright and gay.  Such fine scarlet and gold waistcoats—­such sky-blue and silver—­such pea-green lutestrings—­and pink silk linings—­and flashing buckles—­and courtly wigs—­or becoming powder—­went pleasantly with the brilliant costume of the stately dames and smiling lasses.  There was a pretty sprinkling of uniforms, too—­the whole picture in gentle motion, and the bugles and drums of the Royal Irish Artillery filling the air with inspiring music.

All the neighbours were there—­merry little Dr. Toole in his grandest wig and gold-headed cane, with three dogs at his heels,—­he seldom appeared without this sort of train—­sometimes three—­sometimes five—­sometimes as many as seven—­and his hearty voice was heard bawling at them by name, as he sauntered through the town of a morning, and theirs occasionally in short screeches, responsive to the touch of his cane.  Now it was, ‘Fairy, you savage, let that pig alone!’ a yell and a scuffle—­’Juno, drop it, you slut’—­or ’Caesar, you blackguard, where are you going?’

‘Look at Sturk there, with his lordship,’ said Toole, to the fair Magnolia, with a wink and a nod, and a sneering grin.  ’Good natured dog that—­ha! ha!  You’ll find he’ll oust Nutter at last, and get the agency; that’s what he’s driving at—­always undermining somebody.’  Doctor Sturk and Lord Castlemallard were talking apart on the high ground, and the artillery surgeon was pointing with his cane at distant objects.  ’I’ll lay you fifty he’s picking holes in Nutter’s management this moment.’

I’m afraid there was some truth in the theory, and Toole—­though he did not remember to mention it—­had an instinctive notion that Sturk had an eye upon the civil practice of the neighbourhood, and was meditating a retirement from the army, and a serious invasion of his domain.

Sturk and Toole, behind backs, did not spare one another.  Toole called Sturk a ‘horse doctor,’ and ’the smuggler’—­in reference to some affair about French brandy, never made quite clear to me, but in which, I believe, Sturk was really not to blame; and Sturk called him ’that drunken little apothecary’—­for Toole had a boy who compounded, under the rose, his draughts, pills, and powders in the back parlour—­and sometimes, ‘that smutty little ballad singer,’ or ’that whiskeyfied dog-fancier, Toole.’  There was no actual quarrel, however; they met freely—­told one another the news—­their mutual disagreeabilities were administered guardedly—­and, on the whole, they hated one another in a neighbourly way.