“The blessing of God and Mary on you,” said Tom Tool. “Maybe we could do a hand’s turn for you; me comrade’s a great wonder with the miracles, maybe he could do a stroke would free an innocent man.”
“Is it joking you are?” asked Christine sternly.
“God deliver him, how would I joke on a man going to his doom and destruction?”
The next day the young girl gave them jobs to do, but the Man from Kilsheelan was destroyed with trouble and he shook like water when a pan of it is struck.
“What is on you?” said Tom Tool.
“Vexed and waxy I am,” says he, “in regard of the great journey we’s took, and sorra a help in the end of it. Why couldn’t he do his bloody murder after we had done with him?”
“Maybe he didn’t do it at all.”
“Ah, what are you saying now, Tom Tool? Wouldn’t anyone do it, a nice, easy, innocent crime. The cranky gossoon to get himself stretched on the head of it, ’tis the drink destroyed him! Sure’s there’s no more justice in the world than you’d find in the craw of a sick pullet. Vexed and waxy I am for me careless cousin. Do it! Who wouldn’t do it?”
He went up to the rope that Denis and Christine were weaving together and he put his finger on it.
“Is that the rope,” says he, “that will hang my grand cousin?”