Old Horan must have returned from his journey unbeknown on the night of the gale when the deed was done. Perhaps he had made a poor profit on his toil, for there was little of his own coin found on his body. He saw the two drunks staggering along the bay—he clove in the head of the one with a bit of pipe—he hit the other a good whack to still or stiffen him—he got an axe from the yard—he shore off the Mexican’s two hands, for the rings were grown tight and wouldn’t be drawn from his fat fingers. Perhaps he dragged the captain home to his bed—you couldn’t be sure of that—but put the hand in the captain’s pocket he did, and then went to the paddock to bury the treasure. But a blast of wind whipped and wove some of the hemp strand around his limbs, binding him sudden. He was all huffled and hogled and went mad with the fear struggling, the hemp rolling him and binding him till he was strangled or smothered.
And that is what happened him, believe it or no, but believe it you should. It was the tracing of God on him for his dark crime.
Within a week of it Peter Corcoran was away out of gaol, a stout walking man again, free in Ballygoveen. But on the day of his release he did not go near the ropewalker’s house. The Horans were there waiting, and the two old silly men, but he did not go next or near them. The next day Kilsheelan said to her: “Strange it is my cousin not to seek you, and he a sneezer for gallantry.”
“’Tis no wonder at all,” replied Christine, “and he with his picture in all the papers.”
“But he had a right to have come now and you caring him in his black misfortune,” said Tom Tool.
“Well, he will not come then,” Christine said in her soft voice, “in regard of the red murder on the soul of my dad. And why should he put a mark on his family, and he the captain of a ship.”
In the afternoon Tom Tool and the other went walking to try if they should see him, and they did see him at a hotel, but he was hurrying from it; he had a frieze coat on him and a bag in his hand.
“Well, who are you at all?” asks Peter Corcoran.
“You are my cousin from Ameriky,” says Kilsheelan.
“Is that so? And I never heard it,” says Peter. “What’s your name?”