"Oh, Darby, how COULD you?" she exclaimed with horror.
"Mr. Gilbert," he stammered in a tremulous voice, "I've known ye, man and boy, and ever since ye wor a terror with the catapult. 'Twas I first taught you to handle ferrets, and sure you would not go and expose me now?"
"Why should I not? You have poached this estate for the last ten years; not modestly now and then, like your neighbours, but as systematically as if you had leased the shooting. You must have made your fortune."
"Fortune, indeed! an' how would I make a fortune?" indignantly.
"Easily, Darby! what about the white cow you sold for Miss Dido for twenty pounds, and you only gave her sixteen?" demanded Helen authoritatively.
"Arrah! what are you talking about, miss?" he asked with an air of virtuous repudiation. "Do ye want to destroy mee character?"
"It is all right, Darby, I was there. I heard you sell it to a man named James Casey. We will send for him to-morrow if you like."
"Faix, I see I may as well make a clean breast of it—I see that it's all over," remarked Darby with sullen self-possession.
"If you mean the shooting of the best covers in the county, and robbing old Mr. Sheridan, I think you are about right, and that it is all over," returned Gilbert emphatically.
"Well, sure, if I did not take from him, some one else would," was the cool rejoinder. "'Tis a shame for the likes of him, to be tempting poor people!"