He finished his breakfast and stood up. “Ye’ll stay by the woman an’ watch her careful,” he said. “Will ye manage that all right? Keep her to her bed, or make her lie down on the sofy. She can’t well go back to her home while he’s bein’ got ready. She’s crazy enough now, poor thing.”
“Her child was to be born in a month or so, Dan,” she said, with tears trembling in her eyes. “She might never get her senses back after a shock like that at such a time.”
“I’ll telegraph to the doctor when I go,” he said, “an’ I must be wirin’ to headquarters. They’ll likely be sending a sergeant and another man or two to help fetch him in.”
“I can get one of the neighbours in to help me if need be,” she said. “Maybe I’d better get Mrs. Wilson now.”
“Maybe ye had,” he said hesitatingly. “An’ you must listen careful what Mistress Durgan says—an’ if she mentions Ste—, any name, you ought to write it down, maybe. It might be if she didn’t pull through that you’d have to go in the witness box and swear to who she said it was did it.”
“Me swear Steve Knight’s neck into a noose!” she said. “It’s likely now, isn’t it?”
“They’d make ye go in the box,” he said. “An’ they’d make me say if I warned ye to write down anything she said, an’ me bein’ a constable an’ knowin’, ye see....”
“I see, Dan,” she said. “I’ll write down everything, never fear. You can swear you told me to. I’ll write now what she’s said.” She sprang up and got a piece of paper and pencil. “‘He’s dead’ an’ ‘he’s killed,’ that’s all she’s said till now.”
“Are ye sure—about the ‘killed,’ mavourneen?” he said slowly. “It doesn’t mean just the same....”
“Of course not,” she said hastily, and tore the paper to little shreds. “I never heard such a word. Whatever did you put that in my head for?”