“Broke—smashed!” repeated Kerry, as he held up both hands in feigned astonishment; “'tis a droll smash: begorra, I never see money as plenty this many a year. Sure av there wasn't lashings of it, would he be looking out for carriage-horses, and buying hunters, not to say putting the kennel in order.”
“Is it truth you are telling?” said Roach, in astonishment.
“True as my name is Kerry O'Leary. We offered Lanty Lawler a hundred and twenty guineas on Friday last for a match wheeler, and we're not off of him yet; he's a big brown horse, with a star on his face; and the cob for the master cost forty pounds. He'll be here tomorrow, or next day, sure ye'll see him yourself.”
“The place is falling to ruin—the roof will never last the winter,” broke in the doctor.
“Well, and whose fault is it, but that spalpeen Murphy's, that won't set the men to work till he gets oak timber from the Black Say—'tis the finest wood in the world, they tell me, and lasts for ever and ever.”
“But, don't they owe money every where in the country? There isn't a little shop in Killarney without an account of their's in it.”
“Of course they do, and the same in Cork—ay, and in Tralee, for the matter of that. Would you have them not give encouragement to more places nor one? There's not one of those crayturs would send in their bill—no, though we do be asking for it, week after week. They're afraid of losing the custom; and I'll engage now, they do be telling you they can't get their money by hook or by crook; that's it—I knew it well.”
The doctor meditated long on these strange revelations, so very opposite to all he had heard of the circumstances of the O'Donoghues; and while his own convictions were strongly against Kerry's narrative, that worthy man's look of simplicity and earnest truth puzzled him considerably, and made him hesitate which side to credit.
After a long pause, from which the incoherent ravings of the sick boy aroused him, he looked up at Kerry, and then, with a motion of his thumb towards the bed, he muttered—
“He's going fast.”