"We'll—ahem! drop the Leghorns. After you heard the strange noise how long was it before you heard Miss Langmore scream?"
"Perhaps quarter av an hour, sur. Oi didn't look to the clock."
"And she fainted in your arms?"
"Not exactly that, sur. She scr'ams, 'Me father! me father! Mary, he is murdered! Go to the library!' An' thin she wint over in me arms loike a stone, poor dear, poor dear!" And the domestic began to weep afresh.
"What did you do then?"
"Sure, phat could Oi do? Oi scr'amed fer hilp as loud as Oi could, an' thin Mrs. Bardon an' her son, Alfred, the docthor, came over."
"What happened next?"
"We all wint in the house, an' there we found poor Mr. Langmore dead in the library, in his chair. The doctor thought he moight be aloive yit an' had his mother an' me run upstairs fer some medicine from the medicine closet. In the upper hall we kim on Mrs. Langmore's body, also dead, an' I got that scared Oi turned an' flew down the back stairs an' out av the house loike the divil was afther me!"
There was a general laugh throughout the courtroom, at which the coroner rapped loudly on the desk.
"Silence. Such—ahem! conduct at an inquest is not to be allowed. If this happens again I shall clear the courtroom."