“Ah! you read Father Prout,” said the girl, and looked at the grim law books as though to say they did not look suggestive of the warblings of a poet. “Well, when he got to speak of his home in the ould country, and the good mother he had left in the village he was born in, and of the days of boyhood, I led him on to speak of the glad springtime, when he courted Ellen as a sweet colleen, as he called her, and so the man was melted, and he heard me patiently. Then I asked Mr. Duskin if I might say a few words to the others, and offer a prayer, and as he didn’t say me nay, why I did.”
“Was this man, what’s his name, the complainant, I mean, there then?”
“Oh, no! I was just about to leave, for it was near eleven o’clock, and I feared the friends with whom I stayed would be anxious about me.”
“Oh! you weren’t staying at Duskin’s yourself, then? Mr. Storth must have misunderstood you.”
“Oh, no! I was saying a few parting words to one or two of the women, who seemed glad that I should speak to them. Then the door was thrust open violently, and the man Graham almost fell into the room. He was very much under the influence of drink. One of the women was his wife, and he accused me of wanting to make a Black Protestant of her, and threatened me. But I did not mind him, for he was not himself and was moving to the door. But he stood in my way, and made as though to prevent my going, and Ellen came between us, and made to push him on one side, and he called her a foul name and struck her in the face. Then Patrick Sullivan jumped to his feet with a wild cry, and before one could think or speak the two men were fighting, and then it seemed as though all the house began to scream and shout and yell and swear, and the street filled even at that late hour, and then the police came and seized Sullivan. Graham was on the floor with a nasty wound in his head, and poor Ellen almost in hysterics blaming herself bitterly for taking me to the house at all.”
“You are sure Graham struck Nelly?”
“Oh, yes! And now this morning what could I do but come with the poor woman to see her through the trouble. I had much ado to prevent her pawning her wedding-ring to pay your fee, but we managed without that.”
“Oh! Nelly had her wedding-ring? Then Pat hadn’t been drinking long. It’s the last thing that goes. When that’s gone the husband starts working again. It’s the last thing in and the first thing out.”
“Can you get Sullivan off, Mr. Beaumont? If it is only a question of a fine, perhaps that can be arranged.”
“In the same way, I supose as my fee was arranged?”