"Who are they waiting for?" says Mona, anxiously.
"For the agint, miss. Oh, if ye tell on me now they'll kill me. Maxil, ye know; me lord's agint."
"Waiting—for what? Is it to shoot him?" asks the girl, breathlessly.
"Yes, miss. Oh, Miss Mona, if ye bethray me now 'twill be all up wid me. Fegs an' intirely, miss, they'll murdher me out uv hand."
"I won't betray you," she says. "You may trust me. Where are they stationed?"
"Down below in the hollow, miss,—jist behind the hawthorn-bush. Go home some other way, Miss Mona: they're bint on blood."
"And, if so, what are you doing here?" says Mona, reprovingly.
"On'y watchin', miss, to see what they'd do," confesses he, shifting from one foot to the other, and growing palpably confused beneath her searching gaze.
"Is it murder you want to see?" asks she slowly, in a horrified tone. "Go home, Paddy. Go home to your mother." Then, changing her censuring manner to one of entreaty, she says, softly, "Go, because I ask you."
"I'm off, miss," says the miscreant, and, true to his word, darts through the hedge again like a shaft from a bow, and, scurrying through the fields, is soon lost to sight.