“Yes, and the other two eight and nine, I suppose?” commented Dr. Lyden.
The defendant remained silent.
“Do ye see now how well he began with the youngest—the way we’d think ’twas the eldest!” resumed Dr. Lyden. “I think we may assume that a gorsoon—male or female—of eight or nine years is capable of setting a dog on the sheep.”
Here Darcy spoke again.
“He says,” interpreted William, “there isn’t pig nor ass, sheep nor duck, belongin’ to him that isn’t heart-scalded with the same childhren an’ their dog.”
“Well, I say now, an’ I swear it,” said Sweeny, his eye kindling like a coal, and his voice rising as the core of what was probably an old neighbourly grudge was neared, “my land is bare from his bastes threspassing on it, and my childhren are in dread to pass his house itself with the kicks an’ the sthrokes himself an’ his mother dhraws on them! The Lord Almighty knows—”
“Stop now!” said Mr. Heraty, holding up his hand. “Stop! The Lord’s not intherferin’ in this case at all! It’s me an’ Doctor Lyden has it to settle.”
No one seemed to find anything surprising in this pronouncement; it was accepted as seriously as any similar statement of the Prophet Samuel to the Children of Israel, and was evidently meant to imply that abstract justice might be expected.
“We may assume, then,” said Dr. Lyden amiably, “that the sheep walked out into Sweeny’s end of the lake and drowned herself there on account of the spite there was between the two families.”
The court tittered. A dingy red showed itself among the grizzled hairs and wrinkles on Sweeny’s cheek. In Ireland a point can often be better carried by sarcasm than by logic.