"Sure 'tis the shtick, like, that they pulls here and there to go in their choice place."
"We may presume that the lady is referring to the tiller," said Mr. Mooney, with a facetious eye at the Bench. "Maybe now, ma'am, you can explain to us what sort of a boat is she?"
"She's that owld that if it wasn't for the weeds that's holding her together she'd bursht up in the deep."
"And who owns this valuable property?" pursued Mr. Mooney.
"She's between Con Brickley and me brother, an' the saine is between four, an' whatever crew does be in it should get their share, and the boat has a man's share."
I made no attempt to comprehend this, relying with well-founded confidence on Flurry Knox's grasp of such enigmas.
"Was Con Brickley fishing the same day?"
"He was not, sir. He was at Lisheen Fair; for as clever as he is, he couldn't kill two birds under one slat!"
Kate Keohane's voice moved unhurried from sentence to sentence and her slow pale eyes turned for an instant to the lair of the witnesses under the gallery.
"And you're asking the Bench to believe that this decent man left his business in Lisheen in order to slash fish at your mother?" said Mr. Mooney truculently.