"Ye won't speak to him to-night, then," returned the man. "He came home in the doctor's trap hours ago. Haven't ye heard the news?"
"What news?" exclaimed Murtagh.
"The news o' the shooting. He was shot at out o' the little wood across at the back o' Dolan's fields, an' he never was touched at all; only Black Shandy killed dead as a stone,—worse luck!"
The "worse luck" may have been meant as a lamentation for Black Shandy, but the tone in which it was uttered gave it an uncommonly different signification.
"Shot at!" exclaimed the children, excitedly.
"What an awful lot of funny things are happening!" said Murtagh. "Who shot at him?"
"Them as thought we've had enough o' him and his ways, I s'pose," replied the man. "And that's not a few. Good evening to yez; ye'd better be runnin' in out o' the rain."
"Yes, but look here," said Winnie. "Did they want to shoot him dead?"
"What d'ye suppose I know about it? Maybe it was only a bit o' fun, just to see whether they could hit a man or no when they tried," he replied, with a curious kind of laugh.
"Was he hurt? Were they caught?" inquired Bobbo.