'Here's himself,' interjected one of the group by the door warningly, as Terry came into sight, climbing the hill towards them. As he drew near it could be seen that his steps were hurried and uneven, and his face as white as chalk.
He came straight up to them, and asked in a tense whisper, 'Is it thrue?' looking from one to the other.
They all avoided his eye and looked uneasily away, except Owen, in whose breast the memory of his self-humiliation of six months ago still rankled. He stepped a pace forward, and answered,—
'Aye, it sames you was good enough for her afther ahl.'
His cousin looked at him with a lack-lustre eye, as though he did not take in the meaning of the words, and, encouraged by his quiescence, Owen continued in a more pronounced tone,—
'More like it was her that wasn't good enough for yous.'
For a moment Terry stood rooted to the spot, while the blood surged upwards and veiled his eyesight with a mist, then he crouched and sprang headlong at his adversary's throat with an inarticulate snarl like a wild beast.
Owen was borne backwards by the impetus of his weight, and fell striking his head against the spike of the anvil: and Terry was torn from him by two of the men, his eyes staring and his limbs trembling with rage. When they released their hold of him, his sinews, all unstrung by the violence of his passion, gave way beneath him and he collapsed in a heap upon the floor. For a moment he sat there: then he rose to his knees, and thence to his feet, and staggered out of the door and down the road, reeling to and fro in the sunlight like a drunken man.
'Who'd ha' thought it?' said Patsey, looking after him: 'It's wunnerful what stuff a taste of the gurls does be makin' into a man. Yon wan was a suckin' calf a while ago, and now he's a young bull.'
'May the divil roast him,' exclaimed Owen, scrambling to his feet, and looking regretfully at the pool of his own blood upon the floor. 'He has me disthroyed, but I'll be even wid him yit.'