'Say that wurrud agin, ye scutt. Say it agin, I darr you.'
'Ay, I'll say it as aften as I like, an' I say agin now to yer face, that neither you nor yer trollope will ever set fut on flure of mine from this out.'
'Then take that, ye ignorant fule. Ye wud have it. Maybe it'll larn ye to kape a still tongue in yer head,' shouted Paddy. In his rage the landscape swam blood-red before his gaze, he plucked the hay-fork from the ground behind him, and plunged it into his brother's chest. The sharp steel prongs drove through bone and muscle with a grinding sound, and stood out a handsbreadth behind his back. The base stopped with a thud against the breast-bone. There was a shrill scream, the scream with which the strong man's soul rends itself apart from the body; he rocked and swayed for a moment, and fell stiffly upon his back, his arms outspread. The handle of the fork stood erect, vibrating in the dead man's chest.
The young man put out his hand to grasp it, but it started away from him with a tremor, and he leaped backward, thinking it had come to life. What was that word? Murder. It appeared to be written in letters of brass across the heavens, and all the hills around were thundering it in his ears. For a long time he stood there with his eyes fixed straight in front of him, and the perspiration pouring in streams from his body.
'He dhruv me to it,' he muttered; 'he dhruv me to it.'
It had been coming to this for a long time between the brothers, though neither of them had seen it. The nagging tongue of the elder and the uncontrolled temper of the younger made them an ill-assorted pair. Once in boyhood Paddy, in a fit of anger, had pushed his brother off a cliff into the sea, and in an agony of contrition had leapt off after him. Neither was hurt by the fall, and they swam contentedly together to land, and there fought till neither of them could stand. Since then it had gradually been getting worse. A word and a blow was a daily occurrence between them, and latterly the blow was dealt with whatever instrument came handy. It had come to be only a question of sufficient provocation and a deadly enough weapon, and that was bound to happen which had now happened. This time no remorse would avail. His brother had gone where he could not follow him.
As the young man stood there beside his dead brother, a dull strange sense of the injustice of it all began to rise and swell in his bosom. He couldn't understand it. An ordinary quarrel, resulting in not quite the ordinary way, and two lives were sacrificed and a third ruined forever. God help poor Norah! It was not fair. What good did it do to any one? and why had he and Norah been selected for this thing to happen to?
After a long time he woke from his trance with a start, and keeping his eyes carefully turned from the pool of blood that was slowly drying in front of him, he ran swiftly to the house, as though to escape some temptation that was behind him. Quickly he put the horse in the cart, and standing up in it, drove at full speed to the town. Down the hill of the main street he rattled, as one of the neighbors said, 'as if the devil was behind him,' and pulled up with a jerk at the doctor's door.
'Docther dear, hurry for the love av God,' he said; 'ye're wanted badly out at Michaelstown, there's a man kilt.'
Then he walked across the road to the police station opposite, and said to the sergeant in charge, 'Me an' me brother was havin' wurruds in the three-cornered field behind the house, an' I've shtuck the graip into him. I'm thinkin' it's kilt him I have, an' I've come to giv' meself up.'