"Good heavens! but why did they shoot him?"
"Well, he'd got himself disliked, miss. For more than five years the bhoys had been warning him; sure they sent him enough pictures of coffins and skulls to paper a wall with, and he, he'd light his pipe with them. Little he cared for skulls or crossbones. 'To blazes with them!' he'd say. 'All right,' says the bhoys, 'we'll give you one warnin' more.' 'Warn away,' says he, and they warned. Two nights after they laid him out. Do you see away beyant those trees, miss, thim towers—there, you see them poppin' up?"
"Yes."
"That's Mr. Frinch's house."
"Why, it's a castle."
"Yes, miss, I b'lave they called it that in the old days."
At a gateway, where the gate was flung wide open, Moriarty drew up.
"Now," said he to the person in the tall hat, "that's your way to the back primises; down with you and in with you, and sarve your writ, for it's a writ you've come to sarve, and you needn't be hidin' it in your pocket, for it's stickin' out of your face. Round with you to the back primises and give me compliments to the cook, and say I'll be in for me supper when I've left this lady at the hall dure."
The man in possession, standing now in the road under the moonlight, examined the car and the horse that had brought him.
"The horse and car are Mr. French's?" he asked.