"Do you tell me?" said Mac Cann.
"I do; and I never grudged them to you, for that was the day that everything happened to me."
Mac Cann was searching his head to find from whom he had stolen a hen and a pair of boots at the one time.
"Well, glory be to God!" he cried. "Isn't it the queer world! Are you old Carolan, the miserly man of Temple Cahill?"
The man laughed and nodded.
"I used to be him, but now I'm Billy the Music, and there's my instrument under the boy's oxter."
Patsy stared at him.
"And where's the house and the cattle, and the hundred acres of grass land and glebe, and the wife that people said you used to starve the stomach out of?"
"Faith, I don't know where they are, and I don't care either," and he shook with the laughter as he said it.
"And your sister that killed herself climbing out of a high window on a windy night to search for food among the neighbours?"