"It must have been within half an hour or so that you gave him the poisoned meat, Patsy."
"It was a lengthy mutton bone," murmured Mac Cann.
"Whatever it was!" said Billy the Music.
"The men walked in, they shut the barn door behind them and locked it, for the key was inside whenever I was.
"Well! I always had the use of my hands and my feet and my teeth, but I had no chance there, so in a few minutes I sat down on the kennel to get my breath back and to mop up the blood that was teeming out of my nose. The two men, I will say, were very quiet with it all—they waited for me.
"One of them was a middle-sized block of a man, and he looked as if his head had been rolled in tar—"
"Eh!" said Patsy loudly.
"The other one was a big, young man with a girl's face; he had blue eyes and curls of gold, and he was wearing a woman's skirt—the raggedest old——"
"Begor!" cried Patsy, and he leaped furiously to his feet.
"What's wrong with you?" said Billy the Music.