'Going? and where?—what are your plans?'
'Plans?—I've no plans. Where am I going!—nowhere—anywhere. I'm going away, that's all.'
'You're leaving this place—eh, to return no more?'
'I'm leaving it to-night; I've the doctor's leave, Parson Walsingham. What d'ye look at, Sir? d'ye think it's what I murdered any one? not but if I stayed here I might though,' and Mr. Irons laughed a frightened, half maniacal sort of laugh. 'I'm going for a bit, a fortnight, or so, maybe, till things get quiet—(lead us not into temptation!)—to Mullingar, or anywhere; only I won't stay longer at hell's door, within stretch of that devil's long arm.'
'Come to the parlour,' said Mervyn, perceiving that Irons was chilled and shivering.
There, with the door and window-shutters closed, a pair of candles on the table, and a couple of faggots of that pleasant bog-wood, which blazes so readily and fragrantly on the hearth, Irons shook off his cloak, and stood, lank and grim, and, as it seemed to Mervyn, horribly scared, but well in view, and trying, sullenly, to collect his thoughts.
'I'm going away, I tell you, for a little while; but I'm come to see you, Sir, to think what I may tell you now, and above all, to warn you again' saying to any living soul one word of what passed between us when I last was here; you've kept your word honourable as yet; if you break it I'll not return,' and he clenched it with an oath, 'I daren't return.'
'I'll tell you the way it happened,' he resumed. ''Tis a good while now, ay twenty-two years; your noble father's dead these twenty-two years and upwards. 'Twas a bad murdher, Sir: they wor both bad murdhers. I look on it, he's a murdhered man.'
'He—who?' demanded the young man.
'Your father, Sir.'