"Yes, I think it was him," Deirdre said, meeting his eyes. "Conal said if ever he found him, he'd—"
"Conal's a hot head doesn't mean half he says," McNab muttered.
"But he means that, I'm sure," Deirdre said. "And Conal's so strong. Look at his hands. He could put them round a man's throat and wring the life out of it—just as easily as you wring a bird's neck, Mr. McNab. And he's a dead shot, too, Conal—they say."
"Eh, then it's somebody's neck he'll be wringing, or somebody he'll be shooting, for sure," McNab said. "For it's not him you'll be marrin', and it's not him your heart's set on. It's the other."
The quivering of her face, a dilating of the pupils of her eyes that were wells of darkness, told him that he had scored. He leant forward, following up his advantage, eagerly.
"And it's not Conal, for all his blustering, I'm afraid of, my pretty," he whispered. His eyes were narrowed, the smile in them leaping across his face. "It's not Conal, for all his blustering, though I dursay y' think he'd kill me for love of you. And you'd break his heart for love of somebody else—by way of reward. But it's me all the same that'll get you."
Deirdre pushed back her chair. Then she remembered the part she had been playing all the evening. She steadied herself, putting her hands on the edge of the table, and looked down into McNab's eyes, laughing.
"Why," she cried, "you're as drunk as drunk, Mr. McNab! And so is Steve; you'd better see each other to bed. I'm going myself."
She went across to the corner-room next the Schoolmaster's, where she slept. When she had heard Steve shambling before NcNab to the room off the bar where occasional visitors were put, she went back to the kitchen, raked over the embers of the fire, and put out a flare that was burning low in its tin of rancid fat and belching forth streams of heavy black smoke.
She opened the door of the Schoolmaster's room. The bunk against the wall on which he slept was empty, the window open. She entered, closed the door and sat down by the open window.