"Oh, a tramp, apparently. He appeared to have fallen from the Mount. He might have been running in the dark and shot out violently over the edge. From the look of him I should say he had broken his neck. You know how thick the moss is there under the trees. You would not think the fall could have hurt him, but he is stone-dead. I didn't want him brought here so I ran off and got some men who are building a Congested Districts Board house on the Tubber road to lift him. The body is in the stable belonging to the pub. There will have to be an inquest, I suppose, and I shall have to give evidence. A beastly bore." He began to cut himself a slab out of the game pie absent-mindedly.
"Terry," she said, "I think I know the man. He has been about here lately. Patsy would know. If he is the man I think, he is the husband of Susan Horridge, the little woman at the South lodge."
"Oh—that Patsy's so sweet on! He was a bad lot, wasn't he? A brute to that poor little woman and the delicate child. He didn't look a nice person."
He gave a fastidious little shudder.
"We're too squeamish," he said. "It comes of the long Peace. I've sent word to Costello. I suppose I'll have to appear at the inquest. They say a wise man never found a dead man. No one would accuse me of being wise."
A queer thought came to her. If Shawn had not been lying as he was, helpless, might not he have been suspected of a hand in the death of the man who had made such charges against him?
CHAPTER XXVI
MOTHER AND DAUGHTER
Lady O'Gara left Terry eating his curry—the Castle Talbot cook made a particularly good and hot curry—with a quickly recovered appetite, and went upstairs to where Patsy Kenny was sitting by the fire in the sick-room.
"He woke up an' took his milk," said Patsy in an ecstatic whisper, "an' he knew me! 'Is that you, Patsy, ye ould divil?' says he. Sorra a word o' lie in it! An' Shot had twisted himself in unbeknownst to me, an' when he heard the master spakin' he up an' licked his hand."