Ere long, however, her enthusiasm toned down. She had not reached Mr. Nicholson’s house before her thoughts were busy with the matter which had brought her to Ireland. Across the breakfast-table she talked to her companion about Amos Scott, and how it would fare with him.
“I fear badly,” said that gentleman, who had heard all about the farmer during the time he spent at Bayview, and read the reports that followed after the murder, in the papers. “Everything seems against him. His animus was no secret, and his stick was found beside the dead man.”
“Poor Amos,” ejaculated Grace. “His wrongs have driven him mad.”
“Neither wrongs nor madness will reconcile a north of Ireland jury to knocking a man over in the dark,” said Mr. Nicholson sententiously. “His chance might have been better in the south or west.”
“What do you think they will do to him?” asked Miss Moffat anxiously.
Mr. Nicholson paused for a moment, then he said,—
“I am afraid it will go against him, and if it does, unless he have powerful friends—”
“Oh!” she cried, “there is not one in all that part of the country but would speak for him. Every one knows how sorely he has been tried. Every one’s sympathy must be with him—”
“Surely, Miss Moffat, your sympathies are not with him?” interposed Mr. Nicholson gravely. “Let Mr. Brady be what he might, his right to the land was undoubted. A man is not to be murdered because he asks for his own.”
Having made which remark much in the interest of the servant, who, as is usual in Ireland, had both ears laid back to listen to the conversation of his betters, the lawyer relapsed into silence, leaving Grace to cogitate at her leisure over the plain truth contained in his sentence.