Awhile they carried on a desultory, more or less speculative conversation anent the fatality, until they grew morbidly weary of contemplating the poor broken body. Yorke slid off the dead horse suddenly.
"Wish Slavin were here!" he said, "let's take a dekko from the top of the rise, Reddy, see'f we can see him coming. I'm getting cold sitting here."
Redmond, nothing loath, complied. Mounting, they turned back to the summit of the ridge. Reaching it, the jingle of bells smote their ears, and they espied the Police cutter approaching them at a rapid pace.
"Like unto Jehu, the son of Nimshi!" murmured Yorke, "he's sure springing old T and B up the grade."
Sergeant Slavin pulled up his smoking team along-side his two mounted subordinates. "So ho, bhoys!" was his greeting, "fwhat's this bizness?"
Yorke rapidly acquainted him with all the details. At one point in his narration he had occasion to turn to George: "That's how it was, Reddy?" And the latter replied, "That's about the lay of it, Yorkey."
The sergeant listened, but absently. To them it did not seem exactly to be an occasion for levity; but they could have sworn that, behind an exaggerated grimness of mien, he was striving to suppress some inward mirth, as his deep-set Irish eyes roved from face to face.
"Yez luk as if yez had been hung up an' dhragged tu—th' pair av yez," he remarked casually.
Remembrance smote the two culprits. They exchanged guilty glances and swallowed the home-thrust in silence.
Slavin clucked to his team. "Walk-march, thin!" said he.