"I must see him nevertheless, my good man; and you need not be uncivil, at all events."
"I ax your honor's pardon; I didn't mane it. To be sure you can see him; but there's no harm done, and what harm was done was an accident. Sure Emon will tell you the whole thing how it was himself."
"That is the very thing I want Let me see him."
Lennon then led the way into the room where Emon was sitting up in the bed; for he had heard the buzz of the discussion outside, and caught some of its meaning.
Lennon took care "to draw" the police into the kitchen; for there was nothing annoyed him more—and that, he knew, would annoy his son—than that they should be seen about the place. He had taken his cue from Emon, who did not wish the matter to be made a blowing-horn of.
A very few words with the young man sufficed to show the magistrate and the chief that their discussion upon the subject of taking a dying man's deposition had been unnecessary in this instance, however profitable it might prove on some future occasion. Emon, except that his bead was still tied with a handkerchief, showed no symptom whatever of having received an injury. He cheerfully explained how the matter had happened, untied the handkerchief promptly at the request of the magistrate, and showed him "the tip," as he called it, he had received from Tom Murdock's hurl. There was no mystery or hesitation in Emon's manner of describing the matter. Murdock himself had been the very first to admit and to apologize for the accident; and they did not wish that any fuss should be made about it As to prosecuting him for the blow, which had been casually asked, he might as well think of prosecuting a man who had accidentally jostled him in the street.
All this was a great relief to the magistrate, who at once took the sensible view of the case, and said he was delighted to find that the whole matter had been exaggerated both as to facts and extent, and congratulated both himself and the police upon this happy termination to their zeal.
The magistrate then spoke of the propriety of "the doctor" seeing young Lennon, saying that these sort of "tips" sometimes, required medical care, and occasionally turned out more serious than might at first be anticipated. But Emon told him that Father Farrell, who was an experienced doctor himself, had examined the wound, and declared that it would not signify.
The fact was that the magistrate, in his justifiable fright, had on the first report of the "murder" sent off four miles for the dispensary doctor, in case "the man might not be yet dead," and he expected his arrival every moment, as the point at which his valuable aid would be required was plainly to be explained to him by the messenger.
Finding that matters were much less serious than rumor had made them, and perceiving that the Lennons were far from gratified at the exhibition already made, he was not anxious that it should appear he had sent for the doctor to raise, as it were, young Lennon from the dead. He was therefore determined to watch his approach, and to pretend he was passing by on other business, and that it was as well to bring him in. But the doctor had not been at home when the messenger called; he had been at a real case—not of murder, but of birth; and the magistrate and chief could not now await his arrival without awkwardness for the delay.