“'I am going up-stairs with it, ma'am,' says Jack, whose backward position favoured his lie, and he began to walk up again.
“'Come down here,' said the lady, 'we want no beds here, man.'
“'Mr. Sullivan, ma'am, sent me home with it himself,' said Jack, still mounting the stairs.
“'Come down, I tell you,' said the lady, in a great rage. 'There's no Mr. Sullivan lives here—go out of this with your bed, you stupid fellow.'
“'I beg your pardon, ma'am,' says Jack, turning round, and marching off with the bed fair and aisy. Well, there was a regular shilloo in the house when the thing was found out, and cart-ropes wouldn't howld the lady for the rage she was in at being diddled; so she offered rewards, and the dickens knows all; and what do you think at last discovered our poor Jack?”
“The sweetheart, maybe,” said Larry, grinning in ecstasy at the thought of human perfidy.
“No,” said Goggins, “honour even among sweethearts, though they do the trick sometimes, I confess; but no woman of any honour would betray a great man like Jack. No—'t was one of the paltry ribbons that brought conviction home to him; the woman never lost sight of hunting up evidence about her feather-bed, and, in the end, a ribbon out of one of her caps settled the hash of Jack Tate.”
From robbings they went on to tell of murders, and at last that uncomfortable sensation which people experience after a feast of horrors began to pervade the party; and whenever they looked round, there was the coffin in the background.
“Throw some turf on the fire,” said Goggins, “'t is burning low; and change the subject; the tragic muse has reigned sufficiently long—enough of the dagger and the bowl—sink the socks and put on the buckskins. Leather away, Jim—sing us a song.”
“What is it to be?” asked Jim.