“I had nothing only the little rod I had after the ass,” answered Miss Keohane, with a child-like candour. “I done nothing to them; but as for Con Brickley, he put his back to the cliff and he took the flannel wrop that he had on him, and he threw it on the sthrand, and he said he would have blood, murdher, or f-fish!”
She folded her shawl across her breast, a picture of virtue assailed, yet unassailed.
“You may go down now,” said “Roaring Jack,” rather hastily, “I want to have a few words with your brother.”
Miss Keohane retired, without having moulted a feather of her dignity, and her brother Jer came heavily up the steps and on to the platform, his hot, wary, blue eyes gathering in the Bench and the attorneys in one bold, comprehensive glance. He was a tall, dark man of about five and forty, clean-shaved, save for two clerical inches of black whiskers, and in feature of the type of a London clergyman who would probably preach on Browning.
“Well, sir!” began Mr. Mooney, stimulatingly, “and are you the biggest blackguard from here to America?”
“I am not,” said Jer Keohane, tranquilly.
“We had you here before us not so very long ago about kicking a goat, wasn’t it? You got a little touch of a pound, I think?”
This delicate allusion to a fine that the Bench had thought fit to impose did not distress the witness.
“I did, sir.”