"All the same," Deasey whispered, "maybe it wasn't your fault: 'twas maybe your man egged you on to do the shameful deed——"
"It was so," said the widow. "'Let you get up and cut its throat,' says he, 'and then we will be shut of the domned screechin' thing.'" "Then you got the knife, ma'am," prompted Deasey. "It was the bread-knife," she answered, "with the ugly notches in the blade,—and I stole in the back way to her place in the dead hours of the night—and I had me apron handy for to quench the cries; and when I c'ot it be the throat didn't it look up at me with the two bright, innocent eyes!"
"And what'd you do with the body?" he asked.
"I dug a grave in the shine of the moon," she answered. "And I put it in by the two little cold grey feet——"
This touch of the grey feet laid a spell on Deasey's hankering morbidity.
"What turned the feet grey?" he whispered.
"Nature, I s'pose!" replied the white-haired widow. She drew her shawl about her shrinking form before she turned away.
"'Twas never found out, from that hour to this, who done it!" muttered the Widow Geraghty, "but, may the Divvle skelp me if I touch one drop of chucken-tea again!"