"It would be but ill manners in me to be conthradictin your haner."
"You are sure you did not strike him yourself."
"As sure as two tin-pinnies—Divil burn the man that Brian O'Reily ever ill used when he was down—much less when he was dead, your haner." (crossing himself.)
"How then came that cut upon the corner of your mouth?"
"Oh! murther, and is it these your haner's axing after?" and he ingeniously placed his finger upon a smaller wound made by his bottle on the previous night. "Yes, O'Reily, we wish you to state how you came by those wounds."
"Oh! but I'm bowld to show your haner, seein its you that axed me—sure here's the wapon that kilt me all out!" and as he spoke, he pulled out his broken necked bottle and handed it to his catechist.
"I see it has blood upon it, O'Reily, and this may explain the cut on your mouth, but how came that contusion on your temple?"
"Be dad but I run aginst a good big shelaleigh, an it broke me head so it did—sorra much head I had left at that same recknin, for the crather."
"You ran against a club, O'Reily? Was it growing in the ground or was it in the hands of an enemy?"
"It might be growin, your haner, or it might be in the hands of the great inimy himself, for all that Brian O'Reily knows—sure your haner isn't very particular in examinin the tixture of the timber that knocks you down. It might be a door-post—or may be the gate of the foort—as the thimber grows as thick here as paraties, and this gate was always too small for me when I had a dhrap of the whiskey."