“Why, P——has robbed every man who was fool enough to trust him; he's off to the Isle of Man, with the county funds in addition to the other prog.”
“You don't mane to say,” replied Fardorougha, with a hideous calmness of voice and manner; “you don't, you can't mane to say he has run off wid my money?”
“I do; you'll never see a shilling of it, if you live to the age of a Hebrew patriarch. See what it is to fix the heart upon money. You are now, what you wish the world to believe you to be, a poor man.”
“Ho! ho!” howled the miser, “he darn't, he darn't—wouldn't God consume him if he robbed the poor—wouldn't God stiffen him, and pin him to the airth, if he attempted to run off wid the hard earnings of strugglin' honest men? Where 'ud God be, an' him to dar to do it! But it's a falsity, an' you're thryin' me to see how I'd bear it—it is, it is, an' may Heaven forgive you!”
“It's as true as the Gospel,” replied the other; “why, I'm surprised you didn't hear it before now—every one knows it—it's over the whole country.”
“It's a lie—it's a lie!” he howled again; “no one dar to do such an act. You have some schame in this—you're not a safe man; you're a villain, an' nothin' else; but I'll soon know; which of these is my hat?”
“You are mad, I think,” said Cassidy.
“Get me my hat, I say; I'll soon know it; but sure the world's all in a schame against me—all, all, young an' ould—where's my hat, I say?”
“You have put it upon your head this moment,” said the other.
“An' my stick?”