“Oh, ay,” she returned; “and I hard something about an oath, I think, that they made him take.”
“You did,” said her husband; “and it was true, too. They swore him never to breathe a syllable of it until his dying day—an' although they meant by that that he should never reveal it at all, yet he always was of opinion that he might tell it on that day, but on no other one. And it was his intention to do so.”
“Wasn't it an unlucky thing that she happened to be out when he could do it with a safe conscience?” observed his wife.
“They almost threatened the life out of the poor creature,” pursued her husband, “for Tom threatened to murder him if he betrayed them; and Ginty to poison him, if Tom didn't keep his word—and I believe in my sowl that the same devil's pair would a' done either the one or the other, if he had broken his oath. Of the two, however, Ginty's the worst, I think; and I often believe, myself, that she deals with the devil; but that, I suppose, is bekaise she's sometimes not right in her head still.”
“If she doesn't dale with the devil, the devil dales with her at any rate,” replied the other. “They'll be apt to gain their point, Tom and she.”
“Tom, I know, is just as bitther as she is,” observed the old man, “and Ginty, by her promises as to what she'll do for him, has turned his heart altogether to stone; and yet I know a man that's bittherer against the black fellow than either o' them. She only thinks of the luck that's before her; but, afther all, Tom acts more from hatred to him than from Ginty's promises. He has no bad feelin' against the young man himself; but it's the others he's bent on punishing. God direct myself, I wish at any rate that I never had act or hand in it. As for your time o' life and mine, Polly, you know that age puts it out of our power ever to be much the betther one way or the other, even if Ginty does succeed in her devilry. Very few years now will see us both in our graves, and I don't know but it's safer to lave this world with an aisy conscience, than to face God with the guilt of sich a black saicret as that upon us.”
“Well, but haven't you promised them not to tell?”
“I have—an' only that I take sich delight in waitin' to see the black scoundrel punished till his heart 'll burst—I think I'd come out with it. That's one raison; and the other is, that I'm afraid of the consequences. The law's a dangerous customer to get one in its crushes, an' who can tell how we'd be dealt with?”
“Troth, an' that's true enough,” she replied.
“And when I promised poor Edward on his death-bed,” proceeded the old man, “I made him give me a sartin time; an' I did this in ordher to allow Ginty an opportunity of tryin' her luck. If she does not manage her point within that time, I'll fulfil my promise to the dyin' man.”