The pedlar looked at the speakers with a face of much curiosity and interest, then mused for a time, and at length took a turn or two about the floor, after which he sat down and began to drum his fingers on the little table which had been placed for breakfast.
“Afther I get my breakfast,” he said at length, “I'll thank you to let me know what I have to pay. It's not my intention to stop undher this roof any longer; I don't think I'd be overly safe.”
“Safe!—arrah why so?” asked the woman.
“Why,” he replied, “ever since I came here, you have done nothing but collogue—collogue—an' whisper, an' lay your heads together, an' divil a syllable can I hear that hasn't murdher at the front an' rear of it—either spake out, or get me my bill. If you're of that stamp, it's time for me to thravel; not that I'm so rich as to make it worth any body's while to take the mouthful of wind out o' me that's in me. What do you mean by this discoorse?”
“May God rest the sowls of the dead!” replied the woman, “but it's not for nothing that we talk as we do, an' if you knew but all, you wouldn't think so.”
“Very likely,” he replied, in a dry but dissatisfied voice; “maybe, sure enough, that the more I'd know of it, the less I'd like of it—here now is a man named Sullivan—Barney, Bill, or Bartley, or some sich name, that has been murdhered, an' it seems the murdherer was sent to gaol yestherday evenin'—the villain! Get me my bill, I say, it's an unsafe neighborhood, an' I'll take myself out of it, while I'm able.”
“It's not widout raisin we talk of murdher then,” replied the woman.
“Faith may be so—get me my bill, then, I bid you, an' in the mane time, let me have, my breakfast. As it is, I tell you both that I carry no money to signify about me.”
“Tell him the truth, aunt,” said Hanlon, “there's no use in lyin' under his suspicion wrongfully, or allowin' him to lave your little place for no raison.”
“The truth is, then,” she proceeded, throwing the corner of her apron over her left shoulder, and rocking herself to and fro, “that this young man had a dhrame some time ago—he dremt that a near an' dear friend of his an' of mine too, that was murdhered in this neighborhood, appeared to him, an' that he desired him to go of a sartain night, at the hour of midnight, to a stone near this, called the Grey Stone, an' that there he would get a clue to the murdherer.”