“Damnho sheery orth! (* Eternal perdition on you!) What do you mane, you villain?” exclaimed Prank, seizing the tongs, and attempting to strike him: “do you dar to suspect that I had any hand in it.”
“Wurrah dheelish, Frank,” screamed the sisters, “are you goin' to murdher Rody?”
“Murdher,” he shouted, in a paroxysm of fury, “Why the curse o' God upon you all, what puts murdher into your heads? Is it my own family that's the first to charge me wid it?”
“Why, there's no one chargin' you wid it,” replied Rody; “not one, whatever makes you take it to yourself.”
“An' what did you look at me for, thin, the way you did? What did you look at me for, I say?”
“Is it any wondher,” replied the servant coolly, “when you had sich a dreadful story to tell?”
“Go off,” replied Frank, now hoarse with passion—“go off! an' tell the Reillaghans what happened; but, by all the books that ever was opened or shut, if you breathe a word about murdher—about—if you do, you villain, I'll be the death o' you!”
When Rody was gone on this melancholy errand, old M'Kenna first put the tongs, and everything he feared might be used as a weapon by his frantic son, out of his reach; he then took down the book on which he had the night before sworn so rash and mysterious an oath, and desired his son to look upon it.
“Frank,” said he, solemnly, “you swore on that blessed book last night, that Mike Reillaghan never would be the husband of Peggy Gartland—he's a corpse to-day! Yes,” he continued, “the good, the honest, the industhrious boy is”—his sobs became so loud and thick that he appeared almost suffocated. “Oh,” said he, “may God pity us! As I hope to meet my blessed Savior, who was born on this day, I would rather you wor the corpse, an' not Mike Reillaghan!”
“I don't doubt that,” said the son, fiercely; “you never showed me much grah, (* affection) sure enough.”