“I did,” replied Rody. “I can swear to that.”
“Ay,” exclaimed Prank, with triumph; “an' you yourself, Darby, saw us, as I said, makin' up whatsomever little differences there was betwixt us.”
“I did,” replied the mendicant, sternly; “but I heard you say, no longer ago than last night—say!—why you swhore it, man alive!—that if you wouldn't have Peggy Gartland, he never should. In your own stable I heard it, an' I was the manes of disappointin' you an' your gang, when you thought to take away the girl by force. You're well known too often to carry a fair face when the heart under it is black wid you.”
“All I can say is,” observed young Reillaghan, “that if it comes out agin you that you played him foul, all the earth won't save your life; I'll have your heart's blood, if I should hang for it a thousand times.”
This dialogue was frequently interrupted by the sobbings and clamor of the women, and the detached conversation of some of the men, who were communicating to each other their respective opinions upon the melancholy event which had happened.
Darby More now brought Reillaghan's father aside, and thus addressed him:—
“Gluntho! (* Listen)—to tell God's thruth, I've sthrong suspicions that your son was murdhered. This sacred thing that I put the crass upon people's breast wid, saves people from hangin' an' unnatural deaths. Frank spoke to me last night, no longer ago, to come up an' mark it an' him to-morrow. My opinion is, that he intinded to murdher him at that time, an' wanted to have a protection agin what might happen to him in regard o' the black deed.”
“Can we prove it agin him?” inquired the disconsolate father: “I know it'll be hard, as there was no one present but themselves; an' if he did it, surely he'll not confess it.”
“We may make him do it maybe,” said the mendicant; “the villain's asily frightened, an' fond o' charms an' pisthrogues,* an' sich holy things, for all his wickedness. Don't say a word. We'll take him by, surprise; I'll call upon him to touch the corpse. Make them women—an' och, it's hard to expect it—make them stop clappin' their hands an' cryin'; an' let there be a dead silence, if you can.”
During this and some other observations made by Darby, Frank had got the gun in his possession; and, whilst seeming to be engaged in looking at it, and examining the lock, he actually contrived to reload it without having been observed.