“I'm goin' to tell you myself,” proceeded Raymond; “she came to die here that she might be near them—do you onderstand?” and he involuntarily pressed the arm he still held with his huge iron finger, until Phil told him he could not bear the pain. “She came to die here that she mightn't have far to go to them; for you don't know, maybe, that it's on their grave she is now lyin':—ha, ha; that's one. DID YOU EVER SEE A MURDERED WOMAN, CAPTAIN PHIL?”
“Never,” replied Phil, who stood passive in his grip.
“Ha, ha, ha,” he chuckled, “that's not a good one. Well, but, did you ever see a murdherer?”
“Some o' the blood-hounds pinked fellows, I believe, but then they were only rebels and Pap-papishes.”
“Ha, ha,” still chuckled Raymond, as he confronted himself by degrees with Phil, “I swore it for poor White-head's sake—and for Mary M'Loughlin's sake—an' for twenty sakes besides.”
“God! Rimon, what do you mean?” said Phil, “there's a dreadful look in your eyes Rimon, you are an excellent fellow; but tell me what you mean?”
“To show you a murdherer,” he replied; “and now I have one by the throat!”
As he spoke, he clutched him by the neck with a grasp that might strangle a tiger. Then, as before in O'Regan's sheeling, all the fury of the savage came upon him; his eyes blazed fearfully—the white froth of passion, or rather of madness, appeared upon his lips, and his bowlings resembled the roaring of some beast of prey, while tearing up its quivering victim in the furious agonies of protracted hunger. In a moment Phil was down, and truly the comparison of the beast of prey, and his struggling victim, is probably the most appropriate that could be made; when we consider the position of the one writhing helplessly upon the ground, and the other howling in all the insatiable wildness of bloodthirsty triumph over him. So hard and desperate indeed was the tug for life, and so deadly was the immediate sense of suffocation becoming, that Phil, whose eyes were already blinded, and who was only able to utter a low hoarse gurgle, which sounded like the death-rattle in his throat, was utterly unable either to think of or to use his fire-arms. The onset, too, was so quick, that neither Father Roche nor O'Regan had time to render assistance.
“Great heaven,” exclaimed the priest, “is the young man, bad and wicked as he is, to be murdered before our eyes by that gigantic idiot!”
He proceeded to the spot just when Raymond was about to repeat, in reality, the imaginary scene with the pillow.