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This was a long cottage with a prosperous slate roof, and a board over its narrow door announcing that one Jas. Heraty was licensed for the retail of spirits and porter. The mail-car rolled away; as it crawled over the top of a hill and sank out of sight a last wave of the priestly hand seemed to include us.
"So you were willin' to have arbithration before you came into coort at all?" said Mr. Heraty, eyeing the tall defendant with ominous mildness. "William, ask Darcy is this the case." Darcy's reply, delivered with a slow, sarcastic smile, provoked a laugh from the audience. "Oh, ho! So that was the way, was it!" cried Mr. Heraty, forgetting to wait for the translation.
Swear Sweeny!" said Mr. Heraty, smoothing his long grey beard, with suddenly remembered judicial severity and looking menacingly over his spectacles at Sweeny. "Here, now! you don't want an interpreter! You that has a sisther married to a stationmaster and a brother in the Connaught Rangers!" "I have as good English as anny man in this coort," said Sweeny morosely. "Well, show it off man!
Heraty, to whose imagination a vision of a plumed or feathered sheep seemed to offer nothing unusual, "remember that now, William!" Dr. Lyden looked at his watch. "Don't you think Sweeny might go on with his defence?" he remarked. "About the children, Sweeny how many have ye?" "I have four." "And how old are they?" "There's one o' thim is six years an another o' thim is seven "
Heraty, holding up his hand. "Stop! The Lord's not intherferin' in this case at all! It's me an' Doctor Lyden has it to settle." No one seemed to find anything surprising in this pronouncement; it was accepted as seriously as any similar statement of the Prophet Samuel to the Children of Israel, and was evidently meant to imply that abstract justice might be expected.
Between the two stood the interpreter small, old, froglike in profile, full of the dignity of the Government official. "Well, we should be getting on now," remarked the Chairman, Heraty, J.P., after some explanatory politeness to his unexpected visitors. "William, swear the plaintiff!" The oath was administered in Irish, and the orange moustache brushed the greasy Testament.
"They're usually one or the other," said Doctor Lyden solemnly, and in a stupendous brogue. It was the first time he had spoken; he leaned back, with his hands in his pockets, and surveyed with quiet but very bright eyes the instant grin that illumined the faces of the tapestry. "Sure William himself is no bad judge of gorsoons," said Mr. Heraty.
Heraty without a smile, "we must call upon you again!" Mr. Byrne's meek scholastic face once more appeared at the rood-screen. "Well, I should say," he ventured decorously, "that the expression is locally applied to what I may call a plume or a feather that is worn on various parts of the sheep's back, for a mark, as I might say, of distinction." "Thank you, Mr. Byrne, thank you," said Mr.
"The young fella with the foxy mustash is Docthor Lyden," whispered an informant in response to a question, "and the owld lad that's lookin' at ye now is Heraty, that owns the shop above " At this juncture an emissary from the Bench very kindly offered us seats within the rood-screen. We took them, on a high wooden settle, beside the magisterial table, and the business of the court proceeded.
Darcy raised his small blue eyes with their thick lashes, and took a look at his judge. There was a gabbled interchange of Irish between him and the interpreter. "He says she could not, yer worship, nor as much as one perch." "Ah, what nonsense is this!" said Mr. Heraty testily; "didn't I see the woman meself at Mass last Sunday?"
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