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"Ashes to ashes and dust to dust." It fell briskly on the shallow deal timber. "'Twas the land agitation, the fight for the land, that brought Martin Quirke down," said the official as the earth sprayed the pauper's coffin. "He was one of the first to go out under the Plan of Campaign the time of the evictions. They never got back their place. When the settlement came the Quirkes were broken.
The English people are only commencing their troubles. They don't know they're born yet. Gladstone will have some explaining to do, but he can do it, he can do it. He'd explain the shot out of the Quirke family's legs. Ah! but he's a terrible curse to this country." The other officer said: "Our duty is very discouraging.
"I find," he said, coming out again, speaking as if he were giving evidence at a sworn inquiry, "that the remains of Martin Quirke, deceased, were removed at 4.15." "I am more than half an hour late," said the priest, regarding his watch with some irritation.
"What good would it do me to have men imprisoned?" says William Quirke, senior. "My lad's life might pay for it, and perhaps my own." The most influential people of the district have remonstrated with him, argued, persuaded, all in vain. William Quirke has a wish to remain in this sublunary sphere.
"Martin Quirke they are burying," he said. "Who was he?" "Didn't you ever hear tell of Martin Quirke?" "No, never." "A big man he was one time, with his acres around him and his splendid place. Very proud people they were he and his brother and very hot, too. The Quirkes of Ballinadee." "And now " I did not finish the sentence. The priest was spraying the coffin in the grave with the golden earth.
Let them go at it. All their own fault. Nobody but themselves to blame. All very plausible and reasonable in theory. Let us look a little closer into this matter. What does William Quirke say: "Nobody can help an Irish farmer in a lonely part of Ireland. There are too many ways of getting at him.
But the Gazette gave particulars of the shooting in the legs of the four members of the Quirke family, and Mr. Morley was obliged to admit the fifteen outrages which constituted County Inspector Moriarty's idea of "quiet." Subordinates will say there is peace when there is no peace, if the master requires it. The Bundoran outrage is not susceptible of exaggeration. Call another witness.
County-inspector Moriarty can stir nothing, nor Major Rolleston, Resident Magistrate, nor Inspectors Wright, Pattison, and Huddy, all of whom have done their level best. These gentlemen assert that obviously Quirke knows the moonlighters, and for my own part, I am certain of it. The married son is equally dumb. "They were disguised," he says. "But you would recognise their voices."
Poor Quirke little knew what was at that moment hanging over him. He had not long to wait. The dastard demon of moonlight ruffianism was on his track. Quirke had a son aged fourteen years, but looking two years younger, a simple peasant lad, who cannot have injured his country very much.
But all their importunities were vain; Quirke steadily persevered in the principles of his gallant leader, Robert Emmett. Larkin's father was a respectable tradesman, carrying on his business for many years in his native parish; he removed to Parsonstown, where he contrived to impart to his son Michael, a good English education, and then taught him his own profession.
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