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"I know you wouldn't, Biddy; that's why I'm going to tell you; but you mustn't whisper it to Katty, for I think she'd be telling Thady." "Niver fear, Miss; sorrow a word I'll whisper it to any one, at all at all." "Well, Biddy, did you hear Captain Ussher's going away from this intirely?" "What! away from Ballycloran?" "No, but from Mohill, and from County Leitrim altogether.
Soon after Father John and young Macdermot had turned their backs on Ballycloran, Pat Brady, who, stood smoking his pipe, and idly leaning against the gate-post from which, even then, the gate was half wrenched, heard the sounds of Captain Ussher's horse on the road from Mohill.
"Well, Pat, a year is a dreary long time for a poor boy to be locked up all for nothing; and poor Tim won't bear up well as most might; but he that put him there will soon be sent where he'll be treated even worser than Tim at Ballinamore; and he won't get out of it that soon. By G d, I'd sooner be in Tim's shoes this night than in Captain Ussher's, fine gentleman as he thinks hisself!"
The objection is listened to with as much gravity as though a statement had been made that the prisoner had been in Newfoundland at the time of Ussher's death, and Mr. Allewinde's assistant begins to argue the case. The sub-sheriff and his two clerks are put into the chair, and have to swear one thing and another.
Many people, we know, are prone to make friends with the rich and great. Mrs. Ussher's genius consisted in having made friends with them before they were either. When you hurried to her with some account of a newly discovered treasure a beauty or a conversable young man she would always say: "Oh, yes, I crossed with her two years ago," or "Isn't he a dear? he was once in Jack's office."
Feemy received the lie with which Ussher's brain had at the moment furnished him, without a doubt; she believed it all, and then went on. "But when you've got your rank, you'll come back, Myles, won't you?" "Why that's the difficulty I couldn't well again get leave of absence." "Then, Myles, what will you do?"
And as Brady's name occurred to him, he remembered Ussher's caution respecting that man, and his assurance that he was in Keegan's pay.
Whilst at her toilet Feemy turned over in her mind all that her brother and Father John had said, and firmly resolved not to let the evening pass without telling her lover the comfort it would be to have some decided steps taken as to their engagement: and yet she almost shuddered at the thoughts of doing so; there was a frown which occasionally came over Ussher's face, which made her dread him; and she couldn't but feel that if he wished to take any such steps, he would do so without her asking him; in fact, that it would be much better that he should do so unasked.
From thence he passed back by the two small lakes and the cabin of the poor widow who owed her misery to Ussher's energy, and across the bog of Drumleesh to the lane which would take him by Ballycloran to Father John's cottage.
The kind-hearted man hardly knew what he was doing, so shocked was he, and surprised by what he had heard. He could hardly believe that after what Thady had said to him, after the promises he had made, he would deliberately, and with premeditation, plan and execute Ussher's murder.
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