h, "soon
after the strange gentleman came. I don't know rightly what they wanted
with him. Sweeny was asking Constable Maloney after; but sure the boy
knew no more than I did myself."

"It's a curious thing," said Kinsella, "so it is, damned curious."

"Damned," said Peter Walsh.

"I wouldn't be sorry if the whole lot of them was drownded one of these
days."

"I wouldn't like anything would happen to the young lady."

"Is it Priscilla? I wasn't meaning her. But any way, Peter Walsh, you
know well the sea wouldn't drown that one."

"It would not, surely. Why would it?"

"What I had in my mind," said Kinsella, "was the rest of them."

He looked sadly at the sky and then out across the sea, which was
perfectly calm.

"But there'll be no drowning," he added with a sigh, "while the weather
holds the way it is."

"There's a feel in the air," said Peter Walsh hopefully, "like as if
there might be thunder."

A small boat, rowed by a boy, stole past them up the harbour. Neither of
the two men spoke until she reached the slip at the end of the quay.

"I'd be sorry," said Kinsella, "if anything would happen to them two
that does be going about in Flanagan's old boat. There's no harm in them
barring the want of sense."

"It would be as well for them to be kept off Inishbawn for all that."

"They never offered to set foot on the island," said Kinsella, "since
the day I told them that herself and the childer had the fever. The way
it is with them, they wouldn't care where they'd be, one place being the
same to them as another, if they'd be let alone."

"That's what they will not be, then."

"On account of Priscilla?"

"Her and the young fellow she has with her. They're out hunting them two
that has Flanagan's old boat the same as it might be some of the boys at
a coursing match and the hare in front of them. Such chasing you never
seen! It was up out of their beds they were this morning at six o'clock,
when you'd think the likes of them would be asleep."

"I seen them," said Kinsella.

"And the one of them is as bad as the other. You'd be hard put to it to
say whether it was Priscilla has put the comether on the young fellow or
him that had her druv' on to be doing what it would be better for her to
leave alone."

"Tell me this now, Peter Walsh, that young fellow is by the way of
having a sore leg on him, so they tell me. Would you say now but
that might be a trick the way it would put us off from suspecting