any
mischief he might be up to?"

"I was thinking myself," said Peter, "that he might be imposing on us;
but it's my opinion now that the leg's genuine. I followed them up last
night, unbeknown to them, to see would he get out of the perambulator
when he was clear of the town and nobody to notice him. But he kept in
it and she wheeled him up to the big house every step of the way."

The evidence was conclusive and carried complete conviction to
Kinsella's mind.

"What would be your own opinion," said Peter Walsh, "about that one that
does be going about the bay in your own boat along with Jimmy?"

"I wouldn't say there'd be much harm in her. Jimmy says it's hard to
tell what she'd be after. He did think at the first go off that it might
be cockles; but it's not, for he took her to Carribee strand, where
there's plenty of them, and the devil a one she'd pick up. Nor it's
not periwinkles. Nor dilishk, though they do say that the dilishk is
reckoned to be a cure for consumption, and you'd think it might be that.
But Jimmy says it's not, for he offered her a bit yesterday and she
wouldn't look at it."

"I don't know what else it could be," said Peter Walsh.

"Nor I don't know. But Jimmy says she doesn't speak like one that would
be any ways in with the police."

"She was in Brannigan's last night, buying peppermint drops and every
kind of foolishness, the same as she might be a little girleen that was
given a penny and her just out of school."

"If she hasn't more sense at her time of life," said Kinsella, "she
never will."

"Seeing it's that sort she is, I wouldn't say we'd any need to be caring
where she goes so long as it isn't to Inishbawn."

"She'll not go there," said Kinsella, "for if she does I'll flay the
skin of Jimmy's back with the handle of a hay-rake, and well he knows
it."

"If I was easy in my mind about the strange gentleman that's up at the
big house----"

"It's a curious thing, so it is, him sending for the sergeant the minute
he came."

"Bedamn," said Peter Walsh, "but it is."

The extreme oddness of the strange gentleman's conduct affected both
men profoundly. For fully five minutes they sat staring at the sea,
motionless, save when one or the other of them thrust his head forward
a little in order to spit. Kinsella at last got out his pipe, probed the
tobacco a little with the point of his knife so as to loosen it, pressed
it together again with his thumb, and then lit it.

"I wou