er eyes."

"Was it glasses she was putting on the sheep's eyes?" suggested the
Chairman, with a glance that admitted the court to the joke.

"No, but an ointment," said Sweeny stubbornly. "I seen her rubbing it to
the eyes, an' she no more than thirty yards from me."

"Will ye swear that?" thundered Mr. Heraty; "will you swear that at a
distance of thirty yards you could tell what was between Darcy's
mother's fingers and the sheep's eyes? No you will not! Nor no man
could! William, is Darcy's mother in the coort? We'll have to take
evidence from her as to the condition of the sheep's eyes!"

"Darcy says, yer worship, that his mother would lose her life if she was
to be brought into coort," explained William, after an interlude in
Irish, to which both magistrates listened with evident interest; "that
ere last night a frog jumped into the bed to her in the night, and she
got out of the bed to light the Blessed Candle, and when she got back to
the bed again she was in it always between herself and the wall, an' she
got a wakeness out of it, and great cold--"

"Are ye sure it wasn't the frog got the wakeness?" asked Dr. Lyden.

A gale of laughter swept round the court.

"Come, come!" said Mr. Heraty; "have done with this baldherdash!
William, tell Darcy some one must go fetch his mother, for as wake as
she is she could walk half a mile!" Mr. Heraty here drew forth an
enormous white pocket-handkerchief and trumpeted angrily in its depths.

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?"

Darcy's reply was garnished with a good deal more gesticulation than
usual, and throughout his speech the ironic smile on Sweeny's face was a
masterpiece of quiet expression.

"He says," said William, "that surely she was at Mass last Sunday, the
same as your worship says, but 'twas on the way home that she was taking
a wall, and a stone fell on her and hurted her finger and the boot
preyed on it, and it has her desthroyed."

At this culmination of the misadventures of Mrs. Darcy the countenances
of the general public must; again have expressed some of the
bewilderment that they felt.

"Perhaps William will be good enough to explain," said Dr.