oxy man with a hanging jowl," said Patsy. "Not Irish by his
speech. Seems like as if he'd curse you if you come his way. No
whiskers,--a bare-faced man."

"That would be his description."

"It's a quare thing," said Patsy in a slow ruminating voice, "that for
all the rage I felt agin him, so that I wanted to throttle him wid me
two hands, I never thought of him with the man that was there the night
Mr. Terence Comerford was killed. Did you notice the big hairy hands
of him? They all but choked me that night. I thought I'd cause enough
to hate him when he came my way again because o' the poor girl and the
child. I could scarce keep my hands off him. The villain! I'd rather
kill him than a rat in the stable yard."

"You seem to have a very accurate idea about the person who has made
this grotesque charge against your master," Sir Felix said in his
pompous way. "Your feelings do you credit, but still ... I should not
proceed to violence."

"Please tell Sir Felix what happened that night, Patsy," Lady O'Gara
said. She had stood up and gone a little way towards the window. She
spoke in a quiet voice. Only one who was devoted to her, as Patsy was,
could have guessed the control she was exercising over herself.
Patsy's eyes, in the shadow of the lamp, sent her a look of mute
protecting pity and tenderness.

"'Tis, sir, that I was in the ditch that night." Patsy turned his cap
about in his hands. "I was lookin' for the goat an' she draggin' her
chain an' the life frightened out of me betwixt the black night and the
ghosts and the terrible cross ould patch I had of a grandfather, that
said he'd flog me alive if I was to come home without the goat. I was
blowin' on me hands for the cowld an' shakin' wid fright o' bein' me
lone there; an' not a hundred yards between me an' that place where the
ould Admiral's ghost walks. When I heard the horses' feet comin' my
heart lifted up, once I was sure it wasn't ghosts they was. They
passed me whin I was sittin' in the ditch. No sooner was they gone by
than I let a bawl out o' me, an' I ran after them for company, for it
come over me how I was me lone in that dark place. You see, your
Honour, I was only a bit of a lad, an' th' ould grandfather had made me
nervous-like. Just then I caught the bleat of the goat an' I was
overjoyed, for I thought I'd ketch her an' creep home behind Sir Shawn
an' the walkin' horse. They parted company where the roads met, an' I
heard