apers that came into her head in her passion, and tripped
off her tongue without her knowing a word of what they meant.

But Black Shawn heard her, turning first the deep red with which one
of his complexion blushes, and then falling off as gray as the dead.
Before she'd half said her say he took up his _caubeen_, put it on his
head, and walked out of the place with an air as if he were dreaming.

Now he had an old carbine to frighten the crows, a crazy old thing
that was as likely to hurt the man who fired it as the thing that was
fired at. Black Shawn sat up all night cleaning it, and the grim mouth
of the man never relaxed, nor did the colour come back to his ashy
cheeks.

The next night he lay in wait for Mr. Ramsay-Stewart as he came home
from the county club-house in Ballinscreen, and shot at him, killing
poor Larry Byrne. It was only the length of the bridge from the police
barracks, and as it was but nine o'clock at night, Ballinscreen people
were up and about. So there wasn't much time for Black Shawn to see
what mischief the blunderbuss had done. He saw at the first glance
that one man was down in the dogcart, and another man swinging on by
his arms to the mouth of the terrified horse. But already people were
running across the bridge and shouting, and the dark quay seemed alive
with lights.

Luckily for Shawn the road away from the town was black as a tunnel.
It runs between the two stone walls that shut out Lord Cahirmore's
deer and black cattle from the public gaze. Down this black tunnel
raced Shawn, sobbing like a child, for the black fit was gone over and
the full horror of his crime was upon him. He was a quick runner, and
he got the advantage, for the police in their flurry stopped for a
minute or two debating whether to take the river banks or the road.
But in Shawn's head the pursuing footsteps beat, beat, while he was
yet far beyond them, and the trumpets of the Day of Judgment rang in
his miserable ears. He had the smoking gun in his hands, for he
hadn't the wit to get rid of it. And yet the man was safe, if he had
had his wits about him, for he was the last man for Mr. Ramsay-Stewart
to suspect or allow suspicion to fall upon.

Well, he raced on blindly, and all of a sudden, as he turned a corner,
a man flung up his arms in front of him, and then caught him by both
wrists. It was Murty Meehan, and more betoken, he was on his way to a
drilling of the Fenian boys in a quiet spot in Alloa Valley