did not
answer. "An' if ye don't go they'll make me give evidence, an' ye
wouldn't have me an informer, would ye?"

"I'll go," said Pat.

No one had missed Mick when he got home. Their mother was ill, and the
doctor had come. Lull was with her, and Teressa had come to do the
work. After dinner Teressa came into the schoolroom. She said she was
afraid to be by herself in the big kitchen. Jane questioned her about
Uncle Niel, and she told them that one of the men had found the dead
body in the loney late at night as he was coming back from Newry with
one of the horses. The horse had stopped half way down the loney, and
when the man looked round for a bit of a stick to beat him with he saw
the body lying on its face in the ditch. "But the quare thing,"
Teressa said, "is that yer Aunt Mary houlds to it that he come in after
seein' yez all home last night. She let him in, and boulted the dour
after him, but when they took the corpse home the dour was still
boulted, an' his bed had never been slep' in." Here Lull came into the
schoolroom, and was cross with Teressa. "Have ye no wit, woman," she
said, "sittin' there like an ould witch tellin' the childer a lock a'
lies?"

The day of the funeral Mick stood at the schoolroom window in his new
black coat watching the rain beating against the panes. The burden of
the secret he carried weighed him down. He must have been changed into
another person, he thought, since Honeybird's birthday.

"I wonder why it always rains when people die?" said Fly.

"He didn't die, he was murdered," said Jane bitterly.

Mick shivered; he felt like an accomplice. All night he had been
thinking of the funeral. Lull had told him yesterday he must go to be
chief mourner. But had he any right to be a mourner? What would the
people think--what would Father Ryan say--if they knew that he had
helped his uncle's murderer to escape?

"I wisht I could go with ye, Mick," said Jane at his elbow. "I ast
Lull, but she said ladies niver went to feenerals."

Mick turned round. "I'm all right, Janie," he said. But Janie's
kindness seemed to hurt him more: what would she say if she knew?

"Wouldn't it be awful nice if ye woke up this minute an' it wasn't real
at all, an' we'd only dreamt it?" said Fly.

"Nip me as hard as ye can," said Jane. Fly nipped her arm. "Ye
needn't nip so hard--it's true enough."

"I wonder if God could make it not true?" said Fly.

"He couldn't," said Mick