Mick stared at him in a dazed way. "My father?" he repeated.

"Your father," said Pat; "an' it was my father murdered him."

Mick was too dazed to take it in. All he could think of, all he could see, was that thin white face before his eyes.

"Do ye think ye'll get safe to America?" he said huskily.

"My G.o.d, are ye a chile at all?" said Pat. He gave a big sob, that made Mick jump, and then began to cry and shake all over. "What did I do it for at all at all?" he wailed.

Mick put his arm round him. "Whist, Pat, whist, man; ye must be off, now, at wanst."

Pat stopped crying. "I'm not goin'," he said. "I done what he bid me, an' now I'll give myself up, an' let them hang me: it's what I disarve."

"Listen a bit, Pat," said Mick. "Ye didn't mane it, I know that. It's not you but yer ould father that ought to be hanged----" He stopped, something came back to his mind as though out of a far-off past; but it was only last night Uncle Niel had said: "We do well to forgive him, as G.o.d forgives us." "Pat," he cried, "Uncle Niel said we were to forgive your father!" Quickly he told the whole story--what Patsy had said, what Uncle Niel had answered, with such a sense of relief as he told it that he felt almost glad. "An' I know he would forgive you for murderin' him, Pat, this very minute, if he could spake." Pat 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 G.o.d could make it not true?" said Fly.

"He couldn't," said Mick, "for I'd niver, niver forget it."

"Andy's ready waitin' for ye, Mick," said Lull at the door.

When they came home from the funeral Mick was ill, and had to be put to bed. Jane came up to his room, and sat with him. "Do ye mind what Uncle Niel said to us in the loney?" she said. "Well, he couldn't come as far as this to tell us, so he went an' tould Aunt Mary; Teressa says it was his ghost come back to her."

"To tell us what?" said Mick feverishly.

"That it was wan of them _Things_ done it."

"I thought ye meant about forgivin'," said Mick. "Mebby it was that; don't ye think it might 'a' been, Janie?" His voice was very eager.

"I niver thought a' that," said Jane; "but Uncle Niel was quare an'

good. I believe he'd even forgive a buddy for murderin' him."

Mick lay down with a sigh of relief. "I thought that myself," he said.

It was not till the primroses were out that the children went to the farm again. Half way down the loney there was a rough cross scratched on a stone in the wall, and the words: Niel Darragh. R.I.P. Aunt Mary had been ill all winter, and at first they did not know her, for her hair was quite white. But nothing else was changed. The parlour looked brighter than ever; there was a bowl of primroses on the table.

Through the window you could see the big cherry-trees in the orchard white with blossom. Upstairs the sun streamed into Aunt Mary's bedroom, and the river sounded quite cheerful across the fields as it raced along over the weir. When Aunt Mary had baked the soda bread for tea she went to the half-door, and looked out across the fields. "I thought I saw Niel coming," she said; "it is about time he was home."

Then she turned back to the children, and welcomed them, as though she saw them now for the first time. On the way back they asked each other in whispers what could be the matter with her, but Mick walked on ahead, and said not a word. At the end of the loney they met Father Ryan.

"I was just coming to see you," he said. "It's you, Michael, I was wanting. I've got a blue pigeon for you, if you'll walk the length of the village with me."

Mick turned back with him. It was a lovely evening; the air was full of the smell of spring. They walked along silently. At their feet were tufts of primroses and dog-violets growing under the shelter of the stone wall. A chestnut-tree in the convent garden hung a green branch over the road. Before them, on one side, the sea lay like a silver mist; on the other the mountains, so ethereal that they looked as though at any moment they might melt away into the blue of the sky.

But Mick had no heart for these things. Even when he heard the cuckoo across the fields, for the first time that year, it was with no answering thrill, but only with a dull sense that he had grown too old now to care--seeing Aunt Mary had brought back all the trouble he had tried so hard to forget.

When they got to Father Ryan's house they went straight into the parlour. "Mick," said Father Ryan, sitting down in his chair, "what ails you, child, this long time back?" Mick looked into his face.

"It's all right," said Father Ryan; "you can tell me nothing I don't know. I had a letter from him this morning, poor boy."

"Is he all right?" said Mick.

"He's all right; that's what I wanted to tell you. But yourself, Mick, what ails you?"

"There's nothin' ails me," said Mick; "I've just got ould."

"Whist, boy, at your time of life," said Father Ryan.

"What did he do it for?" said Mike sharply. "Ye've seen her, Father; it's made her go mad." He began to cry.

"There, there, child," said Father Ryan. "It's more than you or me can say what it was done for. A better boy than Pat never lived, but the father had a bad hold on him."

"I sometimes think I done it myself," said Mick.

"You did it?" said Father Ryan. "Faith, child, you did a thing G.o.d Himself would have done."

When Mick said good-bye to Father Ryan about half-an-hour later, and was starting out, with the pigeon b.u.t.toned up inside his coat, he found Jane sitting on a stone at the presbytery gate waiting for him.

"Ye're the good ould sowl," he said, and he took her hand. "Come on, let's run home; I'm quare an' happy."

CHAPTER XI

A CHIEF MOURNER

Some time after the death of Uncle Niel, Patsy's ways began to puzzle the others. Until then they had always been quite open with each other about their comings and goings, but Patsy took to disappearing for a whole day at a time, giving no reason when he came home at night for his long absence. Mick and Jane asked him one day where he went so often by himself, but his answer only made them more curious. "If I telled ye," he said, "ye'd all come, an' that'd spoil it."

About a week after this Lull took them into town, eight miles away, on a shopping expedition. Jane and Patsy were on one side of the car.

Jane noticed that several people they met, and they were people she did not know, touched their hats to Patsy, and Patsy pulled off his cap each time, but said nothing. At last, while they were waiting outside a shop for Lull, a tall man came down the street. As he pa.s.sed the car he started, looked at Patsy, and then with a bow took off his hat, and walked on.