ll care," said Gallagher. "You will care before the day is out."

"Why don't you tell me the name of it, then? if so be you know it."

"You know well why I don't tell you. It's because I wouldn't defile my
lips with the name of it, because I wouldn't say the words that would be
a disgrace to any Irishman."

"You're mighty particular," said young Kerrigan. "It would have to be a
pretty bad name that's on the tune if it's worse than what you said many
a time."

Gallagher was not in a mood to submit calmly to taunts of this kind. He
knew that he was perfectly right in refusing to pronounce the name of
the tune. He was convinced that young Kerrigan knew and was able to talk
as he did only because he was dead to all sense of decency or shame.

"Let me tell you this," he said, "and it's my last word. If that tune's
played in Ballymoy to-day it'll be the worse for you, and the worse for
your father, and the worse for all belonging to you. Let you not play
that tune or the grass will be growing on the step outside your father's
shop before any decent Nationalist will go into it to buy a bit of meat.
Them that makes their living off the people will have to mind themselves
that they don't outrage the convictions of the people."

This was an awful threat, and it cowed young Kerrigan a good deal. He
did not believe that Gallagher was capable of having it carried out to
the last extremity. The grass would not actually grow on his father's
doorstep, because the people of the west of Ireland, though swift and
passionate in resentment, find a difficulty in keeping up a personal
quarrel long enough to permit of the growth of grass. But a great deal
of temporary inconvenience might be caused by a boycott initiated by
Gallagher and taken up by the local branch of the League. Young Kerrigan
was shaken.

"You'd better speak to the doctor about it," he said. "It's his tune and
not mine."

"I will speak to the doctor," said Gallagher. "I'll speak to him in a
way he won't like. I was thinking all along he was up to some mischief
with that tune; but I didn't know how bad it was till Moriarty was
talking to me this morning. Where is the doctor?"

"He was over in Doyle's hotel a minute ago," said Kerrigan, "but I don't
know is he there yet. He might not be, for I seen him going out of it
and along the street."

"Wherever he is I'll make it hot for him," said Gallagher, as he turned
away.

"Constable Moriarty be damned," said young Ke