nds and knees all covered
with blood. 'How did it happen, Mat?' said three or four together; but
Cafferty muttered, 'It's better ask nothing about it; it's not likely
_he 'll_ tell us the truth!'

"The same night my grandfather was arrested on suspicion and brought to
Ennis, where he was lodged in jail; and although there was no witness
agin' him, nor anything more than I towld ye,--the high words between
them, the axe being my grandfather's, the blood on his clothes and
hands, and his dreadful confusion when the people came up,--all these
went so hard against him, and particularly as the judge said it was good
to make an example, that he was condemned; and so it was he was hanged
on the next Saturday in front of the jail!"

"But what defence did he make; what account did he give of the
circumstance?"

"All he could tell was, that he was standing beside the master at the
table, talking quietly, when he heard a shout and a yell in the wood,
and he said, 'They 're stealing the bark out there; they 'll not leave
us a hundredweight of it yet!' and out he rushed into the copse. The
shouting grew louder, and he thought it was some of the men cryin' for
help, and so he never stopped running till he came where they were at
work felling trees. 'What's the matter?' says he, to the men, as he came
up panting and breathless; 'where was the screeching?'

"'We heerd nothing,' says the men.

"'Ye heerd nothing! didn't ye hear yells and shouting this minute?'

"'Sorra bit,' says the men, looking strangely at each other, for my
grandfather was agitated, and trembling, between anger and a kind of
fear; just as he said afterwards, 'as if there was something dreadful
going to happen him!' 'Them was terrible cries, anyway!' says my
grandfather; and with that he turned back to the cottage, and it was
then that he found the master lying dead on his face, and the axe in his
skull. He tried to lift him up, or turn him over on his back, and that
was the way he bloodied his hands and all the front of his clothes. That
was all he had to say, and to swear before the sight of Heaven that he
didn't do it!

"No matter! they hanged him for it! Ay, and I have an ould newspaper
in my trunk this minit, where there 's a great discourse about the
wickedness of a crayture going out of the world wid a lie on his last
breath!"

"And you think he was innocent?" said I.

"Sure, we know it! sure, the priest said to my father,--'Take courage,'
says he,