nodded to those around,
perfectly unconscious of the cause which had brought him there, but
evidently thinking it must be holiday occasion.

Brady had stated to the Coroner pretty accurately what he knew, for
there was nothing which it could have benefited him to falsify. The
two girls proved that after Brady had started with the body, Thady
had had interviews with his sister and his father, and it was
necessary that both of them should be examined.

When the book, on which he was to be sworn, was handed to Larry
Macdermot, he at first refused it, and when it was again tendered to
him, he put it in his pocket, and made the man who gave it to him a
bow. The Coroner, seeing he was in such a state of mind as rendered
him unable to give evidence and unfit to be sworn, asked him some
questions on the subject, but Larry instantly began to cry, and
protest his own innocence, swearing, as he had done before, that he
had loved Ussher better even than his own family.

It was a most melancholy sight--that poor, weak old man, whom so many
of those now present had known so long, and who so very few years
before had been in the full strength of manhood and health, for even
now he was hardly more than fifty.

But sad as all this was, the examination of Feemy was still worse.
As she had been actually present at the moment when Ussher had been
killed, it was absolutely necessary that her evidence should be taken
by the Coroner; and the sergeant of police, who came with a car from
Carrick for them in the morning, insisted, in spite of all that she
and the maids could say to the contrary, that she must accompany him
back. She had got on the same car with her father; Biddy and the
other girl were on the same seat with her, one on each side; but
before they reached Drumsna, she was in such a state, that they could
hardly keep her on the seat.

When they reached that village, the car was stopped by Father John.
He had heard of the sad occurrence late on the previous evening, for
Pat Brady had spared no exertions in disseminating the news of the
catastrophe far and wide as he returned from Carrick. He had stopped
at the priest's gate, and finding Father John absent on a sick visit,
had nearly frightened Judy out of her life, by telling her what had
happened. Father John had not returned home till two in the morning,
and he then heard some garbled version of the story, from which he
was led to believe that Thady was in custody at Carrick