."

"Well," said Sweeny, "and what did he tell you?"

"He told me that the sergeant went along the road till he met with the
gentleman that does be going about the country and has the two ladies
with him, the one of them that might be his wife and the other has Jimmy
Kinsella engaged to row her round the bay while she'd be bathing."

"There's too many going round the country and the bay and that's a fact.
We could do with less."

"We could, surely. But there's no harm in them ones. What the sergeant
said to the gentleman Patsy the smith couldn't hear but it was maybe
half an hour after when the sergeant went home again and he had a look
on him like a man that was middling well satisfied. Patsy the smith saw
him for he was in the ditch when he passed, terrible sick, retching the
way he thought the whole of his liver would be out on the road before
he'd done. Well, there was no more happened last night; but it wasn't
more than nine o'clock this morning before that same sergeant was off
up to the big house and I wouldn't wonder but it was to tell the strange
gentleman that's there whatever it was he heard him last night. He had
that kind of a look about him anyway."

"I don't like the way things is going on," said Sweeny. "What is it
that's up at the big house at all?"

"They tell me," said Walsh, "that he's a mighty high up gentleman
whoever he is."

"He may be, but I'd be glad if I knew what he's doing here, for I don't
like the looks of him."

Patsy the smith, pallid after the experience of the night before, walked
into the shop.

"If Peter Walsh is there," he said, "the sergeant is down about the quay
looking for him."

"You better go to him," said Sweeny, "and mind now what you say to him."

"You'll not say much," said Patsy the smith, "for he'll have you whipped
off into one of the cells in the barrack before you've time to speak.
He's terrible determined."

Patsy's face was yellow--a witness to the fact that his liver was still
in him--and he was inclined to take a pessimistic view of life. Peter
Walsh paid no attention to his prophecy. Sweeny looked anxious.

The sergeant was standing outside the door of Bran-nigan's shop. He
accosted Peter Walsh as soon as he caught sight of him.

"Sir Lucius bid me tell you," he said, "that you're to have the
_Tortoise_ ready for him at twelve o'clock, and that his lordship will
be going with him, so he won't be needing you in the boat."

"It would fail me to d