ations,' sez he; 'but sorra
a woman is there about the place I'd luk at,' sez he."

"They'd be wantin' a man that tuk him," said Lull. "The first wife's
well red a' him in glory."

"When's the weddin', Teressa?" Fly asked.

"An' who's marryin' him?" said Lull.

"He's away this mornin' to be marriet. She's a lump of a girl up in
Ballynahinch," said Teressa. "Troth, ay, he lost no time; he's
bringing her home the night, the neighbours say."

In the stable Andy Graham was even more indignant. "It's the
ondacentest thing I iver heard tell of," he told Mick; "an' the woman
be to be as ondacent as himself."

But Andy's, indignation was nothing to what Jane felt. "I knowed it,"
she said to the others when they were together in the schoolroom; "I
knowed the ould boy was the bad ould baste. Augh! he oughtn't to be
let live."

"Away ar that, Jane," said Patsy; "sure, that's the fool talk. Where's
the harm in him marryin' again?"

"Harm!" Jane shouted. "It's more than harm; it's a dirty insult. Ye
ought always to wait a year after yer wife dies afore ye marry again;
but him!--him!--he just ought to be hung."

"It's a dirty trick, sure enough," said Mick; "but ye couldn't hang him
unless he done a murder."

"An' so he did," said Jane sharply. "Think I don't know? I tell ye he
murdered her, as sure as I stan' on this flure."

"Whist, Jane," said Mick; "that's the awful thing to be sayin'."

"An' I can prove it, too," she went on, "for I saw him do it with my
own two eyes, not wanst, but twiced, an' she let out he was always
doin' it. I promised her I wouldn't come over it, but there's no harm
tellin' it now she's dead. Ye know them eggs Lull sent her?" the
children nodded. "Well, do ye mane to say she iver eat them? For she
just didn't; he eat ivery one himself, an' he eat the puddens, an' he
drunk the milk. Augh! the ould baste, he'd eat the clothes off her bed
if he could 'a' chewed them."

"Who tould ye he eat them all?" said Patsy.

"Sure, I saw him doin' it myself, I tell ye. He come home drunk one
day when I was there. He was that blind drunk he niver seen me. An'
he began eatin' all he could lay han' on. He eat up the jelly; an' two
raw eggs, an' drunk the taste a' milk she had by her in the cup, an' he
even drunk the medicine out of the bottle, an' eat up the wee bunch a'
flowers I'd tuk her, an', when he'd eat up ivery wee nip he could find,
he lay down on the flure, an' went asleep."