The Clancys looked at each other; the old man making an imperative sign to his wife to keep silent.

“That was the very night the rick was burnt down,” he observed; “ye didn’t see any one go near it, did ye?”

“Aye, indeed, it was the very night,” agreed Judy; “I lost me lovely pipe that night too,” she added plaintively.

“Did ye, now?” said Pat, adding in a menacing aside to his wife:  “Woman, I’ll be the death of ye if ye say a word now!  Lave her to me.  Well, Judy, it was a poor case your losin’ your pipe that way.  I wonder what become of it at all?  Ye didn’t see any one comin’, did ye, who would be apt to pick it up?  Give the woman some tay, Mary, can’t ye see she’s dhry?”

Mrs. Clancy poured out the tea with a shaking hand, and Judy, spilling some into her saucer, proceeded to blow it vigorously, her hosts with difficulty restraining their impatience the while.

“Beautiful tay, ma’am!” she remarked, after gulping down the first instalment.  “Elegant tay now, isn’t it?  Herself never gives less nor two an’ thruppence a pound for it.”

“Doesn’t she now,” cried Pat; “well, an’ ye never seen anybody goin’ near that rick?”

“Ne’er a wan at all,” replied Judy, collecting herself.

“Ye didn’t see Mike then?”

“Well, I’ll tell ye.  I was sittin’ wid me back to the rick waitin’ for him, an’ he didn’t come, an’ I fell asleep, an’ when I woke up I couldn’t for the life of me find me bit of a pipe, not a sign of it was in it at all.”  Here Judy began to weep.  “Me heart’s broke ever since!  I just laid it out o’ me hand for a minute, and ne’er a bit o’ me could find it since—­and—­Och! och!  Mr. Clancy, ow—­wh!  Murdher!  What are ye doing at all?” For old Pat had struggled from his chair, and hobbling across to where Judy sat, had seized her by the shoulder, the grip of his one sound hand being as the grip of a vice.

“Woman!” he cried, “it’s you that’s afther bein’ the ruination of me boy!  It’s you that set fire to the rick wid that ould mischeevious pipe o’ yours!  An’ there, ye let him be sent to gaol an’ the whole of us be disgraced for what you are afther doin’.  ’Pon me word, I could throttle ye this minute.”

Mrs. Clancy ran screaming out of the room, bursting in upon Roseen with the announcement in the same breath that “Himself would be the death of ould Judy before he was done wid her,” and that “poor Mike must be fetched out o’ gaol widout the loss of a minute.”

Roseen, rushing to the scene of action, found indeed a prodigious uproar going on.  Old Pat, who until then had been thoroughly convinced that his son had accomplished the destruction of Peter Rorke’s hayrick, could not now restrain his indignation on learning that he had been wrongfully accused; and in the intervals of proclaiming at the top of his voice more energetically than even “Herself” in the past that “anybody wid a grain o’ sense ’ud know poor Mike ’ud be the last one in the world to go disgracing himself that way,” was shaking Judy backwards and forwards till, as she subsequently declared, she nearly lost her life.