“’Pon me word,” he cried, when with some difficulty and a certain amount of physical force he had been separated from his victim, “that’s the ould scut yez ought to be clappin’ into gaol!  Did anybody ever hear the like?  She must go smokin’ her dirty ould pipe under the loveliest rick in the country—­sure, that rick is worth its weight in gould these times—­an’ settin’ it on fire an’ bringin’ ruination an’ destruction on her misthress as well as on me poor innocent boy!  I declare hangin’ ’ud be too good for her!”

“Didn’t I tell ye,” cried Mrs. Clancy triumphantly, “that Mike never went next or nigh that rick?”

“Of course ye did.  Anybody ’ud know that.  Bedad, Mike ’ud know better nor do anythin’ that senseless an’ mischeevious.  Sure, what good ’ud it do anybody to go burnin’ that beautiful hay?  ’Pon me word, Roseen, if I was you I’d walk that lady straight off to the magisthrate.”

Judy, meanwhile, with shrill wails and much rocking backwards and forwards, was incoherently declaring that she wouldn’t sit there to be murdhered, an’ she didn’t know why they was all shoutin’ at her that way, an’ that—­as the culmination of woe—­she’d lost her lovely pipe.

After some time Roseen succeeded in calming the belligerents, and in gathering the sense of their various statements.

Trembling with eagerness and excitement, she led Judy to the stackyard, and there, after much coaxing and persuasion, induced her to describe her position on the fateful night in question.

“I was sittin’ here,” announced Judy, pointing to a certain spot.

“You had your back to the rick then?” said Roseen, “ye can’t see the haggard gate at all from here.  No wonder ye didn’t see Mike.”

“I was tired waitin’ for him,” said Judy.  “I just put me pipe out o’ me hand,” she added meditatively.  “I was thinkin’ of goin’ to look for him—­and when I woke up it was black night an’ I couldn’t find—­”

Suddenly she uttered a shrill scream, and darting forward, stooped over one of the stone supports which had formerly upheld old Peter’s beloved rick, eagerly groping in a certain little fissure in the rough stone, almost hidden beneath the horizontal slab which surmounted it.

“Sure, there it is!” she cried triumphantly, producing indeed the grimy little object so dear to her heart.  “I have it now! there’s me darlin’ pipe!  I was afther forgettin’ I put it there; it was turned upside down in the crack an’ all me baccy’s spilt on me!”

Roseen could at first scarcely believe her own eyes and ears; this then was the solution of the mystery which had so long baffled them.  Poor old Judy, growing sleepy and tired after her long wait, had laid her pipe on one side intending to rise and look for Mike, but, overcome by drowsiness, she had slept instead, and on awaking had forgotten the spot where she had stowed her treasure.  The little pipe, slipping downwards in the crack, had turned over, upsetting