“I wish to goodness a couple of the lads ’ud step home wid themselves this minit of time,” said Mrs. M’Gurk.  “They’d come tip wid him yet, and take it off of him ready enough.  And smash his ugly head for him, if he would be givin’ them any impidence.”

“Aye, and ’twould be a real charity—­the mane baste;—­or sling him in one of the bog-houles,” said the elder Mrs. Keogh, a mild-looking little old woman.  “I’d liefer than nine nine-pennies see thim comin’ along.  But I’m afeard it’s early for thim yet.”

Everybody’s eyes turned, as she spoke, toward the ridge of the Knockawn, though with no particular expectation of seeing what they wished upon it.  But behold, just at that moment three figures, blurred among the gray rain-mists, looming into view.

“Be the powers,” said Mrs. M’Gurk, jubilantly, “it’s Ody Rafferty himself.  To your sowls!  Now you’ve a great good chance, ma’am, to be gettin’ it back.  He’s the boy ’ill leg it over all before him”—­for in those days Ody was lithe and limber—­“and it’s hard-set the thievin’ Turk ‘ill be to get the better of him at a racin’ match—­Hi—­Och.”  She had begun to hail him with a call eager and shrill, which broke off in a strangled croak, like a young cock’s unsuccessful effort.  “Och, murdher, murdher, murdher,” she said to the bystanders, in a disgusted undertone.  “I’ll give you me misfort’nit word thim other two is the polis.”

Now it might seem on the face of things that the arrival of those two active and stalwart civil servants would have been welcomed as happening just in the nick of time; yet it argues an alien ignorance to suppose such a view of the matter by any means possible.  The men in invisible green tunics belonged completely to the category of pitaty-blights, rint-warnin’s, fevers, and the like devastators of life, that dog a man more or less all through it, but close in on him, a pitiful quarry, when the bad seasons come and the childer and the old crathurs are starvin’ wid the hunger, and his own heart is broke; therefore, to accept assistance from them in their official capacity would have been a proceeding most reprehensibly unnatural.  To put a private quarrel or injury into the hands of the peelers were a disloyal making of terms with the public foe; a condoning of great permanent wrongs for the sake of a trivial temporary convenience.  Lisconnel has never been skilled in the profitable and ignoble art of utilizing its enemies.  Not that anybody was more than vaguely conscious of these sentiments, much less attempted to express them in set terms.  When a policeman appeared there in an inquiring mood, what people said among themselves was, “Musha cock him up.  I hope he’ll get his health till I would be tellin’ him,” or words to that effect; while in reply to his questions, they made statements superficially so clear and simple, and essentially so bewilderingly involved, that the longest experience could do little more for a constable than teach him the futility of wasting his time in attempts to disentangle them.