“He’s the last young man in the country I stand in,” said Breen, “that any one who knew him would suspect to be guilty of robbery.  Upon my soul, Lamh Laudher More, I’m both grieved an’ distressed at it.  We’re come to arrest him,” he added, “for the robbery he committed last night.”

“Robbery!” they exclaimed with one voice.

“Ay,” said the man, “robbery, no less—­an’ what is more, I’m afraid there’s little doubt of his guilt.  Why did he lave his hat at the place where the attempt was first made?  He must come with us.”

The mother shrieked aloud, and clapped her hands like a distressed woman; the father’s brow changed from the flushed hue of indignation, and became pale with apprehension.

“Oh! no, no,” he exclaimed, “John never did that.  Some qualm might come over him in the other business, but—­no, no—­your father knows you’re innocent of robbery.  Yes, John, my blood is in you, and there you’re wronged, my son.  I know you too well, in spite of all I’ve said to you, to believe that, my true-hearted boy.”

He grasped his son’s hand as he spoke.

And his mother at the same moment caught him in her arms, whilst both sobbed aloud.  A strong sense of innate dignity expanded the brow of young Lamh Laudher.  He smiled while his parents wept, although his sympathy in their sorrow brought a tear at the same time to his eye-lids.  He declined, however, entering into any explanation, and the father proceeded—­

“Yes!  I know you are innocent, John; I can swear that you didn’t leave this house from nine o’clock last night up to the present minute.”

“Father,” said Lamh Laudher, “don’t swear that, for it would not be true, although you think it would.  I was out the greater part of last night.”

His father’s countenance fell again, as did those of his friends who were present, on hearing what appeared to be almost an admission of his guilt.

“Go,” said the old man, “go; naburs, take him with you.  If he’s guilty of this, I’ll never more look upon his face.  John, my heart was crushed before, but you’re likely to break it out an’ out.”

Lamh Laudher Oge’s deportment, on hearing himself charged with robbery, became dogged and sullen.  The conversation, together with the sympathy and the doubt it excited among his friends, he treated with silent indignation and scorn.  He remembered that on the night before, the strange woman assured him she had not been robbed, and he felt that the charge was exceedingly strange and unaccountable.

“Come,” said he, “the sooner this business is cleared up the better.  For my part, I don’t know what to make of it, nor do I care much how it goes.  I knew since yesterday evening, that bad luck was before me, at all events, an’ I suppose it must take its course, an’ that I must bear it.”

The father had sat down, and now declined uttering a single word in vindication of his’ son.  The latter looked towards him, when about to pass out, but the old man waved his hand with sorrowful impatience, and pointed to the door, as intimating a wish that he should forthwith depart from under his roof.  Loaded with twofold disgrace, he left his family and his friends, accompanied by the constables, to the profound grief and astonishment of all who knew him.