No one seemed to find anything surprising in this pronouncement; it was accepted as seriously as any similar statement of the Prophet Samuel to the Children of Israel, and was evidently meant to imply that abstract justice might be expected.

“We may assume, then,” said Dr. Lyden amiably, “that the sheep walked out into Sweeny’s end of the lake and drowned herself there on account of the spite there was between the two families.”

The court tittered.  A dingy red showed itself among the grizzled hairs and wrinkles on Sweeny’s cheek.  In Ireland a point can often be better carried by sarcasm than by logic.

“She was blind enough to dhrown herself, or two like her!” he said angrily; “she was that owld and blind it was ayqual to her where she’d go!”

“How d’ye know she was blind?” said Mr. Heraty quickly.

“I thought the defence opened with the statement that it wasn’t Darcy’s sheep at all,” put in Dr. Lyden, leaning back in his chair with his eyes fixed on the rafters.

Sweeny firmly regarded Mr. Heraty.

“How would I know she was blind?” he repeated.  “Many’s the time when she’d be takin’ a sthroll in on my land I’d see her fallin’ down in the rocks, she was that blind!  An’ didn’t I see Darcy’s mother one time, an’ she puttin’ something on her eyes.”

“Was it glasses she was putting on the sheep’s eyes?” suggested the Chairman, with a glance that admitted the court to the joke.

“No, but an ointment,” said Sweeny stubbornly.  “I seen her rubbing it to the eyes, an’ she no more than thirty yards from me.”

“Will ye swear that?” thundered Mr. Heraty; “will you swear that at a distance of thirty yards you could tell what was between Darcy’s mother’s fingers and the sheep’s eyes?  No you will not!  Nor no man could!  William, is Darcy’s mother in the coort?  We’ll have to take evidence from her as to the condition of the sheep’s eyes!”

“Darcy says, yer worship, that his mother would lose her life if she was to be brought into coort,” explained William, after an interlude in Irish, to which both magistrates listened with evident interest; “that ere last night a frog jumped into the bed to her in the night, and she got out of the bed to light the Blessed Candle, and when she got back to the bed again she was in it always between herself and the wall, an’ she got a wakeness out of it, and great cold—­”

“Are ye sure it wasn’t the frog got the wakeness?” asked Dr. Lyden.

A gale of laughter swept round the court.

“Come, come!” said Mr. Heraty; “have done with this baldherdash!  William, tell Darcy some one must go fetch his mother, for as wake as she is she could walk half a mile!” Mr. Heraty here drew forth an enormous white pocket-handkerchief and trumpeted angrily in its depths.

Darcy raised his small blue eyes with their thick lashes, and took a look at his judge.  There was a gabbled interchange of Irish between him and the interpreter.