“None at all,” was the answer.  “They made the will unknownst to me, and they have the little farm and the little stock, and all there is left to themselves, and for me nothing but the outside of the door and the workhouse.”

“Do you think they threatened him or used force?” suggested the girl.

“Did they force him to do it, is it?  They did not.  But it’s too much whisky and raisin cakes they had, and me coming into the house after selling a sick pig.  I never heard word or sound about it till a neighbouring man told me they were gathered in the house with the priest, and looking for a witness, and I went in, and Peter Kane was in the house preparing to sign his name, and I took him by the neck and threw him out of the door, and the stepmother she took me by the skin of the shirt, and gave me a slap across the face with the flat of her hand, and I called Peter Kane to witness that she struck me, and he said he never saw it.  And why?  Because he had a cup of whisky given him before, and believe me, when he turned about, it smelled good!  After that, no decent man could be found to sign his name, till they got two paid men.  Sure there’s schemers about that ’ud hang you up for half a glass of whisky.”

“And who drew up the will?” inquired Miss Eden.

“The curate, Father Sheehy that did it.  Sure our own priest would never have done it, but it was a strange curate from the County Mayo.  And I asked him did he know there was such a one as me in the world, and he said he never did.  Then yourself’ll need forgiveness in heaven, Father, says I, as well as that silly old man.”

“Could you not speak quietly to your father about it?” suggested Louise.

“Sure I never see the old man but when I go into the room in the morning to wipe my face with the little towel after washing it, and he don’t speak to me himself, but to himself he do be speaking.  And the old woman says to me, ’Go down now to your landlord and see what he can do for you;’ and I said I will go, for if he was at home, there was never a bishop or a priest or a friar spoke better and honester words to me than his honour’s self.”

Martin Regan paused to take breath and wipe his mouth with his coat sleeve, and after a moment’s abstracted gaze at the vista of tall fir trees before him, burst out again: 

“And now it’s whisky and tea for the old woman, and trimmings at two shillings the yard for the sister’s dress, and what for Martin? what for the boy that worked for them the twelve months long?  Me that used to go a mile beyond Cloon every morning to break stones, and to deal for two stone o’ meal every Saturday to feed the childer when there was nothing in the field.  And it’s trying to drive me from the house now they are, and me to wet my own tea and to dress my own bed, and me after wringing my shirt twice, with respects to ye, after working all the day in the potato ridges.”

“Could no one influence your stepmother; has she no friends here?” asked Louise, much moved.