“Oh, go on, Mr Armstrong!—­go on; I see you are determined to have it all your own way, but my turn’ll come soon.”

“I say that Doctor Colligan interrupted you before you fully committed yourself.”

“Fully committed myself, indeed!  Why, Colligan knows well enough, that when he got up in such a fluster, there’d not been a word at all said about Anty.”

“Hadn’t there, Mr Lynch?—­just now you said you turned the doctor out of your house for speaking about your sister.  You’re only committing yourself.  I say, therefore, the evidence, though quite strong enough to put you into the dock as a murderer in intention, might not be sufficient to induce a jury to find you guilty.  But guilty you would be esteemed in the mind of every man, woman, and child in this county:  guilty of the wilful, deliberate murder of your own sister.”

“By heavens I’ll not stand this!” exclaimed Barry.—­“I’ll not stand this!  I didn’t do it, Mr Armstrong.  I didn’t do it.  He’s a liar, Lord Ballindine:  upon my sacred word and honour as a gentleman, he’s a liar.  Why do you believe him, when you won’t believe me?  Ain’t I a Protestant, Mr Armstrong, and ain’t you a Protestant clergyman?  Don’t you know that such men as he will tell any lie; will do any dirty job?  On my sacred word of honour as a gentleman, Lord Ballindine, he offered to poison Anty, on condition he got the farm round the house for nothing!—­He knows it’s true, and why should you believe him sooner than me, Mr Armstrong?”

Barry had got up from his seat, and was walking up and down the room, now standing opposite Lord Ballindine, and appealing to him, and then doing the same thing to Mr Armstrong.  He was a horrid figure:  he had no collar round his neck, and his handkerchief was put on in such a way as to look like a hangman’s knot:  his face was blotched, and red, and greasy, for he had neither shaved nor washed himself since his last night’s debauch; he had neither waistcoat nor braces on, and his trousers fell on his hips; his long hair hung over his eyes, which were bleared and bloodshot; he was suffering dreadfully from terror, and an intense anxiety to shift the guilt from himself to Doctor Colligan.  He was a most pitiable object—­so wretched, so unmanned, so low in the scale of creation.  Lord Ballindine did pity his misery, and suggested to Mr Armstrong whether by any possibility there could be any mistake in the matter—­whether it was possible Doctor Colligan could have mistaken Lynch’s object?—­The poor wretch jumped at this loop-hole, and doubly condemned himself by doing so.

“He did, then,” said Barry; “he must have done so.  As I hope for heaven, Lord Ballindine, I never had the idea of getting him to—­to do anything to Anty.  I wouldn’t have done it for worlds—­indeed I wouldn’t.  There must be some mistake, indeed there must.  He’d been drinking, Mr Armstrong—­drinking a good deal that night—­isn’t that true, Doctor Colligan?  Come, man, speak the truth—­don’t