Page:Darby O'Gill and the Good People by Herminie Templeton Kavanagh (1903).djvu/98

Rh bate him too scan’lous,” says little Nial, the fiddler, comin’ out. “An’ Dicky is too proud to complain of her to your honour. He says ’twould be makin’ a kind of informer out of himself. But maybe she’ll bate him agin, so I thought to mintion it,” he says. With that Phadrig Oge broke in from where he stood on the thrashol’:

“Tom Healy’s family, up the mountainy way, is all down with the faver; they have no one to send worrud!” cried Phadrig; “your honour ought to know about it,” he says.

Be this time the Good People were all outside, crowded about the horse, an’ aich one excited, shouting up some friendly informaytion.

Father Cassidy, from Terror’s back, sat smilin’ down kind, first on this one, then on that, an’ then on the other.

“Wisha!” says he, “ain’t ye the kindly crachures! I’ve heard more news of me own parish in the last foive minutes than I’d have learned in a twelvemonth. But there’s one thing I’d liked mighty well to know. Maybe yez could tell me,” says he, “who committed the mystarious crime in this parish a year ago last Christmas? Who stole the six shil- Rh