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176 some of the neighbours were afraid you would get a relapse."

"They needn't have done that!" said Dermot, "I never saw them any other way than that. If anyone were asking them to do it they would not be so ready! Running to give a priest a journey without any necessity! To think of it!"

"It does not matter a pin," said the priest. "I would have come in any case, to see whether you had any news from Sive, or whether there was any foundation for this rumour that is afloat."

"I did not hear a single word of it until that woman came and said that Sive had met a bad companion, or something to that effect," said Dermot.

"Who was the bad companion she said Sive had met?" said the priest.

"She did not tell us who he was. She did not give us any account of him, and that is what is sending me out of my senses," said Dermot.

"At that rate," said the priest, "I dare say she heard the rest, too, just as I heard it. Some carmen brought it as a great wonder and as a topic of conversation between them, that Nosey Cormac was in Dublin also, and that he and Sive worked the business together to get the thief caught; that they both played their cards so well and so cleverly that the King's people were astonished, and so was the King, at their doing the work so well. Then, when Sive got six hundred pounds instead of the three hundred that had been taken from her, that a match was settled between her and Cormac, and that the pair are married by this time, or about to be married."