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178 there is no use in saying anything but what is right, and the truth is the best. I don't think there is a man living this day on the dry land of Ireland who could manage Sive."

"With the exception of one man I don't think there is," said the priest. "And there is another thing about it, there is not a woman living to-day on the dry land of Ireland (nor, I might say, in the next land to it) who could manage Cormac if Sive doesn't manage him; which she will. Cut off my ear if she doesn't."

"Why, Father," said Dermot, "anyone would imagine by the way you speak that you see some truth or foundation in this rumour."

"Well, the fact is, the carmen have the ins and outs of the story so exactly, and they all tell it so much in the same words, that it is hard to say that there is not some truth in it," said the priest.

"I never had the remotest idea that such a thing would happen," said Dermot. "I thought Sive would no more marry him than she would drown herself. And I thought he would not look at the side of the road that Sive was on, no, not if there wasn't another woman in Ireland. What I used to hear her saying was that there was not a man in Ireland she detested more than him, and that there was not an uglier man in Ireland than he. If the pair are married it beats all I ever saw."

"Perhaps," said the priest, "if she got all this consideration, as they say she did, from the King's people and from the King himself, on account of doing the work so well, and getting that thief arrested, and if she got six hundred pounds as a reward for it, Cormac mav have said to himself that it would