Page:The Country-House Party.djvu/45

Rh 'Those were the queer times,' said old Dan M$c$Loughlin, filling his pipe and drawing a long pull at it. 'I've seen a man myself hanged for stealing a bit of a sheep. And now you might kill a man, and it's ten chances to one you would get off easy. Ay, I'll tell you about it if you like,—when I get a good draw on my pipe.

'He was a lad named Mike O'Dwyer, and was an out-and-out poacher. Anything he could steal tasted sweeter to him than what was honestly come by. There was a great suspicion about the countryside that he did not stop at rabbits and hares. Sheep were missing now and again, and disappeared as if the ground had opened and swallowed them. Suspicion was flitting here and there, like an ill bird, and often settled by honest men's doors.

'Well, it flew to the right man at last. One morning, as I was out in my father's fields driving the plough, I saw my laddo running like a hare down the long boreen beside Clonleigh Hill, and I guessed what had happened. The soldiers were stalking him. When they seen him running they sprang from their hiding, and there was the hunt, I can tell you. They nigh caught him at the end of the boreen, but he slipped by them