I thought Father Dan would have been waiting for me under the trammon on
"the street," but he had gone back to the Presbytery and sent Tommy the
Mate to lead me through the mist and the by-lanes to the main road.
The old salt seemed to have a "skute" into the bad business which had
brought out the Bishop and the lawyer at that late hour, and on parting
from me at the gate of Sunny Lodge he said:
"Lord-a-massy me, what for hasn't ould Tom Dug a fortune coming to him?"
And when I asked him what he would do with a fortune if he had one he
answered:
"Do? Have a tunderin' [thundering] good law-shoot and sattle some o'
them big fellas."
Going to bed in the "Plough" that night, I had an ugly vision of the
scene being enacted in the cottage on the curragh (a scene not without
precedent in the history of the world, though the priesthood as a whole
is so pure and noble)--the midnight marriage of a man dying in unnatural
hatred of his own daughter (and she the sweetest woman in the world)
while the priest and the prostitute divided the spoils.
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