"Not to be wearyin' you wid particulars, this wint along for about three years. Thin me father got too feeble to do the wurrk, an' the governmint appointed an associate Jay Pay. That was the ind of me service as a speshull consthable. The new Jay Pay stood six fut three, an' weighed two hundred an' fifty pounds. I was out of a job.
"But there was no lack of divarshun. From Mullaghareirk to Ballingurreen, from Clonakilty to Ballydehob, from Musheramore to Teampeall-na-bo'ct, every Rory of the Hills that had iver been in me father's court, or iver had a relation there, was lyin' for me wid his shillelagh, an' sometimes an ould rusty fowlin'-piece. It wasn't healthy for me in West Cork anny more. The priests cud have made it safe enough. But I had wanst studied to be a priest, an' had continded wid the Prefect of Discipline, d'ye see? An' thin there was the hundred pounds in the bank in Cork, an' the farm forninst the dure of the church in Sleeahtballymackcurraghalicky, d'ye moind? They wud be surer if I was out of the way. So, for the sake of a quiet loife, I tuk the Queen's shillin' an' went away to the wars--God pardon me if I'm not speakin' the truth, it was for a quiet loife I left West Cork, an' was shipped out wid the Munsters to the wars in Indy."
"Niver! He doied a twelvemonth after I left for Indy."
"Have you ever been back to see the old place where you were born?"
"Wanst. Tin years afther I enlisted, I got l'ave an' wint back from Indy."
"It was still there. They hadn't moved it."
"Was the money still in the bank in Cork?"
"They tould me that they had expinded the hundred pounds, an' the value of the farm, an' a little more in masses an' prayers to get me father out of purgatory. They said that I was a bit in their debt, an' that they would need a trifle yet for they hadn't got him quite free. I asked thim if that was God's truth they were speakin'. They tould me that it was. 'Thin,' says I, 'if you know so much of what's goin' on in purgatory, wud you jist give me father a message from me? Jist tell him to ask the Blissed Lord to open the dure and let him out, an' I'll stake me sowl's salvation on it that the Lord will do it at wanst, and niver ask him for a farm or a hundred pounds in the bank. For me father was a man that niver willingly hurted a chicken.' An' wid that I left them wid me farm an' the hundred pounds. But it's many a cintury me father will be restin' on the beds of flowers in glory before the fires of purgatory will have burned that farm an' the hundred pounds out of the sowls of the black dragoons who defrauded me of me inheritance. An' that's God's truth I'm tellin' you. An' moind ye, it's a Catholic I was born and a Catholic I intind to die."
