CHRISTY. _shaking his head._—I never used weapons. I’ve no license, and I’m a law-fearing man.
MICHAEL. It was with a hilted knife maybe? I’m told, in the big world it’s bloody knives they use.
CHRISTY. _loudly, scandalized._—Do you take me for a slaughter-boy?
PEGEEN. You never hanged him, the way Jimmy Farrell hanged his dog from the license, and had it screeching and wriggling three hours at the butt of a string, and himself swearing it was a dead dog, and the peelers swearing it had life?
CHRISTY. I did not then. I just riz the loy and let fall the edge of it on the ridge of his skull, and he went down at my feet like an empty sack, and never let a grunt or groan from him at all.
MICHAEL. _making a sign to Pegeen to fill Christy’s glass._—And what way weren’t you hanged, mister? Did you bury him then?
CHRISTY. _considering._—Aye. I buried him then. Wasn’t I digging spuds in the field?
MICHAEL. And the peelers never followed after you the eleven days that you’re out?
CHRISTY. _shaking his head._—Never a one of them, and I walking forward facing hog, dog, or divil on the highway of the road.
PHILLY. _nodding wisely._—It’s only with a common week-day kind of a murderer them lads would be trusting their carcase, and that man should be a great terror when his temper’s roused.
MICHAEL. He should then. (_To Christy._) And where was it, mister honey, that you did the deed?
CHRISTY. _looking at him with suspicion._—Oh, a distant place, master of the house, a windy corner of high, distant hills.
PHILLY. _nodding with approval._—He’s a close man, and he’s right, surely.
PEGEEN. That’d be a lad with the sense of Solomon to have for a pot-boy, Michael James, if it’s the truth you’re seeking one at all.
PHILLY. The peelers is fearing him, and if you’d that lad in the house there isn’t one of them would come smelling around if the dogs itself were lapping poteen from the dungpit of the yard.
JIMMY. Bravery’s a treasure in a lonesome place, and a lad would kill his father, I’m thinking, would face a foxy divil with a pitchpike on the flags of hell.
PEGEEN. It’s the truth they’re saying, and if I’d that lad in the house, I wouldn’t be fearing the loosed kharki cut-throats, or the walking dead.