EFORE any definite action was taken, the public interest was diverted from Miss Blow and her affairs by a new sensation. At about half-past one o'clock Mrs. Patsy Devlin was seen advancing along the street towards the barrack with a crowd of women and children after her. Her appearance suggested that she was suffering from an extremity of grief. Her hair hung loose over her shoulders in picturesque grey wisps. Her bodice had only one fastening, a white pin, driven through it near the neck. Below the pin the garment gaped, down to the point at which, still gaping, it was tucked into a crimson petticoat. Her boots, a pair so large that they might have been, and probably were, her husband's, were unlaced, and clattered on the ground every time she lifted her feet.
"Himself is gone from me," she wailed, when she reached the door of the barrack, "gone and left me, and me sick in my bed with an impression on my chest and a rumbling within in the inside of me as it might be a cart, or two carts, and they with turf in them going along on the street."
"My good woman," said Sergeant Farrelly, "go home out of this, and don't be making a disturbance on the public street."
"Home, is it?" wailed Mrs. Devlin; "and where will I find a home when himself is gone from me?"
"Go to your bed," said the sergeant; "and if so be that you're sick the way you're after telling us, get the doctor to attend you."
Then he recollected that there was no doctor in Clonmore, and suggested as an alternative that she should send one of the children up to Jimmy O'Loughlin's shop to buy "some sort of a bottle that would do her good."
"And what good would a bottle be to me, if I had the money to pay for it itself, and where would I get the money, with himself gone from me? It was a bad head he was to me, and many's the time I've been sorry that ever I married him, but sure it's worse I'll do without him now he's gone."
"And that's true for her, the creature," said old Biddy Halloran from the outskirts of the crowd.
"Where is he gone to?" asked the sergeant.
"Is it where has he gone? If I knew that, would I come to you to find him for me? Where has he gone? Och! but I'd be the thankful woman this day if I could lay my eyes on him."
Mrs. Devlin wept wildly.
"Stop your crying, woman dear," said a sympathizer; "sure the police will have him found for you in two twos. Isn't that what they're here for?"
"When did you miss him?" asked the sergeant.
"Miss him! Amn't I missing him every minute since he went from me, and the children along with me crying for their da, and them with no da left them?"
"When did you see him last?" said the sergeant, varying the form of his question.
"I seen him," said Mrs. Devlin, "e'er last night. He came home, and him after spending the evening at Jimmy O'Loughlin's."
"Had he drink taken?"
Mrs. Devlin hesitated. One of her supporters in the crowd encouraged her to speak out boldly.
"Don't be afeard, Mrs. Devlin, ma'am. Speak up to the sergeant when he asks you the question. It's for your own good that he's trying to get the truth out of you."
"I won't," said Mrs. Devlin at last, "be telling lies to you. He had not. There wasn't a sign of it on him, though I won't deny that he might have had a glass of porter or the like."
"And did he spent the night with you in the house?"
"He did—he did," wailed Mrs. Devlin, overcome afresh by the recollection. "And in the morning, as it might be yesterday morning, when he had his breakfast took, 'I'm off,' says he, 'up to the Castle,' says he, 'to see the old lord that always was a good friend to me and my father before me.' And I never seen him since."
"Did he go to the Castle?" asked the sergeant.
"How would I know whether he did or not? Amn't I after telling you that I was sick in my bed?"
"He did go," said a man from the crowd, "for I seen him getting over the wall into the deer park, and him looking most determined, the same as if he had business to do."
"And why didn't you come up and tell me before?" said the sergeant. "He's gone for twenty-four hours and more, and it's only now you find it out."
"I was expecting him to step into the house every minute," said Mrs. Devlin, "and I wasn't willing to lay my mind down to it that he was gone, till there was no help for it."
"The Lord save us!" said old Biddy Halloran. "It's an afflicted creature you are this day, Mary Devlin."
Sergeant Farrelly buttoned his tunic and took his cap. He summoned Constable Cole and they marched together down the street towards Jimmy O'Loughlin's hotel. The crowd, Mrs. Devlin at the head of it, followed them. Constable Cole turned.