“What fool-talk ye shpake, Dan Mulcahy. ’Twas twelve sthruck; I counted ut.” “Thin ye counted wrong. I counted ut, an’ ’twas elivin.” “Yez nayther av yez right,” interposed Dennis Grady. “’Twas not elivin when we lift; ’twas not, be the mother av Moses!” “I wondher at ye, Dennis Grady; ye must have been dhrunk as a Kerry cow,” and both Mulcahy and Shanahan turned upon the obstinate Grady, and the dispute waxed clamorous till Hewitt stopped it. “Come, come,” he said, “never mind the time then. Settle that between you after you’ve gone. Does either of you remember--not calculate, you know, but _remember--_the time you got to Ballyshiel?--the actual time by a clock--not a guess.” Not one of the three had looked at a clock at Ballyshiel. “Do you remember anything about coming home again?” They did not. They looked furtively at one another and presently broke into a grin. “Ah! I see how _that_ was,” Hewitt said good-humouredly. “That’s all now, I think. Come, it’s ten shillings each, I think.” And he handed over the money. The men touched their forelocks again, stowed away the money and prepared to depart. As they went Larry Shanahan stepped mysteriously back again and said in a whisper, “Maybe the jintlemen wud like me to kiss the book on ut? An’ as to the toime--” “Oh, no, thank you,” Hewitt laughed. “We take your word for it, Mr. Shanahan.” And Mr. Shanahan pulled his forelock again and vanished. “There’s nothing but confusion to be got from them,” Mr. Bowyer remarked testily. “It’s a mere waste of time.” “No, no, not a waste of time,” Hewitt replied, “nor a waste of money. One thing is made pretty plain. That is that the shot was fired on Tuesday. Mrs. Hurley never noticed the report, but these three men were close by, and there is no doubt that they heard it. It’s the only single thing they agree about at all. They contradict one another over everything else, but they agree completely in that. Of course I wish we could have got the exact time; but that can’t be helped. As it is it is rather fortunate that they disagreed so entirely. Two of them are certainly wrong, and perhaps all three. In any case it wouldn’t have been safe to trust to mere computation of time by three men just beginning to get drunk, who had no particular reason for remembering. But if by any chance they had agreed on the time we might have been led into a wrong track altogether by taking the thing as fact. But a gunshot is not such a doubtful thing. When three independent witnesses hear a gunshot together there can be little doubt that a shot has been fired. Now I think you’d better sit down. Perhaps you can find something to read. I’m about to make a very minute examination of this place, and it will probably bore you if you’ve nothing else to do.”