‘You have no right, sir, to make any such request,’ said she, with a
haughty air.
‘There was a man with you, my lady,’ he went on, ‘as you drove through
Cruhan, and we want to know where he is now.’
‘That concerns you, sir, and not me.’
‘Maybe it does, my lady,’ said he, with a grin; ‘but I suppose you know who
you were travelling with?’
‘You evidently don’t remember, sir, whom you are talking to.’
‘The law is the law, miss, and there’s none of us above it,’ said he, half
defiantly; ‘and when there’s some hundred pounds on a man’s head, there’s
few of us such fools as to let him slip through our fingers.’
‘I don’t understand you, sir, nor do I care to do so.’
‘The sergeant there has a warrant against him,’ said he, in a whisper
he intended to be confidential; ‘and it’s not to do anything that your
ladyship would think rude that I came up myself. There’s how it is now,’
muttered he, still lower. ‘They want to search the luggage, and examine
the baskets there, and maybe, if you don’t object, they’d look through the
carriage.’
‘And if I should object to this insult?’ broke she in.
‘Faix, I believe,’ said he, laughing, ‘they’d do it all the same. Eight
hundred--I think it’s eight--isn’t to be made any day of the year!’
‘My uncle is a justice of the peace, Mr. Gill; and you know if he will
suffer such an outrage to go unpunished.’
‘There’s the more reason that a justice shouldn’t harbour a Fenian, miss,’
said he boldly; ‘as he’ll know when he sees the search-warrant.’
‘Get ready the carriage, Larry,’ said she, turning contemptuously away,
‘and follow me towards the village.’
‘The sergeant, miss, would like to say a word or two,’ said Gill, in his
accustomed voice of servility.
‘I will not speak with him,’ said she proudly, and swept past him.
The constables stood to one side, and saluted in military fashion as she
passed down the hill. There was that in her queenlike gesture and carriage
that so impressed them, the men stood as though on parade.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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