They left the room and locked the door. Just as the key turned Mr Murphy’s voice came sleepily: “Patsy!” “Yes, Misther Murphy?” “Bring me me hot wather at eight.” “Well,” said Mr Fanshawe, “that chap takes the bun!” “It’s only his way, sir,” said Patsy. “He pretinds to joke with you, but all the same he’d slit your throat if he had the chanst for two brass farthin’s.” Then Patsy went off to his room, but he did not go to bed. He sat on the side of it for a long time debating matters in his mind. He had saved Lady Molyneux’s jewels, he had not betrayed his trust, he had helped in the capture of the worst character in the county. He had done his duty, in fact, but he was not thinking of that. He had proposed, it will be remembered, that Mr Fanshawe should load a gun with bullets and blow Paddy Murphy’s head off, and he had made the proposition in all seriousness. But Paddy free and Paddy in prison were different people. All the sympathy in his queer nature was aroused for the man in the potato room, for prison, to the Celtic imagination, is a far more terrible thing than death. Patsy got off his bed and, candle in hand, left his room; he came down the passage to the cupboard where the under-gardener kept his tool-chest. He took a file from it, came back up the passage to the potato room door, slipped the file under the door, and knocked. A loud snore was the only answer. He knocked again without eliciting a reply. “He’s aslape,” muttered Patsy; “but maybe he’ll see it when he wakes.” Upstairs, Mr Boxall, who had taken advantage of the open window to enter the house during Mr Murphy’s incarceration in the potato room, was making plans to leave Ireland to the Irish as soon as might be. The incident of Mr Mooney, the outcries of Mr Murphy, the whole affair, in short, was incomprehensible to his mind, and only to be summed up in one formula: “D——d savages.” ------------------------------------------------------------------------ CHAPTER XXX “PUT THE DUNKEY TO” It was perhaps through the mouth of Con Cogan that wind of the matter got about. However, that may have been, it is certain that by eight o’clock next morning the news was all over the country-side that Paddy Murphy had been caught and was a prisoner in Glen Druid House. From cabin to cabin, from Castle Knock to Shepherd’s Cross, the news went, filling hearts with exultation and a sneaky sort of sorrow. Paddy was feared and hated. Mark you, I do not put it hated and feared, for in the Irish mind there is a lot of difference between the two statements. The hatred he had caused was not the leaden and colourless hatred which a landlord or a tyrant can inspire; it was born entirely of his lawless and desperate acts of ruffianism, and therefore had a romantic tinge. He was hated because he was feared, and now that fear of him became remote, the hatred of him began to fade from the public mind.