“What he as good as said was that Timothy Sweeny and myself would have the gentleman cheated out of half the gravel he’d paid for by the time he’d got the other half. There was a smile on his face like there might be on a man, and him after a long drink, when he found out the way we were getting the better of the gentleman up the country. Believe you me, Peter Walsh, he wouldn’t have rested easy in his bed until he did find out, either that or some other thing.” “That sergeant is as cute as a pet fox,” said Peter Walsh. “You’d be hard set to keep anything from him that he wanted to know.” Kinsella sat for some minutes without speaking. Then he took a match from his pocket and lit his pipe for the third time. “I’d be glad,” he said, “if you’d tell me what it was you had in your mind when you said a minute ago that the sergeant might maybe have more to do than he’d care for one of these days.” Peter Walsh looked carefully round him in every direction and satisfied himself that there was no one within earshot. “Was I telling you,” he said, “about the gentleman, and the lady along with him that came in on the train today?” “You were not.” “Well, he came, and I’m thinking that he’s a high-up man.” “What about him?” “The sergeant was sent for up to the big house,” said Peter Walsh, “soon after the strange gentleman came. I don’t know rightly what they wanted with him. Sweeny was asking Constable Maloney after; but sure the boy knew no more than I did myself.” “It’s a curious thing,” said Kinsella, “so it is, damned curious.” “Damned,” said Peter Walsh. “I wouldn’t be sorry if the whole lot of them was drownded one of these days.” “I wouldn’t like anything would happen to the young lady.” “Is it Priscilla? I wasn’t meaning her. But any way, Peter Walsh, you know well the sea wouldn’t drown that one.” “It would not, surely. Why would it?” “What I had in my mind,” said Kinsella, “was the rest of them.” He looked sadly at the sky and then out across the sea, which was perfectly calm. “But there’ll be no drowning,” he added with a sigh, “while the weather holds the way it is.” “There’s a feel in the air,” said Peter Walsh hopefully, “like as if there might be thunder.” A small boat, rowed by a boy, stole past them up the harbour. Neither of the two men spoke until she reached the slip at the end of the quay. “I’d be sorry,” said Kinsella, “if anything would happen to them two that does be going about in Flanagan’s old boat. There’s no harm in them barring the want of sense.” “It would be as well for them to be kept off Inishbawn for all that.” “They never offered to set foot on the island,” said Kinsella, “since the day I told them that herself and the childer had the fever. The way it is with them, they wouldn’t care where they’d be, one place being the same to them as another, if they’d be let alone.” “That’s what they will not be, then.” “On account of Priscilla?”