"Get home safe, you fool!" answered Father John, "and why wouldn't they?--don't you know the difference yet, between a few foolish words, said half in fun, and a quarrel? To be sure they got home safe;--and let me tell you, Denis, for a sensible fellow as you pretend to be, you'd be a deal better employed minding your business, than thinking of other people's quarrels, or trying to pick up stories of murders, and heaven knows what--filling your own mind and other people's too with foolish fears, for which there are no grounds. And now, if you'd take my advice, you'll go home, and leave your betters to take care of themselves, for you'll find it quite enough to take care of yourself;--and mind, McGovery, if I find this cock and bull story of yours gets through the country, so as to reach Mr. Keegan's ears, or to annoy Mr. Macdermot, I shall know where it came from; and perhaps you're not aware, that a person inventing such a story as you've been telling Mr. Cullen, might soon find himself in Carrick Gaol." It would be impossible to say whether Cullen was most astonished, or McGovery disconcerted, by Father John's address. "But," began Cullen, "if the man really heard the plan proposed, Mr. McGrath, and if Mr. Thady was one of them--" "Ah, nonsense, Cullen." "But I haven't invented a word, Father John," said McGovery; "I heard it every word; and shure, afther hearing it all with my own ears, was I to let the man be shot into a bog-hole, without saying a word to no one about it, Father John?" "Ah, you're a nice boy, Denis,--and why did you pass my gate to come all the way down to Father Cullen, to tell him the dreadful tale? why didn't you come to me, eh--when you knew, not only that I was nearer you than Mr. Cullen, but also nearer to the place where all this was to happen?" "Why then, Father John, not to tell you a lie, it is because you do be going on with your gagging at me so." "Nonsense, man;--how can you say you are not going to lie, when you know you've a lie in your mouth at the moment." "Sorrow a lie is there in it at all, Father John,--I wish the tongue of me had been blistered this morning, before I said a word of it." "I wish it had been. Why, Cullen, it was only last night that he wanted to persuade me that a lot of boys were to meet at the place where he was married, to agree to murder Ussher; and to hear the man, you'd think it was all arranged, who was to strike the blow and all; and now here he is with you, with a similar story about Keegan! He was afraid to come to me, because he knew he'd half humbugged me with his other story last night." "But I tell you, Father John, I heard it all with my own ears this time."