When he got to Drumsna, the McKeons were only just rising from breakfast, but Father John saw, on entering the room, from their grave and anxious faces, that they had all heard the news. Tony had been out to his fields before breakfast, and had there been told by one of the men that Ussher's body had on the previous night been taken through Drumsna to the police station at Carrick, and that it was said that Thady Macdermot, the murderer, had already escaped out of the country. This tale Tony had communicated in a whisper to his wife, and she had afterwards told the girls. What was the good of keeping it secret? before the evening it would be known to the whole country. When Father John came in, they all crowded round him, to learn what really might be relied on as the truth of the case; but he could only tell them that it was too sure that Ussher had died by Thady's hand,--that that young man was not in custody,--and that he had been informed that Feemy herself was present when the blow had been struck. "Feemy and their poor father," added Father John, "are to be examined to-day before the Coroner; it will be a dreadful thing for her, poor girl! to be forced to tell all her secrets, to declare all that she would most wish to conceal before the mob that will be in the room at Carrick." "Yes," added Tony, "and to stand there without any one to support her, and to be asked questions, which if they're answered correctly, may be will hang her brother." "I'll never believe," said Father John, "that he killed him in cold blood. Yourself, Mrs. McKeon hasn't a kinder heart within you than that young man; he never would have committed a wilful, premeditated murder; I don't think yet it will come to be so bad as what McKeon says. But when did Feemy leave this? I thought she was here, and was to stay here for some time to come." Mrs. McKeon then explained how Feemy had insisted on returning home the morning after the ball, with the promise of returning again. After talking over the various unaccountable circumstances of the case, without once suspecting that Feemy had consented to and had actually been in the act of going off with Ussher, Mrs. McKeon agreed, at the instigation of her husband and the priest, to accompany Feemy to the inquest, and after it was over to bring her to her own house, and to allow her to remain there till something should be definitely arranged as to her future residence. "For," said Tony, "Ballycloran will be no place for her again, nor the county either for the matter of that; but now that she's unhappy she shan't want a roof over her head; we were glad enough to see her when she held her head high, and I wouldn't advise any one to say much against her now she's in throuble--unless he wished to quarrel with me." And Tony McKeon closed his fist as much as to show that if any one did entertain so preposterous a wish he could be little better than a born idiot.