“That’s most likely to be Miss Farquharson.” “I wouldn’t say,” said Jimmy, “whether the sergeant would be back at four.” “He will not, nor yet at five.” “I was thinking as much.” “Where’s Miss Blow?” “The doctor’s young lady,” said Jimmy, “is down at the barrack along with Moriarty.” “I’m glad to hear that.” “She wasn’t as much put out as you’d expect,” said Jimmy, “when she found she couldn’t go on the bicycle. I was thinking she might be in a bad way and that maybe she’d be too much for Moriarty, so I sent Bridgy into the yard to her, not caring to go myself----” “You were right there,” said Mr. Goddard. “Bridgy told me after, that she never saw in all her born days anything to equal the state that Moriarty had the tyre in. ‘You could have run the wisps of it,’ she said, ‘through the teeth of a fine comb.’” “Get Bridgy,” said Mr. Goddard. “I’d like to hear the story from herself.” “I’m not sure could I get her, for she’s busy with the pig’s food and would be wanting to clean herself before she’d come. But there’s no need anyway, for I can tell you the way she quietened the doctor’s young lady as well as she’d tell it herself, and maybe better, for she might be backward in speaking out before a gentleman. ‘The sergeant bid me say,’ says Bridgy, ‘that he’s off this quarter of an hour, and has took Constable Cole along with him.’ Only for Moriarty being there and listening to her Bridgy says the young lady would have cursed awful at hearing that. ‘Wild horses,’ says Bridgy, ‘wouldn’t have held the sergeant back from going, he was that set on catching the blackguards that ill-treated the poor doctor.’ Bridgy says the young lady seemed more pacified at them words. ‘The sergeant,’ says Bridgy, ‘is a terrible man when his temper is riz, and riz it is this day if ever it was. I’d be sorry for the man that faces him.’ And so she went on telling stories about the sergeant and Constable Cole that would make you think they were the blood-thirstiest villains in Ireland, and that nothing delighted them only getting a hold of murderers and the like.” “And did Miss Blow believe all that?” “I’m not sure did she, but it quietened her. She didn’t say a word to Moriarty, good nor bad, but she went out into the street and she asked the first three men she met where was Sergeant Farrelly and Constable Cole.” “Well, and what did they tell her?” “They told her the truth, of course. They told her they’d seen the sergeant and Cole going off on their bicycles back west in the direction of Rosivera. I’m thinking that after that she began to be of opinion that there was, maybe, some truth in what Bridgy had been saying. Anyway, she went off down to the barrack, and Moriarty after her, and she’s there yet.” Susy Lizzie emerged from behind the wire screen of the post-office counter while Jimmy O’Loughlin was speaking. She held in her hand a bundle of telegraph forms. Her uncle caught sight of her.