“It isn’t so much that,” replied Billy, “but it’s a good story and a wonderful story.”
“The potatoes are nearly done, Mary, a grah?”
“They’ll be done in a short while.”
“Hold your story for a few minutes until we eat the potatoes and a few collops of the rabbits, for I tell you that I’m drooping with the hunger.”
“I didn’t eat anything myself,” replied Billy, “since the middle of yesterday, and the food there has a smell to it that’s making me mad.”
“It’s not quite done yet,” said Mary.
“It’s done enough,” replied her father. “Aren’t you particular this day! Pull them over here and share them round, and don’t be having the men dying on your hands.”
Mary did so, and for five minutes there was no sound except that of moving jaws, and by that time there was no more food in sight.
“Ah!” said Patsy with a great sigh.
“Aye, indeed!” said Billy the Music with another sigh.
“Put on more of the potatoes now,” Patsy commanded his daughter, “and be cooking them against the time this story will be finished.”
“I wish I had twice as much as I had,” said Art.
“You got twice as much as me,” cried Patsy angrily, “for I saw the girl giving it to you.”
“I’m not complaining,” replied Art; “I’m only stating a fact.”
“That’s all right,” said Patsy.
The pipes were lit, and all eyes turned to Billy the Music. Patsy leaned back on his elbow, and blew his cloud.
“Now we’ll have the rest of the story,” said he.
XXII
“This,” continued Billy the Music, “is the wonderful thing that happened to me.
“Bit by bit I got fonder of the money. The more I got of it the more I wanted. I used to go away by myself to look at it and handle it and count it. I didn’t store it all in the house; I only kept enough there to make the people think it was all there, and as everyone was watching that and watching each other (for they all wanted to steal it) it was safe enough.
“They didn’t know it was mostly copper was in that box, but copper it was, and some silver that I couldn’t fit into the other boxes.
“There was a place at the end of the big barn, just underneath the dog’s kennel—maybe you remember my dog, Patsy?”
“A big black-and-white snarly devil of a bull-terrier?” said Patsy, thoughtfully.
“That’s him.”
“I remember him well,” said Patsy. “I fed him once.”
“You poisoned him,” said Billy the Music quickly.
“That’s a hard word to say,” replied Patsy, scraping at his chin.
Billy the Music looked very fixedly at him, and he also scraped meditatively at his bristles.
“It doesn’t matter now,” said he. “That was the dog. I made a place under his kennel. It was well made. If you had pulled the kennel aside you’d have seen nothing but the floor. Down there I kept the three boxes of gold, and while I’d be looking at them the dog would be lurching around wondering why he wasn’t allowed to eat people—I was a bit timid with that dog myself—and it was one day while I was handling the money that the thing happened.
“There came a thump on the barn door. The dog made a noise away down in the heel of his throat and loped across; he stuck his nose against the crack at the bottom and began to sniff and scratch.
“ ‘Strangers there,’ said I. I put the money away quietly, lifted the kennel back to its place, and went over to open the door.
“There were two men standing outside, and the dog sprang for one of them as if he had been shot out of a gun.
“But that man was quick. He took the beast on the jump, caught him by the chaps, and slung him with a heave of his arm. I don’t know where he slung him to; I never saw the dog alive after that, and I did think it was that jerk killed him.”
“Begor!” said Patsy.
“It must have been within half an hour or so that you gave him the poisoned meat, Patsy.”
“It was a lengthy mutton bone,” murmured Mac Cann.
“Whatever it was!” said Billy the Music.
“The men walked in, they shut the barn door behind them and locked it, for the key was inside whenever I was.
“Well! I always had the use of my hands and my feet and my teeth, but I had no chance there, so in a few minutes I sat down on the kennel to get my breath back and to mop up the blood that was teeming out of my nose. The two men, I will say, were very quiet with it all—they waited for me.
“One of them was a middle-sized block of a man, and he looked as if his head had been rolled in tar—”
“Eh!” said Patsy loudly.
“The other one was a big, young man with a girl’s face; he had blue eyes and curls of gold, and he was wearing a woman’s skirt—the raggedest old—”
“Begor!” cried Patsy, and he leaped furiously to his feet.
“What’s wrong with you?” said Billy the Music.
Patsy beat his fists together.
“I’ve been looking for that pair of playboys for a full year,” he barked.
“Do you know them?” said Billy the Music, with equal excitement.
“I don’t know them, but I met them, and the girl yonder met them too, the thieves!”
“They are a pair of dirty dogs,” said Mary coldly.
“And when I do meet them,” said Patsy savagely, “I’ll kill the pair of them: I will so.”
Billy the Music laughed.
“I wouldn’t try killing them lads; I did try it once, but they wouldn’t let me. Tell us what they did to yourself, and then I’ll go on with my story, for I’m real curious about those two.”
Mac Cann put his pipe into his pocket.
XXIII
Said Patsy:
“There isn’t very much to tell, but this is how it happened.
“About two weeks before your dog died myself and the girl were tramping
