"What is this all? Who are you?" was sharply demanded out of the obscurity, in a tongue strange to Goron.
Turlogh, the learned man, had the English.
"I am the Lord of Dunbeekin," he made answer, in a cool voice, "and I will be proceeding with my people to Rosscarbery to bury our Lord Bishop, as befits his station and great fame in these parts."
The voice of the unseen captain laughed, amid a sinister rattle of steel on steel.
"There is no Rosscarbery left on the face of the earth. There is no Bishop, alive or dead. There is no Lord of Dunbeekin, but only an old thief of a rebel hiding in the mountains, who called himself such among his native savages. Him we will hang when found, as we hung his kinsman, the barbarian Donal Grany, on the lintel of his own castle in Kinalmeaky."
"I am he of whom you speak," returned Turlogh; "and when I have buried my Bishop, and fulfilled to the last the commands of his testament, which I have here with me writ by his own hand, we will talk further of this hanging. But now I will be moving forward on my way."
Other sounds of laughter rose about them in the darkness.
"They are all mere Irish," said a rough man's voice, after a moment. "They bear with them a bier of some sort, true enough, but they have their women and children and herds with them as well. It is a strange game. Why should we not fall upon them now, before they have wrought the mischief of their conceit?"
"You are outside the law," spoke the first voice, that of authority. "We may put you all to the sword, here where we find you."
"I know of no law but my Lord Bishop's wish," replied
