'Show it here, Tim;' 'let _me_ look,' cried two or three neighbours,
getting round as quickly as they could.

'Oh! murdher;' said one.

'Oh! be the powers o' Moll Kelly!' cried another.

'Oh! bloody wars!' exclaimed a third.

'That poor fellow got no chance for his life at all, at all!' said Tim.

'That was a bullet,' said one of them, putting his finger into a clean
circular aperture as large as a half-penny.

'An' look at them two cracks. Och, murther!'

'There's only one. Oh, I see you're right, _two_, begorra!'

'Aich o' them a wipe iv a poker.'

Mattocks had climbed nimbly to the upper level, and taking the skull in
his fist, turned it about this way and that, curiously. But though he
was no chicken, his memory did not go far enough back to throw any light
upon the matter.

'Could it be the Mattross that was shot in the year '90, as I often
heerd, for sthrikin' his captain?' suggested a by-stander.

'Oh! that poor fellow's buried round by the north side of the church,'