About midnight my father, half crazy with fright, brought the gig back, and in it the dead body of his master.

They had reached the gap in Ballinthere Hill, he said, going by the lower road, when a shot was suddenly fired from the roadside, grazing my father's arm and lodging in the neck of Mr Gorman.

It was so suddenly done, and the horse bolted so wildly forward at the report, that before my father could even look round the assassin had vanished.
Mr Gorman was already dead.

My father did what he could to stanch the wound, but without avail; and, in a daze, he turned the horse's head and drove back as fast as he could to Kilgorman.

My lady, whose bedroom was over the hall-door, was the first to hear the sound of the wheels, and she seemed to have guessed at a flash of the mind what had happened.
Weak as she was, she succeeded in dragging herself from the bed and looking out of the window; and the first sight that met her eyes, by the gleam of the lanterns, was the lifeless body of her husband being lifted from the gig.
The shock was too much for her.