The prison for felons awaiting trial in the civil courts was in Castle Rushen, at Castletown, but Dan Mylrea was not taken to it. There had been a general rising in the south of the island on the introduction of a coinage of copper money, and so many of the rioters had been arrested and committed for trial, without bail, at the Court of General Jail Delivery, that the prison at Castle Rushen was full to overflowing. Twenty men had guarded the place day and night, being relieved every twenty-four hours by as many more from each parish in rotation, some of them the kith and kin of the men imprisoned, and all summoned to Castletown in the morning by the ancient mode of fixing a wooden cross over their doors at night.
Owing to this circumstance the Deemster made the extraordinary blunder of ordering his coroner to remove Dan to the prison beneath the ruined castle at Peeltown. Now, the prison on St. Patrick's islet had for centuries been under the control of the Spiritual Courts, and was still available for use in the execution of the ecclesiastical censures. The jailer was the parish sumner, and the sole governor and director was the Bishop himself. All this the Deemster knew full well, and partly in defiance of his brother's authority, partly in contempt of it, but mainly in bitter disdain of his utter helplessness, where his son's guilt was manifest and confessed, he arrogated the right, without sanction from the spiritual powers, of committing Dan to the Church prison, the civil prison being full.
It was a foul and loathsome dungeon, and never but once had Bishop Mylrea been known to use it. Dark, small, damp, entered by a score of narrow steps, down under the vaults on the floor of the chapel, over the long runnels made in the rock by the sea, it was as vile a hole as the tyranny of the Church ever turned into a jail for the punishment of those who resisted its authority.
The sumner in charge was old Paton Gorry, of Kirk Patrick, a feeble soul with a vast respect for authority, and no powers of nice distinction between those who were placed above him. When he received the Deemster's warrant for Dan's committal, he did not doubt its validity; and when Quayle, the coroner, for his own share ordered that the prisoner should be kept in the close confinement of the dungeon, he acquiesced without question.
If Dan's humiliation down to this moment had not been gall and wormwood to his proud and stubborn spirit the fault did not lie at the door of Quayle the Gyke. Every indignity that an unwilling prisoner could have been subjected to Dan underwent. From the moment of leaving the court-house at Ramsey, Dan was pushed and huddled and imperiously commanded with such an abundant lack of need and reason that at length the people who crowded the streets or looked from their windows—the same people, many of them, who had shrunk from Dan as he entered the town—shouted at the coroner and groaned at him. But Dan himself, who had never before accepted a blow from any man without returning it, was seen to walk tamely by the coroner's side, towering above him in great stature, but taking his rough handling like a child at his knees.
At the door of the prison where Quayle's function ended that of the sumner began, and old Gorry was a man of another mold. Twenty times he had taken charge of persons imprisoned six days for incontinence, and once he had held the governor's wife twelve hours for slander, and once again a fighting clergyman seven days for heresies in looking toward Rome, but never before had he put man, woman, or child into the pestilential hole under the floor of the old chapel. Dan he remembered since the Bishop's son was a boy in corduroys, and when the rusty key of the dungeon turned on him with a growl in its wards, and old Gorry went shivering to the guard-room above and kindled himself a fire there and sat and smoked, the good man under his rough surtout got the better of the bad jailer. Then down he went again, and with a certain shame-facedness, some half-comic, half-pathetic efforts of professional reserve, he said he wouldn't object, not he, if Dan had a mind to come up and warm himself. But Dan declined with words of cold thanks.
"No, Gorry," he said, "I don't know that I feel the cold."
"Oh, all right, all right, sit ye there, sit ye there," said Gorry. He whipped about with as much of largeness as he could simulate, rattled his keys as he went back, and even hummed a tune as he climbed the narrow stairs. But, warming itself at the fire, the poor human nature in the old man's breast began to tear him pitilessly. He could get no peace for memories that would arise of the days when Dan plagued him sorely, the sad little, happy dog. Then up he rose again, and down he went to the dungeon once more.
"I respects the ould Bishop," he said, just by way of preliminary apology and to help him to carry off his intention, "and if it be so that a manhasdone wrong I don't see—I don't see," he stammered, "it isn't natheral that he should be starved alive anyway, and a cold winter's night too."
"It's no more than I deserve," Dan mumbled; and at that word old Gorry whipped about as before, repeating loftily, "Sit ye there, sit ye there."
It was not for him to cringe and sue to a prisoner to come out of that foul hole, och! no; and the Bishop's sumner inflated his choking chest and went back for another pipe. But half an hour later the night had closed in, and old Gorry, with a lantern in his hand, was at the door of Dan's prison again.
"To tell the truth, sir," he muttered, "I can't get lave for a wink of sleep up yonder, and if you don't come up to the fire I wouldn't trust but I'll be forced to stay down here in the cold myself."
Before Dan could make answer there came a loud knocking from overhead. In another moment the key of the door had turned in its lock from without, and Gorry's uncertain footfall was retreating on the steps.
When Dan had first been left alone in his dark cell he had cast himself down on the broad slab cut from the rock, which was his only seat and bed. His suspense was over; the weight of uncertainty was lifted from his brain; and he tried to tell himself that he had done well. He thought of Ewan now with other feelings than before—of his uprightness, his tenderness, his brotherly affection, his frequent intercession, and no less frequent self-sacrifice. Then he thought of his own headlong folly, his blank insensitiveness, his cold ingratitude, and, last of all, of his blundering passion and mad wrath. All else on both sides was blotted from his memory in that hour of dark searching. Alone with his crime—tortured no more by blind hopes of escaping its penalty, or dread misgivings as to the measure of his guilt—his heart went out to the true friend whose life he had taken with a great dumb yearning and a bitter remorse. No cruel voice whispered now in palliation of his offense that it had not been murder, but the accident of self-defense. He had proposed the fight that ended with Ewan's death, and, when Ewan would have abandoned it, he, on his part, would hear of no truce. Murder it was; and, bad as murder is at the best, this murder had been, of all murders, most base and foul. Yes, he had done well. Here alone could he know one hour of respite from terrible thoughts. This dark vault was his only resting-place until he came to lie in the last resting-place of all. There could be no going back. Life was forever closed against him. He had spilled the blood of the man who had loved him with more than a brother's love, and to whom his own soul had been grappled with hooks of steel. It was enough, and the sick certainty of the doom before him was easiest to bear.
It was with thoughts like these that Dan had spent his first hours in prison, and when old Gorry had interrupted them time after time with poor little troubles about the freezing cold of the pestilential place he hardly saw through the old man's simulation into the tender bit of human nature that lay behind it.
A few minutes after Gorry had left the cell, in answer to the loud knocking that had echoed through the empty chambers overhead, Dan could hear that he was returning to it, halting slowly down the steps with many a pause, and mumbling remarks meantime, as if lighting some one who came after him.
"Yes, my lord, it's dark, very dark. I'll set the lantern here, my lord, and turn the key."
In another moment old Gorry was at Dan's side, saying, in a fearful undertone, "Lord 'a' massy! It's the Bishop hisself. I lied to him mortal, so I did—but no use—I said you were sleeping, but no good at all, at all. He wouldn't take rest without putting a sight on you. Here he is—Come in, my lord."
Almost before Dan's mind, distraught by other troubles, had time to grasp what Gorry said, the old jailer had clapped his lantern on the floor of the cell, and had gone from it, and Dan was alone with his father.
"Dan, are you awake?" the Bishop asked, in a low, eager tone. His eyes were not yet familiar with the half-light of the dark place, and he could not see his son. But Dan saw his father only too plainly, and one glance at him in that first instant of recovered consciousness went far to banish as an empty sophism the soothing assurance he had lately nursed at his heart that in what he had done he had done well.
The Bishop was a changed and shattered man. His very stature seemed to have shrunk, and his Jovian white head was dipped into his breast. His great calm front was gone, and in the feeble light of the lantern on the floor his eyes were altered and his face seemed to be cut deep with lines of fear and even of cunning. His irresolute mouth was half-open, as if it had only just emitted a startled cry. In one of his hands he held a small parcel bound tightly with a broad strap, and the other hand wandered nervously in the air before him.
Dan saw everything in an instant. This, then, was the first-fruits of that day's work. He rose from his seat.
"Father!" he cried, in a faint, tremulous voice.
"My son!" the Bishop answered, and for some swift moments thereafter the past that had been very bitter to both was remembered no more by either.
But the sweet oblivion was cruelly brief. "Wait," the Bishop whispered, "are we alone?" And with that the once stately man of God crept on tiptoe like a cat to the door of the cell, and put his head to it and listened.
"Art thou there, Paton Gorry?" he asked, feebly simulating his accustomed tone of quiet authority.
Old Gorry answered from the other side of the door that he was there, that he was sitting on the steps, that he was not sleeping, but waiting my lord's return.
The Bishop crept back to Dan's side, with the same cat-like step as before. "You are safe, my son," he whispered in his low eager tone. "You shall leave this place. It is my prison, and you shall go free."
Dan had watched his father's movements with a sickening sense.
"Then you do not know that I surrendered?" he said, faintly.
"Yes, yes, oh, yes, I know it. But that was when your arrest was certain. But now—listen."
Dan felt as if his father had struck him across the face. "That was what the Deemster said," he began; "but it is wrong."
"Listen—they have nothing against you. I know all. They can not convict you save on your own confession. And why should you confess?"
"Why?"
"Don't speak—don't explain—I must not hear you—listen!" and the old man put one arm on his son's shoulder and his mouth to his ear. "There is only one bit of tangible evidence against you, and it is here; look!" and he lifted before Dan's face the parcel he carried in his other trembling hand. Then down he went on one knee, put the parcel on the floor, and unclasped the strap. The parcel fell open. It contained a coat, a hat, two militia daggers, and a large heavy stone.
"Look!" the Bishop whispered again, in a note of triumph, and as he spoke a grin of delight was struck out of his saintly old face.
Dan shuddered at the sight.
"Where did you get them?" he asked.
The Bishop gave a little grating laugh.
"They were brought me by some of my good people," he answered. "Oh, yes, good people, all of them; and they will not tell. Oh, no, they have promised me to be silent."
"Promised you?"
"Yes—listen again. Last night—it was dark, I think it must have been past midnight—I went to all their houses. They were in bed, but I knocked, and they came down to me. Yes, they gave me their word—on the Book they gave it. Good people, all—Jabez the tailor, Stean the cobbler, Juan of Ballacry, and Thormod in the Street. I remember every man of them."
"Father, do you say you went to these people—these, the very riff-raff of the island—you went to them—you, and at midnight—and begged them—"
"Hush, it is nothing. Why not? But this is important." The Bishop, who was still on his knees, was buckling up the parcel again. "You can sink it in the sea. Did you mark the stone? That will carry it to the bottom. And when you are in the boat it will be easy to drop everything overboard."
"The boat?"
"Ah! have I not told you? Thormod Mylechreest—you remember him? A good man, Thormod—a tender heart, too, and wronged by his father, poor misguided man. Well, Mylechreest has promised—I have just left him—to come down to the harbor at nine to-night, and take the fishing-smack, the 'Ben-my-Chree,' and bring her round to the west coast of St. Patrick's Islet, and cast anchor there, and then come ashore in the boat, and wait for you."
"Wait for me, father?"
"Yes; for this prison is mine, and I shall open its doors to whomsoever it pleases me to liberate. Look!"
The Bishop rose to his full height, threw back his head, and with a feeble show of his wonted dignity strode to the door of the cell and cried, in a poor, stifled echo of his accustomed strong tone, "Paton Gorry, open thou this door."
Old Gorry answered from without, and presently the door was opened.
"Wider."
The door was thrown wide.
"Now, give me the keys, Paton Gorry," said the Bishop, with the same assumption of authority.
Old Gorry handed his keys to the Bishop.
"And get thee home, and stay there."
Old Gorry touched his cap and went up the steps.
Then, with a bankrupt smile of sorry triumph, the Bishop turned to his son. "You see," he said, "you are free. Let me look—what is the hour?" He fumbled for his watch. "Ah, I had forgotten. I paid my watch away to poor Patrick Looney. No matter. At nine by the clock Mylechreest will come for you, and you will go to your boat and set sail for Scotland, or England, or Ireland, or—or—"
Dan could bear up no longer. His heart was choking. "Father, father, my father, what are you saying?" he cried.
"I am saying that you are free to leave this place."
"I will not go—I can not go."
The Bishop fetched a long breath and paused for a moment. He put one trembling hand to his forehead, as if to steady his reeling and heated brain.
"You can not stay," he said. "Hark! do you hear the wind how it moans? Or is it the sea that beats on the rock outside? And over our heads are the dead of ten generations."
But Dan was suffocating with shame; the desolation around, the death that was lying silent above, and the mother of sorrows that was wailing beneath had no terrors left for him.
"Father, my father," he cried again, "think what you ask me to do. Only think of it. You ask me to allow you to buy the silence of the meanest hinds alive. And at what a price? At the price of the influence, the esteem, the love, and the reverence that you have won by the labor of twenty years. And to what end? To the end that I—I—"
"To the end that you may live, my son. Remember what your father's love has been to you. No, not that—but think what it must have been to him. Your father would know you were alive. It is true he would never, never see you. Yes, we should always be apart—you there, and I here—and I should take your hand and see your face no more. But you would be alive—"
"Father, do you call it living? Think if I could bear it. Suppose I escaped—suppose I were safe in some place far away—Australia, America, anywhere out of the reach of shame and death—suppose I were well, ay, and prosperous as the world goes—what then?"
"Then I should be content, my son. Yes, content, and thanking God."
"And I should be the most wretched of men. Only think of it, and picture me there. I should know, though there were none to tell me, I should remember it as often as the sun rose above me, that at home, thousands of miles away, my poor father, the righteous Bishop that once was, the leader of his people and their good father, was the slave of the lowest offal of them all, powerless to raise his hand for the hands that were held over him, dumb to reprove for the evil tongues that threatened to speak ill. And, as often as night came and I tried to sleep, I should see him there growing old, very old, and, maybe, very feeble, and wanting an arm to lean on, and good people to honor him and to make him forget—yes, forget the mad shipwreck of his son's life, but with eyes that could not lift themselves from the earth for secret shame, tortured by fears of dishonor, self-tormented and degraded before the face of his God. No, no, no, I can not take such sacrifice."
The Bishop had drawn nearer to Dan and tried to take his hand. When Dan was silent he did not speak at once, and when Dan sat on his stone seat he sat beside him, gentle as a child, and very meek and quiet, and felt for his hand again, and held it, though Dan would have drawn it away. Then, as they sat together, nearer the old Bishop crept, nearer and yet nearer, until one of his trembling arms encircled Dan's neck and the dear head was drawn down to his swelling, throbbing breast, as if it were a child's head still, and it was a father's part to comfort it and to soothe away its sorrows.
"Then we will go together," he said, after a time, in a faint forlornness of voice, "to the utmost reaches of the earth, leaving all behind us, and thinking no more of the past. Yes, we will go together," he said, very quietly, and he rose to his feet, still holding Dan's hand.
Dan was suffocating with shame. "Father," he said, "I see all now; you think me innocent, and so you would leave everything for my sake. But I am a guilty man."
"Hush! you shall not say that. Don't tell me that. No one shall tell me that. I will not hear it."
The hot eagerness of the Bishop's refusal to hear with his ears the story of his son's guilt told Dan but too surely that he had already heard it with his heart.
"Father, no one would need to tell you. You would find it out for yourself. And think of that awful undeceiving! You would take your son's part against the world, believing in him, but you would read his secret bit by bit, day by day. His crime would steal in between you like a spectre, it would separate you hour by hour, until at length you would be forever apart. And that end would be the worst end of all. No, it can not be. Justice is against it; love is against it. And God, I think God must be against it, too."
"God!"
Dan did not hear. "Yes, I am guilty," he went on. "I have killed the man who loved me as his own soul. He would have given his life for my life, even as he gave his honor for my honor. And I slew him. Ewan! Ewan! my brother, my brother!" he cried, and where he sat he buried his face in his hands.
The Bishop stood over his son with the same gentle calm that had come upon him in the cell, and with not one breath of the restless fever with which he entered it. Once again he tried to take Dan's hand and to hold it, and to meet with his own full orbs Dan's swimming eyes.
"Yes, father, it is right that I should die, and it is necessary. Perhaps God will take my death as an atonement—"
"Atonement!"
"Or, if there is no atonement, there is only hell for my crime, and before God I am guilty."
"Before God!"
The Bishop echoed Dan's words in a dull, mechanical underbreath, and stood a long time silent while Dan poured forth his bitter remorse. Then he said, speaking with something of his own courageous calm of voice, from something like his own pure face, and with some of the upright wrinkles of his high forehead smoothed away: "Dan, I will go home and think. I seem to be awakening from a dreadful nightmare in a world where no God is, and no light reigns, but all is dark. To tell you the truth, Dan, I fear my faith is not what it was or should be. I thought I knew God's ways with his people, and then it seemed as if, after all these years, I had not known him. But I am only a poor priest, and a very weak old man. Good-night, my son, I will go home and think. I am like one who runs to save a child from a great peril and finds a man stronger than himself and braver—one who looks on death face to face and quails not. Good-night, Dan, I will go home and pray."
And so he went his way, the man of God in his weakness. He left his son on the stone seat, with covered face, the lantern, and the parcel on the floor, and the door of the cell wide open. The keys he carried half-consciously in his hand. He stumbled along in the darkness down the winding steps, hewn from the rock, to the boat at the little wooden jetty, where a boatman sat awaiting him. The night was very dark, and the sea's loud moan and its dank salt breath were in the air. He did not see, he did not hear, he did not feel. But there was one in that lonesome place who saw his dark figure as he passed. "Who is there?" said an eager voice, as he went through the deep portcullis and out at the old notched and barred door ajar. But the Bishop neither answered nor heard.
At the house in Castle Street, near to the quay, he stopped and knocked. The door was opened by the old sumner.
"I've brought you the keys, Paton Gorry. Go back to your charge."
"Did you lock the doors, my lord?"
"Yes—no, no—I must have forgotten. I fear my mind—but it is of no moment. Go back, Paton—it will be enough."
"I'll go, my lord," said the sumner.
He went back, but others had been there before him.
Well satisfied with this day's work the Deemster drove from the Ramsey court-house to midday dinner with his father-in-law, the old archdeacon, taking Jarvis Kerruish with him. Mona he sent home in the lumbering car driven by the coroner. It suited well with the girl's troubled mind to be alone, and when night fell in and the Deemster had not returned, the grim gloom of the lonely house on Slieu Dhoo brought her no terrors. But toward nine o'clock the gaunt silence of the place was broken, and from that time until long after midnight Ballamona was a scene of noise and confusion.
First came blind Kerry, talking loudly along the passages, wringing her hands, and crying, "Aw, dear! oh, mam! oh, goodness me!"
Mastha Dan was no longer in prison, he had been kidnapped; four men and a boy had taken him by main force; bound hand and foot he had been carried through the mountains to a lonely place; and there at daybreak to-morrow he was to be shot. All this and more, with many details of place and circumstance, Kerry had seen as in a flash of light, just as she was raking the ashes on the fire preparatory to going to bed.
Mona had gone through too much to be within touch of the blind woman's excitement.
"We must not give way to these fancies, Kerry," she said.
"Fancies, mam? Fancies you're saying? Scoffers may mock, but don't you, mam—brought up with my own hand, as the saying is."
"I did not mean to mock, Kerry; but we have so many real troubles that it seems wicked to imagine others—and perhaps a little foolish, too."
At that word the sightless face of Kerry grew to a great gravity.
"Foolish, mam? It is the gift—the gift of the good God. He made me blind, but he gave me the sights. It would have been hard, and maybe a taste cruel, to shut me up in the dark, and every living craythur in the light; but he is a just God and a merciful, as the saying is, and he gave me the gift for recompense."
"My good Kerry, I am so tired to-night, and must go to bed."
"Aw, yes, and well it has sarved me time upon time—"
"We were up before six this morning, Kerry."
"And now I say to you, send immadient, mam, or the Lord help—"
The blind woman's excitement and Mona's impassibility were broken in upon by the sound of a man's voice in the hall asking sharply for the Deemster. At the next moment Quayle, the coroner, was in the room. His face was flushed, his breath came quick, and his manner betrayed extreme agitation.
"When the Deemster comes home from Kirk Andreas tell him to go across to Bishop's Court at once, and say that I will be back before midnight."
So saying, the coroner wheeled about without ceremony, and was leaving the room.
"What has happened at Bishop's Court?" Mona asked.
"Nothing," he said, impatiently.
"Then why should I tell him to go there?"
The tone of the question awakened the curmudgeon's sense of common policy.
"Well, if you must know, that man has escaped, and I'm thinking the Bishop himself has had his foot in the mischief."
Then Kerry, with a confused desire to defend the Bishop, interrupted, and said, "The Bishop's not at the Coort—let me tell ye that."
Whereupon the coroner smiled with a large dignity, and answered, "I know it, woman."
"When did this happen?" said Mona.
"Not an hour ago; I am straight from Peeltown this minute."
And without more words the coroner turned his back on her, and was gone in an instant.
When Quayle had left the room Kerry lifted both hands; her blind face wore a curious expression of mingled pride and fear. "It is the gift," she said, in an awesome whisper.
Mona stood a while in silence and perplexity, and then she said, in tremulous voice, "Kerry, don't think me among those that scoff, but tell me over again, my good Kerry, and forgive me."
And Kerry told the story of her vision afresh, and Mona now listened with eager attention, and interrupted with frequent questions.
"Who where the four men and the boy? Never saw their faces before? Never? Not in the street? No? Never heard their voices? Ah, surely you remember their voices? Yes, yes, try to recall them; try, try, my good Kerry. Ah! the fishermen—they were the voices of the fishermen! How were you so long in remembering? Quilleash? Yes, old Billy. And Crennell? Yes, and Teare and Corkell, and the boy Davy Fayle? Poor young Davy, he was one of them? Yes? Oh, you dear, good Kerry!"
Mona's impassibility was gone, and her questions, like her breath, came hot and fast.
"And now tell me what place they took him to. The mountains? Yes, but where? Never saw the place before in all your life? Why, no, of course not; how could you, Kerry? Ah, don't mind what I say and don't be angry. But what kind of place? Quick, Kerry, quick."
Kerry's blind face grew solemn, and one hand, with outstretched finger, she raised before her, as though to trace the scene in the air, as she described the spot in the mountains where the four men and the boy had taken Dan.
"It was a great lone place, mam, with the sea a-both sides of you, and a great large mountain aback of you, and a small low one in front, and a deep strame running under you through the gorse, and another shallow one coming into it at a slant, and all whins and tussocks of the lush grass about, and maybe a willow by the water's side, with the sally-birds hanging dead from the boughs, and never a stick, nor a sign of a house, nor a barn, but the ould tumbled cabin where they took him, and only the sea's roar afar away, and the sheep's bleating, and maybe the mountain geese cackling, and all to that."
Mona had listened at first with vivid eagerness and a face alive with animation, but as Kerry went on the girl's countenance saddened. She fell back a pace or two, and said, in a tone of pain and impatience:
"Oh, Kerry, you have told me nothing. What you say describes nearly every mountain-top in the island. Was there nothing else? Nothing? Think. What about the tumble-down house? Had it a roof? Yes? No one living in it? No buildings about it? A shaft-head and gear? Oh, Kerry, how slow you are! Quick, dear Kerry! An old mine? A worked-out mine? Oh, think, and be sure!"
Then the solemnity of the blind woman's face deepened to a look of inspiration. "Think? No need to think," she said in an altered tone. "Lord bless me, I see it again. There, there it is—there this very minute."
She sunk back into a chair, and suddenly became motionless and stiff. Her sightless eyes were opened, and for the first few moments that followed thereafter all her senses seemed to be lost to the things about her. In this dream-state she continued to talk in a slow, broken, fearsome voice, exclaiming, protesting, and half-sobbing. At first Mona looked on in an agony of suspense, and then she dropped to her knees at Kerry's feet, and flung her arms about the blind woman with the cry of a frightened bird.
"Kerry, Kerry!" she called, as if prompted by an unconscious impulse to recall her from the trance that was awful to look upon. And in that moment of contact with the seer she suffered a shock that penetrated every fibre; she shuddered, the cry of pain died off in her throat, her parted lips whitened and stiffened, her eyes were frozen in their look of terror, her breath ceased to come, her heart to beat, and body and soul together seemed transfixed. In that swift instant of insensibility the vision passed like a throb of blood to her from the blind woman, and she saw and knew all.
Half an hour later, Mona, with every nerve vibrating, with eyes of frenzy and a voice of fear, was at Bishop's Court inquiring for the Bishop.
"He is this minute home from Peel," said the housekeeper.
Mona was taken to the library, and there the Bishop sat before the fire, staring stupidly into the flame. His hat and cloak had not yet been removed, and a riding-whip hung from one of his listless hands.
He rose as Mona entered. She flew to his arms, and while he held her to his breast his sad face softened, and the pent-up anguish of her heart overflowed in tears. Then she told him the tangled, inconsequent tale, the coroner's announcement, Kerry's vision, her own strange dream-state, and all she had seen in it.
As she spoke, the Bishop looked dazed; he pressed one hand on his forehead; he repeated her words after her; he echoed the questions she put to him. Then he lifted his head to betoken silence. "Let me think," he said. But the brief silence brought no clearness to his bewildered brain. He could not think; he could not grasp what had occurred. And the baffled struggle to comprehend made the veins of his forehead stand out large and blue. A most pitiful look of weariness came over his mellow face, and he said in a low tone that was very touching to hear, "To tell you the truth, my dear child, I do not follow you—my mind seems thick and clouded—things run together in it—I am only a feeble old man now, and—But wait" (a flash of light crossed his troubled face)—"you say you recognize the place in the mountains?"
"Yes, as I saw it in the vision. I have been there before. When I was a child I was there with Dan and Ewan. It is far up the Sulby River, under Snaefell, and over Glen Crammag. Don't say it is foolish and womanish, and only hysteria, dear uncle. I saw it all as plainly as I see you now."
"Ah, no, my child. If the Patriarch Joseph practised such divination, is it for me to call it foolishness? But wait, wait—let me think." And then, in a low murmur, as if communing with himself, he went on: "The door was left open ... yes, the door ... the door was...."
It was useless. His brain was broken, and would not link its ideas. He was struggling to piece together the fact that Dan was no longer in prison with the incidents of his own abandoned preparations for his son's escape. Mumbling and stammering, he looked vacantly into Mona's face, until the truth of his impotence forced itself upon her, and she saw that from him no help for Dan could come.
Then with many tears she left him and hastened back to Ballamona. The house was in confusion; the Deemster and Jarvis Kerruish had returned, and the coroner was with them in the study.
"And what of the Peeltown watch?" the Deemster was asking sharply. "Where was he?"
"Away on some cock-and-bull errand, sir."
"By whose orders?"
"The Bishop's."
"And what of the harbor-master when the 'Ben-my-Chree' was taken away from her moorings?"
"He also was spirited away."
"By whom?"
"The same messenger—Will-as-Thorn, the parish clerk."
"Old Gorry, the sumner, gave up the prison keys to the Bishop, you say?"
"To the Bishop, sir."
"And left him in the cell, and found the door open and the prisoner gone upon his return?"
"Just so, sir."
"What have you been doing in the matter?"
"Been to Ramsey, sir, and stationed three men on the quay to see that nobody leaves the island by the Cumberland packet that sails at midnight."
"Tut, man, who will need the packet?—the man has the fishing-boat."
Mona's impatience could contain itself no longer. She hurried into the study and told her tale. The Deemster listened with a keen, quick sense; he questioned, cross-questioned, and learned all. This done, he laughed a little, coldly and bitterly, and dismissed the whole story with contempt.
"Kidnapped? No such matter. Escaped, woman—escaped! And visions, forsooth! What pedler's French! Get away to bed, girl."
Mona had no choice but to go. Her agitation was painful; her sole thought was of Dan's peril. She was a woman, and that Dan was a doomed man, whether in prison or out of it, whether he had escaped or been kidnapped, was a consideration that had faded from her view. His life was in imminent danger, and that was everything to her. She had tried to save him by help of the Bishop, and failing in that direction, she had attempted the same end by help of the Deemster, his enemy.
The hours passed with feet of lead until three o'clock struck, and then there was a knock at her door. The Deemster's voice summoned her to rise, dress quickly and warmly, and come out immediately. She had not gone to bed, and in two minutes more was standing hooded and cloaked in the hall. The Deemster, Jarvis, the coroner, and seven men were there. At the porch a horse, saddled and bridled, was pawing the gravel.
Mona understood everything at a glance. Clearly enough the Deemster intended to act on the guidance of the vision which he had affected to despise. Evidently it was meant that she should go with the men to identify the place she had described.
"An old lead mine under Snaefell and over Glen Crammag, d'you say?"
"Yes, father."
"Daybreak?"
"It was daybreak."
"You would know the place if you saw it again?"
"Yes."
The Deemster turned to the coroner.
"Which course do you take?"
"Across Glen Dhoo, sir, past Ravensdale, and along the mountain-path to the Sherragh Vane."
"Come, girl, mount; be quick."
Mona was lifted to the saddle, the coroner took the bridle, and they started away, the seven men walking behind.
What had happened was a strange series of coincidences. Early that day the crew of the "Ben-my-Chree," in the mountain solitude where they found freezing and starving safety, had sent one of their number back to Sulby village to buy a quarter of meal. Teare was the man chosen for the errand, and having compassed it, he was stealing his way back to the mountains, when he noticed that great companies of people were coming from the direction of Ramsey. Lagging behind the larger groups on the road was a woman whom he recognized as his wife. He attracted her attention without revealing himself to the people in front. She was returning from the Deemster's inquest, and told what had occurred there: that Dan, the Bishop's son, had surrendered, and that the indictment to the Court of General Jail Delivery had been made out not only in his name, but in the names of the four men and the boy of the "Ben-my-Chree."
Teare carried back to the mountains a heavier burden than the quarter of meal. His mates had watched for him as he plodded up the bank of the Sulby River with the bag on his back. When he came up his face was ominous.
"Send the lad away for a spell," he muttered to old Billy Quilleash, and Davy Fayle was sent to cut gorse for a fire.
Then the men gathered around Teare and heard what had happened. The disaster had fallen which they foresaw. What was to be done? Crennell, with a line from a psalm, was for trusting in the Lord; and old Quilleash, with an oath, was for trusting in his heels. After a pause Teare propounded his scheme. It centred in Dan. Dan with his confession was their sole danger. Once rid of Dan they were as free men. Before his confession of guilt their innocence was beyond his power to prove or their power to establish. On his way up from the valley Teare had hit on a daring adventure. They were to break into the castle at Peel, take Dan by force, bring him up to the mountains, and there give him the choice of life or death: life if he promised to plead Not Guilty to the indictment, death if he adhered to the resolution by which he had surrendered.
The men gathered closer about Teare, and with yet whiter faces. Teare gave his plan; his scheme was complete; that night they were to carry it out. Paton Gorry was the jailer at Peel Castle. The lad Davy was the old sumner's godchild. Davy was to go forth and smuggle Gorry's keys out of the guard-room. If that were found impossible—well, Paton was an old man; he might be put quietly out of harm's way—no violence—och! no, not a ha'p'orth. Then Corkell was son-in-law of the watch at Peeltown, and hence the watch must take the harbor-master to the "Jolly Herrings," in Castle Street, while they themselves, Teare, Quilleash, Crennell, and Corkell, took the "Ben-my-Chree" from her moorings at the mouth of the harbor. On the west coast of St. Patrick's Isle they must bear down and run the dingey ashore. Then Dan must be seized in his cell, bound hand and foot, and brought aboard. With a fair wind—it was blowing east-sou'east—they must set sail for Ramsey Bay, put about at Lague, anchor there, and go ashore.
"That'll lave it," said Teare, "to raisonable inf'rence that Mastha Dan had whipped off to England by the Whitehaven packet that sails at midnight from the quay."
This done, they were to find a horse, strap the fettered man to its back, fetch him into the mountains in the dark hours of the night, and at daybreak try him solemnly and justly on the issue they had hit upon of life or death. No violence! Aw, no, all just and straight! If so be that the man was hanging them, they'd do him justice man to man, as fair as the backbone lies down the middle of a herring. Deemster's justice couldn't be cleaner; no, nor as clean. Aw, yes, no violence!
It was an intricate plan, involving many risks, presupposing many favorable chances. Perhaps it was not a logical computation of probabilities. But, good or bad, logical or illogical, probable or improbable, easy of accomplishment or full of risk and peril, it was the only alternative to trusting in the Lord, as Crennell had suggested, or in their heels, as Quilleash had preferred. In the end they took it, and made ready to act on it.
As the men arrived at their conclusion Davy Fayle was returning with an armful of withered gorse for a fire. The first move in that night's adventure was to be made by him. "Lave the lad to me," whispered Quilleash, and straightway he tackled Davy. Veracity was not conspicuous in the explanation that the old salt made. Poor Mastha Dan had been nabbed, bad cess to it, and jiggered up in Peel Castle. He would be hanged sarten sure. Aw, safe for it, if some chaps didn't make an effort immadient. They meant to do it, too. Ay, that very evenin'! Wouldn't they let him help? Well, pozzible, pozzible. They wasn't no objection to that. Thus, Davy fell an eager victim to a plan that was not propounded to him. If saving Mastha Dan from the dirts that had nabbed him was the skame that was goin', why, nothin' would hould him but he would be in it. "Be aisy with the loblolly-boy and you have him," whispered old Billy behind the back of his hand, as he spat a long jet from his quid.
Relieved of doubt as to their course of action, they built a fire and warmed themselves, and with water from the river below they made cold porridge of the meal, and ate and drank, and waited for the night. The darkness came early—it was closing in at four o'clock. Then the men smothered their fire with turf and earth and set out for Peeltown. Their course was over Colden, and between Greeba and Beary, to the breast of Slieu Whallin, and then down to St. Patrick's Isle by the foot of Corrin's Hill. It was twelve miles over hill and dale, through the darkness and the muggy air of the winter's night. They had to avoid the few houses and to break their pace when footsteps came their way. But they covered the distance in less than four hours. At eight o'clock they were standing together on the south of the bridge that crosses the Neb River at the top of Peel Harbor. There they separated. Corkell went off to the market-place by a crooked alley from the quay to find the watch and dispose of him. When the harbor-master had been removed, Corkell was to go to the "Ben-my-Chree," which was moored in deep water at the end of the wooden pier, open the scuttle on the south, and put the lamp to it as a signal of safety to Quilleash, Teare, and Crennell above the bridge on the headland opposite. They were then to come aboard. Davy Fayle took the south quay to St. Patrick's Isle. It was now the bottom of the ebb-tide, and Davy was to wade the narrow neck that divided the isle from the mainland. Perhaps he might light on a boat; perhaps cross dry-shod. In half an hour he was to be on the west of the castle, just under a spot known as the Giant's Grave, and there the four men were to come ashore to him in the dingey. Meantime he was to see old Paton Gorry and generally take the soundings. Thus they parted.
Davy found the water low and the ford dry. He crossed it as noiselessly as he could, and reached the rocks of the isle. It was not so dark but he could descry the dim outlines of the ruined castle. A flight of steps ascended from the water's edge to the portcullis. Davy crept up. He had prepared to knock at the old notched door under the arch, but he found it standing open. He stood and listened. At one moment he thought he heard a movement behind him. It was darkest of all under these thick walls. He went on; he passed the doorway that is terrible with the tradition of the Moddey Dhoo. As he went by the door he turned his head to it in the darkness, and once again he thought he heard something stir. This time the sound came from before him. He gasped, and had almost screamed. He stretched his arms toward the sound. There was nothing. All was still once more.
Davy stepped forward into the courtyard. His feet fell softly on the grass that grew there. At length he reached the guard-room. Once more he had lifted his hand to knock, and once more he found the door open. He looked into the room. It was empty; a fire burned on the hearth, a form was drawn up in front of it; a pipe lay on a bare deal table. "He has gone down to the cell," Davy told himself, and he made his way to the steps that led to the dungeon. But he stopped again, and his heart seemed to stand still. There could now be no doubt but some one was approaching. There was the faint jingle as of keys. "Paton! Paton!" Davy called, fearfully. There was no answer, but the footsteps came on. "Who is there?" he cried again, in a tremulous whisper. At the next instant a man passed in the darkness, and Davy saw and knew him. It was the Bishop.
Davy dropped to his knees. A moment afterward the Bishop was gone through the outer gate and down the steps. His footsteps ceased, and then there were voices, followed by the plash of an oar, and then all was silence once more, save for the thick boom of the sea that came up from the rocks.
Davy rose to his feet and turned toward the steps that led down to the door of the dungeon. A light came from below. The door was open also, and, stretching himself full-length on to the ground, Davy could see into the cell. On the floor there was a lantern, and beside it a bundle lay. Dan was there; he was lying on the stone couch; he was alone.
Breathless and trembling, Davy rose again and fled out of the old castle and along the rocky causeway to a gullet under the Giant's Grave. There the men were waiting for him.
"The place is bewitched," he said, with quick-coming breath; and he told how every door was open, and not a soul was in the castle except Dan. The men heard him with evident terror. Corkell had just told them a similar story. The watch and the harbor-master had both been removed before he had gone in search of them. Everything seemed to be done to their hands. Nothing was left to them to do but simply to walk into the castle and carry out their design. This terrified them. "It's a fate," Corkell whispered; and Crennell, in white awe of the unseen hand that was helping them, was still for trusting in the Lord. Thus they put their heads together. Quilleash was first to recover from superstitious fears. "Come, lay down, and no blather," he said, and stalked resolutely forward, carrying a sack and a coil of rope. The other men followed him in silence. Davy was ordered to stay behind with the small-boat.
They found everything as the lad had left it: the notched door of the portcullis was open, the door of the guard-room was open, and when they came to the steps of the dungeon the door there was also open. A moment they stood and listened, and heard no sound from below but a light, regular breathing, as of one man only. Then they went quietly down the steps and into the cell. Dan was asleep. At sight of him, lying alone and unconscious, their courage wavered a moment. The unseen hand seemed to be on them still. "I tell thee it's a fate," Corkell whispered again over Quilleash's shoulder. In half a minute the sleeping man was bound hand and foot, and the sack was thrown over his head. At the first touch he awoke and tried to rise, but four men were over his prostrate body, and they overpowered him. He cried lustily, but there was none to hear. In less time than it takes to tell it the men were carrying Dan out of the cell. The lantern they left on the floor, and in their excitement they did not heed the parcel that lay by it.
Over the courtyard, through the gate, along the ledge under the crumbling walls, they stumbled and plunged in the darkness. They reached the boat and pushed off. Ten minutes afterward they were aboard the "Ben-my-Chree" and were beating down the bay.
Dan recognized the voices of the men, and realized his situation. He did not shout again. The sack over his head was of coarse fibre, admitting the air, and he could breathe through it without difficulty. He had been put to lie on one of the bunks in the cabin, and he could see the tossing light of the horn lantern that hung from the deck-planks. When the boat rolled in the strong sea that was running he could sometimes see the lights on the land through the open scuttle.
With a fair wind for the Point of Ayr, full sail was stretched. Corkell stood to the tiller, and, when all went smoothly, the three men turned in below, and lighted a fire in the stove and smoked. Then Davy Fayle came down with eyes dull and sick. He had begun to doubt, and to ask questions that the men could not answer. What for was Mastha Dan tied up like a haythen? And what for the sack? But the men were in no humor for cross-examination. No criss-crossing! The imperent young idiot waistrel, let him keep his breath to cool his porridge. To quiet the lad the men plied him with liquor, and at the second draft he was reeling drunk. Then he laughed a wild laugh, and sang a mad song, and finally stood up to dance. It was a grim sight, but it was soon ended, and Davy was put to sleep in another of the bunks. Then two hours passed, and there was some growling and quarreling.
Crennell and Teare went up on deck. Quilleash remained below, sitting before the stove cleaning with oil and a rag a fowling-piece that Dan had brought aboard at the beginning of the herring season. Sometimes he crooned a Manx carval, and sometimes whistled it, as he worked, chewing his quid meantime, and glancing at intervals at Dan's motionless figure on the bunk: