L’âme des grands travaux, l’objet des nobles voeux,Que tout mortel embrasse, ou désire, ou rapelle,Qui vit dans tous les coeurs, et dont le nom sacréDans les cours des tyrans est tout bas adoré, La Liberté!J’ai vu cette déesse altièreAvec égalité répandant tous les biens,Descendre de Morat en habit de guerrière,Les mains teintes du sang des fiers AutrichiensEt de Charles le Téméraire.”
Felix Matier’s manner of pronouncing French was somewhat painful to listen to. Voltaire would probably have failed to recognise his solitary lyric if he had heard it read by Mr. Matier. But if the poet had discovered that the verses were his own and had got over his shudder at a mangling of French sounds worse than the worst he can have heard at Potsdam from the courtiers of Frederick William, he would probably have been well enough satisfied with the spirit of the rendering. Mr. Matier, of the North Street, Belfast, was obviously a sincere worshipper of thedéesse altière, and would have been delighted to see her handsteintes du sangof the men who had torn down his sign the night before. Neal, though he could read French easily, did not understand a single word he heard. He took the book from his host to see what the poem was about. Mr. Matier did not seem the least vexed, although he understood what Neal was doing.
“The French are a great people,” he said. “Europe owes them all the ideas that are worth having. I’d be the last man to breathe a word against them, but I must say that it requires some sort of a twisted jaw to pronounce their language properly. I understand it all right when it’s printed, but as for Speaking it or following it when a Frenchman speaks it——”
He shrugged his shoulders.
“But it’s time I stopped moidering you with poetry. I hope you’re really feeling better. I hope Peg took good care of you, and brought you your breakfast.”
“Indeed she did. She took rather too good care of me. I thought one time she was going to kiss me.
“Did she make to do that? Well, now, just think of it! Isn’t she the brazen hussy? And I’m sure her breath reeked of onions or some such like.”
“Oh,” said Neal, “we didn’t get as far as that. Her breath may be roses for all I know.”
“You kept her at arm’s length. Serve her well right. I never heard of such impudence. But these red-haired ones are the devil. It’s the same with horses. I had a chestnut filly one time—a neat little tit in her way—but she’d kick the weathercock off the top of the church steeple whenever she was a bit fresh. Never trust anything red. A red dog will bite you, a red horse will kick you, a red wench will kiss you, besides being a damned unlucky thing to meet first thing in the morning, a red soldier will hang you. There’s only one good thing in the world that’s red, and that’s a red cap—the red cap of Liberty, Neal, and may we soon have all the red coats in the country cut up into such head-gear.”
It was fortunate for Neal that he found Felix Matier’s conversation amusing and Felix Matier’s books interesting. He had ample opportunity of enjoying them during the week which followed the dragoons’ riot. Donald Ward refused, as long as possible to allow him to get out of bed, and even when Neal was up and dressed, peremptorily forbade him to leave the house. He spoke weighty words about his experience of wounds, of frightful consequences which followed cuts on the head when the cold of the outer air got at them, of men who had died of lockjaw because they would not take care of scalp wounds, of burning eruptions which broke out on the unwary, of desperate fevers threatening life and reason.
Neal was puzzled. He had tumbled about among the rocks at Ballintoy a good deal during his boyhood, cutting and bruising most parts of his body. Even his head had not escaped. There was a deep scar under his hair which he had come by in the course of an attempt to enter a long fissure among the rocks of the Skerries, off Port-rush. But such wounds had troubled him very little. He had never made a fuss about them or taken any special precautions on account of them, neither knowing nor caring anything about the evils which may follow wounds, which do follow wounds, in pampered bodies. He could not understand why his uncle, who was certainly not otherwise given to morbid coddling, should insist upon such excessive care of a cut which was healing rapidly.
The fact was that Donald Ward was nervous about Neal, not at all on account of his cut head, which was nothing, but because Captain Twinely and his yeomen had returned to Belfast. It leaked out that the military authorities were not pleased with Captain Twinely. He had brought back three prisoners and the cannon, but he had not brought back Micah Ward, who was particularly wanted. Captain Twinely, angry at his cold reception, and furious at the hanging of his trooper, was anxious to revenge himself upon some one. Lord Dun-severic was too great a man to be attacked. The Government could not afford to interfere with his methods of executing justice in North Antrim. Captain Twinely was given a broad hint that he must hawk at lower game, and keep his mouth shut about the hanging of his trooper. There was no objection to the yeomen outraging women so long as they confined themselves to farmers’ wives, but an insult offered to Lord Dunseveric’s sister and daughter, under Lord Dunseveric’s own eyes, was a different matter. The less said the better about the hanging of the man who had distinguished himself by that exploit. Captain Twinely, growing savage at this second snub, and afraid lest perhaps he himself might be sacrificed when Lord Dunseveric’s story of his raid came to be told, sought to ingratiate himself with the authorities by offering them a fresh victim. He gave an exaggerated version of Neal Ward’s attack on the troopers outside the meeting-house, and drew an imaginary picture of the young man as a deep and dangerous conspirator. He even managed to shift the responsibility for the hanging of the trooper from Lord Dunseveric’s shoulders to Neal’s. He knew that Neal had left Dunseveric, and he assured Major Fox, the town major, that Neal was at that moment in Belfast arranging for the outbreak of the rebellion. Major Fox was worried by the complaints which respectable citizens were making about the dragoons’ riot. He was anxious to prove, if possible, that the soldiers’ conduct had been provoked by the violence of the United Irishmen. He produced the man whom Peg Macllrea and Neal had mangled and set him before the public as an object of pity, his wrist tied up and his head elaborately bandaged. A great idea flashed on him. He allowed it to be understood that he was on the track of a most dangerous rebel—a young man who had hanged a yeoman in Dunseveric and nearly murdered a dragoon in Belfast. In reality he was too busy just then with more important matters to make any real search for Neal Ward. But a week later he offered a reward of fifty pounds for such information as would lead to his apprehension.
But the rumours of Captain Twinely’s sayings were sufficient to frighten Donald Ward. He did not shrink from danger himself, and, had his own life been threatened, would have taken measures to protect himself without any feeling of panic, but his apprehension of peril for Neal was a different matter. He felt responsible for his nephew, and did not intend to allow him to be captured if caution could save him. Therefore, he insisted on Neal’s remaining indoors, and plied him with the most alarming accounts of the danger of his wound. He hoped in a few days to get Neal out of Belfast to the comparative safety of some farmhouse. He was particularly anxious that Finlay, who would certainly recognise the young man, should not see him.
News reached Belfast that the United Irishmen in Wexford were in arms and had taken the field against the English forces. The northern leaders became eager to move at once and to strike vigorously. Everything seemed to depend on their obtaining the command of Antrim and Down, and opening communications with the south. James Hope arrived in Belfast. Henry Joy M’Cracken was there. Henry Monro rode in every day from Lisburn. Meeting after meeting was held in M’Cracken’s house in Rosemary Lane, in Bigger’s house in the High Street, in Felix Matier’s shattered inn, or in Peggy Barclay’s. Robert Simms, the general of the northern United Irishmen, resigned his position. His heart failed him at the critical moment, and when pressed by braver men to take the field at once he hung back and gave up his command. He forgot his oath on MacArt’s Fort, where he stood side by side with Wolfe Tone. Henry Joy M’Cracken, a man of another spirit, was appointed in his place. With extreme rapidity and an insight into the conditions of the struggle, marvellous in a man with no military training, he laid his plans for simultaneous attacks upon a number of places in Down and Antrim.
The Government was not idle. The northern United Irishmen were the best organised and most formidable body to be dealt with. During the pause before the outbreak of hostilities spies went busily to and fro. Reports were carried to the authorities of every movement made, of almost every meeting held. Men were arrested, imprisoned, flogged in the streets of Belfast. Information was forced from prisoners under the lash. Parties of yeomen rode through the country burning, ravishing, and hanging as they went.
James Finlay earned his pay with the best of his kind, denouncing men whom he knew to be United Irishmen, and giving information about their whereabouts. He was settled in Bridge Street, and, strangely blind to the fact that he was no longer trusted, invited the leaders to confer with him, and allowed his house to be used as a store for ammunition. Donald Ward, grimly determined that this man should get his deserts, insisted that nothing should be said or done to alarm him.
“We can’t deal with him here,” he said. “Wait, wait till we get him down to Donegore next week. If we frighten him now he won’t go.”
Of all these doings Neal heard only vague rumours. Sometimes Peg Macllrea, crimson with horror and rage, came to him and told him of a flogging, sparing him no details of the brutality. Sometimes his uncle sat an hour with him and talked of the fight that was coming. He seemed neither impatient nor excited. He looked forward with calm satisfaction to the day when he would have a gun in his hand and an opportunity of shooting at the men who were harrying the country.
“We have a couple of brass cannons, Neal. They’re not much to boast of, but if they are properly served they will do some mischief. I have a little experience of artillery, though it wasn’t in my regular line of fighting. I think I’ll perhaps get charge of one of them.”
Felix Matier came often to see Neal. As things grew darker outside he became more and more extravagantly cheerful. His talk was all of liberty, of the dawn of the new era, of the breaking of old chains, and the rising of the peoples of the world in unconquerable might.
“We’re to do our share in the grand work, Neal Ward, you and me; we’ll have our hands in it in a day or two now.
“‘May liberty meet with success!May prudence protect her from evil!May tyrants and tyranny tine in the midstAnd wander their way to the devil.’
“Ora, but fighting’s the work for a man after all. Here am I that have spent my life making up reckonings and seeing to drink and men’s dinners and the beds they were to sleep in. But I never was contented with such things, and the money I made didn’t content me a bit more.Theytaught me better, boy.” He put his hand on the pile of books which lay on the table in front of Neal. “They taught me that there was something better than making money and eating full and living soft, something in the world a man might fight for. Eh, but I wasn’t meant for an innkeeper—I was meant for a fighter.
“‘I’d fight at land, I’d fight at sea;At hame I’d fight my auntie, O!I’d meet the devil and DundeeOn the braes o’ Killiecrankie, O!’”
James Hope also came to see Neal. His talk was very different from the flamboyant exultation of Felix Matier; very different also from Donald Ward’s cool delight in the prospect of battle. James Hope seemed to realise the awful gravity of taking up arms against established government. He alone understood the very small chance there was of victory for the United Irishmen. Yet Neal never for an instant doubted Hope’s courage. He felt that this man had argued out the whole matter with himself and thought deeply and prayed earnestly and had made up his mind.
“I do not think that we are sure to win, Neal, but I hope that our fighting will enable those coming after us to obtain by other means the liberty and security which will surely be withheld from them unless we fight. I do not say these things to every one, but I feel safe in saying them to you. You will not fear to die, if death is to be the end of it for us.”
Neal felt convinced that Hope himself would go calmly, steadfastly on if he were quite sure that the gallows waited for him. It was to Hope, more than to either of the others, that he complained about his confinement in Matier’s house.
“I cannot bear,” he said, “to be shut up here. I am not ill. The cut on my head is cured now. There must be some other reason for keeping me here. Am I not to be trusted? You say that you believe I will not shrink. Why keep me here as if you were all afraid of my turning coward or traitor?”
Hope parried these complaints as well as he could, telling Neal that a soldier’s first duty was obedience, that in good time he would be given something to do; that in the meanwhile he must show himself brave by being patient!
“It is harder,” he said, “to conquer yourself than to conquer your enemy.”
One day, when Neal had been a week in captivity, he broke out passionately to Hope—
“I cannot bear this any longer. I hear of you and my uncle and the others risking your lives. I hear of the brutality of the soldiers. I hear of great plans on foot. I claim my share of the danger that surrounds us. I understand now why you all combine to keep me here. You are afraid of my running risks. I claim, I claim as a right, that I be allowed to take the same risks as the rest.”
James Hope sat silent. His fingers played with the dark lock of hair which hung over his forehead. Neal knew the gesture well. It was common with Hope when he thought deeply and painfully. His fine dark eyes were fixed on Neal’s, and there was the same curiously gentle expression in them which had attracted Neal the first time he noticed it.
“I admit your claim,” said Hope, slowly, at last. “I shall speak to your uncle. To-morrow, I think I may promise this; to-morrow you shall come with me, and we shall do something which will be difficult, and I think a little dangerous too.”
James Hope kept his promise. About noon the next day he came to the inn and found Neal waiting for him impatiently.
“We are going,” he said, “to James Finlay’s house. Before we start I think I ought to tell you that in any case you could not stay here any longer. I saw this morning a proclamation offering a reward of fifty pounds for your capture, and I have no doubt that Finlay will earn it if he can, even if the soldier you mauled does not trace you here.”
“I am ready,” said Neal.
“You are not afraid? I see you are not, and we are not going to run into any unnecessary danger. Finlay will not betray you at once. He will not run out and call soldiers to take you the moment he sees you. He has a deeper plan. He has arranged that a meeting of our leaders will be held in Aeneas Moylin’s house to-morrow night. He is to be there himself, and he has received assurance that most of our chief men will be there. We have little doubt that he has given information about the meeting, and made his arrangements for capturing us all. We shall tell him that you are to be there, too. Then he will not want to risk exposing himself by betraying you at once. He will wait for you till to-morrow. But when to-morrow comes he will not find our leaders at Donegore. I have not asked, and I do not wish to know, what he will find when he gets there.”
“I understand,” said Neal. “When we meet I am to pretend that I trust him thoroughly.”
Hope smiled.
“You are a good soldier. You are prepared to obey, and you do not ask too many questions. But I am going to trust you fully, and tell you why we are going to Finlay’s house to-day. Some time ago we stored some cases of ball cartridges there. They are in a cellar, and I have no doubt that Major Fox knows all about them, and thinks them as safe as if they were in the munition room of the barrack. You and I are going to carry off those cases. We want the cartridges badly, and we cannot wait for them. We shall be using them, I hope, the day after to-morrow, and if we leave them there till Finlay goes to Donegore to-morrow evening I fear they may be seized by the soldiers. We must take them at once, and it seems to me that our best chance will be to walk off with them in broad daylight without an attempt at concealment. We shall bring them here.”
“How many cases are there?” asked Neal.
“Eight,” said Hope. “We must manage to carry four each, but the distance is not very great.”
Neal drew a deep breath of relief when he reached the street. Any service, however dangerous, any form of activity in the open air, was a joy to him after his long confinement in the house.
The streets, as he and Hope passed through them, were full of soldiers. Companies of yeomen marched and countermarched in indifferent order through every thoroughfare. Pickets of regulars, their bayonets fixed, stood at the street corners and in front of the principal buildings. Troops of dragoons, rattling and jingling, trotted briskly in one direction or another. Orderlies cantered their horses from place to place. Business in the town was almost suspended. Many of the shops were shut. Grave citizens, engaged in pressing affairs, hurried, with downcast eyes, along the causeways, seldom stopping to speak to each other, greeting acquaintances with hasty nods. Women of the better sort, if they ventured out at all, walked quickly, heavily cloaked and veiled. The trollops and street walkers of a garrison town emerged from their lairs even at midday, and stood in little groups at the corners exchanging jests with the soldiers on picket duty, or shouted ribaldries to the yeomen and dragoons who passed them. Idle maid servants, sluttish and dishevelled, leaned far out of the upper windows of the houses to gaze at the pageant beneath them. In the High Street a crowd of loafers—coarse women and soldiers off duty—was gathered in front of an iron triangle where, it was understood, some prisoners were to be flogged. Town, Major Fox, Major Barber, and some other officers in uniform, strolled up and down in front of the Exchange, rudely jostling such merchants as ventured to enter or leave the building.
James Hope walked slowly through the streets, chatting cheerfully to Neal as he went. Now and then he even stopped to watch a troop of dragoons go by or to gaze at the uniforms of the soldiers who stood on guard. In crowded places he waited quietly until he saw a way of passing on without pushing or attracting attention to his movements. The trial was a severe one for Neal’s nerves. It was hard to pose as a curious sightseer within a few feet of men who could have earned fifty pounds by arresting him.
At last, after many pauses, and what seemed an interminable walk, Hope stopped at the door of a respectable looking house and knocked. A woman half opened the door and eyed them suspiciously. Then, recognising a whispered pass-word of some sort from Hope, she admitted them and ushered them into a room on the ground floor. James Finlay sat at a table with writing materials spread before him. He started slightly when he saw Neal, but recovered himself instantly. He came forward, shook hands with Hope, and then said to Neal—
“You and I know each other, Mr. Ward. I trust your father is in good health, and that all is well at Dunseveric?”
Neal, though he had schooled himself beforehand to greet Finlay cordially, shrank back. He felt a violent loathing for the man. It became physically impossible for him to take Finlay’s hand in his, to speak smooth words to this hypocrite who inquired of the good health of the very people he had betrayed. Hope saw the hesitation and tried to cover it with a casual remark. Finlay also saw it and misinterpreted it.
“I hope,” he said, “that you do not bear me any malice on account of the little trouble there was between us long ago in the north. You ought to forgive and forget, Mr. Ward. We are both workers in the same cause now. At least, I suppose you are a United Irishman like your father or you wouldn’t come here with James Hope to-day.”
“Neal Ward,” said Hope, “is going to the meeting at Donegore to-morrow evening.”
Neal recovered himself and held out his hand to Finlay.
There was another knock at the door of the house. Finlay started violently and ran to the window.
“It’s all right,” he said, “it’s only a lad I keep employed. I sent him out an hour ago to find out what was going on in the streets and to bring me word.”
He returned to Hope with a smile on his face, but he had grown very white, and his hands were trembling slightly. A boy burst into the room, followed by the woman who had opened the door for Hope and Neal.
“Master,” he cried, “they’ve brought out Kelso into the High Street. The soldiers are dragging him along. They are going to flog him.”
The boy’s eyes were wide with excitement. Having delivered his message, he turned and fled. A flogging was too great a treat for Finlay’s boy to miss. The woman, without staying to don hat or shawl, went after him. Finlay called to her to stay. She shouted her answer from the threshold.
“Do you think I’m daft to be sitting my lone in your kitchen and them flogging a clever young man in the next street?”
Then the hall-door slammed. Finlay turned to Hope. He was whiter than ever, and his whole body shook as if with an ague.
“Kelso will tell,” he said. “Kelso knows, and they’ll flog the secret out of him. He’ll tell, I know he will. He must tell; no man could help it.”
If Finlay was pretending to be terrified he acted marvellously well. It seemed to Neal that he really was afraid of something, perhaps of some sudden betrayal of his treachery, of vengeance taken speedily by Hope.
“What ails you?” said Hope. “You needn’t be frightened.”
“The cartridges, the cartridges,” wailed Finlay. “Kelso knows they are here.”
“If that’s all,” said Hope, “Neal Ward and I will ease you of them. We came here to take them away.”
“You can’t, you can’t, you mustn’t. They’d hang you on the nearest lamp iron if they saw you with the cartridges.”
There was a bang on the door and a moment later a knocking on the window of the room, and then a woman’s fate was pressed against the glass. Hope sprang across the room and flung open the window. The servant woman who had gone to see the flogging pushed her head into the room and said—
“They’re taking down Kelso, and he’s telling all he knows. Major Barber and the soldiers are getting ready to march. It’s down here they’ll be coming.”
“It’s time for us to be off, then,” said Hope.
“Come along, Neal, down to the cellar, and let us get the cartridges.”
James Finlay followed them downstairs, begging them not to attempt to carry off the cartridges. He held Hope by the arm as he spoke.
“Don’t do it,” he said, “for God’s sake don’t do it. The soldiers are coming. They will be here in a minute. They will meet you. They will hang you. I know they will hang you. Oh! for God’s sake go away at once while you have time. Leave the cartridges.”
Hope shook off the grip on his arm with a gesture of impatience. He pushed open the cellar door.
“Now, Neal,” he said, “pick up as many of the cases as you think you can carry.”
James Finlay turned from Hope and seized Neal by the hands. The man was trembling from head to foot; his face was deadly white; the sweat was trickling down his cheeks in little streams.
“Don’t let him. Oh! don’t let him. He won’t listen to me. Stop him. Make him fly.”
He fell on his knees on the floor and clasped Neal’s legs. He grovelled. There was no possibility of doubting the reality of his emotion. This was not acting. The terror was genuine. James Finlay was desperately frightened.
“Get out of my way. No one is going to hurt you in any case.”
“It’s not that,” he said. “Believe me if you can. Believe me as you hope to be saved. I can’t, I won’t seehimhanged. I can’t bear it.”
He was speaking the literal truth. He believed that James Hope would be caught and would then and there be hanged. Finlay had betrayed many men, had earned the basest wages a man can earn—the wages of a spy. He knew that his victims went to flogging and death, but he never watched them flogged, he never saw them die. He even bargained never to stand in a witness box. The results, the inevitable issues of his betrayals, were never immediately before his eyes. Between him and the punishment of his victims there was always some space of time spent in prison, some appearance of a legal trial, some pretence of a just judgment. He was able, with that strange power of self-deception which most men possess, to conceal from himself that it was his information which led to the brutalities which followed it. If James Finlay had been obliged himself to execute the men whose execution his testimony secured; if he had been forced to lay the lash on quivering flesh or fit the noose round the necks of living men; it is likely that no bribe would have bought him, that sheer cowardice and an instinctive horror of death and pain would have saved him, as no consideration of honour and truth did, from the extreme baseness of an informer’s trade. Here lay part of the meaning of his terrified desire for Hope’s escape. He could not bear to see men hanged before the door of his own house, or hear with his ears their shrieks under the lash.
But there was more behind this feeling than utter cowardice. He knew James Hope, knew him intimately, though he had known him only for a short time. Like Neal Ward he had walked with Hope along the roads and lanes of County Antrim, had heard him talking, had seen—as no man, even the basest, could fail to see—the wonderful purity and unselfishness of Hope’s character. James Finlay had sold his own honour, but there remained this much good in him, he refused to sell Hope’s life. God, reckoning all the evil and baseness of James Finlay’s treachery and greed, will no doubt set on the other side of the account the fact that even Finlay recognised high goodness when he saw it, that he did not betray Hope, that he grovelled on the floor before a man whom he hated for the chance of saving Hope from what seemed certain death.
Neal pushed Finlay aside and stepped forward. He took five of the cases of cartridges—three under his right arm two under his left. Hope raised the other three. Then, picking up a bundle from a corner, he said—
“There is more gear here, which we may as well take with us. There is a green jacket which some of our young fellows may like to wear, and a flag; we ought to have a flag to fight under.”
They turned to leave the house. Neal cast one glance behind him and saw Finlay lying curled up on the ground, his face covered with his hands, as if he were already trying to shut away from his eyes the sight of Hope’s body dangling from a lamp iron.
Reaching the street, Hope stood for a moment and glanced up and down it. A party of soldiers was marching towards them. Hope looked at them carefully.
“These are not the men whom the woman warned us of. Major Barber, if he were coming here from High Street, would be marching the opposite way. This is some company of yeomen.”
A band played at the head of the approaching company, and the men stepped out briskly to the tune of “Croppies Lie Down.” Their uniforms were gay, their arms and accoutrements in good order, the officer in command was well mounted; a crowd of idle young men and some women were walking beside and behind the soldiers, attracted by the music and the unusually smart appearance of the men.
“I know these,” said Hope, “they are the County Down Yeomanry. They have just marched in, and are no doubt going to report themselves. Come, Neal, this is our chance.”
He joined the crowd which walked with the soldiers. Neal followed him closely. Hope, as if feeling the weight of the boxes he carried, walked slowly until he found himself in that part of the crowd which followed the regiment. Then, pushing forward briskly, he and Neal came close behind the last soldiers. The ranks were not well kept, nor the march orderly. Hope made his way forward until he and Neal were walking amongst the yeomen. As they swung out of the street they were met by another body of troops.
“These are regulars,” whispered Hope, “and Major Barber is in command of them. That is he.”
The two bodies of troops halted. There was a brief conversation between their commanding officers. Then an order was given. The yeomen, their band playing briskly again, marched on. Hope and Neal, now in the very middle of the ranks, marched with them. The royal troops presented arms as they passed. Major Barber watched them critically.
“It’s a pity these volunteers won’t learn their drill,” he said to a young officer beside him. “Look at that for marching. The ranks are as ragged as the shirt of the fellow we’ve just been flogging; but they’re fine men and well armed. By Jove, they have two country fellows with them carrying spare ammunition. I’ll bet you a bottle of claret there are cartridges in those cases.”
He pointed to Hope and Neal.
“Ought to have a baggage waggon,” said the officer, “or ought to put the fellows into uniform. They might be damned rebels for all any one could tell by looking at them.”
“I’d expect to meet a rebel pretty near anywhere,” said Major Barber, “but, by God, I would not expect to find one marching in the middle of a company of yeomen.”
The yeomen passed and the infantry marched again towards Finlay’s house. Hope turned to Neal. Laughter was dancing in his eyes, but, except for his eyes, his face was grave.
“Now,” he whispered, “we’ve got to slip out of the ranks and make our way into North Street.”
As he spoke he lurched against the yeoman next to him and allowed the bundle he carried to slip from his arm. The soldier cursed him for a clumsy drunkard. Hope, in return, abused the soldier for knocking the parcel out of his arms, and then called to Neal—
“Wait for me, mate, wait till I gather up my goods again.”
He deposited his cartridge cases on the ground, went after the bundle which had rolled into the gutter, and then, arranging his load slowly, allowed the yeomen to march past.
“Did you hear Major Barber say that he’d be ready to bet that these cases held cartridges? A sharp man, Major Barber! But there are more men than him about with eyes in their heads. The next officer we meet will be wanting to know where we are taking the cartridges. We won’t have another company of yeomen to vouch for our characters. I think, Neal, we’d better get something to cover these up. There’s a man here in charge of a carman’s yard who is sure to have a couple of sacks which will suit us very well.”
He passed under an archway, followed by Neal, and entered a small yard.
“Charlie,” he cried, “are you there, Charlie?”
A young man emerged from one of the stables. He started at the sight of Hope.
“Are you mad, Jemmy Hope?” he said. “Are you mad, that you come here, and every stable full of dragoons’ horses? They have them billeted on us, curse them, and the villains are in the coachhouse polishing their bits and stirrup irons. Hark to them.”
“I hear them,” said Hope. “Get me two of your oat sacks, Charlie, good strong ones. I have goods here that want protecting from the sunlight.”
The man cast a swift glance round, ran to one of the stables, and fetched the sacks.
“Now, Neal, pack up, pack up.”
He pushed his own cases into one of the sacks. Neal followed his example.
“It won’t do,” said Hope, “the sacks don’t look natural. There are too many sharp corners bulging out. Charlie, lad, fetch us some straw—a good armful.”
While they were stuffing the sacks with the straw one of the dragoons swaggered across the yard. He stood watching Hope and Neal for a minute or two, and then said.
“What have you there that you’re so mighty careful of?”
“Whisht, man, whisht,” said Hope, “it’s not safe to be talking of what’s here.”
He winked at the soldier as he spoke—a sly, humorous wink—a wink which hinted at a good joke to come. The dragoon, a fat, good-natured man’, grinned in reply.
“I won’t split on you, you young thieves. I’ve taken my share of loot before this, and I expect some pickings out of the croppies’ houses before I’ve done. I won’t cry halvers on you. What’s yours is yours. But tell us what it is.”
“It’s cases of cartridges,” said Hope, winking again. “We’re taking them to the general in command of the rebel army, so don’t be interfering with us or maybe they’ll hold a courtmartial on you.”
The fat dragoon laughed. The idea of packing up ammunition for the croppies in the temporary barrack of a squadron of dragoons, and using His Majesty’s straw to stuff the sacks, appealed to him as extremely comic. Hope and Neal shouldered their bundles and left the yard.
“I’m afraid,” said Hope, “that we can’t store these in Matier’s house. When Barber learns that the cases are gone he’ll search high and low for them, and Matier’s will be just one of the places he’ll look sooner or later. Are you good for a tramp, Neal, with that load on your back?”
“Yes,” said Neal, “I’ll carry mine for miles if you like.”
“Then,” said Hope-, “we’ll just look in at Matier’s as we pass, and if the coast’s clear I’ll leave word where we’re going. I know a snug place on the side of the Cave Hill where we can lie for the night. To-morrow you can join your uncle at Donegore.”
There were no soldiers round the inn when they reached it. Felix Matier and Donald Ward were both out. Hope left his message with Peg Macllrea, who was sanding the parlour.
“So you’re going to sleep out the night on the Cave Hill?” she said to Neal. “That’ll be queer and good for your clouted head I’m thinkin’.”
“It’ll do my head no harm,” said Neal. “You know well enough, Peg, that there never was much the matter with it.”
They shouldered their loads again, walked up the street, and then, quickening their pace, tramped along the Shore Road for about three miles.
“Now,” said Hope, “turn to the left up that loaning, and we’ll strike for the hill.”
They crossed the fields round the homesteads which lay between the hill and the road, reached uncultivated and stony ground, and then commenced their climb. Neal was strong, active, and accustomed to fatigue, but he began to feel the weight of his sack of cartridge cases before he had climbed five hundred feet. When Hope bade him halt he was glad enough to lie panting on the springy heather.
“We’re safe now,” said Hope, “but we’ve got further to go before night. We must make the place I named so that the men will be able to find me and the cartridges to-morrow morn.”
Neal, ashamed of his weariness, bade Hope lead on.
“I might have trysted with them for Mac Art’s Fort,” said Hope. “It was there that Neilson and Tone and M’Cracken swore the oath. That would have been a brave romantic spot for you and me to spend the night. We might have thought of great things there with the stars over us and nothing else between us and God’s heaven. But it’s a draughty place, lad.” The laughter came into his eyes as he spoke. “A draughty place and a stony, like Luz, where Jacob lay, and maybe the angels wouldn’t come near the likes of us. The place I have in my mind is warmer.”
They reached it at last—a little heathery hollow, lying under the shelter of great rocks.
“You might sleep in a worse place, Neal. It was here that Wolfe Tone and the men I told you of dined three years ago—and a merry day they had of it. I could wish we had a few of the scraps they left. It’s cold work sleeping in the open on an empty stomach, but we must just cheer each other with Tone’s byword—
“‘’Tis but in vainFor soldiers to complain.’”
Neal, lying full length on the heather in the warmth of the afternoon sun, dropped off to sleep. He had undergone severe physical exertion, which told on him. He had been through an hour and more of great excitement, which exhausted him far more than the exertion. When he woke the sun had sunk behind the hill, and the air was pleasantly cool. Hope sat beside him, gazing out across the Lough and the town which lay below them.
“I’ve been thinking, Neal, of that man Finlay. He was frightened to-day when we were in his house. Now what had he to be frightened about?”
“I don’t know,” said Neal, “but I agree with you. The man certainly wasn’t play-acting. He was in real fear.”
“I think,” said Hope, “that he was afraid the soldiers would take us and hang us.”
“But,” said Neal, “why should he fear that when he has betrayed us?”
“The human heart,” said Hope, after a pause, “is a strange thing. The Book tells us that no man is altogether good; no, not one, and that’s true. Never was a truer word. We try, lad, we try, and the grace of God works in us, but there remains the old leaven of evil; ay, it’s there, even in the heart of a saint. Now, it isn’t written, but I think it’s just as true that there’s no man altogether bad. There’s a spark of good somewhere in the worst of us, if we could but get at it. There’s a spark of good in Finlay.”
“How can there be?” said Neal, angrily. “The man’s a spy, an informer, a paid liar, a villain that takes gold and perjures himself.”
“That’s true, over true. And yet he wanted to save our lives to-day. I tell you the man’s not all bad. There’s something of the grace of God left in him after all.”
Neal was not inclined to argue about the matter. He sat silent, watching star after star shine out of the moonless sky. After a long silence Hope spoke again.
“There are men among us who mean to take Finlay’s life. I can’t altogether blame them. He deserves to die. But Neal, lad, don’t you have act or part in that. Remember the word,—‘Vengeance is mine and I will repay, saith the Lord.’ If there’s a spark of good in him at all, who are we that we should cut him off from the chance of repentance? ‘The bruised reed shall he not break; the smoking flax shall he not quench.’ Remember that, Neal.”
From far down the side of the hill the sound of a woman’s voice reached them faintly. It drew nearer.
“That’s some slip of a lassie from off the farms below us,” said Hope. “She’s looking out for some cow that’s strayed.”
“She’s singing,” said Neal. “I catch the fall of the tune now and then.”
“She’s coming nearer. It can’t be a cow she’s seeking. No beast would stray that far up amongst the heather and the stones.”
The voice came more and more clearly. The words of the song reached them—