Men who have eaten sufficiently and drunk heavily are not anxious to admit into their company any one who has not dined, and whose last glass of wine was drunk the day before. The gentlemen in the public room of the Massereene Arms were not, most of them, drunk when Maurice St. Clair came among them, but they were gay. Their hearts, to use a Scripture phrase, were made glad with wine. They were in the mood in which men crack jokes and laugh loud at jokes which would not pass muster before dinner. They were ready to sing out of time and tune or to applaud the songs of others without criticising them. But they were, with the exception of one or two, men of feeble capacity, sober enough to be conscious of the fact that they were liable to make fools of themselves, and to resent the intrusion of a cool-headed stranger.
They stared angrily at Maurice St. Clair. They said in audible tones things which showed him plainly that his presence was most unwelcome, but Maurice remained unabashed. He crossed the room and sat down on the window seat—the same seat from which Neal had watched the piper and the dancers a week or two before. He beckoned to the harassed and wearied girl who waited on the party.
“Get me,” he said, “something to eat—anything. I do not mind what it is, and bring a cup of milk. Then send my groom to me.”
“The gentleman,” said a young squire, who had certainly crossed the undefined line which separates sobriety from drunkenness, “is going to drink milk. Now, what I want to know is this—has any gentleman a right to drink milk on an evening like this, after the glorious victory which we have won?”
“It’s damned little you had to do with winning it,” said an officer who sat beside him. “You can drink, but——”
“The man that says I can’t drink lies,” said the other. “No offence to you, Captain; no offence meant or taken. I give you a toast, and I propose that the milky gentleman in the window—the milk-and-water gentleman—drinks it along with us. Here’s success to the loyalists and a long rope and short shrift to the rebelly croppies. Now, Mr. Milk-and-Water——”
Maurice rose to his feet.
“I understand, gentlemen, that this is a public room in which any traveller may be supplied with what he calls for. I have no wish to push myself into your company. I trust that you will allow me to enjoy my own unmolested.”
The intoxicated proposer of the toast laid his hand on his sword, blustered out an oath or two, and was pulled down again into his seat. There was good feeling enough left among the better class of his companions to understand that a stranger should be treated with civility. There was sense enough among the rest to recognise that Maurice was not the kind of man whom it would be safe to bully. The girl returned and informed Maurice that his groom was in the kitchen, but refused to attend him.
Maurice rose and sought the man himself. The reason of the refusal was sufficiently obvious. The kitchen was full of troopers who had advanced much further on the way to absolute drunkenness than their officers. James, Lord Dunseveric’s groom, was decidedly the most drunken of the party, but Maurice wanted the man, and was prepared to take some trouble to reduce him to a condition of serviceableness again. He grasped him by the collar of the coat, and pushed him through the back door into the yard. A delighted stable boy worked the pump handle while Maurice held the groom under the stream of cold water. The cure was ineffective. Maurice walked him up and down the yard for half an hour, and then put him under the pump again. The man remained obstinately drunk. Maurice flung him down in a corner of a stable and left him.
He returned to the room where the feasters sat, and looked in. The company had advanced rapidly since he had seen them last. The squire who had proposed the toast was under the table. Several others were lying back helplessly in their chairs. Those who could talk were talking loud and all together. The amount of liquor still to be consumed was considerable. Maurice smiled. These officers and gentlemen were little likely to interfere with anything he chose to do at midnight. He went out of doors and sat on the stone bench in front of the inn.
He had no plan in his head for the rescue of Neal Ward, only he was quite determined to accomplish it somehow before morning. He did not even know where his friend was imprisoned, or how he was guarded. His father had spoken of a cellar somewhere in the inn. He supposed that foe would sooner or later be able to find it, overpower the sentry, and set Neal free. In the meanwhile, he had nothing to do but wait.
He felt a touch on his shoulder, and looked round to see the girl, the inn servant, standing beside him.
“You’re the gentleman,” she whispered, “that was speaking till the young man here the morn—the young man that I give the basket to, that is a friend o’ Jemmy Hope’s?”
Maurice recollected the incident very well.
“He’s here the now,” whispered the girl again. “He’s down in the wine cellar, and the door’s locked on him, and there’s a man with a gun forninst the door, and, the Lord save us, it’s goin’ to hang him they are.”
“Will you show me where the cellar is?” said Maurice.
“Ay, will I no? I’ll be checked sore by the master, but I’ll show you, I will.”
The girl led him down a long passage, which was nearly dark, opened a door, and showed him a flight of stone steps.
“There’s three doors,” she said. “It’s the one at the end forninst you that’s the cellar door. Are ye going down? It’s venturesome ye are. Whisht, then, and go canny, and dinna go ayont the bottom of the steps.”
Maurice went cautiously. When he reached the bottom of the steps he saw before him a long passage, stone-flagged, low-roofed, narrow. From an iron hook at the far end hung a lamp. Beyond it stood a sentry, one of Captain Twinely’s yeomen. The man was awake and alert. There was no sign of drunkenness about him. He was well armed. The light from the lamp was dim and feeble at Maurice’s end of the passage, but it shone brightly enough for a space in front of the sentry. Maurice saw that it would be impossible to approach the man unseen, impossible to steal on him or rush at him without having a shot fired which would startle every one in the inn. He crept up the stairs again. The girl was waiting for him.
“Is the door of the cellar locked?” he asked.
“Ay, it is, I fetched the last bottles of wine out mysel’, and I saw them put the man in—sore draggled he was, and looking like a body in a dwam. The master locked the door himsef, and the captain took the keys off with him. But there’s no harm in that. There’s another key that the mistress used to have afore she died, the creature. It’s in a drawer in the master’s room, but it’s easy got at.”
“Get it for me,” said Maurice.
He looked into the public room again. The revel was far advanced now. It was nearly midnight, and only three or four of the most seasoned drinkers survived. Even they, as Maurice saw, were in no position to assert themselves, or to understand anything that was going on. A few minutes later even these veterans felt that they had had enough. Supporting each other, reeling against tables and chairs, they staggered upstairs to their beds. The greater part of the merry company lay on the floor in attitudes which were neither dignified nor comfortable, and snored. The rest of the inn was silent. From outside came the steady tramp of the soldiers who patrolled the town, and from far off their challenges to the sentries on watch at the ends of the streets.
The girl came back to Maurice with the key in her hand.
“I got it,” she said. “The master’s cocked up sleepin’ by the kitchen fire. There was a man in his bed, or maybe twa, but I didna wake them.”
“Come back to me in half an hour,” said Maurice, “I may want your help. And listen, my lass, if you stand by me to-night I’ll see you safe afterwards. You shan’t want for a handful of silver or a bran new gown.”
“I want none of your siller nor your gowns,” said the girl. “I’ll lend ye a han’ because you’re a friend of the lad that’s the friend of Jemmy Hope.”
At about half-past twelve the sentry who stood in front of Neal’s cellar heard some one descend the stairs into the passage with shuffling steps. A slatternly girl with shoes so down at the heel that they clattered on the stone flags every time she lifted her feet, approached him. She rubbed her eyes and yawned like one lately wakened out of sleep. She carried a lantern in her hand.
“What do you want here?” said the man.
“The master sent me, sir, with another lamp. He was afeard the yin ye had would be out again the morn. There isna that much oil in it.”
“Your master’s civil,” said the man. “I’ve no fancy for standing sentry here in the dark. He’s a civil man, and I’ll speak a good word for him to-morrow to the captain. I hope you’re a civil wench like the man you serve.”
“Ay, amn’t I after fetchin’ the lamp till ye?”
“And a kiss along with it,” said the soldier. “Come now, you needn’t be coy, there’s none to see you.”
He put his arms round her waist and pulled her towards him.
“Mind now, mind, will ye, have you neither sense nor shame? Ye’ll have the lamp spilt and the house in a blaze this minute.”
She escaped from him, and, standing on tip-toe, reached the lamp which hung from the roof and put it on the ground. The soldier caught her again, and this time succeeded in kissing her.
“Ye may hang the fresh lamp up yourself,” said the girl. “I willna lay a finger on it for ye now.”
Rubbing her mouth with her hand, as if to wipe away the kiss forced on her, she shambled down the passage, taking the first lamp with her. The sentry heard her shuffle up the stairs again, making a great deal of noise with her clattering shoes. Then he hung the fresh lamp on his hook and stood back again against the door of the cellar.
It was very dull work standing all night in the passage, but he was determined to keep awake. Neal Ward had slipped through the fingers of Captain Twinely’s men twice. There was not much chance of his escaping this time, but the sentry, for the honour of his corps, and for the sake of the personal ill-will that every member of it bore to the prisoner, was not going to run the smallest risk. Earlier in the night he had amused himself by shouting insults of various kinds through the door of the cellar. Later on he had given the prisoner a vivid and realistic description of the way in which men are hanged, but Neal had made no sign of hearing a word that was said to him, so the occupation grew uninteresting. Now he whistled a few of his favourite airs, speculating on the amount of the fifty pounds reward offered for Neal’s capture which would fall to his share, and estimating his chances of taking some of the other United Irishmen for whom the Government had offered substantial sums. Then he began to count the flagstones on the floor of the passage. He had done this once or twice before, and had been able to distinguish as many as twenty-five, which brought him more than half way to the staircase, before the light failed him. This time he could only count twenty. Beyond that the floor lay dimly visible, but it was impossible to distinguish one stone from another.
“Damn it,” He growled, “this isn’t near as good a lamp as the first.”
He counted again, and only reached a total of eighteen slabs of stone. He glanced down the passage, and found that he could not see the end of it. He looked at the lamp. It was burning very low. It occurred to him as an unpleasant possibility that the girl had taken away the wrong lamp—had taken the one with the oil in it and left him the empty one. He reassured himself. This lamp was a different shape from that which hung in the passage when he first took his post as sentry. He made up his mind that its wick must require to be turned up. Perhaps it had been badly trimmed. The girl who brought it was evidently sleepy; she would be very likely to forget to trim it. He stepped forward to where the lamp hung. He paused, startled by a slight noise at the far end of the passage. He listened, but heard nothing more. It was necessary to lift the lamp off the hook before he could trim the wick. He laid his musket on the ground and reached up to it. As he did so he heard swift steps, steps of heavy feet, on the flagged passage. They were quite close to him. He looked round and caught a glimpse of Maurice St. Clair in the act of springing on him. He was grappled by strong arms and flung to the ground before he could do anything to defend himself. Maurice, kneeling on him, put the point of a knife to his throat.
“If you speak one word or utter the slightest sound I cut your throat at once.”
The unfortunate soldier lay still. Maurice, the knife still pricking the man’s throat, crept slowly off him and knelt on the floor. With his left hand he unclasped the soldier’s belt.
“Now,” he said, “turn over on your face, and put your hands behind you.”
The man obeyed, and felt the sharp point of the knife slip slowly round his neck until it rested behind his ear.
“‘Remember,” said Maurice, “one good cut downwards now and you are a dead man. Put your hands together.”
He pulled the leather belt clear with his left hand, then, dropping the knife, he knelt on the man’s back and gripped his wrists.
In a moment he had them securely strapped together with the leather belt. Then he stuffed a cloth into the soldier’s mouth and bound it there with a stout cord tied tight round his head. Another cord—Maurice had come well supplied with what he was likely to want—was made fast round the man’s legs. Then Maurice stood up and surveyed his handiwork. He laughed softly, well satisfied. The lamp flickered and went out.
“It’s a good job for you,” said Maurice, “that the light lasted as long as it did. I couldn’t have gagged and tied you in the dark. I should have been obliged to kill you.”
He felt along the wall until he came to the cellar door and found the keyhole. After much fumbling he got the key in, turned it, and pushed open the door.
“Neal,” he called. “Neal, are you there?”
“Yes. Who is that? Is it you, Maurice? It’s like your voice.”
Stumbling forward through the pitch dark, Neal gripped Maurice at last. Hand in hand they went cautiously along the passage and up the stairs.
“Come in here,” said Maurice. “There’s a light here, and I want to see if it’s really you. Oh! you needn’t be afraid. There are plenty of soldiers, but they won’t hurt you. They’re all dead drunk. Now, Neal, there’s lots to eat and drink. Sit down and make the best of your time. You’ll want a square meal. I’ll just take a light and go down to that fellow in the passage. I’ve got a few fathom of good, stout rope—I’m not sure that it isn’t the bit that they meant to hang you with in the morning—and I’ll fix him up so that he’ll neither stir nor speak till some one lets him loose.”
In a quarter of an hour Maurice returned.
“The next thing, Neal, is to get you out of this town. It’s full of soldiers, and there are sentries at every turn, but I’ve got the word for the night, and I think we’ll be able to manage.”
He walked round the room peering carefully at the drunken men who lay on the floor.
“‘Here’s a fellow that’s about your size, Neal. He seems to be a captain of some sort, a yeomanry captain by the look of him. I’m hanged if it isn’t our friend Twinely again. We’ll take the liberty of borrowing his uniform for you. There’ll be a poetic justice about that, and he’ll sleep all the better for having these tight things off him.”
He knelt down and stripped Captain Twinely.
“Now then, quick, Neal. Don’t waste time. Daylight will be on us before we know where we are. Take your own things with you in a bundle. Change again somewhere when you get out of the town, you’ll be safer travelling in your own clothes. Take some food with you. Here, I’ll make up a parcel while you dress. I’ll stick in a bottle of wine. Now you’re right. Walk boldly past the sentries. If you’re challenged curse the man that challenges you. The word for the night is ‘Clavering.’ Travel by night as much as you can. Keep off the main roads. Strike straight for home. It’ll be a queer thing if you can’t lie safe round Dunseveric for a few days till we get you out of the country.”
Lord Dunseveric and Maurice breakfasted together at eight o’clock on the morning of Neal’s escape. They sat in the room where Lord O’Neill lay, and had a table spread for them beside the window. It was impossible to eat a meal in any comfort elsewhere in the inn. Indeed, but for the special exertions of the master and his maid it would have been difficult to get food at all. Maurice was triumphant and excited. Since Neal had not been brought back it was reasonable to suppose that he had made good his escape out of the town, and there was every hope that he would get safe to the coast. Once there he had friends enough to feed him, and hiding-places known to few, and almost inaccessible to soldiers or yeomen.
Lord Dunseveric asked no questions about Maurice’s doings in the night. He felt perfectly confident that Neal had got off somehow. The details of the business he would hear later on. For the present he preferred to know nothing about them.
An officer entered the room and handed a letter to Lord Dunseveric. It was a request, in civil language enough, that he would meet General Clavering in the public room of the inn at nine o’clock, and that Maurice would accompany his father.
General Clavering sat at the head of the table when Lord Dunseveric and Maurice entered. Three or four of the senior officers of the regular troops sat with him. Captain Twinely, in a suit of clothes he had borrowed from the master of the inn, and one of his men, stood near the fireplace. The room had been cleared of the drunken sleepers, but a good deal of thedébrisof their revel—empty bottles, broken glasses, and little pools of spilt wine—were still visible on the floor.
“I have to announce to you, Lord Dunseveric,” said the general, “that the prisoner who was confined in the inn cellar last night, Neal Ward, has escaped.”
Lord Dunseveric bowed, and smiled slightly. His eye lighted on Captain Twinely, and his smile broadened. The landlord’s suit fitted the captain extremely ill.
“Indeed,” he said, “Captain Twinely seems to be unfortunate with regard to this particular prisoner. This is, let me see, the third time that Neal Ward has—ah!—evaded his vigilance.”
“The sentry who guarded the door of the cellar,” said General Clavering, “was attacked, overpowered, bound, and gagged.”
“By the prisoner?”
“No, my lord, by some one who assisted the prisoner to escape, who, after dealing with the sentry as I have described, unlocked the door of the cellar with a key, the duplicate of that which Captain Twinely had in his pocket. This man and the prisoner subsequently stripped Captain Twinely of his uniform, and, as I learn from my sentries, Neal Ward passed through our lines in the disguise of a captain of yeomanry.”
“You surprise me,” said Lord Dunseveric, “a daring stratagem; a laughable scheme, too. I trust you took no cold, Captain. I confess that I should have liked to have seen you in your shirt tails this morning. You were, I presume,” he stirred a little heap of broken glass with his foot as he spoke, “vino gravatuswhen they relieved you of your tunic. But what has all this to do with me?”
“Merely this,” said General Clavering, “that your son is accused of having effected the prisoner’s escape.”
Lord Dunseveric looked at Maurice, looked him quietly up and down, as if he saw him then for the first time.
“I can believe,” he said, “that my son might overpower the sentry. He is, as you see, a young man of considerable personal strength, but I should be surprised to learn that he dressed the prisoner in the captain’s uniform. I may be misjudging my son, but I have hitherto regarded him as somewhat deficient in humour. You must admit, General Clavering, that only a man with a feeling for the ridiculous would have thought of——”
“It will be better for you to hear what the sentry has to say, my lord, and I beg of you to regard the matter seriously. I assure you it will not bear joking on. The rescue of a prisoner is a grave offence. Captain Twinely, kindly order your man to tell his story.”
“Since I am not a prisoner at the bar,” said Lord Dunseveric, “I shall, with your permission, sit down. As to the seriousness of the business in hand, I confess that for the moment the thought of the worthy Twinely waking this morning not only with a splitting headache but without a pair of breeches on him keeps the humorous side of the situation prominent in my mind.”
The sentry told his story. To Maurice’s great relief, he omitted all mention of the girl who had supplied the lamp which so conveniently burnt low, but he had recognised Maurice and was prepared to swear to his identity.
“No doubt,” said General Clavering, “you will wish to cross-question this man, my lord.”
Lord Dunseveric yawned.
“I think that quite unnecessary,” he said, “a much simpler way of arriving at the truth of the story will be to ask my son whether he rescued the prisoner or not. Maurice, did you bind and gag this excellent trooper?”
“Yes.”
“Did you subsequently release Neal Ward from the cellar?”
“Yes.”
“Now, Maurice, be careful about your answer to my next question. Did you take the clothes off Captain Twinely?”
“Yes.”
“And was that part of the scheme entirely your own? Did the idea originate with you or with the prisoner whom you helped to escape?”
“It was my idea.”
“I apologise to you, Maurice. I did you an injustice. You have a certain sense of humour. It is not perhaps of the most refined kind, still you have, no doubt, provided a joke which will appeal to the officers’ mess in Belfast, Dublin, and elsewhere; which will be told after dinner in most houses in the county for many a year to come. And now, General Clavering, I presume there is no more to be said. I wish you good morning.”
“Stop a minute,” said General Clavering, “you cannot seriously suppose that your son, simply because he is your son, is to be allowed to interfere with the course of justice?”
“Of justice?” asked Lord Dunseveric in a tone of mild surprise.
“With His Majesty’s officers in the execution of their duty—that is, to release prisoners whom I have condemned—I, the general in command charged with the suppression of an infamous rebellion. Your son, my lord, will have to abide the consequences of his acts.”
“Maurice,” said Lord Dunseveric, “it is evident that you are going to be hanged. General Clavering is going to hang you. It is really providential that you didn’t steal his breeches. He would probably have flogged you first and hanged you afterwards if you had.”
“Damn your infernal insolence,” broke out General Clavering furiously, “You think that because you happen to be a lord and own a few dirty acres of land that you can sit there grinning like an ape and insulting me. I’ll teach you, my lord, I’ll teach you. By God, I’ll teach you and every other cursed Irishman to speak civil to an English officer. You shall know your masters, by the Almighty, before I’ve done with you.”
Lord Dunseveric rose to his feet. He fixed his eyes on General Clavering, and spoke slowly and deliberately.
“I ride at once to Dublin,” he said. “I shall lay an account of your doings and the doings of your troops before His Majesty’s representative there. I shall then cross to England, approach my Sovereign and yours, General Clavering. I shall see that justice is done between you and the people you have outraged and harried. As to my son, I have work for him to do. I shall make myself responsible for his appearance before a court of justice when he is summoned. In the meanwhile, I neither recognise you as my master nor your will as my law. I appeal to the constitutional liberties of this kingdom of Ireland and to the right of every citizen to a fair trial before a jury of his fellow-countrymen. You shall not arrest, try, or condemn my son otherwise than as the law allows.”
General Clavering grew purple in the face. He stuttered, cursed, laid his hand on his sword, and took a step forward. Lord Dunseveric, his hands behind his back, a sneer of contempt on his face, looked straight at the furious man in front of him.
“Do you propose,” he said, “to stab me and then hang my son?”
This was precisely what General Clavering would have liked to do, but he dared not. He turned instead on Captain Twinely.
“Let me tell you, sir, that you’re a damned idiot, an incompetent officer, a besotted fool, and your men are a lot of cowardly loons. You had this infernal young rebel safe and you let him go. You not only allowed him to walk off, but you actually provided him with a suit of clothes to go in. You’re the cause of all the trouble. Get your troop to horse. Scour the country for him. Don’t leave a house that you don’t search, nor a bed that you don’t run your sword through. Don’t leave a dung-heap without raking it, or a haystack that you don’t scatter. Get that man back for me, wherever he hides himself, or, by God, I’ll have you shot for neglect of duty in time of war, and your damned yeomen buried alive in the same grave with you.”
The general was still bent on teaching the Irish to know their masters and making good his boast of reducing them to the tameness of “gelt cats.” With Captain Twinely, at least, he seemed likely to succeed.
“I can imagine, Maurice,” said Lord Dun-severic, when they were alone together again, “that Captain Twinely and his men have at last got a job to suit them. Sticking swords through old wives feather beds is safer work than sticking them through rebels. Scattering haystacks will be pleasanter than scattering pikemen. Raking dung heaps will, I suppose, be an entirely congenial occupation.”
His tone changed, He spoke rapidly and seriously.
“You will ride with me as far as Belfast. From there you must find some means of communicating with the captain of that Yankee brig of which you told me. If necessary, go yourself to Glasgow and find the man. Pay him what he asks and arrange that he lies off Dunseveric and picks up Neal. You must then go home and see to it yourself that Neal gets safe on board. It may not be easy, for the yeomen will be after him; but it has got to be done. I go to Dublin as I said. I shall have some trouble in settling this business of yours. It really was an audacious proceeding—your rescue of the prisoner. It will take me all my time to get it hushed up. Besides, I must use my influence to prevent bad becoming worse in this unfortunate country of ours. By the way, did you make any arrangement for the return of Captain Twinely’s uniform when Neal had finished with it?”
“No, I never thought of that.”
“You ought to have thought of it. Poor Captain Twinely looks very odd in the inn-keeper’s clothes, which do not fit him in the least.”
It was obvious to Captain Twinely that Neal Ward’s instinct would be to make for Dunseveric. He spread the men under his command, and the members of a couple of corps similar to his own, in bands of five or six, across a broad belt of country. He arranged what he called a “drive,” and pushed slowly northward, searching every possible hiding-place as he went. It seemed to him totally impossible that Neal could escape. Sooner or later he was sure to come on him, and then—Captain Twinely chuckled grimly at the thought that he would leave no chance of a fourth escape.
This excellently-planned search resulted in the discovery of Captain Twinely’s clothes, damp and somewhat muddy, in a ditch about a mile out of the town. It did not end in the capture of the fugitive, because it was founded on a miscalculation. Neal did not make straight for Dunseveric. When he got out of the town and changed his clothes he went to Donegore Hill. M’Cracken and Hope were there with the remains of their army, and Neal was most anxious to join them. The murder of Peg MacIlrea had made him so furiously angry that he cared nothing about his own safety. His escape from Antrim was a matter of satisfaction mainly because it seemed to afford him another opportunity for fighting. He neither attempted to weigh the chances of success nor considered the uselessness of continuing the struggle. He wanted vengeance taken on men whom he hated, and he wanted to have some share himself in taking it.
He found the roads round Donegore Hill guarded by sentries. The camp on the top of the old rath had all the appearance of being held by disciplined troops. There was little sign of the disorganisation and panic which often follow defeat. The men were calm, self-possessed, and reasonable, but they were hopeless. Neal realised that this army, at least, would do no more serious fighting. The men were anxious to make terms for themselves and for their leaders. They were perfectly well aware that they were beaten, and could not expect to make any head against their enemies.
Neal found James Hope, and was warmly greeted by him.
“When I discovered that we’d left you behind,” said Hope, “I made up my mind that you must have been shot down along with your uncle and the fine fellows who made a stand with him. Ah, Neal, we’ve lost many—your uncle, Felix Marier, poor Moylin, and many another. One killed here, another there, but all of them in doing their duty. But we mustn’t talk of these things, lad. Tell me, what brings you here?”
“Need you ask?” said Neal. “I am come to fight it out to the last.”
“Take my advice and slip off home. There’s no good to be done by stopping with us. Things are desperate. Most of our people are going home to-day. M’Cracken and a handful—not more than a hundred—are going to Slievemis in the hope of being able to join Monro in County Down, or perhaps to get through to the Wexford men.”
“I will go with you.”
“No, no, lad, you’ve done enough. You’ve done a man’s part. Go home now.”
“What are you going to do?”
“I? Oh, I’m only a poor weaver. It doesn’t matter what I do. I’m going on with M’Cracken.”
“So am I. Listen to me, James Hope, till I tell you what is in my mind—till I tell you what has happened to me since yesterday.”
They sat on the grassy slope of the old rath. The wide plain stretched before them—green, well wooded, beautiful. There lay Adair’s plantations, the Six Mile Water winding like a serpent among the fields, the woods of Castle Upton, and the young trees on Lyle Hill, with the distant water of Lough Neagh glistening in the sunlight. Nearer at hand thatched farmhouses smoked, signs that the yeomen were enjoying the fruits of victory. Hope pointed to Farranshane, where William Orr’s house was burning—a witness to a malignity so bitter that it wreaked the vengeance from which the dead man was safe on his widow and his orphans.
Neal told his story, and spoke of the passionate desire for revenge which burned in him. Hope listened patiently to every word. Then he spoke.
“If I were to tell you now, Neal, as I told you once before, that vengeance belongeth only unto the Lord, you would turn away and listen to me no more. Therefore, I shall not speak to you in that way at all, or appeal to those higher feelings which the great God has planted in the breasts of even the humblest of His servants. I will, instead, appeal to that which is lower and smaller than the religion of Christ, and which yet may be in its way a noble thing. I will speak to you as to a man of honour. I am not fond of the title of gentleman, but I think I know what is meant by honour. Sometimes it is no more than a fantastic image bred of prejudice and pride; but sometimes it is high and holy, next to God. I think, Neal, that you would like to reckon yourself a man of honour.”
Already James Hope’s words were producing an effect on Neal’s mind. The extreme bitterness of his passion was dying away from him.
“You are right,” he said, “I wish to act always as a man of honour, but my honour is engaged——”
“That is not what you said before. Before, you spoke of revenge and not of honour. But let that pass. I will try to show you, as a truly noble man would, as your friend, Lord Dunseveric, would if he were here to advise you, how your honour really binds you. You were rescued from your imprisonment last night and from death this morning by your friend, Maurice St. Clair, and he bid you go home. He set you free in order that you might go home. I think he would not have done what he did unless he had believed that you would go home. You are in honour bound to him. You are in reality still a prisoner—a prisoner released on parole, although no formal promise was required of you. Do you understand what I mean?”
“Yes, I understand; but you are advising me to do a cowardly thing—to desert you, whom I reckon my friend, in the time of your extremity.”
“Maurice St. Clair was your friend before I was, Neal. You are bound to him by earlier ties. Besides, he has given you your life.”
“But he is in no danger.”
“I am not sure of that. If it is discovered that he let you go last night he will surely suffer for it. They have hanged men for less, and imprisoned or exiled others.”
“Oh,” said Neal, “I could find it in my heart to wish they would hang Maurice. Hope, you know many men and many things, but you don’t know Lord Dunseveric. Why, man, if they hanged Maurice the old lord would hang them—he would hang them in batches of a score at a time. If any escaped him he would wait for them till the resurrection morning. He would meet them as they stepped out of their graves and hang them then. He would hang them if there wasn’t another tree in the whole universe to put the rope round except the tree of life which stands by the river in the New Jerusalem.”
He laughed exultingly. Hope looked at him with pitying tenderness. He understood the hysterical passion which had dragged such words from him.
“I am glad,” he said, “that your friend is in no great danger, but that does not alter the truth of what I say. You are his prisoner, released on your parole, and you must present yourself to him when he calls for you at Dunseveric. Besides, Neal, you owe a duty to your father and to those at home who love you. For their sakes you must not throw your life away.”
The anger died out of Neal’s heart. This last appeal left him with no feeling but tenderness. He thought of his father, a lone man, waiting for news of him, of Donald, of the battle, and the cause. He thought of Una St. Clair and the ever-new marvel of the love that she had confessed to him. Still he hesitated. Brought up in the stern faith of the Puritans, he believed that because a thing offered a prospect of great delight it must somehow be wrong. The longing to see Una again came on him, sweeping over all other thought and emotion as the flowing spring-tide in late September sweeps over the broad sands of the northern coast. To see her, to hear her, to touch her, perhaps to kiss her again, was the one thing supremely desirable in life. Therefore, he felt instinctively that it must be a tempter’s voice which showed him the way to the fulfilment of such desire.
“Are you sure,” he asked, “that you are not, out of love for me, advising me to do wrong?”
“I am sure,” said Hope.
Afterwards they talked of how Neal might best accomplish his journey to Dunseveric. It was clear to Hope, as it had been to Maurice St. Clair, that the main roads must be avoided, and that all travelling must be done by night; but it was not very easy to go through an unknown country by night, and until Neal got as far as Ballymoney he could not be sure of being able to find his way.
“I might manage it,” he said, “if I could keep to the main road. I have travelled it once and I think I should not miss it even at night, but how am I to get along lanes and across fields which I have never seen without losing myself?”
“Ah,” said Hope, “that is a difficulty, and yet there is a way out of it. Phelim, the blind piper, is with us here. God knows how he got safe from the battle yesterday, and found his way to us. He will be no use to us any more, only a hindrance. We shall not march to battle again with our pipes playing and our colours flying. I think I shall be able to persuade him to act as your guide. The blind leading the ignorant, eh, Neal? But Phelim knows every lane and path in the country. How he does I don’t know. Perhaps some new sense is developed in the blind. Anyway, night and day are alike to him. If he takes you as far as the neighbourhood of Ballymoney you’ll be able to find the rest of the way afterwards yourself.”
That night, while M’Cracken marched the remnant of his army to Slievemis, Neal and blind Phelim set off on their journey north. They travelled safely in the rear of the yeomen who were searching the country side. Neal lay hid all one day in a little wood while Phelim, who seemed to want little rest and no sleep, wandered in the neighbourhood and brought back tidings of the doings of the yeomen who had passed. Before daybreak the next morning Neal left his guide behind him and made his way to the sandhills near Port Ballin-trae. He lay in a hollow near the mouth of the river Bush. He understood from what Phelim had told him that Captain Twinely and his men had pushed northwards in pursuit of him, and that he had followed in their tracks. He realised that there must be a large force gathered in Bushmills and Ballintoy, and that the whole country would be scoured to find him. Therefore, though he was within a few miles of his home, he dare not stir in the daytime. He lay in his sandy hollow through the long hot day, with the sound of the sea in his ears. He slept for an hour or two now and then. Once he crept among the dunes to a place where a little stream trickled down, in order to get a drink, but he did not venture to stay beside the stream. For some time he amused himself by plaiting the spiked grass into stiff green rods, and then, from a razor shell which he found in his hollow, he fashioned pike heads for the ends of the rods. Afterwards he picked all the yellow crow-toes within reach, and the broad mauve flowers of the wild convolvulus. He set them out in gay beds, like flowers growing in gardens, and edged them round with borders of wild thyme. Then, with great labour, he collected forty or fifty snail shells and laid them in rows, making each row consist only of those like each other in colouring. He had lines of dark brown shells, of pale yellow, and of striped shells. These again he subdivided according to the width and number of their stripes. Once he ventured to creep to a place from which he could watch the sea. He saw that the tide was flowing. Below him on the strand were a number of seagulls, strutting, fluttering, shrieking, splashing with wing-tips and feet in the oncoming waves. He supposed that the young fry of some fish must have drifted shorewards, and that the birds were feasting on them. Then’, at the far end of the bay, he saw men’s figures moving, near the Black Rock, among the boats hauled up on the shore in the creek from which he and Maurice and Una had set out to fish on Rackle Roy. A dread seized him that these might be yeomen. Since he had come within reach of home, since he had seen and heard the sea, since he had breathed the familiar salt-laden air, his courage had left him. He felt a very coward, desperately anxious not to be caught and dragged back again to the horror of death. He wanted to live now that he was back at home and almost within reach of Una. He eyed the distant figures anxiously, and then crept back and lay trembling in his hollow among his ordered snail-shells and the flowers, already withered, which he had plucked and planted in the sand.
At last the sun set. Neal waited for an hour while the June twilight slowly faded. He watched the sandhills round his lair turn from bright yellow to grey, watched them while they seemed in the fading light to grow loftier, and assume a weird majesty which was not their’s in the daytime. The objects near at hand, the faded flowers, and the snail-shells, and the rods of woven bent, lost their bright colours and became almost invisible. The eternal roaring of the sea seemed to be subdued, as if even it felt awed by the stillness of the June night. The sand on which he lay was damped with dew. Only the sharp cry of the corncrake broke the solemnity of the night.
He rose, and, peering anxiously before him as each fresh stretch of his way became visible, crossed the sandhills. Avoiding the stepping-stones and the regular crossing-place, he waded through the brook which ran gurgling between the sandhills and the rough track beyond them. He crossed it, and, skirting the rear of a cottage, reached the top of the Runkerry cliffs. Far below him the sea rushed, white-lipped, against the rocks. The tide was almost full. The scene was as it had been ten days ago, ten years ago, a whole lifetime ago, when he walked this same way with Donald Ward. Still keeping close to the sea, he avoided the high road near the Causeway, plodded along the stony track past the Rocking Stone and the Wishing Well, climbed the Shepherd’s Path, and once more walked along the verge of the cliff above Port na Spaniard and the Horse Shoe Bay and Pleaskin Head. He reached Port Moon, and saw far below him the glimmer of a light in the rude shelter where fishermen lodge in summer time. Avoiding the farmhouse near him on his right, and the lane which led past it to the high road, he went on, clinging close to the sea as if for safety. He rested a while in the shelter of the ruins of Dun-severic Castle, and then went on till his feet were stumbling among the graves of Templeastra, where the dust of his mother lay. It was dark now. He guessed that he must have been an hour and a half on his way. He came close to the manse—his home. Below him lay Ballintoy Strand, with its sentinel white rocks which keep eternal watch against invading seas. Between him and his home there was the road to cross and the meadow to wade through. It must, as he guessed, be eleven o’clock. His father and Hannah Macaulay would be in bed. He would have to rouse them with cautious tapping upon window panes.
He reached the back of the house at last, and saw, to his amazement, that a light burned in the kitchen, and that the door stood wide open. A dread seized him. Perhaps the house was occupied by soldiers. For a moment he thought of turning back again to the sea and the cliffs. But he wanted food, and it was absolutely necessary for him to communicate with some one. His plan was to lie hid in the Pigeon Cave, but he must have food brought to him day by day, and he must let his father or Hannah know where he was going.
Very cautiously he crept forward and peered through the window. There was a candle in its tall iron stand on the floor, and the peat fire burned brightly on the hearth. A row of brass candlesticks were on the mantel-board. Hannah Macaulay sat on a chair near the door knitting. The room, he saw, was neat and orderly as ever.
The lids of the pots and the metal dish-covers gleamed from the nails on which they hung round the walls. The pewter plates, bronze jugs, and upturned noggins stood in shining rows on the dresser shelves. Neal waited. Not a sound reached him from the house. He took courage and slipped through the open door.
“Is that you yoursel’, Master Neal?” said Hannah, quietly, “I ha’ your supper ready for ye. I was sitting up for you. You’re late the night.”
She rose from her seat and, without a sign of surprise or excitement, closed the door and bolted it.
“Hannah, how is it that you are expecting me? You can’t have known that I was coming. How did you know?”
Hannah took plates from the dresser and food from the cupboard while she answered him.
“Master Maurice’s groom, the lad they call James, rode in from Antrim the day afore yesterday with a note for Miss Una ower by. She tellt me that you’d be coming and that it was more nor like you’d travel by night. I’ve had your supper ready, and I’ve sat waiting for you these two nights, I knew rightly that it was here you’d come first.”
“Where is my father?”
“He’s gone, Master Neal. The sojers came and took him, but he bid me tell you not to be afeard or taking on about him. He was thinking they’d send him across the sea, maybe to Scotland, he said, but they wouldna hurt him. So eat your bit and take your sup, my bairn. You must be sore troubled with the hunger. How ever did ye thole?”
“I have your bed ready for you,” she said as Neal ate, “and it’s in it you ought to be by right. I’m thinking it’s more than yin night since ye hae lain atween the sheets, judging by the looks of ye.”
“It’s five, Hannah, and it will be twice five more before I sleep in a bed again. I dare not stay here.”
“Thon’s what Miss Una said. But, faith, if it’s the yeomen you’re afeard of, I’ll no let them near you.”
“I daren’t, Hannah; I daren’t do it. I must away to-night and lie in the Pigeon Cave. I’ll be safe there, and you must manage somehow to get food to me.”
“Is it me that you look to be climbing down them sliddery rocks and swimming intil the cold sea among your caves and hiding holes? I’m too old for the like, but there’s a lassie with bonny brown eyes that’ll do that and more for ye. Don’t you be afeard, Master Neal. She’d climb the Causey chimney pots and take the silver sixpence off the top if she thought you were wanting it. Ay, or swim intil them caves, that God Almighty never meant for man nor maid to enter, and if were waiting for her at the hinder end of one of them. She’s been here an odd time or twa since ever she got the letter that the groom lad fetched. I’ve seen the glint in her eyes at the sound o’ your name, and the red go out of her cheek at word of them dratted yeos, bad scran to them! I’m no so old yet, but I mind weel how a young lassie feels for the lad she’s after. Ay, my bairn, it’s all yin, gentle or simple, lord’s daughter or beggar’s wench, when the love of a lad has got the grip o’ them. And there was yin with her—the foreign lady with the lang name. For all that she mocks and fleers as if there was nothing in the wide world but play-actin’ and gagin’ about. Faith, she’s an artist, but she might be more help than Miss Una herself if it came to a pinch. She’s a cunning one, that. I’m thinking that she’s no unlike the serpent that’s more subtle than any beast of the field. She has a way of glowerin’ a body and giving a bit of a girn to her mouth. Man or woman or red-coated sojer itself, they’d need to be up gey an’ early that would get the better o’ her. A bird might be lang afore it could find time to build a nest in her ear, so it might. Eh! but, my poor lad, it’s a sorry thing to think of ye lyin’ the night through among the hard stones and me in my warm bed. Eh! but it grieves me sore—— whisht, boy, what’s thon?”
Hannah started to her feet. Hand to ear, lips parted, with eager eyes and head bent forward she listened.
“It’s the tread of horses; they’re coming up the loany.”
“I must run for it,” said Neal, “let me out of the door, Hannah.”
“Bide now, bide a wee, they’d see you if you went through the door.”
She put out the lamp as she spoke.
“Do you slip through to the master’s room and open the window. Go canny now, and make no noise. Get through and off with ye into your cave as hard as ever you can lift a foot, I’ll cap them at the door, lad. I’m the woman can do it. Faith and I’ll sort them, be they who it may, so as they’ll no be in too great a hurry to come ridin’ to this house again, the black-hearted villains. But I’ll learn them manners or I’m done wi’ them else my name’s no Hannah Macaulay.”
Neal, as he slipped silently from the room, was aware that Hannah meditated a vigorous attack upon her midnight visitors. She took the long kitchen poker in her hand, shook it with a grim smile, and thrust the end of it into the heart of the fire.
There was a knock at the door. Hannah, standing in a corner of the room, and hidden from any one looking in through the window, neither spoke nor stirred. The knocking was repeated, and again repeated. Hannah remained silent.
“Open the door,” shouted a voice from without, “open the door at once.”
Still there was no reply.
“We know you’re within, Hannah Macaulay, we saw the light before you put it out. Open to us, or we’ll batter in the door, and then it will be the worse for you.”
“And who may be you that come knocking and banging the door of a dacent house at this time o’ night, making a hullabaloo fit for to wake the dead; and it the blessed Sabbath too?”
“Sabbath be damned; it’s Thursday night.”
“Is it, then, is it? There’s them that wouldn’t know if it was Monday nor Tuesday, nor yet Wednesday, nor the blessed Sabbath day itself, and, what’s more, wouldn’t care if they did know. That just shows what like lads you are. Away home out o’ this to your beds, if so be that you have any beds to go to.”
In fact the men outside were perfectly right. The day was Thursday, though it neared Friday. The Sabbath was a long way off yet, as Hannah knew quite well.
“You doited old hag, open the door.”
“I’m a lone widow woman,” said Hannah, plaintively, “I canna be letting the likes of ye in and me in my bed. It wouldna be dacent if I did. Where’d my good name be if I did the like and me not know ye?”
A savage kick at the door shook it on its hinges.
“Bide quiet, now,” said Hannah, “and tell me who ye are afore I open to you. Would you have me let robbers intil the house, and the master awa’?”
“We’re men of the Killulta yeomanry, we’re here to search the house by order of Captain Twinely. Open in the King’s name.”
“Why couldn’t ye have tellt me that afore? There isn’t a woman living has as much respect for the King as mysel’. Wait now, wait till I slip on my petticoat. You wouldna have a woman come to the door to you in her shift, would ye?”
There was a long pause—too long for the yeomen outside. Another kick, and then another, shook the door. Hannah went over to it and began to fumble with the bolt.
“I’m afeard,” she said, “that the lock’s hampered.”
“I’ll soon cure that; stand clear of the keyhole till I fire.”
“For the Lord’s sake, man, dinna be shootin’ aff your guns, I canna abide the sound o’ the like. It dizzens me. Dinna be hasty, fair and easy goes far in the day. Who is it you said you were?”
“The yeomen, you deaf old hag.”
“The yeomen, God bless us, the yeomen. That’s the kind of lads that dresses themselves up braw in sojers’ coats and then, when there’s any fighting going on, let’s the real sojers do it, and they stand and look round to see the gommerels admiring them. Faith I’ll let you in. There’s no call even for a hirplin ould woman with one foot in the grave and the ither out of it to be afeard of the likes of you.”
Hannah Macaulay’s description of her bodily condition erred on the side of self-depreciation. The one foot which remained out of the grave carried her across the kitchen floor with remarkable speed. She took the poker now red, almost white, hot at the end, darted back to the door, and flung it open. With a wild whoop she rushed at the two yeomen who stood on the threshold. There were other yells besides her’s, a smell of burning cloth and singed flesh, a hurried treading of feet, and a clattering of the hoofs of frightened horses. Hannah sent into the night a peal of derisive laughter, and then turned into the house and shut the door.
“I said I’d sort them,” she chuckled, “and I’ve sorted them rightly. Yin o’ them will carry a mark on his mug to the day of his death, and lucky if he hasn’t lost the sight of an eye. There’ll be a hole in the breeks of the other that’ll tak a quare width of cloth to make a patch for it. And, what’s more, thon man’ll no sit easy on his horse for a bit. They’ll not be for chasing Master Neal the night any way. But, faith, this house will be no place for me the morrow. I’ll just tak my wee bit duds under my arm and away with me up to Dunseveric House. Miss Una’ll take me in when she hears the tale I ha’ to tell. I’d like to see the yeos or the sojers either that would fetch me out of the ould lord’s kitchen. If they tak to ravishing and rieving the master’s plenishins I canna help it. Better a ravished house nor a murdered woman.”
Neal got out of the window, and once more crossed the meadow. He lay for a minute in the ditch beside the road listening intently. He feared that he might have been tracked home, that the house might be surrounded, and that escape might be difficult or impossible. But there was no sound of any sort on the road—neither voices of men, treading of horses, or jangling of accoutrements. Evidently the men at the door of the manse were no more than a patrol. They were entering the house out of wanton desire to annoy Hannah Macaulay or on the chance of discovering there something which might give them a clue—not because they actually suspected that he was within. He heard the crash of the first kick on the door, rose from the ditch, crossed the road, and took to the edge of the cliffs again. He walked quickly, frightened and shaken. He started into a breathless run when Hannah’s battle whoop reached him on the still air. He heard distinctly the men’s shrieks, and even the noise of the runaway horses galloping on the hard road. He went the faster—a mad terror driving him.
He passed Port Moon again, crossed the majestic brow of Pleaskin Head, skirted the Causeway, and reached the Runkerry cliffs. He went more slowly, ceased running, sat down, drawing deep laboured breaths. The food he ate in the manse had strengthened him. The assurance of the care and watchfulness of his friends cheered him, but his mind was like that of a hunted animal. He had no courage left, nothing but an overmastering desire to hide himself.
He rose, and went on again, reached the cliff above the Rock Pigeons’ Cave, and found the place where descent to the sea was possible. There was no path, just a precipitous grass slope, and then steep rocks, and below them the dark, moaning sea. A timid man might shrink from the climb in daylight, a bold man would be rash to attempt it at night, but of this short, slippery grass and these sharp rocks Neal had no fear at all. He knew them all too well to fear them. He let himself slide down, sure of the resting-place his feet would find. With firm hand-grips and confident steps he descended from rock to rock until he stood at last on a flat shelf, a foot or two above the sea. He saw the long channel, rock-bounded, narrow, dark, along which he and Maurice had piloted their boat. He saw beyond it the mouth of the cave—a space of actual blackness on the gloomy face of the cliff. He heard the water drop from the roof into the sea with heavy splashes. At his feet the long swell writhed between the walls of rock, reached up black lips and drew them down again with hollow, sobbing sound. From the extreme darkness of the cave came the dull moaning of the ocean, as of some inarticulate monster bowed with everlasting woe. A swim through this cold, lonely water, between the smooth walls which rose higher and higher on either side, into the impenetrable gloom of the echoing cavern and on to the extreme end of it, was horrible to contemplate. But for Neal there were worse horrors behind. His cowardice made him brave. He stripped and stood shivering, though the night air was warm enough. He wrapped his clothes into a bundle and, with his neck scarf, bound them firmly on his head. He slipped without a splash into the water and struck out towards the mouth of the cave.
The dull swell lifted him on its breast and drew him down again as if to wrap him with huge cold hands. An undertow of receding water pulled him to the rocks and he touched them with his hands. He reached the mouth of the cave, and felt the splash of the drops which fell from it. He moved very cautiously, fearing to strike suddenly on the sunken rocks. He felt for them with his feet, reached them, stood upright waist-deep. Then, with cold limbs and a numb terror in his heart, he plunged forward again into the deep water within the cave. He swam on, with set teeth, close-pressed lips, and eyes strained to see a foot in front of him into the blackness. Once he turned and looked back. Through the mouth of the cave he saw the dim grey of the June night—a framed space of sky which was not actually black. He felt as if he were looking his last at the familiar world of living things—as if he were on his way to some gloomy other world of moaning, forlorn spirits, of desolate, disappointed loves, of weary, spent souls floating aimlessly on chill, unfathomable sorrow. He swam on, and heard at last the splash of the waves on the shore. His feet touched bottom. He slipped and slid among large slimy stones, worn incredibly smooth by their age-long washing in this sunless place. He struggled forward breast-deep, waist-deep, knee-deep, in the black water. He reached dry ground, crawled upwards till he felt the boulders no longer damp, and knew that he lay above the reach of the tide. He unbound the bundle from his head, clothed himself, and felt the blood steal warm through his limbs again. He staggered further up, groped his way to the side of the cave, as if the touch of solid rock would give him some sense of companionship. Then, like a benediction from the God who watched over him, sleep came.