When Fairchild awoke from his long bout of brain fever his eyes fell upon Seymour.
'Why didn't you save her as you promised?' were the first words he uttered.
'Nonsense, old man, you're wandering still. Of course I saved her. You forget, it was her sister Ruth that those devils murdered.'
'Oh, it's all a horrible mistake,' groaned the invalid, as he buried his face in his hands and turned his head to the wall, moaning like a wounded thing in pain.
It was Philip Brandon's last day at Oxford. Behind him lay four pleasant years spent partly in dawdling through the Honors schools, chiefly in gratifying his own various tastes for athletics, social intercourse, and contemporary literature. In front of him lay—what? The thought stuck in his throat; so, in an unsettled spirit, he lit a cigar and sauntered out into the High, with a vague idea of doing the rounds as he used in his schoolboy days, and taking a last farewell of the old city's 'coronal of towers.'
Passing a gunsmith's, he remembered he wanted some cartridges, and, going in to buy them, saw there that fatal air-gun, which he afterwards declared to himself was the cause of all his troubles. Curiously enough this shirking of the responsibility of his own acts was not in his case a sign of weakness, it was his very directness of mind that made him perceive and value the morality of his own conduct with the same remorseless logic as he extended to his neighbors, and would have made him intolerable to himself had he not taken refuge in some such obliquity of mental vision. A man who is free from self-deception is not a man at all, but a monster. Self-hypocrisy, after all, is only another form of self-respect, and it is part of human nature to desire our own good opinion no less than other people's.
To outward seeming the air-gun was merely an ordinary hazel walking-stick with a crook handle, and the closest examination would barely reveal its real nature. In his restless mood this novelty in puzzles took Brandon's fancy, and he bought it on the spot. There was something sinister and secret about having this unsuspected weapon. He was pleased with it, as he had been pleased when a boy with his first sword-stick; and he determined then and there to tell no one that it was more than it actually appeared—an ordinary walking-stick.
He had packed all his luggage and warehoused his furniture in readiness for his start to Ireland in the morning, so there was nothing left to be done but to wonder why he was going there at all. His uncle had hitherto paid his way through school and college, but had recently told him that his income had been so diminished by the depreciation in Irish land, that he could no longer afford to continue his allowance or start him in a profession, as he had originally intended; so that, on leaving the 'Varsity, Philip must shift for himself, but would be welcome, if he chose, to come on a visit while 'looking about him.'
This invitation Philip had accepted, though without much feeling of gratitude to his uncle. He felt that he had been hardly used. He had been led to expect a fair start in a profession; and now, at an age when most other avenues of employment were closed to him, with a useless general education and no means of supplementing it with a special one, he was calmly turned adrift. It would have been kinder to have cast him off earlier, when his tastes were still unformed and his notions less refined. Even now he could not help feeling that it would only have taken a slight effort on his uncle's part to redeem the tacit pledges he had given; but with all his easy good-nature, the old man had the failing, which so often goes with it, of intense selfishness, and had no idea of curtailing his own pleasures in order to set his nephew upon his legs. It would do the young man good, he thought, to knock about a little at the outset. But he had made a mistake: Philip's nature was too intense to take kindly to such discipline, it was apt to strike in too deeply, and there was no knowing what the result might be. As it was, Oxford had performed its part for him, as for so many other penniless young men, of totally unfitting him for any professions but the pulpit and the birch-rod, the two which his soul most utterly abhorred.
Perhaps it would have been wiser under these circumstances to have started work at once, but Philip felt a desire to take breath before his plunge into the stream of life. Hitherto his life had been a series of preparations for some one definite event,—his examinations, the end of his school life, the end of his university life. Now he had come to the end of the latter, and he found that it was not an end nor even a beginning. The whole of life lay spread before him to choose from, with no means of making a choice. Contemplating it in the mass, the boundless indefiniteness of the prospect bewildered his gaze and paralyzed his energies. The world was so large he did not know where to begin upon it. He was not close enough to it to recognize that there, as elsewhere, only a single stage of the journey occupies our attention at a time. He shrank aghast into himself and took refuge in habit. His habit led him to his uncle's house.
Arrived in the cheerful island of his birth, what with the dampness of the climate, and the dulness of country life at Lisnamore, his lassitude grew upon him and enveloped him as with a miasma. He was always a great reader, and now did little else but read novels. Real life pressed so heavily upon him, that he was driven to take refuge in a world of unrealities. But they increased rather than diminished his malady. This cloud of alien personalities obscured his own, acting upon his mind like an anæsthetic, so that for weeks he lived and moved in that atmosphere of unreality which constant novel-reading engenders, and which is so apt to unfit one for the stress of actual life. A melancholy and moodiness of humor possessed him, so that he passed whole days with scarcely speaking a word, and to the other inmates of the house he appeared a very different person from the light-hearted and good-natured lad of former visits.
In fact, up to this point in his life the easy good-nature common to the rest of his family had been his most salient characteristic upon the surface, and he had taken for granted that it was part of his real nature. So long as the world had treated him kindly he had met it in his turn with a most amiable countenance. It is true that he had not been widely popular at college, but he had explained this to himself by ascribing it to too great self-reliance on his own part. His epithets for his own character in the secret places of his heart were 'strong' and 'original'—epithets which he had justified to a certain extent at Balliol by going his own way irrespective of Dons and lectures, and by a certain readiness to act without reference to conventional standards or traditions, together with a disdain for the ordinary grooves of life, which made his conduct under any given circumstances difficult to foretell. Nevertheless, he had been liked by his own set; and when he did go out of his way to cultivate an acquaintance, perhaps partly owing to this very fastidiousness of his, he rarely failed to attract.
But now that his lot had become soured, he surprised himself at times indulging in moods and fancies, that showed him there were unsuspected forces in his nature which had hitherto lain dormant, but which might spring into activity at any instant. In his moments of introspection he sometimes dimly wondered now if he were not in truth just a little bit selfish at bottom, else how to account for this extravagant solicitude about his own fortunes.
The fact was that the unsettlement of the conditions of his existence, the gravity of this first appearance of his upon the platform of every-day life, and the dreariness of the outlook had affected his nature more deeply than he was himself aware. His life at Oxford, with its atmosphere of ease and luxury, had unfitted him for the stern realities of the world in which he was now called upon to earn his bread. The hopelessness in modern life of effecting one's aim had thus early begun to impress him. Nowadays, as heretofore, he saw that effort is not wasted, but that it produces a result absurdly inadequate to the force expended. Everywhere around him he saw men of brilliant parts and dauntless courage ground beneath the wheels of that modern Juggernaut, the soul-destroying round of mechanical toil; men whose ambition originally would not have strained at kingdoms, reduced to hack writers for journals and ushers in a school. A young man aims at the moon and hits a suburban cottage. Pegasus is put to grind a mill. Seeing all this, he felt shut-in upon every side. For a time he beat the pinions of his mind helplessly against his prison-bars. Then the black moodiness of despair enwrapped him in its folds. He had no tools with which to shape his destiny, so he apathetically left the issue upon the knees of Fate.
But he was young and buoyant, and this depression could not last forever. The first sign of its breaking up was a desire for outdoor exercise. He roused himself from his lethargy, and to escape its influence determined on a fishing excursion to a distant mountain lough. He thought that the drive and the fresh air would re-invigorate him. And indeed by the time he had accomplished the twelve miles there, and had caught a few trout, he was more like his usual self; but by noon the weather had settled down into one of those broiling days which one occasionally meets with in Ireland, generally in October, and fishing had become hopeless. The fish were small, but plentiful, and now they rose all round him, and flapped his flies with their tails in a tantalizingly derisive manner.
He had brought his air-gun with him, and to while away the time, he got it out and began shooting at the fish as they rose. He soon found that, by allowing for the curve of the pellets, he could hit a spot the size of half-a-crown at a dozen yards with some certainty, and at this sport he amused himself for the rest of the afternoon, until he had acquired a fair command of the weapon. Gradually as he continued his pastime, the vicious snick of the bullets in the water infected his blood, and gave rise to curious thoughts within him. He grasped his weapon more tightly, the perspiration stood out upon his forehead, and a fierce satisfaction surged through him each time he hit his aim. Suddenly he came to himself with a start and recognized the emotion that had been driving him. It was a feeling of murderous revolt against that society which had given him expensive tastes without the means of gratifying them. All those yearnings of his for fine books and pictures, the pleasures of the palate, and the love of women, for everything which can be bought by money, or, rather cannot be procured without its possession, must run to waste and remain forever unsatisfied. It was against the possessors of all those good things which he had not and could never hope to have, that in his mind he had been directing those bullets with such fatal accuracy.
The knowledge came home to him with a sudden shock, and horror-stricken at himself he hastily put up his rod and started on his homeward journey. The sultriness of the day, as is often the case in the hour before sunset, had become even intensified. There was not a breath of air, as he jogged quietly along in the evening light. All nature seemed to perspire, and a dull yellow haze covered the surrounding country. The road stretched straight and dusty before him between its walls of sod; and upon either hand spread a flat and uninteresting expanse of bog and moorland. The approach to the town was signalled by the change from the clay to a limestone soil; and instead of the occasional ditches of sod or huge drains, which divided the country and restricted the wanderings of a few isolated cows and donkeys, frequent stone walls began to appear, built by piling odd stones together without cement of any kind, and separating fields of hay, wheat, and potatoes.
Rather more than half the distance had been traversed, when an object detached itself from the haze in the middle distance and rapidly approached. As it drew near he saw that it was a car, with a man sitting upon one side, and the other side turned up; and as it came still closer he recognized in the driver a cousin of his own, the land-steward of the Duke of Ulster. The other was going to pass with a wave of his whip. But a sudden revulsion of feeling had come over Philip. Nature had taken upon herself the oppression of his own spirits, and had shamed him out of his febrile emotions by the spectacle of her larger melancholy. So now that he had met a fellow-creature he was glad to escape the surrounding monotony and was seized with a sudden craving for conversation.
'Hullo, Dick, whither away so fast?' he shouted. 'Here, have I not seen you for a whole year, and you cut me as dead as if you owed me money.'
Both pulled up their horses, and Dick replied: 'Sorry, old man. Didn't mean to offend you, but I've got a lot of money here, so I'm in a hurry to get home, and have it off my hands. Been collecting the quarter's rents, and have got about five thousand pounds in cash to take care of.'
'Pooh, you're codding. Why didn't you put it in the Bank?'
'Couldn't. Shuts early on Saturdays. And no safe in my office to keep it in.'
'Well, but after all there wouldn't be so much harm done, even if you did get it collared. I suppose you've taken the numbers of the notes.'
'Why, my dear fellow,' replied the other, 'all the tenants are small farmers, and pay either in coin or in one pound notes, that would be just as difficult to trace.'
So saying he put his horse into a walk to pass him. At that moment feeling for his whip, Philip's hand fell upon that demon-possessed air-gun, which he had left loaded on the cushion beside him. An electric thrill passed through all his nerves. Almost without volition the weapon flew to his shoulder. He saw Dick's temple turned sideways towards him for a moment. There was a whip-like crack, a thud, and his body swayed heavily and fell backwards on the stone ditch beside the road. Both horses stood still. All nature held her breath. A vast silence brooded over the landscape. There wasn't a figure to be seen within the horizon.
He sat there quite still for at least five minutes, still grasping his infernal instrument. He did not realize at first what had happened, and waited for Dick to rise up again. It was as though something outside himself, that did not belong to him, had done this thing. His murderous thoughts of the forenoon had borne unexpected fruit. Presently Dick's horse began to crop the grass by the wayside. The crunching sound broke in upon his stupefaction. Dick himself did not move. He got down and walked up to him, keeping carefully on the grass all the way, so as to leave no trace of footsteps. He had fallen with the back of his head upon a stone, and even to Philip's inexperienced eye it was evident that he was already dead. He had not expected this, but it was better so. He felt his heart, to make sure. It had stopped beating.
Then he got on the car to search for the money. First he looked in the well. It was not there. A cold perspiration burst over him. What if Dick were only joking after all? But soon he found the bag under the end of the cushion his cousin had been sitting on. He started off the horse with a lash of the whip, which he laid down again beside the dead man, rolled a large stone into the middle of the road to account for the accident, carried the bag to his own car, wrapped it in his mackintosh, and quickly drove on home.
At first his faculties had been stunned with a physical numbness by the sudden shock of his own action, and everything that he had done hitherto had been merely mechanical. But now his mind began to recover its tone. It rushed at once to the other extreme of an almost painfully intense activity. Thoughts whirled through his head at lightning speed. In one illuminating flash he saw himself in his naked reality. His seething ambition, his easy-going temper, his constitutional dislike of running in grooves, and his recent despondency, all rose and confronted him in the guise of a colossal Egoism, a selfishness which desired exemption from the common lot of mankind, a lot of hopeless futureless toil; while a yet darker suggestion loomed dimly forth from the background of his mind. He recognized that his good-nature at ordinary times was really only an absolute indifference to other people's affairs, except when they touched him nearly. Even in his own concerns his cold logicality of intellect kept him supine except in cases of the extremest importance. This was really the first important crisis of his life. He had in a measure that habit of self-analysis, which goes with a cold and self-centred brain, though it was chiefly of the flattering sort, and he knew that his nature was of an almost elemental simplicity and directness; but he had rarely suspected before to-day that when deeply stirred an elemental cruelty was one of its ingredients.
These moments of self-revelation come in the life of all of us, when our ordinary every-day self, familiar to ourselves and our home circle, is suddenly brought face to face with that other deeper lying and often semi-barbarous self, which crouches hidden beneath the veneer of civilization and the mask of social habit, and we are forced into a swift mental comparison of the two. Happy is the man in whom these two selves are identical; for his shall be a stagnant life, and is not that the life of the gods? But these flashes of insight do not remain long with us. We make haste and cover them up, and put such importunate thoughts away from us, and only a vague uncomfortableness remains in the memory for a short time.
So in Philip's mind the first clearness of the impression of his own baseness soon faded, and was swallowed up in consideration of its consequences. His act, that concrete expression of his character, could not be glossed over. It remained behind there in all its naked hideousness in the person of his murdered cousin lying in the road.
Questions of expediency came first. Could he risk finding the body and taking it home with him? It was not yet too late. No, the money would prevent that, though otherwise it might be the best plan. There was only the one road and he must have met his cousin somewhere. But he had almost walked his horse hitherto, it was still quite fresh, and now if he drove hard, he could say that he had met Dick two or three miles nearer home, and the time would agree all right. And the money? It might very well appear that some tramp had come by and taken it, after the accident had occurred. For himself—offenders that did not belong to the ordinary criminal classes, were always detected through their own folly. They couldn't control their countenances, or were overcome by remorse or betrayed the hiding-place of their spoil through over-anxiety. He had no such weaknesses. His education had at least done him the service of eradicating from his breast all scruples of conscience and superstitious fancies. He would conceal his gains in a safe spot he knew, and leave the country, so that he could not rouse suspicion. Next year he could return for the money, and it would go hard with him, but it would help him on the road to fortune.
He was ambitious. He had felt that he had ability above the ordinary. But the world had afforded him no opening. Now with five thousand pounds to back him the world was at his feet. He would select a congenial profession, which should draw forth all his energies, and would gain experience. Brains, experience, capital, each was almost useless by itself. But with a combination of the three what could he not do? The world was his oyster, and what he had been pining for latterly was the lack of an oyster-knife to open it.
Then Dick again! His thoughts reverted to him, poor chap! What of him?—how had it all come about? How had he come to do what he had done? Of course, in the first instance, it was the result of the opportunity of the moment and what he now saw to be his morbid craving after wealth for the last few weeks, the unhealthy dreams of a sick imagination. But to probe deeper. He was a fatalist, and it was no good crying over spilt milk. But let him at least be honest with himself; let him know the full meaning of his own action. Did he regret what had happened? would he do the same if he had to do it over again? Probably not; simply because in spite of the philosophers a man never does act twice alike under the same circumstances. But he felt that he would not have restored his cousin to life now, had that been possible. His main feeling was a guilty satisfaction that things had fitted in so well. He was not a coward, and before this the thought of suicide had come to him as a way out of his perplexities. For he had no near relations to think of, no ties to bind him to life. The worst that could now happen to him was almost preferable to the mediocre existence of mean and monotonous drudgery, which had formerly seemed his only prospect.
But gradually, as he brooded over the events of the afternoon, he began to lose sight of the benefit which had accrued to him. The idea had already become familiar by assimilation, and now his thoughts tended to dwell rather upon the danger which he had incurred, and whose proportions increased the longer he regarded it. A vague sense of irritation and injury began to grow up in his mind against his cousin as the author of his trouble, and even against the inanimate instrument of his violence, 'It's all the fault of that air-gun,' he muttered; and again, 'What business had he to meet me in the mood I was in with his babbling confidences? He has only himself to thank for his fate, and he has put my neck in danger too by his folly. Damn him!'
At the thought a sudden passionate wave of hatred, roused by the prick of personal fear, surged through his bosom. He was already beginning to set a higher value on life than heretofore, and he hated Dick that he had brought him the danger along with the benefit. He felt that he was unreasonable, but that only made him hate his cousin the more. After all, he had never seen much of Dick, and he was always a fool; he showed that even in his death—snuffed out like a candle. If it had been he, he would have made a harder fight for it than that; there was something contemptible about giving in so easily.
By this time he had reached the house. He carried the bag in under the mackintosh, and the walking-stick in his hand. The latter he put in the stand. He had used it constantly of late, and its absence would excite remark.
The bag he wrapped in oil-cloth to keep it from the damp, carried it out into the garden at the first opportunity, and hid it in an apple-tree, high up among the branches, in a hole, which had been his secret alone since boyhood.
Late that night the rumor reached the house that his cousin had fallen off his car and broken his neck. They all scouted the idea, and Philip mentioned having met him that afternoon a couple of miles out of the town, but Dick wouldn't stop to speak to him. The next day the rumor was confirmed: Philip had been the last person to see him alive.
For himself, Philip was physically prostrated, he could hardly move, and ached in every limb and every muscle: the fatigue resulting from the emotions which had racked him on the previous day was so much greater than any mere bodily fatigue he had hitherto known. The day afterwards—the Monday—he received a visit from the police-sergeant. He went cheerfully down. It was to summon him, he supposed, as a witness at the inquest, which was fixed for the morrow. Judge, then, of his surprise when he was arrested on a charge of having murdered his cousin.
He was very angry at first. Then the absurdity of the situation struck him, and he laughed aloud. Here had this lumbering country lout stumbled on the truth by accident, where a cleverer man would not have dreamt of looking for it. But it might prove no laughing matter for him, once the scent had been struck. The sergeant had applied, it seemed, to the magistrate for the warrant, upon his own responsibility, on the strength of a rumor that Philip was at the bottom of the affair somehow. How the rumor originated he never discovered—probably from some distortion in the repetition of his own story of the meeting. But it made matters very unpleasant for him for the time. He said that he would go quietly to the police-barracks if he were not handcuffed.
When he arrived there, the officer in charge—the District Inspector, and an old friend of Philip's, named Fitzgerald—cried out:
'Hullo, young 'un, what have you been doing now?—run in for being drunk and disorderly?' He thought that Philip had dropped in to see him, and that the presence of the sergeant was only a coincidence. Great was his surprise when he heard that the young man was really a prisoner—and upon what charge? He was more angry than Philip had been, and called the sergeant a blundering idiot, only in stronger language. At last he cooled down again and said:
'Well, never mind, you'll have to stop here to-night, but you'll be let loose again to-morrow, and everybody will think it only a good joke.'
'Yes, that's all very well,' replied Philip; 'but Richards, the coroner, has a grudge against me. As you know, he is the town baker; last year he set up a carriage, and heard me call it the bread-cart. He is sure to seize the opportunity of taking the change out of me. And I entirely fail to see where the joke comes in.'
When he arrived in the court next day, everybody was talking and laughing. They thought it an absurd farce that he should be accused of such a crime at all. Even the police-sergeant had been sneered out of his momentary inspiration of shrewdness long ago. Philip alone knew what a hair's-breadth removed from earnest the affair was capable of proving. He was like a man sitting on a powder magazine with people ignorantly letting off crackers all round him, one of which might at any moment blow him into eternity.
The body of the court was crowded as usual with corner-boys—a shiftless race of loafers peculiar to Ireland, who hang about the streets and the corners of the public-houses, and never do a day's work from year's end to year's end. They sponge upon their wives, spending all the money that they can beg upon drink during that short portion of the year that they are not retained in jail at their country's expense. 'God presarve yer ahner, wherever ye may go,' cried one of these as he entered. Philip had given him many a screw of tobacco, and knew that it was not for him, but for the loss of his tobacco that the man feared.
That bit of smartness about the bread-cart cost him an anxious time. The doctor gave his evidence that there were two injuries upon the body of the deceased—a cut upon the back of the head, which had been caused by falling off the car onto a stone, and a very small bruise on the temple. What had occasioned the latter, or if it were connected with the accident, he couldn't say. But neither injury was sufficient to cause death. That had resulted from stoppage of the heart's action, which had long been diseased. Philip paid little attention to this; he was sufficiently honest with himself to recognize that he had committed murder in intention if not in actual fact.
Then the coroner wanted to know could the bruise on the temple have been caused by a blow from a whip or a stick? The doctor thought not. Nevertheless Philip's whip and all his sticks were fetched. The servants gave evidence as to the one he had used that day; it was handed round. Everybody was surprised at its lightness. Philip's heart stood in his mouth. The doctor and the coroner examined it minutely. If either of them had a grain of penetration, he was a lost man; but he could reckon with confidence on their stupidity. The air-gun preserved its secret well; for once it did not betray him. Its lightness proved even in his favor. The doctor decided that it was incapable of inflicting a stunning blow, that it was probably hollow, and would break on slight provocation.
He was acquitted, a verdict of accidental death returned, and the jury remarked severely upon the hasty action of the sergeant in adding to his natural grief at his cousin's death by such an unnatural accusation.
But Philip was in a fever until that wretched air-gun should be safely disposed of. At any moment it might change its mind and inform against him. He hooked his arm in Fitzgerald's directly the inquest was over, and said, 'Come along, and have a bathe after this beastly stuffy court; and as you have the custody of my sticks, I suppose you won't mind letting me have one now?' Fitzgerald laughed, and he took the air-gun. The other wanted to look at it, and see if it was really as light as they all made out. But Philip was not such a fool; the officer's trained eyesight was likely to prove too sharp.
They went to bathe in the river channel, a couple of miles below the town, and about half a mile from its mouth. When they had undressed, Philip threw the stick as far as he could into the middle, under pretence of sending Fitzgerald's retriever in after it. But the tide was on the ebb and the stream ran strong, so, as he knew would be the case, the dog turned back long before he reached the stick. Philip hoped never to see the wretched thing again. Suddenly a terror seized him; he could not leave it to the mercy of blind chance like that. What if the sea gave up its prey?—the next tide might wash it ashore again. Some one might find it and return it again, or worse still, find out the secret. He must get rid of it more effectually at all hazards. He plunged in after it, and quickly reached it; then pretending to put his feet between his hands, while holding the stick at either end he snapped it in two and cast it from him.
Meanwhile he had not noticed that he had rounded the last turn in the channel in its journey seaward. He had got into the strength of the current, and it swept him away like a leaf. He swam against it aslant with all his strength, but could not reach the edge, and in a moment he was among the breakers on the bar.
For a short time he succeeded in swimming over the waves or diving through them, and hoped to be able to get right out to sea. But soon he was seized by a huge roller, the ninth wave, and carried resistlessly back again upon its crest. The edge of the breaker curled thin beneath him like a shaving, dissolving into spray. He looked down as he reached the bar, and suddenly the water seemed to vanish under him. One moment he was ten feet in the air, the next he fell with stunning force upon the sand, covered only with a couple of feet of surf. Before he recovered his senses, the broken water of the next wave was upon him, and the black-surge of the first was fighting with it for him. He was rolled over and over. Sand entered his eyes, mouth, nostrils, and ears. He was conscious of swallowing oceans of water. He struggled blindly for a time; he, at any rate, would not give in until the last gasp. But gradually there stole over him a feeling of drowsiness, of disinclination for further effort, a feeling that Fate had been too much for him. 'It's all that damned air-gun's fault,' he muttered again obstinately; and the waters closed over him.
When he came to himself again, he was lying on the strand, and Fitzgerald was bending over him. He had been washed by chance into the corner of an eddy near the shore, the D.I. had run along the bank, rushed in and rescued him before the life was quite buffeted out of him.
Thanks, old boy,' he said, looking up at his friend; 'you have saved my life, and I won't forget it.'
'Oh, nonsense; you would do as much for me any day.'
They dressed in silence. At last Philip remarked:
'That stick was hollow after all; it snapped like a twig in my hands. I suppose it will fill with sand now and stop at the bottom of the sea.'
'Yes; you will never see it again, and a good job too: it was near being the death of you.'
'Yes,' said Philip, with a slow smile; 'it was very near being the death of me.'
'Will you come out with me on revenue duty to-day, and try some still-hunting?'
The speaker was the District Inspector of police at Lisnamore, where I was spending my Long, as usual, some years ago. He was almost the only civilized being within miles of us, and as I discovered he hailed from the same public school as myself, we soon struck up an acquaintance and saw a great deal of each other.
On the present occasion, however, I hesitated a moment before accepting his invitation. The fact was, that it was his duty to search for illicit whisky, and only part of his ordinary routine, so that no one would think any the worse of him for doing it. But it was not mine: I was very good friends with the peasantry all about, and didn't wish to make myself unpopular by interfering with their making 'a sup of putcheen,' when they liked. On the other hand there wasn't the least chance of our finding any just then. The priests had lately taken a dislike to the practice of the illicit trade as having a deteriorating influence on their flock, and had preached a crusade against it, and, what the police had been utterly powerless to effect for years, they had accomplished in a couple of months. To an Irishman it is a positive temptation to break the law—what else is it for? But to disobey the priests, at the risk of his soul's damnation, is quite another thing. So the convictions had dwindled immediately, Fitzgerald told me, from twenty a week to none at all, at which he was not a little chagrined, as besides being a sarcasm on the efficacy of the civil as opposed to the religious arm, the cessation of confiscations had deprived him of a source of income in the royalty upon captures.
Under these circumstances it couldn't be much harm to accompany him upon his rounds. It only meant walking a certain number of miles through the surrounding bogs and mountains with a chance of an occasional shot, so I said, 'All right, wait till I get my gun and some cartridges, and I'm with you,' and we set off.
The construction of these private stills is primitive in the extreme, as they consist almost entirely of a coil of copper piping called a 'worm,' for distilling the fermented barley. This is boiled, and, passing through the 'worm,' which is placed in a tub of cold water, the steam comes out at the other end raw spirit: the operation is repeated a second time to increase the strength of the brew. The potheen thus made, is, like all pure spirit, a colorless liquid. But, when desired, it is colored by the simple process of taking a red-hot poker and a lump of sugar-candy and dropping the burnt sugar into the whisky until the required tinge is reached.
The most usual method of concealing the still when not in use is to choose a lonely part of the mountain, cut a circular piece out of the sod large enough to sink a barrel, containing the plant, and then replace the sod. This hiding-place is called by the peasantry a 'coach,' probably from some corruption of the Frenchcache, and the only means of discovering its secret is that a trained eye can detect the very slight difference between the color of the turf on the circular patch and the grass around it. So, as may be imagined, it is possible to walk a good many miles and pass a good many stills without making any discovery.
Sometimes the barrel is concealed by sinking it at the end of a piece of rope into a mountain lough; to the rope a thick piece of string is attached; to that a thinner piece; to that again a piece of thread, which is fastened round an ordinary bottle-cork. To recover the barrel, it is necessary first to find the cork, and then to haul up the lengths of increasing thickness until the original rope is reached. Of course it is a hopeless task for any one not acquainted with the exact spot of concealment to try and find one of these corks except by tracking the owner.
An instance has even been known, when the barrel was sunk in the middle of a highway, and the road levelled over it to look the same as usual; a quick-eared policeman, however, noticed the hollow sound as he drove over the place, and earned the praises of his superiors and the curses of the owners by unearthing a fine cask of malt.
Fitzgerald and I were not so lucky; the only bag we made was a few hares and snipe, and to get these we walked upwards of thirty miles. We had six of Fitzgerald's policemen with us to help in our search, fine long-legged men like all the members of the force. The D. I. himself was considerably the smallest of the company, for naturally the standard is not so high for the officers as for the ordinary rank and file. So for the first fifteen miles he was clean out of it in walking powers, but every mile after that length of stride told for less and stamina for more, and by the end of the day Fitzgerald with his long back and duck legs had walked us all to a standstill.
Our way lay across wild mountainous slopes clad in heather, varied by swampy patches where the rushes grew thickly, and studded with large boulders. Spread out on either side of us the policemen made a fine line of beaters, which roused every living thing before us that there was to rouse. To tell the truth we did not take the trouble to look for much else, knowing it hopeless, and my adventures did not begin until the business of the day was over.
It was in the evening on our return that we struck the coast a couple of miles from home, near the Giants' Castle. This was an old ruin, built on a projecting headland, concerning which the legends current in the country-side were more numerous than I could mention. That dearest to the minds of children and the simple peasantry about was embodied in its name, and had its origin in the Cyclopean nature of the masonry that yet remained. Another account had it that this was one of the castles of the O'Donnells, the ancient kings of Ulster, while yet later stories described its inhabitants as smugglers, who had run many a valuable cargo at this out-of-the-way spot.
The Castle was built on an immense slab of rock which completely overhung the sea, and a feature in all the legends was the existence of a well at the outermost corner of the building, which was bored clean through the solid rock with a perpendicular drop into the sea beneath. In the legends of the Giants they had used this well as a rubbish hole for the bones of the victims they had devoured; by the O'Donnells it had been employed as a means of escape in time of danger; while it was through its cavity that the smugglers had raised their goods from the boats below. The champions of each account clinched their several legends, with the triumphant argument, 'an' av ye don't believe me, ye can go an' see far yersilf av the well isn't there,' which of course was irrefutable.
Well, to return to my story, I wanted a specimen of the large black-backed gull to stuff, and thought this a good opportunity of getting one. It was their habit to come in round the cliffs at sunset, and the well, which was now choked with rubbish, would make a very good place to lie in wait for them; there was a breach in the walls just at the corner where it was situated, which would afford an opening for a shot when the birds came opposite to me, while I should be completely concealed from them.
Fitzgerald was hungry, so he went on home with his policemen, and left me sitting in the well. I was tired, and my moss-lined resting-place proved so comfortable, that I fell asleep almost immediately, and didn't wake until it was already too dark to be able to see to shoot.
I started up, and was just going to clamber out of the hole, when I heard the sound of voices near me, and presently perceived that just when I least expected it, I had come across the owners of what was probably the last still in the country-side.
There were about a dozen men sitting in a group, evidently waiting to begin operations when it grew darker. It was even then too dark to see their faces, but I could tell by their voices they were all the worst characters of the neighborhood, most of them being fishermen belonging to that part of the coast.
Why I didn't go up to them at once and explain matters I really cannot tell, for I had nothing to fear from them. They all knew 'young Master Harry,' and under ordinary circumstances would not dream of doing me any harm, or think that I should do them any. But I suppose, remembering my occupation during the day, I had an uneasy conscience. Besides, the danger they ran of excommunication might render them rougher than usual. They certainly would not be pleased to see me there, while I could tell by their tones that they had already been partaking rather too freely of their own manufacture. If I stopped where I was they would never be any the wiser, as some scattered stones concealed me from them. I could tell from what they said that the 'coach' where they had their still hidden, was close at hand, and that they were going to fetch it soon; when they did, I could slip out and get away unperceived.
But my plans were upset by an unforeseen accident. Once or twice since I stood up in the well, I had heard a faint splash, as of earth or stones dropping into the sea beneath, and now of a sudden the ground under my feet gave way and disappeared with a sudden rushing sound. Instinctively I dropped my gun, which I have never seen since from that day to this, spread my arms out over each side of the hole, and was left dangling there with my feet over the abyss.
I was in no further danger from that source, as I could easily draw my body up onto the ground, but the sudden shock upset my nerve, and caused me to take the most unwise course possible in my position, one which I should never have chosen had I not been thus startled out of my presence of mind. I scrambled up onto the level ground, and as I saw the men coming towards me I dodged behind the outer wall of the ruin and ran off as hard as I could.
Of course they saw me almost immediately, and in a moment I had the whole crew yelling at my heels, making a clamor that sufficiently attested their condition. I had a pretty fair start, and at first my course lay along level ground. But presently I came to a dip, and I took the slope at a pace that would have made my reputation forever on the 'Varsity running-track.
But when I reached the bottom of the hollow I suddenly received a check. The ground disappeared from under my feet for the second time that day, and at the same instant rose up and hit me on the head. I felt stunned by the shock, which almost rent me in pieces, but had not time to indulge in luxuries just then, so without understanding exactly how I did it, I pulled the ground down over me again, and covered myself up not a moment too soon, as immediately afterwards I heard my pursuers tearing past my place of concealment. It was fortunate for me that the night was so dark, and their brains so muddled, that the fact of their not seeing me when they reached the top of the ridge did not rouse their suspicions, and they would go some way before they found they had lost me.
When I had time for reflection I discovered I was in the same hole with the smugglers' still. I had trod on the lid of the barrel which worked on a swivel in the middle, and as I pitched forward the opposite side had risen and caught me in the face; the wonder was it had not taken the head off me. Besides that my legs had fared badly amongst the smugglers' apparatus in the barrel, and my shins and their 'worm' had done about an equal amount of damage to each other.
As I lay there rubbing my bruises, I bitterly regretted the foolish impulse which had led me to take flight. If I had stood my ground at first, the fishermen's knowledge of me would have preserved me from the suspicion of spying on them and from consequent injury, but now that I had provoked these suspicions and fully roused the latent savagery of their natures, I could expect no better treatment than the merest stranger, if I were caught; while in their drunken state this chase after a human quarry would have such zest for them that they would not easily abandon it.
This thought roused me to action, for soon they would be coming back to the 'coach' for their still, and I should have grave reasons for fear if they found me there in the midst of thedébrisof their property.
I crawled out of the barrel at once, but even then I was too late, for already they were coming back and caught sight of me, and once again they were in full cry after me.
This time I had a better start, but I was crippled by the injuries I had received, and they gained upon me rapidly; to add to my troubles the shouts of my pursuers were answered by others who had been searching further afield and were now in front of me, and I found I was surrounded on all sides except towards the sea.
For a moment I was in despair, but suddenly a memory of my boyish days flashed across me, and I made straight for the cliffs. My pursuers thought they had me safe, and shouted with drunken glee, for the cliffs were fully two hundred feet in height and quite perpendicular.
I struck the top at almost exactly the spot I intended, and quickly found a narrow funnel-shaped ravine, down which I had often climbed to fish when a boy; but this time there was no leisure to climb. Digging my heels into the loose slack of the crumbling rock, and pressing my elbows against the sides of the chimney, I let myself go with a rush and roar of falling pebbles and slate, and arrived at the bottom minus all the skin on my elbows, ribs, and knees. But this bottom was in reality only a wide platform in a niche of the cliff half-way down its side, which, as it proceeded, dwindled into a narrow ledge on the face of the rock. Along this ledge I made my way, until I finally arrived at a point where there was a gap altogether of two or three feet in width, while the wall of the cliff overhung the place so closely that it was impossible to cross the break without going down on my hands and knees and crawling over it. This peculiarity had earned the ledge the name of 'the dog's pass' amongst the few who knew of its existence, or would dare its perils for the sake of the rock-fishing to be had in the otherwise unapproachable cove below.
Once I had got to the further side of the gap I felt comparatively safe for the present, and, gathering some large stones, sat down a couple of yards from its edge; the break occurred at a projecting corner of the rock in such a position that any one on the other side of it could not see me until he had crawled across it.
Presently I heard the noise of rattling stones, which told me that one or more of my pursuers were descending the gully, but more cautiously than I had done, and then came the sound of shuffling footsteps along the ledge. There was a pause for a couple of minutes, before a large hand was laid on my side of the gap; I promptly dropped a rock upon it, and with a yell and a volley of curses it was rapidly withdrawn.
After that I knew my citadel was safe from attack in that quarter as there was a drop of over a hundred feet from the ledge onto the naked rocks beneath, which, even in the condition they were in, none of the smugglers would be very anxious to face. But I also knew that it was only a question of time, until they fetched a boat from the adjacent village, and took me in the rear from the side of the sea.
With a view to that event the sooner I was off the ledge the better, lest I should be caught between two fires. From the point I had reached the path sloped rapidly and easily down, and I was soon standing on the rock-strewn shore.
And now what was the next thing to be done? Besides the plan of hiding in one of the holes or caverns of the rocks, which was ignominious, and could only delay my discovery for a short time, there was only one other means of escape I could think of; a desperate hazard it was at the best, but desperate diseases require desperate remedies, so I made my preparations to take advantage of the eventuality should it occur.
I didn't exactly know what I had to fear in the event of capture. I could hardly suppose they would deliberately murder me, but I had no wish to try the experiment. The fishermen on that coast are almost a distinct race; they are incredibly savage for a civilized country in this nineteenth century, and like most semi-barbarous people hold human life in very light esteem, except when it is their own that is in question. I had known more than one instance where a man had been kicked or stoned to death in their drunken brawls. By this time they must be thoroughly enraged with me, and what with drink and the excitement of the chase, it was evident that the dogged pertinacity of their characters was roused to the utmost.
About the middle of the cove in which I was standing, there was a reef of rock running out into the sea, one side of which descended abruptly into deep water, while on the other side it shelved gradually, but the bottom was strewn with boulders, so that the point of the reef was the only spot at which it was possible to land from a boat.
To that point I proceeded; having first taken off my coat and boots, and sunk them in the sea, I let myself gently down into the water, and swam carefully along close under the reef, so that no one could see me from above; then I hid myself close to the point, with everything but my head underneath the water, and that covered with seaweed.
Not long afterwards I saw the boat coming round the next headland, and my heart gave a great leap, as I saw fortune had favored me in the first step in that it was a sailing and not a rowing boat that they had brought.
Quickly she neared the point, and half-a-dozen men leapt out, pushing her off again at once and leaving two men in her, evidently to tack about until they returned. Then I dived beneath the water, came up by the stern of the boat, and before she gathered way I had twisted my handkerchief in one of the iron hinges on which the rudder was hung, and clinging to that, was towed through the water, taking care the while to keep the rudder between me and the party on shore. Happily too, it was not one of the whale boats ordinarily used for fishing on the coast that they had got hold of, but an old-fashioned pleasure-boat, half-decked, and with a projecting stern which hid me from the steersman, so that I was safe from his observation as well.
One of the men remarked once that the boat sailed very heavily and the rudder was very stiff, but the other seemed to think that that was only to be expected of such a tub; so nothing further troubled me beyond the smart of the salt water in my cuts, until the boat reached the end of her stretch and tacked; then I let go my hold, and, diving, rose within the shadow of the cliffs out of sight of my enemies, and near a shelving promontory, where I landed.
After that I made the best of my way home, arriving there with no bones broken indeed, but coatless, bootless, gunless, and in such a state of bruises and abrasions as I believe man never was in before. Since then I have gone on no more still-hunting expeditions.
'Missed again. Here's better luck. Will you have a nip, Fitzgerald?'
'No, thanks; I never drink when I'm out shooting. And if I were you, I wouldn't take any more either. It won't improve your aim.'
'Which is bad enough already. Right you are, my boy. But I admire your cheek in saying so to me, seeing that I'm twenty years your senior. I suppose I ought to be offended, only I'm not. But where's the harm in a flask of whisky in a day?'
'Not the least in life, I suppose, only I've known good men broken in my time through taking less so early in the day as this. Anyway it doesn't make either your hand or your eye any the steadier, and one never knows when he may want all the nerve he's got.'
The speaker was a District Inspector in the Irish Constabulary, the other was his host, one of that race of gentlemen farmers so fast dying out in Ireland, who had offered him a day on his grouse mountain, the only portion of the estate that was not mortgaged up to the hilt.
'It's about time that I was going home in any case,' continued Fitzgerald.
'Nonsense, man,' cried his companion, 'why, the day is yet young, there'll be light enough to shoot for another two hours, it's hardly four o'clock. What's the hurry?'
'Well, you know that the Home Rule Bill passed its third reading in the House of Commons last night.'
'Yes, and a nice fuss those blackguards are kicking up over it. A mole couldn't help knowing that.'
'That's just it, on the borderland here between Protestantism and Roman Catholicism, the Celtic and Saxon element, party feeling runs extraordinarily high, and the people are so excited that I expect there'll be a row to-night. They're going to have bonfires in the streets and all kinds of games, and we'll be lucky if we get through it without a faction fight. I have to be home and get into uniform before the fun begins, so I hope you don't mind, but I've ordered my man to have the car to meet me at the shebeen by the cross-roads at half-past four.'
'Very well, in that case we'd better be making tracks. Call the dogs to heel, Jimmie.'
The two men turned and strode down the mountain side, the keeper bringing up the rear with the two pointers. The heather rustled stiffly against their iron-shod boots as they went, showing behind them a trail of bruised stalks and nail marks on the naked earth. Every now and then, at the sound of their steps a hare rose out of range and dodged swiftly round the corner of a knoll, shrugging her shoulders at the hail-storm of spent shot that rattled round her. Or a snipe rose with a startling rush and a shrill 'scape, scape' at their feet after being nearly walked over, and zigzagged out of sight. At the foot of the slope came a belt of rushes with bog-holes gaping for the feet of the unwary. Beyond that was the first sign of approaching civilization, a potato field, across the ridges of which they strode to reach a cart-track beyond. A mile along this lay the shebeen they were making for.
'I suppose you'll be very much in evidence to-night with your men,' remarked Trevor idly, after a time, to break the silence.
'Now, my dear fellow, you might know better than that, after living amongst these people all your life. There's nothing that provokes an Irishman to make a row so much as to let him know you're ready for him. Sheer cussedness is a much neglected factor in human nature, and especially Irish nature. No, of course I have an extra contingent of men in town for the occasion in case of emergency, but my chief endeavor is always to confine them to barracks and to keep them in the background as much as possible. Their presence only causes friction. More than one of my friends has suffered before now through an undue display of activity.'
'Do you mean that you don't intend to interfere at all, then?'
'Not if I can possibly help it. If I have to make even one arrest it's all over, it will be a free fight. The wisdom of those in authority is such, that they have placed the new barracks at the far end of the town from the poorest, and therefore the rowdiest, quarter. The consequence is that, to run a man in, as a general rule, my men have to drag him about half a mile through the public streets, and no Irish mob that was ever raked off its native dung-heap could stand such a temptation as that.'
By this time they had reached the shebeen, a small two-roomed cottage with moss and long grasses growing on its weather-beaten thatched roof. The lower half of the door was shut, but over it they could see the room inside with its hard mud floor; it was furnished with a dresser hung with a few tin porringers and delf plates and bowls, a bedstead and a table; on the hearth was burning a turf fire; in the open chimney-place there swung an iron crook, from which a pot had just been lifted and was now set in the middle of the floor; round it the family, consisting of an old man, a girl and a boy, were gathered upon three-legged stools for their evening meal; each was armed with an iron spoon and a bowl of buttermilk; beside them on some embers a tin teapot was stewing. On the left of the entrance was a half-open door leading into the second room, inside which the sight of some large earthenware crocks of milk and the corner of a bedstead showed that it was used conjointly as a dairy and a sleeping chamber. Outside the door was the car, with the groom standing at the horse's head.
As the afternoon sun cast their long shadows across the floor of the cottage the old man looked up and saw the two men standing on the doorstep; he rose and opened the half door, and immediately an Irish terrier barking furiously rushed out and attacked the two pointers, that were behind with the keeper. In a moment the three dogs were rolling together in the road amid a perfect hurricane of yelps.
'Call off your damned mongrel,' shouted Trevor, the veins in his neck purple with rage on behalf of his favorite sporting dogs; but in that rolling mass of liver and white and yellow it was impossible to distinguish one whole animal from another. Pull off your dog, Flannigan, or I'll shoot him,' shouted Trevor again, and with his right thumb he pulled up the hammer of his gun, his finger on the trigger. The old man stooped to separate the dogs; as he did so, Trevor's thumb slipped, the hammer fell, there was a loud report, and the whole charge of shot struck the peasant behind the shoulder at a distance of three yards at most. He fell with a scream in the middle of the road. The horse stood up on his hind legs pawing at the groom. The dogs rolled into the ditch and continued to worry each other there unnoticed. The rest stood still, stupefied.
'That's what comes of an unsteady hand,' muttered Fitzgerald grimly to himself.
The same instant the girl rushed out of the cottage and threw herself on her father's body. 'Ye've kilt him,' she moaned, 'ye've kilt him.'
At last Trevor recovered himself, and, advancing, laid a hand on her shoulder. 'My good girl,' he said, 'you can't tell how sorry I am that this has occurred. Let us see if we can't help your father. He may not be badly hurt after all.'
'Stan' back,' cried the girl, raising her flushed face and dishevelled hair from the dust and thrusting him violently away. 'Stan' back; don't touch him. Haven't ye done him enough av harrum ahlready?'
'If money's any good,' said Trevor, helplessly making a fresh effort, 'here's all I have with me, and I'll give you—'
'Don't darr to offer me your dirty money,' she interrupted, scattering the coins from his hand with a vehemence of passion that lifted her out of herself. 'It's blood money, so it is, give me back my father's life that ye tuk away. Didn't I hearn ye say ye'd shute him, an' shute him ye did, an' may the curse of the fatherless rist on ye from this day out.'
'Nonsense, girl,' said Fitzgerald hastily, 'it was a pure accident, and Mr. Trevor never threatened to shoot your father, but only the dog, and the gun went off by accident in his hand.'
'An accident was it? An accident?' repeated the girl. 'An' arn't yous a polisman and you stood by and seen it done? Why don't ye arrist him? I'll larn ye if it was an accident or not,' and she stooped down and whispered some words in her brother's ear, her eyes gleaming with all the fierce vindictiveness of the Celtic nature when roused. The boy nodded silently and darted quickly off down the road, looking back from time to time; Fitzgerald gazed uneasily after him for a moment, then turning briskly to the keeper, he said, 'Hurry up to the house and tell Mrs. Trevor to send down some brandy and some linen for bandages. And you, Jackson, run across the fields to Doherty's there behind the hill. The doctor's there now, so bring him back with you. And you,' he continued, laying his hand on the girl's arm, 'must let us carry your father in out of this. He can't be left here any longer or he'll bleed to death.'
The girl stood sullenly on one side while the two men unhinged the door, placed the old man upon it as carefully as possible, carried him in and laid him on the bed. Then Fitzgerald cut the clothes away from the gaping wound, tore up one of the coarse sheets, and bound the injured part up roughly but not unskilfully. The fowls ran in and out of the open door the while and pecked unnoticed at the pot of potatoes upon the floor.
'I think we've done everything that can be done now,' said the D. I. when he had finished, 'and there's no good stopping here. It's time that I was in town, and the doctor'll be round here immediately. I'll send the priest up to you as soon as I get there. I'm afraid I must trouble you, Trevor, to come with me.'
'Why? What's the meaning of this?' stammered the farmer, his face going ashen gray.
'I'm afraid that after what's happened,' answered Fitzgerald formally, looking intently at the ground, and digging a root of grass out of the roadway with his toe, 'that it is my duty not to let you out of my sight.'
'Ha!' ejaculated the girl, her nostrils dilating, and a succession of strange emotions, satisfaction, doubt and anxiety, chasing each other rapidly across her expressive features.
The disgraced man walked towards the car and clambered up on one side like a man in a dream, his companion mounted the other and drove rapidly away. As soon as they were out of earshot of the girl, he said, 'the fact is, that in the present excited state of feeling in the country, you are much safer for a few nights in our barracks than in your own house.' Trevor said nothing. These words explained his companion's attitude, but it did not affect the sudden realization of the outer consequences of his act, which had come upon him like a blow. His senses were stunned for the time being, and only perceived an endless vista of stone walls swiftly hurrying past.
Rounding the first corner, out of sight of the cottage, the D. I. urged his horse to a gallop, which he kept up the whole six miles to the town. The road consisted of a succession of steep hills joining plateau to plateau, and leading always downwards from the higher ground to the valley beneath. Down these the light car rattled and bounced, jolting and swaying as either wheel passed over a larger fragment of rock than usual; often for yards at a time their velocity carried them along upon one wheel, the other spinning violently in the air; the smaller stones flew to every side from the good gray horse's hoof-strokes as he stretched to his work over the flint-strewn road. Soon the poor beast was in a lather, but neither of the men moved or spoke or took note of the rush fields, with the sod walls between, that flitted past, each one so like the last that they appeared to get not a step further on their journey. It was a nightmare of endless sameness. Still they sat fast, the one straining his eyes eagerly over the winding road beneath them, the other looking straight in front of him with eyes that saw nothing and a mind that had no room for wonder at such furious haste upon the part of a man who was proverbially merciful to his cattle.
As they approached the town, Fitzgerald's face grew longer and longer, and he drove ever more and more recklessly, until they had clattered and slithered down the last hill, and sweeping round the curve, came in sight of a figure running laboriously along the dusty road in front of them. Then his eyes lightened, and he muttered to himself: 'I think we can just do it; but it was a narrow squeak, I allowed him too long a start on such a hilly road.' The figure, when they overtook it, proved to be that of the wounded man's son; the blood was streaming from gashes in his naked feet, where they had been cut by the sharp flints upon the rough mountain road, and his breath was coming in deep sobs. As the car drew abreast of him, he caught hold of the step beneath Trevor's feet and ran by his side for a few paces, but the driver leaned across the well of the car and slashed at him savagely with the whip; the long, thin lash lapped itself round the ragged body and bare legs of the lad, nearly spinning him off his feet as it uncurled. He let go his hold with a yell of pain, and dropped behind showing his teeth in a grin of disappointed malevolence; but still he continued doggedly running on.
'That was Flannigan's son, surely,' said Trevor, startled out of his trance.
'I know,' replied Fitzgerald briefly, whipping up his horse afresh, and soon the boy was hidden from them in a rolling cloud of dust. But on turning the next corner they found themselves at the beginning of the long street of the little town, and he had to slacken pace again. The roadway was blocked with heaps of wood and tar-barrels, and behind each pane of glass in the wretched windows the length of the street was fixed a tallow candle, in readiness for the illumination of the evening. Groups of men were lounging about the doorways, amongst whom were seen a few women wearing white aprons, the badge of 'the most ancient profession in the world.'
The car threaded its way with difficulty through these varied obstructions, the police officer and his friend being the recipients of more than one scowling glance or smothered curse; but once clear of them, Fitzgerald urged the horse to his speed again, and galloped up the hill beyond.
'What's all the hurry about?' asked Trevor, now awake to his surroundings.
'That boy is here to tell them about you,' was the reply; and he relapsed into silence again, his position brought home to him more forcibly than ever.
The next moment a shout was heard, followed by a hoarse roar; and looking down the slope they could see, in the gathering dusk, a black mass surging up the hill behind them, the white aprons gleaming in the forefront like the feathering of surf upon a wind-blown billow. But the barrack gates had clanged to behind them before the foremost of their pursuers could come within reach, and the mob swept in a torrent round the base of the building, uttering cries of rage, and leaping up against the walls, like wolves who have been disappointed of their prey.
'Give him up to us,' they shouted. 'We want the murdherer of Pether Flannigan. We'll tear the heart out of the bloody tyrant.'
'The black curse be on the quality,' screamed a woman's strident treble, high above the rest. 'Give us the man that's made orphans of a poor man's childer, or we'll pull the whole place about yer ears.'
'Faith,' said Fitzgerald with a gentle chuckle, 'that was a near thing; and, all things considered, I'm just as well pleased after all that the barracks are not in the middle of their quarter to-night, or there's no knowing what might happen.'
The whole of that night all kinds of rumors were rife in the town, but nothing definite was ascertained. Orators declaimed to excited crowds round the bonfires, rousing them to boiling-point. The Catholics, especially those of the baser sort, were loud in their accusations against Trevor, denouncing the accident as a deliberate cold-blooded murder, and finding in it a political significance as the last act of despairing tyranny on the part of the Saxon in revenge for his overthrow. They swore that the man who had thus dared to insult the hopes of a budding nation should pay for his insolent mockery with his blood. The other party shrugged their shoulders, and declared it would be folly to interfere with the Nationalists in such a mood; it was hard lines on Trevor, no doubt, but it was his own fault for being such a fool. If he were once returned for trial, it would be all up with him; for no Irish jury would be found to acquit him, and the Government would not dare to interfere at such a crisis. The only hope for him was that the man should not die at all, and that could hardly be called a hope.
The next morning, hearing that Flannigan had taken a turn for the worse, Fitzgerald set out with a magistrate, in order to take his deposition before the end should come. Half-way there they met the doctor returning from his visit. He told them that the charge of shot had completely shattered the shoulder-blade—a wound which was not necessarily mortal in the case of a young man of strong constitution; but at his patient's age, the shock to the system alone was bound to prove fatal, and he was rapidly sinking, though he had still some hours of life before him. As he was leaving, the priest had actually arrived to administer the last offices to the dying man.
'I think,' said Fitzgerald, as the doctor drove on upon his way, 'that I'll walk up one or two of these hills. This poor beast of mine got rather a gruelling last night, and I don't want him to have a permanent grudge against this road;' and, to the magistrate's surprise, he walked the whole of the remainder of the journey.
As they came up to the cottage, they could see, as once before, over the half door into its interior. The priest was standing by the bedside holding the vessel of holy oil in his hands; and through the crisp morning air the last words of the sacrament of Extreme Unction rang clear upon their ears:
'Through this holy unction,' and they could see the sweep of the priest's arm, as he made the sign of the cross upon the sick man's forehead, 'and through His most tender mercy the Lord pardon thee whatever sins thou hast committed with the senses of thy body and with the thoughts and desires of thy heart. Amen.'
'Amen,' echoed the two men, and swinging open the half door entered the room. The priest turned from bestowing the blessing, and his eyes fell upon the magistrate; he started, and a sudden flame of apprehension leapt into life in his eyes, which was answered by a smile deep down in Fitzgerald's. And then was seen a curious sight: a conflict of religions, of parties, of races, over the dying body of one man. Another human life was the stake.
'I have come to take your deposition,' said the magistrate, advancing into the room to the side of the bed.
'Why, how is this?' interrupted the priest hoarsely, licking his lips with his tongue. 'Why was I not told that this had not been done?'
'Why, what differ does it make?' asked the girl anxiously from the foot of the bed.
The priest's nostrils distended and he opened his mouth to speak, but restrained himself. He turned to the bed and said: 'You wish to depose that Mr. Trevor shot you after having threatened to do so?'
'Ay,' said the man; 'he said he'd shute me, an' shute me he did.'
Anxiety gave way to triumph in the priest's eyes, but prematurely, for the dying man's gaze followed Fitzgerald's significant look to the sacred vessel that the priest still grasped in his hand, and he continued—'But what is all that to me? I'm done with the affairs of this life. I've had my absolution for all my sins thought and done. I'm done with the wurruld an' the wurruld's done with me. I'm nat to ate nor spake more. An' I forgive him.'
'You needn't mind about the absolution,' urged the priest in his eagerness, letting the mask slip, and the glare of fanaticism shine through, 'I'll see that that's made all right: I'll get you a dispensation. But you must make some statement before you die.'
'I tell ye,' said the old man querulously, and raising himself excitedly upon his elbow, 'I forgive him. Foreby, Misther Trevor's bin a good master to me up to now. An' I'll make no statement. An' I won't be stirred from that wurrud by man nor praste.' But the effort was too much for him, and the next moment he fell back upon the pillow gasping, the bed dyed red with his life-blood; his wound had broken out afresh.
With a despairing cry his daughter threw herself on her knees by the bedside, and the two laymen unbaring themselves reverently in the presence of Death, withdrew into the open air to await his advent. Ten minutes afterwards the old man had ceased to breathe, without having again opened his lips.
'It's lucky for our friend Trevor,' said Fitzgerald to his companion, as they drove thoughtfully homeward, 'that the priest made that mistake about the sacrament, and that the Irish peasant has such an ingrained reverence for forms. The old man was evidently set upon his delusion, whether he got it from his daughter or no, and if he had made that statement, you would have had to commit Trevor for trial, and he would equally surely have been hanged. As it is, I don't think any committal is necessary.'
'Now I know why you were so anxious to walk up all those hills,' the magistrate dryly replied; 'but it wouldn't have done to arrive after his death.'
'No; that wouldn't have done at all. The fat would have been in the fire then, with a vengeance. But, as it is, they have no cause for complaint.'
It turned out as Fitzgerald said. When the case was brought before them for a preliminary hearing, the magistrates decided that in the face of his victim's refusal to testify against Trevor there was no case for a jury. At this decision there was agitation in some quarters, and talk about class feeling and the straining of justice on behalf of individuals; but everybody felt that both sides were tarred with the same brush, and the Catholics no doubt perceived that they had sold themselves: the better sort amongst them sympathized with Trevor's misfortune, and held aloof from the more extreme element. The matter was not vigorously pushed, and soon dropped into oblivion.