Chapter II (4)

Still Johnny had a daring and ingenious turn of mind. Early the next morning, in Rathbeg, a village some few miles from Letterard, much excitement was awakened by the discovery of certain handbills which had been posted up on walls and doors in several conspicuous places. They were white foolscap sheets, written upon in a large round hand to the following effect:--

_Men of Rathbeg! Assemble in your Thousands this Saturday evening to Mow the Meadow of the evicted Tenant, Felix Moriarty, on the Town-land of Gortramakilleen at Letterard. Down with Tyrants!_

These placards must have been affixed during the night, and nobody in Rathbeg knew anything about the matter, a secrecy which, together with the shortness of the notice given, suggested that some peculiar urgency in Felix Moriarty’s affairs made it expedient to render him the required assistance without incurring the observation of the constabulary. Such a state of things was not by any means unprecedented, and would in itself strongly dispose the men of Rathbeg to be active on his behalf, although none of them were acquainted with Moriarty except vaguely by name, or indeed knew much more about little, out-of-the-way Letterard than that it had for proprietor an ill-reputed landowner. On the other hand most people were just then too busy getting in their hay to spare easily even the fag-end of the lingering daylight, especially as the unsettled aspect of the weather made every dry hour doubly precious. And to be sure, it was a long step from Rathbeg to Letterard. Hence there were abundant materials, for the debate which was carried on in and about Finucane’s public for a considerable time after the finding of the summons.

Theig Ahern, the village orator, urged eloquently that it would be a good job to lend anybody a helping hand “against the likes of such a notorious, ould, black-hearted, naygurly, exterminatin’, widow-robbin’, childer-starvin’ miscreant of a land-grabber as ould Warden, himself and his sheriff’s writs.” But then Timothy Dolan argued briefly, yet effectively, that there were plenty of as good jobs, and better, to be done in their own bits of fields, without tramping half a dozen miles over the country after them. The hearers who said “Ay, bedad,” and “Thrue for you,” to this sentiment seemed nearly as numerous as those who received it with murmurs of “mane-spirited” and “unmanly.” So the issue remained doubtful.

Meanwhile, the originator of the discussion, seated at his favourite post on the wall of his Letterard oat-field, was speculating about the result. Not many hours had passed since Johnny Quin had made his way home under the waning moonlight, through dewy fields, from his stealthy bill-sticking at Rathbeg. He had himself composed and written and copied the notices over-night in the emptied National schoolroom, with some assistance from his old friend, Peter Cleary, the teacher, to whom he did not communicate their contents. Mr Cleary, however, though he preferred to be discreetly ignorant, may have guessed at their purport from the words which he was occasionally called upon to spell. “Och not at all, Johnny. There does be but one _r_ in ‘tyrant,’ and all the _i’s_ you have is a _y_ and an _a_. You always made an oncommon bad offer at the orthography.”

And now Johnny, blinking half-drowsily in the sunshine, spent most of the day in looking forward hopefully to the success of his plot. It had occurred to him yesterday, when enjoying his own wittiness embodied in the absurd haycock, and feeling how much that enjoyment would be enhanced by the presence of spectators. To assemble these by a stratagem which would “raise the laugh on them” for coming was a project with a twofold charm, and it fully occupied his mind from the moment of its first conception until he had evolved and, so far as lay in his power, carried out all the details.

If he had been asked what he expected to gain in case things happened as he hoped, he might have truthfully replied, a fine shindy entirely, for that outcome was undoubtedly uppermost in his anticipations. Suppose that a dozen or so of the Rathbeg men were moved by his bogus summons to tramp over with their scythes in the evening, and, upon arriving, found their job was nothing more than simply the removal of the pygmy cock from its ridiculous site. “Bejabers, it’s ragin’ mad they all ’ill be as sure as sure,” Johnny said, chuckling as he rehearsed the scene. “‘Where’s Moriarty’s meadow that’s evicted?’ says they, ‘and that we’re come to mow for?’ ‘Is it, where is it?’ says I. ‘Musha, where else but here,’ I says--for on the roof I’ll be--‘up over your fools’ heads. And I’ll bet me brogues it’s the quarest little meadow ever a man was evicted out of,’ says I. Leppin’ they’ll be.”

About the incidents of this promising fray Johnny felt no anxiety at all. He did not, of course, propose to encounter the exasperated visitors quite single-handed. The stir of their advent would, he knew, bring plenty of the neighbours flocking to see what was up, and there would be no lack of Letterard lads to side with him. What did cause him some uneasiness was the doubt whether any party would actually come. His appeal might have been disregarded. The Rathbeg farmers might be too busy for such expeditions; or they might know enough about Letterard affairs to be aware that there was in reality no talk of evicting Felix Moriarty, and so perceive the hoax. For this reason Johnny kept his own council, lest the failure of his joke should “raise the laugh” on _him_.

But while the sunset was still unfurling in the west a wide fan of pink-flushed feathery cloudlets, which seemed to be waving off a misty little moon, like a white rose-leaf, fluttering up out of the faint green east, Johnny’s fears were dispersed by what he deemed a very joyful sight. From his coign of vantage he espied coming up the lane something which he presently ascertained to be a troop of men, several among whom carried scythes or sickles. And, more than this, along with them moved a brilliant blue and scarlet object, drawn by a pair of horses.

“Glory be! if it isn’t a mowin’-machine they’re after bringin’!” he said in high delight. “Well now, that bangs Banagher.” And he laughed so uncircumspectly that he almost lost his footing on the slope of Moriarty’s thatch, to which he had mounted. A mowing-machine it was, the fact being that Theig Ahern, the orator, in the absence of his elder brother, a well-to-do farmer, had taken upon himself, contrary to advice, to borrow it for the demonstration against the evictors.

With his torn straw hat flapping in the gusty breeze, Johnny stood up tall beside his dumpy haycock, and surveyed the approach of the cavalcade, smiling his broadest smile. But there were no smiles on the faces that looked up at him. The party from Rathbeg were by this time distinctly out of humour. They had failed to get any satisfactory information about Moriarty’s meadow from the following of unoccupied gossoons whom their progress had attracted, and this led them to apprehend that they had somehow blundered about the road. No suspicion of a trick had as yet occurred to them; but they were not by any means in a mood to take one in good part.

Therefore when Johnny, grinning more broadly than ever, replied to inquiries: “Is it Moriarty’s meadow you was lookin’ for? Sure amn’t I meself standin’ on it before your eyes? And a grand big one it is. Only I dunno will yous find it very handy drivin’ your pair-horse yoke into it. Maybe it’s lucky I done the mowin’ meself,” his answer evoked looks and language sufficiently threatening to make him glance round rapidly, singling out the friendly faces, as he took a firmer grip of the sturdy blackthorn, which he had providently hidden behind the haycock.

An excited parley ensued, growing momentarily angrier and louder, while Farmer Ahern’s fiery chestnuts fumed and fidgeted, spurning the rough road, and flashing the set blades of their machine in restless starts to and fro. Then on a brief pause a voice rose clear and shrill. It proceeded from little Dan Molloy, who had perched himself on a wall adjoining the cabin, and it said,--

“Sure, now, if _he’s_ so fond of mowin’”--Dan pointed to Johnny--“mightn’t you take your fine yoke in there”--he pointed across to the open gate of Johnny’s oat-field--“and give it a turn through his bit of oats?”

This suggestion, which was received with an assenting laugh, roused acute horror in Johnny, such peril did it threaten to his thriving crop, the very core of his hope and pride. Down he hurled himself with a clatter to prevent the outrage, aiming, as he passed, at the mischievous visage of Dan Molloy a resentful cuff, which Dan adroitly ducked. But Johnny’s action only precipitated the event he was dreading. For the restless horses, scared by his abrupt rush towards their heads, broke away from all control and bolted straight into the field.

Alas for the lovely young oats as four pairs of galloping hoofs and a pair of wide-rimmed iron wheels burst wildly into them, followed by a throng of trampling feet which wrought hardly less grievous havoc. Every moment was destroying among the soft green blades and haulms with their silken ears the work of many days’ sunshine and dewy air, when suddenly, before the careering runaways had been brought to a standstill, another yet more alarming object diverted the attention of their pursuers.

Johnny’s reserve on the subject of his jest had known one exception, very unfortunately for his confidante’s peace of mind. She was his mother, a little old widow woman, prematurely aged and crippled by rheumatism, so that she had to be carried to and fro between her bed and her armchair, her only journeys. Her son Johnny was most kind to her. It had been with the best intentions that he enlivened their morning meal by telling her all about the grand trick he had just played on the Rathbeg lads, and how infuriated they would be when they landed over with their scythes to cut nothing good or bad, and what a laugh it would raise on them, and what a splendid row was certain to follow. “It’s much,” he said, “if somebody’s head isn’t broke over it.” And then he had gone off whistling in the highest spirits, leaving little Mrs Quin a prey to the blackest forebodings.

All the long, lonely day she brooded uninterruptedly upon the dreadful possibilities of the coming encounter, in which crooked, shining scythe-blades, wielded by rash and wrathful hands, might play a part as fatal as if they were flashes from a murky cloud. “They’ll be murdherin’ one another up there,” she said to herself, “and me sittin’ here all the while like an ould tabby-cat in comfort by the chimney-corner, and no abler to do a hand’s turn agin’ it.”

Johnny’s fear that nobody might come formed her sole hope, and of that she was bereft about the pink sunset time, when little Joe O’Hea ran in to her with a jug of sour milk and the news that he had just seen a great lot of men carrying scythes, and a quare big yoke of a mowin’-machine going along up the lane towards Felix Moriarty’s. At these tidings Mrs Quin’s heart sank. Then her mind swiftly caught at and grasped a desperate resolution. “Joe, sonny,” she said to Joe, who was on the point of racing off for another view of the remarkable machine, “do you see that bucket of wather?” It was a zinc bucket set brimful near the door. “I want you,” she continued, “to take a couple of standin’ leps in the middle of it.”

“But sure, ma’am, wouldn’t I be splashin’ it all over the floor and dhrowndin’ everythin’?” Joe objected, amazed.

“Never you mind, sonny; do as I bid you like a good boy. Lep away, and I’ll give you a penny,” said Mrs Quin. Whereupon Joe, although still puzzled, by no means loth, did jump so energetically that the contents of the bucket were speedily dispersed in sparkling showers, a bountiful share of which thoroughly drenched his own garments.

“That’s an iligant child,” Mrs Quin said approvingly, “ne’er a dhry stitch there’s on you at all. Now come here till I tell you what else I’m wantin’ you to do. You know, Joey, it’s a terrible wicked thing,” she went on impressively, as he stood by her, dripping and expectant, “it’s a terrible wicked, dangerous thing for childer to get meddlin’ wid the fire.”

“_I_ don’t ever meddle wid it,” Joe hastened to protest. “Biddy and Paddy does be at it of an odd while, and I do be biddin’ them let it alone and not be burnin’ themselves up.”

“To be sure, avic, to be sure, so you would. But now, just for this very once, and you’re to not ever go do such a thing again _at all_ in the len’th of your life’s days, I want you--may goodness forgive me--to take the little matchbox you’ll find behind the blue jug on the dresser, and run out to the back of the house, where you can aisy raich to the thatch from the high bank of the field, and strike a few of the blue heads of the matches, jewel, on the rough side of the box--och but I’m the ould sinner!--and stick them lightin’ into the thatch here and there, as if you was stickin’ pins in a pincushion, and you’ll see the fine flare-up there’ll be directly. It’s as dry as tinder.”

This commission was surprisingly to the taste of six-year-old Joe. “And what more’ll I do after that, ma’am?” he said, eager for further agreeable instructions. “There’s the pigsty--”

“Sure, then, you might be runnin’ up the field and screechin’ fire and thieves and all manner,” said Mrs Quin; “it’s a sort of game, you see.”

But as Joe gleefully darted out, armed with the small yellow box, she shook her head stiffly. “Och now meself’s the wicked ould woman. But deed it’s murdherin’ themselves they’d be--and Johnny. And if I sent them only a message,” she argued, “sure they might be apt to think the crathur was romancin’, and just keep on fightin’; but seein’s believin’. And the child’s drippin’ wet, forby his clothes bein’ woollen every thread. He couldn’t set himself alight anyhow. May goodness forgive me. It’s killin’ me his poor mother had a right to be for puttin’ such divilment in the crathur’s head.”

So we can easily understand how it came to pass that in the midst of chasing the driverless mowing-machine several people became aware of a thick smoke column rising on the edge of the slope below them, and of red flames shooting up through the blue cloud, growing rapidly stronger and brighter in the faded daylight. At the same time they observed a small figure rushing about with shrill shrieks in the adjacent field. Joe, in fact, had been so much scared by the sudden huge blaze of the dry thatch that he performed his screaming lustily.

Among the first to see was Johnny Quin. “Mercy around!” he said, “there’s our house blazin’ wild, and Herself inside it.”

He outstripped all the others in their rush down-hill, and reached the scene of the conflagration none too soon, for the kitchen was a smother of smoke, through which wisps of fiery straw had already begun to drop fiercely about the helpless old woman as she sat distracted by conflicting terrors. She could hardly realise her relief when she found herself where she could breathe and see, and in the arms of her Johnny safe and sound.

Nevertheless the mother and son spent that night uncomfortably enough, huddled in a corner of their devastated dwelling, under an extemporised shelter of potato-sacks, while all around them hummed and plashed through their charred rafters the drops of a downpour which had arrived just too late to save their roof. Johnny sat in mournful meditation.

“Well now,” he said at last, “it’s quare bad luck. There’s me oats destroyed, that was grand, and the machine smashed, and the horse’s leg cut woeful, and our bit of good thatch ruinated over our heads--and all wid intendin’ a joke.”

“It’s on your knees you ought to be, me lad,” said Mrs Quin, the incendiary, “thankin’ goodness that the feet of you aren’t raped off wid them hijjis slashin’ scythes, and meself not burned into ashes and cinders schemin’ to purvint yous doin’ murdher, instead of talkin’ about bad luck.”

But Johnny’s gratitude remained undemonstrative. “I’m thinkin’,” he said, “it’s a fool’s work to be raisin’ a laugh on any people. For you never can rightly tell what else mayn’t take and rise up along wid it. Ay, bedad--and apter than not somethin’ you won’t like.”

DELAYED IN TRANSMISSION

When anybody in Meenaclochran gives a party, the word which goes round to bid the neighbours often has far to travel over the wide bog-land, and is conveyed by very miscellaneous messengers, all manner of wayfarers being pressed into the service. This was especially often the case with the Nolans and the M‘Nultys, two of the most sociably-disposed families in the place, and living remotely at opposite ends of the spacious and lonesome Cregganmore bog. Both households, however, comprised lively young people, while both were a shade or so more prosperous in their farming than is common in that district, and owned the warmest hearths and the widest floors. Consequently, among circumstances thus propitious, it was not likely that the obstacles merely of long miles and rough walking would prove insuperable when either wished to let the other know “there would be dancing in it” on such or such a night. As they were on most friendly terms they of course took care that the dates of their entertainments should not clash; but everybody knows how difficult it occasionally is to prevent this, and not long ago, by a chapter of those accidents which will sometimes happen, Dinny Breen and John Hickey met on Tackaberry’s Bridge, Dinny charged with an invitation from the Nolans to the M‘Nultys, and John with one from the M‘Nultys to the Nolans, both for the same Saturday evening.

Tackaberry’s Bridge is about half way between the two white farmhouses, humping itself up in an abrupt, ungainly loop, like a travelling caterpillar, over the Murna River, which flows through the middle of the bog. Though roughly built it shows more traces of design, such as it is, than the rest of the road, which seems just a track worn by feet choosing the firmest ground as they go to and fro. Stepping-stones occur here and there, and are found convenient by pedestrians in soft weather, but naturally tend to discourage any other kind of traffic.

As Dinny Breen sat now on the low parapet under the only little tree, a stooping willow, visible far and wide, he looked down into the clear brown water and said: “If the both of them has company axed for the one night, it stands to raison that naither of them could be goin’ out in any case. So there’s no great good in me trampin’ on all the way to M‘Nulty’s.”

“There is not, bedad,” said John Hickey. “Nor in meself, for the matter of that, to be mindin’ about lavin’ word wid the Nolans.”

“Because,” said Dinny, “this is a very handy day to be borryin’ the gun off Pat Kelly, when we have the dogs along, and the polis are away wid themselves to Loughmore Petty Sessions. A race’s runnin’ on the whole of them.”

“True for you; they are so bedad,” said John.

The last-named consideration was an important one, owing to the fact that neither the proposed borrowers nor lender happened to possess a licence, which made immunity from the chance of encounters with inquisitive patrols appear a highly desirable feature in an afternoon’s sport. Accordingly, the opportunity was pronounced too good to be thrown away, and the two faithless youths were soon happily engaged among bogholes and tussocks, and heathery boulders and golden-burning furze bushes, with no further thought of Nolans or M‘Nultys.

Anyone whose experience has lain in places like Meenaclochran will understand how improbably large an amount of good luck would be needed to keep the news of an entertainment from the ears of an uninvited neighbour. No such exceptional quantity intervened on this occasion. Very little _contrariness_ of things, on the other hand, commonly suffices to ensure the worst possible complexion being put on the matter; and that was now amply supplied. A few unfortunate remarks from tactless or ill-disposed acquaintances, a few slight misrepresentations, inadvertent or otherwise, and the thing was done. The seeds of offence were safely sown and might be trusted to thrive apace. Only a short growing space was wanted to ripen the conviction alike of Nolans and M‘Nultys that they had been treated by each other with black ingratitude, if not insulted outrageously; and their firm belief in their wrongs was supersaturated with bitterness. The mood of that goddess excluded from the wedding feast, or of that fairy forgotten at the christening, may well have been enviable in comparison, since all the world has heard tell how they gave expression to their resentment with a satisfactory thoroughness far beyond the reach of any little farming folk “looking as sulky as a pig” at one another on a lonely Donegal bog. Although the latter had certainly no wish to conceal their state of mind, pride forbade them to manifest it in public by utterances more explicit than enigmatical innuendoes, coupled with the cast of countenance aforesaid; and this helped to keep the origin of the grievance in obscurity, thereby lessening the chances of an explanation.

Consequently, before many weeks went by, all Meenaclochran had begun to remark with interest that “Nolans and M‘Nultys weren’t so very great these times, whatever ailed them;” and soon afterwards it became clear that they were “black out altogether.”

The estrangement may perhaps have gratified two or three mischief-makers; it undoubtedly caused much distress to more than one of the persons most concerned. Generally speaking, it was regarded as an inconvenient and untoward occurrence, and if it had made a newspaper paragraph, might have been said, with more than average truth, to have thrown a gloom over the whole parish. On nobody, however, did it produce less effect than on the pair who had brought it about. Dinny Breen and John Hickey, being but slightly acquainted with either of the fronted parties, and finding their chief pleasure in the company of their terriers, stravading over the hills and bogs, were equally ignorant and unconcerned about this detail in the social affairs of their neighbourhood. They might have stated accurately that it was “all one to them so long as they could be gettin’ after the rabbits, and birds and troutses.”

But as the autumn waned into winter, diminishing their opportunities for those favourite pursuits, they found themselves impelled to devise other pastimes. And one tedious morning in Christmas week, said Dinny to John: “D’you mind the day a while ago you and me was bringin’ round word of a party to Nolans and M‘Nultys, and divil a bit of it we brought them at all?”

“I do so, bedad,” said John. “That was the time we got the three brace of snipe up at the end of the lough, and took them home along wid the rabbits sittin’ in the middle of two big loads of bracken, and me hayro of war at the barracks”--he referred to the police sergeant--“lookin’ over the gate at us and we goin’ by.”

“Because,” said Dinny, “I was thinkin’ why wouldn’t we be bringin’ it to them now? Better late than never, as the man said when he ate the bad egg. We needn’t be tellin’ them what Saturday it was, so they’ll never suppose but it’s the next, that’s St Stephen’s Day. I’d like to see what ould Anastasia M‘Nulty would say to it. There’s apt to be some quare talk out of her, for Mick Gahan was tellin’ me she’s ragin’ mad agin all the Nolans this while back, whatever’s took her.”

“Lookin’ as bitter as sut at one another they are this long time, sure enough. Troth now, I wouldn’t wonder if the whole pack of them would be leppin’ over it,” John said hopefully. “I’m passin’ by Nolan’s place this evenin’, and I could as aisy as not look in.”

“And I’ll leg it over to M‘Nulty’s,” said Dinny, “for I might as well be doin’ one thing as another.”

The two friends executed their design without difficulty, but, so far as John Hickey was concerned, with somewhat disappointing results. For when he put his head in at the Nolans’ back door, he saw nobody except Mrs Peter, rolling out a flour cake on the table, and in reply to his communication all she said was: “Musha, I hope they’re well,” with an air of the utmost composure. Then to his inquiry whether he should convey an answer for her, she rejoined simply and placidly: “Ah, go and fish.” So that he retired with a sense of failure.

Dinny Breen’s adventures were more interesting as he found at home Mrs Anastasia M‘Nulty who received his misleading message with a tirade which almost came up to his expectations in vehemence and vigour. She ended an impassioned critique upon the characters and conduct of the Nolan family, past and present, by requesting him to tell them from her that unless they “kep’ their impidence to themselves they would be very apt to get it back, along wid somethin’ they might happen not to like,” which Dinny solemnly promised to do. Whereupon, as he was passing the haggart gate, out after him sped Molly M‘Nulty, who must have been running along the other side of the dyke on purpose to intercept him, and who breathlessly explained that “he needn’t repeat e’er a word her grandmother was after sayin’, for she’d seemed in a quare cross humour the whole day, and didn’t mane anythin’ at all, good or bad.” So Dinny more honestly pledged himself on no account to deliver Mrs M‘Nulty’s refusal.

Now these things would scarcely have helped the most acute and furthest-sighted to predict what did actually happen on that next Saturday evening, or to account for it with any certainty. Who, indeed, can say how it came about? But whether through the genial influence of the season, or a limited choice of gaieties, through amity or _ennui_, _Liebe oder Langeweile_, the fact is that in a moonless obscurity between seven and eight o’clock two parties of people, coming from opposite directions, rushed almost into one another’s arms on Tackaberry’s Bridge as they fled towards the willow tree for shelter from a shower of rattling hailstones.

“Musha, good gracious! and is it yourself, Mrs M‘Nulty, ma’am?” said Julia Nolan, becoming aware of whom she had jostled against. “Maybe it’s too soon we are, then, steppin’ over to your place?”

“Pather Nolan, begorrah--I didn’t expec’ to see you till we got to the farm,” said Art M‘Nulty. “And what way at all are you facin’ the now?”

Meanwhile Peter’s eldest son was shaking hands interminably with Art’s youngest daughter, and saying: “And how’s yourself this long time, Molly asthore? Sure I haven’t seen a sight of you for a month of Sundays.”

“Somebody’s after makin’ fools of us, that’s the truth,” declared Joe M‘Nulty when facts had been stated.

“And a dale our best plan then,” said Peter Nolan, “is to not be made fools of. Just step along home wid us the whole of yous, the way you was intindin’, and ’twill be a comical thing if we can’t get a drop out of the bottle, and a scrape off of the fiddle handy enough.”

Well and good, as the old _shanachies_ say. Peter’s suggestion was unanimously adopted; and since shortly afterwards the neighbours were not only remarking how “M‘Nultys and Nolans had patched it up,” but were also agreeably excited by the prospect of “young Pather Nolan and Molly M‘Nulty gettin’ married at the Shrove,” we may perhaps regard the results of this second misdeed on the part of Dinny and John as an exception to the rule that two wrongs don’t make a right. Still, by way of a better moral, we should bear in mind that only for the opportune clatter of the hail-shower the consequences would probably have been widely different. For if the two families had passed each other by unbeknownst in the dark, to arrive cold and wet at empty, shut-up houses, it is hard to say what complications might not have ensued. The chances certainly are that no such wedding would have taken place at the Shrovetide, if indeed it had not been put off hopelessly for ever and a day. So great are the perils that environ practical jokers and their victims.

FOR COMPANY

Larry Behan, stepping over from Loughmore to Clochranbeg, a few perches short of the Silver Lane met with Joe Hedican, leading his sorrel mare, and said to him: “What at all ails yous?”

“Is it what ails us?” said Joe.

“Sure what else?” said Larry. “And the mare in a lather and a thrimble, and yourself comin’ along as unstuddy as a thing on wires. Lookin’ fit to drop down of a hape together the two of yous are.”

“And why wouldn’t we have a right to be?” said Joe, “and ourselves just after behouldin’ what we won’t either of us be the better for till the day we’re waked.”

“Bedad then, that same’s the plisant talk for me to be hearin’, wid the light darkenin’ before me every minyit,” said Larry, “And so it’s wakin’ th’ ould mare you’ll be one of these days, says you? Well now, I niver heard the like of that. But, to be sure, I’m not very long in the County Donegal. I hope you’ll send me word of the buryin’, for I’d be sorry to miss it. ’Tis the comical notion, if you come to considher it.”

He laughed, upon considheration, with much noise, at anyrate, but as the mare rolled her eyes wildly at him, and Joe only shook his head the more ominously, he withdrew abruptly from their unsympathetic countenances, though he persisted in his guffaw. When he had gone half a dozen yards he faced round and shouted: “Might you happen to know is the Garveys’ boat in yet?” Joe, however, was just mounting, and he plunged off at full speed, without seeming to hear. “Fine floundherin’ and bouncin’ about he has, and be hanged to him, himself and his ould baste,” Larry said with indignation. “If I thought the Garveys were like to be stoppin’ out late I’d lave it till to-morra, and turn back now, but I couldn’t tell I mightn’t lose the job altogether wid delayin’.”

This was not the risk he chose to run, and he presently reached the entrance of the high-banked, winding boreen, whence he threw a look backwards in hopes that some fellow-travellers might be catching him up. Nothing, however, moved on the lonely moorland road behind him except the gallop of Joe Hedican’s horse hurling itself in the wrong direction. So he went forward without the prospect of any company.

The Silver Lane twists through an undulating sea of softly heaped-up mounds, scantily clad with bent-grass, pale and dry, and dark, harsh-textured furzes. These are rooted in almost pure sand, silvery hued, yet under strong sunbeams yielding dim golden glimmers that give a faint purple to the shadow in its curves and folds. But the touch of this March evening’s twilight left it all cold white and grey. It lies deep and powdery on the narrow roadway, so that a man has not even the sound of his own footsteps to reassure him, should he be disposed to feel lonesome and apprehensive. Larry Behan was feeling both as he passed the second sharp turn of the lane and came to a place where a crevice-like path pierced the sandhill on his left. Here he noticed several huge hoof-prints, some of them impressed with violence upon the low buttresses and ledges of the banks, which, in the ordinary course of things, no horse would have trodden.

“Hereabouts it is they seen whatever it was frighted them,” he said to himself, “and set the mare prancin’ and dancin’. ’Twas the quare capers she had. Between us and harm--look where she flounced right across the road, and scraped herself up agin the furze bush: her hair’s thick on it.”

He was hastening on, longing and dreading to be round the next corner, when he heard close by a sound--such a homely, commonplace one that he experienced hardly a moment of panic before out of the little by-path ran a very small boy, swinging a large tin can. As a general rule Larry would have seen nothing particularly attractive about the black-headed, bare-footed, flannel-petticoated gossoon, and would probably have allowed him to pass on unaccosted. But in the present circumstances he could have desired no better company, for an innocent child is the most efficacious safeguard possible when uncanny things are about. Another encouraging reflection also occurred to him immediately: “’Twas that now, and divil a thing else scared the two of them--the little brat skytin’ by, clatterin’ his can, and the light shinin’ off it on a suddint.” Still, this view of the matter, though plausible and rational, was not quite certain enough to justify him in letting slip the chance of an escort, and he therefore set about engaging the child in conversation. He did so rather clumsily, for lack of the familiarity with children’s society which would have enabled him to fill up the gap between thirty odd and five years old with appropriate small-talk.

“Is it goin’ for water you was, sonny?” he said.

“She sent me to the well again,” said the gossoon, stopping his trot and pointing up the little path to a tangle of briars and long grass in a slight hollow.

“And is it gone dry on you?” said Larry, looking into the empty can.

The reply was a turning of it upside down to show a crack that ran for several inches round the bottom rim. “I can put the top of me littlest finger right through it,” the gossoon said and proved. “It won’t hould e’er a sup at all. And the big jug’s broke too.”

“That’s a bad job,” said Larry.

“There’s nothin’ she can be sendin’ now unless the black kettle itself, that’s as much as I can do to lift when it’s empty inside, let alone full--it’s the size of meself, bedad,” averred Larry’s protector.

“Sure then, she couldn’t ax you to be carryin’ that. Is it far you come?” Larry inquired with some anxiety.

“I dunno,” said the gossoon. “But it’s a terrible ould baste of a big kettle for always wantin’ to be filled. I hate the sight of it sittin’ there on the fire, wid the dirty ould sutty lid tryin’ to lep off it; and then Herself does be bawlin’ to me to run out agin and bring the water before it’s boiled dry. I do be sick and tired of goin’ up the lane wid the heavy can pullin’ out the arm of me all the way back; fit to destroy me, Katty Lonergan says it is. And a while ago I was givin’ it a couple of clumps agin’ a stone, where I seen a weeny crack comin’; so maybe that’s what beginned it. But you needn’t let on, or I’ll be kilt. Sorra a sup it ’ill hould.”

He dropped some small handfuls of the fine sand into the can, and holding it up watched the grains sift slowly out. This experiment he repeated more than once, and Larry, albeit in a hurry, looked on with prudent patience. But at last he suggested: “Mightn’t she be mad if you’re too long delayin’?”

“She does be mad most whiles,” his companion said philosophically, “and I don’t so much mind if she won’t be sendin’ me back wid the ugly ould kettle.”

However, he began to walk on, rattling a couple of cockle-shells that had remained in the can. Larry kept close beside him, and meekly waited when he occasionally stopped to pick up pebbles, or explore rabbit-holes, or start sand-avalanches and cascades by tugging at the colourless roots of the grasses in the slithery banks. It was a slow progress, and the dusk had grown perceptibly greyer by the time that Larry emerged from between them, at a place where the road branches, on the right towards Clochranbeg, on the left towards the great Bog of Greilish.

“And what way are you goin’, avic?” Larry inquired with less anxiety now, having left behind the Silver Lane, which he knew to be the most perilous stage of his journey.

The child pointed to a small cabin standing opposite, a stone’s throw back from the road; a reply that somewhat surprised Larry. For even through the gathering dimness the place looked quite ruinous and deserted, with rifted roof, and rank weeds peering in at frameless windows.

“She’s screechin’ to me,” said the gossoon, and darted off, making for the door. Larry heard nothing but the cockle-shells clattering in the can. “There’s no sort of people,” he said to himself, “would be livin’ in the likes of that, unless it was tinkers stoppin’ awhile. But I see ne’er a sign of an ass or a cart in it. Well now, he was the quare little imp--himself and the big kettle.”

A bit further on he overtook the Widow Nolan, who was going his way, and as they walked along together he casually asked of her how the Silver Lane had come by its bad name. “For,” he said, “since I’m in this parish I met wid many that do be afeared of it, but what’s wrong wid it I niver happint to hear tell.”

“Sure it was before my time,” said Mrs Nolan. “There used to be a woman livin’ in th’ ould empty house you seen at this end of it, and a little boy belongin’ to her, that she gave bad treatment to. Huntin’ him off she was continual to fetch her in big cans full of water out of the well up near the far end of the lane, that you might be noticin’ goin’ by. So one day she sent him wid a great heavy lump of a kettle he couldn’t rightly lift, and tryin’ to fill it the crathur over-balanced himself and fell in after his head, and was got dead-drowned. And ever since then it does be walkin’ there now and agin; and folks say there’s no worser bad luck goin’ than for a body to see a sight of it, or to so much as hear the clink of the can--well, man alive, what’s took you at all?”

“The Lord have mercy on me this day,” said Larry, “and meself just after walkin’ alongside of it, and talkin’ to it, the len’th of the boreen.”

And thenceforward neither of them had any breath to spare for conversation until they at last reached distant--still cruelly distant--Clochranbeg.

THE END

EDINBURGH
COLSTON AND COMPANY LTD
PRINTERS

Mr T. FISHER UNWIN’S

POPULAR NOVELS

=MR T. FISHER UNWIN= has much pleasure in announcing the publication of the following Novels. Notes thereon will be found overleaf:--

SIX SHILLINGS EACH.

THE DAYSPRING. A Romance WILLIAM BARRY. A DRAMA OF SUNSHINE--Played in Homburg MRS AUBREY RICHARDSON. THE SITUATIONS OF LADY PATRICIA W. R. H. TROWBRIDGE. THAT FAST MISS BLOUNT ROY HORNIMAN. ANGLO-AMERICANS LUCAS CLEEVE. THE MISCHIEF OF A GLOVE MRS PHILIP CHAMPION DE CRESPIGNY. HELEN ADAIR LOUIS BECKE. ROSEMONDE BEATRICE STOTT. LAURA’S LEGACY E. H. STRAIN. THE BLACK SHILLING AMELIA E. BARR. THE VINEYARD JOHN OLIVER HOBBES. THE MIS-RULE OF THREE FLORENCE WARDEN. THROUGH SORROW’S GATES HALLIWELL SUTCLIFFE. KITTY COSTELLO MRS ALEXANDER. NYRIA MRS CAMPBELL PRAED. COURT CARDS AUSTIN CLARE. THE KINGDOM OF TWILIGHT FORREST REID. A BACHELOR IN ARCADY HALLIWELL SUTCLIFFE. THE FILIGREE BALL ANNA K. GREEN. MYRA OF THE PINES HERMAN K. VIELE. THYRA VARRICK AMELIA E. BARR. THE SONG OF A SINGLE NOTE AMELIA E. BARR. A BUSH HONEYMOON LAURA M. PALMER ARCHER. THE WATCHER ON THE TOWER A. G. HALES. THE CARDINAL’S PAWN K. L. MONTGOMERY. TUSSOCK LAND ARTHUR H. ADAMS. THE FOOL-KILLER LUCAS CLEEVE. LOVE TRIUMPHANT MRS L. T. MEADE. MOTHERHOOD L. PARRY TRUSCOTT. HE THAT HAD RECEIVED THE FIVE TALENTS ANGUS CLARK. CHINKIE’S FLAT AND OTHER STORIES LOUIS BECKE.

T. FISHER UNWIN’S NEW NOVELS.

THE DAYSPRING--A Romance. By WILLIAM BARRY, D.D., Author of ‘The Wizard’s Knot,’ etc., etc.

This is the lite story of an eager, earnest young soul, rising at length above the illusion of the senses to the clear heights of faith. Noble aims, misconstrued in the mirage of modern Paris, under the charm of a deluding spirituality, bring us to the moment of choice between two paths, one that of so-called Free Love, the other that of supreme self-sacrifice. The dreamy mysticism, the sparkling humour, the sudden brilliances, the delicate fancies which characterise the work of the author of ‘The New Antigone’ are to be found in this newest and perhaps most fascinating of Dr. Barry’s books. A background of adventure is set by the last days of the Second Empire and the Commune of 1871.

A DRAMA OF SUNSHINE--Played in Homburg. By Mrs AUBREY RICHARDSON. (First Novel Library).

A dramatic episode of life in Homburg, at the height of the English season. The characters represent types of men and women actually to be met with in the high social and political world of to-day. A Society Beauty and a Sister of an Anglican Community personify the red Rose of Love, Pride and Gaiety, and the pale Lily of Purity, Aspiration and Repression. In the heart of the Rose, a lily bud unfolds, and in the calyx of the Lily, a rose blossoms. The incidents of the story succeed each other swiftly, reaching a strong _dénoûement_, and working out to a satisfying termination.

THE SITUATIONS OF LADY PATRICIA: A Satire for Idle People. By W. R. H. TROWBRIDGE, Author of ‘The Letters of Her Mother to Elizabeth.’

Lady Patricia is an Englishwoman of a noble but impoverished family, whose girlhood has been spent on the Continent. Left an orphan she comes to England with the independent intention of seeking her own living. Sometimes under her own, sometimes under an assumed name, she takes various situations in England and France, and is brought in contact with many different sets of society both in the upper and the middle classes. In this volume she relates her experiences, and comments upon them with caustic wit. The plan of the work affords the author of ‘The Letters of Her Mother to Elizabeth’ an excellent opportunity of satirising the aristocracy and the _bourgeois gentilshommes_ of England and France, and readers of the earlier volume will be prepared for a book full of piquancy and daring.

THAT FAST MISS BLOUNT. A Novel. By ROY HORNIMAN, Author of ‘The Living Buddha,’ ‘The Sin of Atlantis,’ etc.

There is nothing easier for a girl who has been born in a garrison town of hard-up Service parents than to drift, especially if, as in the case of Philippa, she has been disappointed in her first romance and is left a little soured and hardened. It is so easy to enjoy the tawdry amusements that come her way; and if, like Philippa, she is beautiful, flirtation follows flirtation, men come and go, till it becomes the habit to talk of her as ‘that fast Miss Blount.’ She is not the sort of girl as a rule who gets married. There is something in the atmosphere about her which makes marrying men fight shy of her. Philippa, however, is saved from social shipwreck by marrying in such a way as to rouse the envy of all those who have been her traducers. The background of the story is concerned with the family life of Captain and Mrs Blount’s household. There are also some exciting chapters dealing with the South African war.

ANGLO-AMERICANS. By LUCAS CLEEVE.

The main theme of this story is the fundamental antagonism existing between two characters--an American girl educated in ideas of freedom and independence, and of the subservience of man to woman, and her husband, an English Lord, who expects his wife to regard his career and interests as her own, and to devote herself to them even to the obliteration of herself. The girl’s father is a millionaire, and the story tells incidentally of the illicit means by which his pile was made.

THROUGH SORROW’S GATES. A Tale of the Wintry Heath. By HALLIWELL SUTCLIFFE, Author of ‘Ricroft of Withens,’ etc.

The scene is laid in Halliwell Sutcliffe’s favourite country, the moors of the West Riding, though in the present book he goes even further into the heart of the heath, nearer to that simplicity of feeling and passion which is the real mark of the moor-folk. His characters spring from the moor, as it were, and grow out of it; and not least of these characters is Hester, the impulsive, erring farm lass, who dreamed wild dreams at Windy Farm, and saw herself supplanted by a little, well-born woman rescued from the snow.

KITTY COSTELLO. By Mrs ALEXANDER.

This story--the last that was written by Mrs Alexander--tells the experiences of a well-born, beautiful Irish girl suddenly plunged, somewhere about the ‘forties,’ into commercial circles in a busy English port. The attraction of the book consists rather in the brightly-drawn contrast of the Irish and English temperaments, with their widely differing views of life, than in exciting incidents, though the reader can hardly fail to feel the fascination of the heroine or to be interested in all that befalls her.

NYRIA. By Mrs CAMPBELL PRAED.

The author considers this the most important book she has yet written. Its preparation has engaged her for a long time, and in it she gives her readers the very best of herself. The scene is laid in Rome in the first century A.D., and among the characters are many historical figures. The period offers magnificent opportunities for the writer of romance, and of Mrs Campbell Praed’s imaginative gifts and power of vivid description it is, of course, needless to speak at this time of day. The story, which is a lengthy one, will be found to be full of dramatic situations and thrilling incidents.

COURT CARDS. By AUSTIN CLARE, Author of ‘The Carved Cartoon,’ ‘Pandora’s Portion,’ ‘The Tideway,’ etc.

A romance dated in the closing years of the sixteenth century, and placed on both sides of the border. The time, a stirring one, when the old order changing had not yet wholly yielded place to the new, admits of romantic incidents of every kind, from raiding, kidnapping and gaol-breaking, to mysterious love-making and midnight murder. The intrigues between the English and Scottish Courts form a plot sufficiently intricate, which is here likened to a game of whist, the court-cards chiefly used therein being Queen Elizabeth of England, James VI of Scotland, and the celebrated Archie Armstrong, called ‘The Knave of Hearts,’ who by a series of extraordinary adventures, rose from the condition of a wanderer and sheep stealer on the border side to the position of chief jester and ruling favourite at the Scottish Court.

THE KINGDOM OF TWILIGHT. By FORREST REID. (First Novel Library).

This is the history of the earlier half of the life of a man of genius, following him through boyhood and youth to maturity. It is a book in which the form, the atmosphere, count for much. Essentially the study of a temperament--a temperament subtle, delicate, rare--it has more in common, perhaps, with the work of D’Annunzio than that of any English novelist; the author’s aim, at all events, having been to describe, from within, the gradual development of a human soul--to trace the wanderings of a spirit as it passes from light to light in search of that great light ‘that never was on sea or land.’

A BACHELOR IN ARCADY. By HALLIWELL SUTCLIFFE, Author of ‘Ricroft of Withens,’ ‘Mistress Barbara Cunliffe,’ etc.

In this book Mr Sutcliffe abandons his strenuous manner of adventure, feud, swordplay and fierce wooing, and gives us an English idyll. The bachelor is a man of some thirty odd years, who dwells in rural peace among his animals, birds, fields and flowers, and, assisted by his faithful henchman, sows his seeds, mows and prunes in complacent contempt for such as have succumbed to the delights of matrimony. And so he fares through spring and summer, seedtime and harvest, his chief companions the squire across the fields and his young daughter, till as time goes on he discovers that the girl is all the world to him, and the curtain descends on the bachelor--a bachelor no more.

THE MISCHIEF OF A GLOVE. By Mrs PHILIP CHAMPION DE CRESPIGNY, Author of ‘From behind the Arras.’

This story deals with the adventures of a man and a maid in the time of Mary I of England. The heroine, the daughter of a wild and reckless father, inherits his bold spirit, and by her woman’s wit and courage, assists her lover to elude the pursuit of his enemies. She sallies forth in man’s attire for his sake, and has many adventures, both humorous and otherwise, before the end is attained.

HELEN ADAIR. By LOUIS BECKE.

This story, which is largely based on fact, describes the career of a young Irish girl whose father was transported to Botany Bay for being concerned in the publication of a ‘seditious’ newspaper. Helen Adair, so that she may follow her father to the Antipodes, and share, or at least alleviate, his misfortunes under the dreaded ‘Convict System,’ passes counterfeit coin in Dublin, is tried and convicted under an assumed name, and is sent out in a transport. Her adventures in Australia form an exciting romance.

ROSEMONDE. By BEATRICE STOTT. (First Novel Library).

This is the story of a gifted, sensitive woman, her husband who was a genius, and the unquenchable love for each other which was their torture and their bane.

LAURA’S LEGACY. By E. H. STRAIN, Author of ‘A Man’s Foes.’

The ‘Innocent Impostor’ of the title is a very charming girl who has grown up in the full belief of herself and the world that she is Miss Barclay of Eaglesfaulds; her mother dotes on her, she is seemingly heiress to large property, even the Queen is interested in her, how can she guess that she is in reality the daughter of a beggar woman, and is keeping the rightful heir out of his inheritance? How this extraordinary situation came about and the trouble and tangle it brought into the life of a sensitive and noble-natured girl, is narrated by E. H. Strain after the fashion which has already endeared her to many readers.

THE BLACK SHILLING. By AMELIA E. BARR.

Critics who have read this novel in manuscript speak of it as the best story Mrs Barr has yet written. Its central character--Cotton Mather, preacher, scholar, philanthropist and persecutor--is one of the most picturesque figures in American history, while the period--that of the witchcraft scare at the opening of the eighteenth century, when numbers of men and women suffered cruel persecution for their supposed trafficking with the Evil One--is full of dramatic possibilities.

THE VINEYARD. By JOHN OLIVER HOBBES.

In this novel Mrs Craigie turns from the glittering world of finance, which she depicted so brilliantly in ‘Love and the Soul Hunters,’ and gives us a story of life in an English provincial town. As in all her books the love interest is strong, and under the ‘signoria d’Amore’ her characters are led into situations of the deepest interest, demanding for their treatment all the subtlety of insight which her previous works have shown her to possess.

THE MIS-RULE OF THREE. By FLORENCE WARDEN, Author of ‘The House on the Marsh,’ etc.

This is the story of three young men, living together in London lodgings, of the ideals of womanhood which they have formed, and of the singular fashion in which each falls a victim to the charms of a woman in all respects the opposite to his ideal. The story takes the reader from London to the most romantic region of the Channel Islands, and is connected with a mystery which surrounds the owner of one of these islands.

T. FISHER UNWIN, Publisher,

THE STICKIT MINISTER AND SOME COMMON MEN

BY
S. R. CROCKETT

_Eleventh Edition. Crown 8vo., cloth_, =6s.=