Chapter II: Part 2

A raw, chill air blew into the room. He noticed that a pane of glass was broken. One of the children had thrown a ball through it a few days before, and in the present situation of the Connolly household a glazier was an unattainable luxury.

Harold rose with the intention of moving his chair out of the draught, but as he did so the sound of whispered words, seemingly at his very ear, made him pause. The voices came from the shrubbery below the window, and in one of them he recognised the unmistakable brogue of old Peter Dwyer.

Had the man been to the police station and returned with the constables so quickly? This was Harold’s first thought, but he dismissed it as soon as formed. Peter had been barely half an hour absent, and the station was several miles off. Where had he been, then, and with whom was he conversing? Harold bent his head close to the broken pane and listened.

“Are ye sure sartin that the young woman seen us?” inquired a rough voice--not Peter’s--“because this is goin’ to be an ugly job, an’ there’s no call for us to tackle it widout needcessity?”

“Sartin as stalks,” whispered the old servant. “She was all of a thrimble, as if she’d met a sperrit an’ all the words she had was ‘I seen it--I seen it all,’ an’ she yowlin’ like a banshee.”

“It’s quare we didn’t take notice to her, for she must ha’ been powerful close to see us such a night. I thought I heerd the horn, too, an’ I lavin’ the yard.”

She wint out to blow it,” whispered Peter. “Most like it was stuck in the shrubbery she was.”

“Come on thin,” growled the other; “it’s got to be done, an’ the byes is all here. Ye left the little dure beyant on the latch?”

“I did that,” responded old Peter; and then a low, soft whistle sounded in the darkness. It was a signal.

Rapidly but cautiously Harold Hayes left the window and stole across the room. He understood it all. Polly had seen the murder and had recognised the assassins. Old Dwyer was a traitor. He had slipped out and warned the ruffians of the peril in which they stood, and now they were here to seal their own safety by another crime--by the sacrifice of a life far dearer to Harold than his own.

Swiftly, silently, he sped down the gloomy passage. The lives of all beneath that roof were hanging on his speed. Breathless he reached the little door, and flung himself against it with all his weight while his trembling fingers groped in the darkness for bolt or bar.

A heavy hand was laid on the latch, and the door was tried from without.

“How’s this, Peter?” inquired the rough voice. “I thought ye said it wasn’t locked.”

“No more it is; it’s only stiff it is, bad cess to it. Push hard, yer sowl ye.”

But at this moment Harold’s hand encountered the bolt. With a sigh of relief he shot it into the socket, and then, searching farther, he supplemented the defences with a massive bar, which, he knew, ought always to be in place at night.

Then he sped back along the passage, while muttered curses reached his ears from without, and the door was shaken furiously.

“Jack, Jack,” he panted, as he flung open the door of the room in which the young men slept--“Jack, come down and--”

He stopped abruptly. Mr. Connolly was kneeling at the bedside, and his two sons knelt to the right and left of him.

There were no family prayers at Lisnahoe; only the ladies were regular church-goers; but that it was a religious household no one could have doubted who knew the events of the night and saw the old man on his knees between his boys.

They rose at the noise of Harold’s entrance, and the American, who felt that there were no moments to be wasted on apologies, announced his errand.

“Old Peter Dwyer is a traitor! He has gone out and brought the murderers to finish the work they have commenced.”

And then, in eager, breathless words, he told them how he had heard the conversation in the shrubbery, and how the men, apprehensive that Miss Connolly could identify them, had returned to stifle her testimony.

“They were right there,” said the old man. “She saw the first blow, and it was struck by Red Mike Driscoll.”

“Then she is better?” asked Harold, eagerly.

The boys were at the other end of the room, slipping cartridges loaded with small shot into the fowling-pieces they had snatched from the walls.

“Oh yes,” replied Mr. Connolly; “she is all right now.”

A sound of heavy blows echoed through the house. The men below had convinced themselves that the door was firmly fastened, and, desperate from the conviction that they were identified, and relying on the loneliness of the place, they were attacking the barrier with a pickaxe.

“I’ll soon put a stop to that,” cried Jack; and cocking his gun, he left the room.

Dick was about to follow, but his father stopped him.

There’s no one in front of the house yet,” said the old gentleman. “Slip out quietly, my boy, and make a dash for it to the police station. You’ve taken the cup for the two-mile race at Trinity. Let’s see how quick you can be when you are running for all our lives.”

“I’ll go down and fasten the door after him,” volunteered Hayes, and the old man nodded. Outside, on the landing, they could hear the blows of the pickaxe more distinctly. Suddenly, above the clangour, rang out close and sharp the two reports of Jack’s double-barrel. He had selected a window commanding the attack, and had fired point-blank down into the group of men.

Shrieks and groans and curses testified to the accuracy of the young man’s aim, and the sound of blows ceased. Harold and Dick ran rapidly downstairs. The latter unbarred the front door.

“Don’t you run a fearful risk if you are seen?” inquired the American.

“Of course I do,” returned the brave lad, without a tremor in his voice; “but somebody’s got to take the chance; we can’t defend the house forever; and I wouldn’t miss this opportunity of nabbing the whole gang for a thousand pounds.”

He opened the door and sped out into the night. He was out of sight in a moment, and, as far as Harold could judge, he had not been observed. Again the blows of the pickaxe rang out from the rear of the house.

Hayes closed the door and replaced the heavy bar. Then he turned to remount the stairs, and met Polly, who was standing near the top with a candle in her hand.

She was quite composed now, but very pale. He tried to ask if she had recovered, but she cut him short impatiently.

“There is nothing the matter with me. What is the meaning of all this uproar and--and the firing?”

For at this moment the twin reports of Jack’s breech-loader again echoed through the house, this time it was answered by a fusilade from below.

There was nothing to be gained by concealment, and Harold told her the whole story in a few words.

“How prompt and clever of you!” she said; “You have saved all our lives.”

Her praise was very sweet to him, but there was no time to enjoy it now.

“Where are you going?” she asked, as he turned again to spring up the stairs.

I am going to my room for my revolver,” he answered. “I may have use for it before this is over.”

“Do,” she replied. “I will wait for you here.” Haves hurried on.

Jack was in the guest’s room. The young Irishman had selected that window, as it commanded the little door against which the brunt of the attack had hitherto been directed. Every pane was shattered, and walls and ceiling showed the effect of the volley that had been directed against him, but the young fellow stood his ground uninjured. “Don’t mind me,” he said, in answer to Harold’s inquiry. “I’m all right, and can hold this fort til morning if they don’t get ladders. I fancy I’ve sickened them of trying that door below.”

Harold hastily grasped his revolver and went His idea was to stand in the passage near the smoking-room, and defend the place should the door give way; for he did not believe that timber had ever been grown to withstand such blows.

Mrs. Connolly put her head out of the nursery door as he passed. Her husband had told her of the position of affairs.

“Is that you, Mr. Hayes?” she whispered. “Is Jack hurt?”

“Jack is quite safe,” answered the young American. “Are the children very much frightened?”

“Not as long as I am with them,” the old lady answered. “And Dick--what of him?”

“Dick is all right too,” replied Harold. He could not tell the poor woman that her boy was out in the open country without a wall between him and the ruffians.

Mrs. Connolly drew back into the nursery to take the post assigned her--assuredly not the easiest on that terrible night--to listen to the doubtful sounds from without, and to support, by her own constancy, the courage of her children.

Harold found Miss Connolly in the hall where he had left her.

“What do you intend to do?” she asked.

“I was going to stand inside the door they have been hammering at,” he answered, “in case they should break it in.”

“Papa is there,” said the girl; “perhaps you had better wait here. They will try the front door next”

“Very good,” he assented; and then added, with a sudden apprehension, “but the windows. There are so many of them. How can we watch them all?”

“There are bars to all the lower windows,” she replied, “and I do not think they know where to find ladders. No; their next attempt will be at the hall door, and it will be harder to repel than anywhere else, for the portico will protect them from shots from the windows.”

“And now, Miss Connolly,” urged Harold, “you can do no good here. Had not you better go upstairs out of the way?”

“No, no; I would rather wait here,” she answered. “Don’t be afraid. I sha’n’t give way again as I did to-night. I don’t know what came over me, but it was all so horrible--so unexpected--” She broke off with a little shuddering sigh.

“You saw them attack him?” asked Harold.

She nodded. “I was under that big cedar outside the parlor window. I had hidden there to blow the horn. Suddenly I saw Fergus with a lantern in his hand coming full speed toward the house. Just as he got within a few paces of me, half a dozen men burst out from the laurels. Oh, how savagely they struck at him! He was down in a moment. It was all so close to me: I recognised Red Mike by the light of poor Fergus’s lantern.”

“And then?” asked Hayes.

“I don’t think I remember any more. I must have staggered on to the house, for they tell me I was found at the foot of the steps, but I don’t know how I got there. I was terribly frightened, but I sha’n’t do it again--not if they blow the roof off,” she said, trying to smile.

“I should think they would be afraid to persevere now that they are discovered,” observed Harold. “This firing must alarm the neighbourhood.”

“In a lonely place like this!” said the girl. “No, no, Mr. Hayes; there are not many to hear these shots, and none that would not sooner fight against us than on our side. We must depend on ourselves. But oh,” she wailed, her woman’s heart betraying itself through the mechanical calm she had maintained so long, “oh, I am sorry that your friendship for us should have brought you into such peril--to think that your visit here may cost you your life,” and she broke off and covered her streaming eyes with her hands.

“Indeed, indeed,” said Harold, earnestly, “I think any danger I may run a small price to pay for the privilege of knowing you, and, and--of loving you.”

It was out at last; the words that had been so difficult to say came trippingly from his tongue now, and she did not repulse nor attempt to licence him.

There, in the dimly lighted, lofty hall, he poured out all that had been in his heart since he had known her, and won from her in return a whisper that emboldened him to draw the yielding form toward him and press his lips to hers.

With a pealing crash the pickaxe bit into the stout oaken door, and the young lovers sprang apart, terrified at this rude interruption of dreams. Blow followed blow, and the massive woodwork shivered and splintered and swayed under the savage impulse from without.

The assailants had abandoned their attempt on the postern; they had ignored the kitchen door, within which stout Tom Neil with Dick’s double-barrel stood on guard; they had turned their attention to the main entrance, where a projecting portico partially sheltered them from the galling discharges of Jack’s favourite “Rigby.”

They were only partially sheltered, however. The heir of Lisnahoe had quickly shifted his ground when the attack on the postern was abandoned, and he now stood in another room, ready, with the quickness of a practised snipe-shot, to fire on any arm or hand or foot which showed even for an instant outside the shadow of the portico.

Crash, crash, crash! Again and again the steel fangs of the pick ate their way through the solid timber. The lock yielded quickly, but, heavily barred at top and bottom, the good door resisted staunchly. Polly had glided away from Harold’s side. He fancied that she had sought a place of safety, and rejoiced thereat; but in a moment she reappeared. She carried a shot-gun in her hands, and when she reached his side she rested the butt on the ground and leaned on the weapon.

“I have often fired at things,” she said, simply. “Why shouldn’t I now?”

Mr. Connolly and Jack joined them in the hall, and Neil had come up from the kitchen door. The main entrance was evidently the weak point, and the whole garrison must be on hand to defend it. The assailants had waxed cautious of late, and for some time had allowed the sharp-shooter no chance. He thought that he would be of more service below; but, as it proved, when he abandoned his post he committed a fatal error.

Apparently the enemy had discovered that the galling fire from above had ceased. Perhaps some of their number had ventured out and returned scatheless. They speedily took advantage of this immunity. While the attacks with the pickaxe were not relaxed for a moment, a score of men had brought the trunk of a young larch from the saw-pit at the back of the house. Poised by forty strong arms, this improvised battering-ram was hurled against the front door, carrying it clear off its hinges. In the naked entry a crowd of rough men jostled one another, as they sprang forward with hoarse imprecations on their prey. The garrison was vanquished at last.

Not yet. Four shots rang out as one, instantly repeated as the defenders discharged their second barrels into the very teeth of the advancing mob. Then Mr. Connolly, Neil, and Jack clubbed the guns they had no time to reload, and prepared to sell their lives dearly in a hand-to-hand struggle. Polly, as soon as she had fired, dropped her weapon, and in an instant Harold had swept her behind him, and stood, revolver in hand, his breast her bulwark, confronting the mob.

But the mob, withered by the volley, hesitated a moment. The vestibule was streaming with blood, and shrieking, writhing victims strove in vain to rise. It was a sickening sight, but there was the electricity of anger in the air and no one faltered long. On they came again with undiminished fury.

But again the rush was checked. Sharp and vengeful rang out the close reports of the American revolver, and at each echo a man fell. Less noisy, less terrific, but far more deadly, the six-shooter took up the work where the breech-loaders had left it; and Harold, covering with his body the girl he loved, fired as steadily as if practising in a pistol gallery, and made every shot tell.

He had not used his weapon in the first rush; somewhere or other, young Hayes had heard of the advantages of platoon firing.

The lights had been extinguished and day was just breaking. Firing from the obscurity into the growing light, the garrison had the best of the position; but there were firearms among the assailants too, and the balls whistled through the long hall and buried themselves in the panelling.

But this could not last. Much as they had suffered in the assault, the assailants were too numerous to be longer held at bay. With a feeling of despair, Harold recognised the futile click that followed his pressure on the trigger and told him that he had fired his last cartridge.

With a wild yell the assailants rushed forward. Not a shot met them; nothing stood between them and their vengeance but four pale, determined men, weaponless but unflinching.

A quick trampling as of a body of horse was heard on the gravel without. A sharp, stern order reached the ears even of those in the house.

“Unsling carbines! Make ready! Present!”

Clubs and blunderbusses dropped from nerveless hands as the advancing mob paused, faltered, and then surged backward through the doorway. The lust of vengeance gave way to the instinct of self-preservation, and the rioters scattered in flight.

Dick’s gallant race against time had not been fruitless. A squadron of constabulary had reached the ground at the critical moment, and Lisnahoe was saved.

Few of the assailants escaped--every avenue was guarded by mounted policemen; and the gang which had long terrorised the neighbourhood--whose teachings and example had done so much to convert the sullen discontent of the peasantry into overt violence--was effectually broken up. From that night the boycott on the Connolly household was raised.

Red Mike Driscoll expiated on the gallows the murder of the Emergency man Fergus, and nearly a score of others were sentenced to various terms of imprisonment for assault and housebreaking.

The attacking party had lost three men killed, besides many wounded, more or less severely, by the shot-guns. The judicial inquiry into the casualties brought out details of the defence which struck terror to the hearts of the country people. It was not likely that Lisnahoe would be molested again.

Harold Hayes and Polly Connolly were married shortly after Easter. They are living in New York now, in a pleasant flat overlooking Central Park. They entertain a good deal, and Irish affairs are sometimes discussed at Mr. Hayes’s table; but so far he has failed to convince any of his American friends that there may be more than one side to the agrarian question in Ireland.

“Nonsense,” remarked one gentleman, who professed to be deeply read in the subject; “they are an oppressed and suffering people. Let them have their land.”

“And what is to become of the landlords?” inquired Polly, with a wistful remembrance of her girlhood’s beautiful home.

But to this question there has been no reply, and none has been offered yet.

A LOST RECRUIT

BY JANE BARLOW

When Mick Doherty heard that there was to be route-marching next day in the neighbourhood of Kilmacrone, he determined upon going off for a long “stravade” coastward over the bog, where there were no roads worth mentioning, and no risks of an encounter with the military. In this he acted differently from all his neighbours, most of whom, upon learning the news, began to speculate and plan how they might see and hear as much as possible of their unwonted visitors. Opinions were chiefly divided as to whether the Murghadeen cross-roads would be the best station to take up, or the fork of the lane at Berrisbawn House. People who, for one reason or another, could not go so far afield, consoled themselves by reflecting that the band, at any rate, would be likely to come through the village, and would no doubt strike up a tune while passing, as it had done a couple of years ago, the last time the redcoats had appeared in Kilmacrone. And, och, but that was the grand playin’ intirely! It done your heart good just to be hearin’ the sound of it, bedad it did so. Old Mrs. Geoghegan said it was liker the sort of thunder-storms they might be apt to have in heaven above than aught else she could think of, might goodness forgive her for sayin’ such a thing; and Molly Joyce said she’d as lief as not have sat down and cried when’t was passed beyond her listenin’, it went that delightful thumpety-thump, wid the tune flyin’ up over it.

The military authorities at Fortbrack were not ignorant of this popular sentiment, and had considered it in the order of that day. For experience had shown that a progress of troops through the surrounding country districts generally conduced to the appearance before the recruiting officer of sundry long-limbed, loose-jointed Pats, Micks, and Joes; and a recent scarcity of this raw material made it seem expedient to bring such an influence to bear upon the new ground of remote Kilmacrone. Certain brigades and squadrons were accordingly directed to move thitherward, under the general idea that an invading force from the southeast had occupied Ballybeg Allan, while in pursuance of another general idea, really more to the purpose, though not officially announced, the accompanying band received instructions to be liberal and lively in its performances by the way.

All along their route through the wide brown land the soldiers might be sure of drawing as much sympathetic attention as that lonesome west country could concentrate on any given line. Probably there would be no one disposed, like Mick Doherty, to get out of the way, unless some very small child roared and ran, if of a size to have acquired the latter accomplishment, at the sound of the booming drums. To the great majority of these onlookers the spectacle would be a rare and gorgeous pageant, a memory resplendent across twilight-hued time-tracts as a vision of scarlet and golden gleams, and proudly pacing horses, and music that made you feel you had never known how much life there was in you all the while. Some toll, it is true, had to be paid for this enjoyment. When it had passed by things suddenly grew very flat and colourless, and there was a tendency to feel more or less vaguely aggrieved because you could not go a-soldiering yourself. In cases, however, where circumstances rendered that obviously impossible, as when people were too old or infirm, or were women or girls, this thrill of discontent, seldom very acute, soon subsided, by virtue of the self-preserving instinct which forbids us to persist in knocking our heads hard against our stone walls. But it was different where the beholder was so situated that he could imagine himself riding or striding after the rapturous march-music to fields of peril and valour and glory, without diminishing the vividness of the picture by simultaneously supposing himself some quite other person. The gleam in young Felix M’Guinness’s eyes, as he watched the red files dwindle and twinkle out of sight, was to the brightening up beneath his grandfather’s shaggy brows as the forked flash is to the shimmering sheet-lightnings, that are but a harmless reflection from far-off storms. And there, indeed, pleasure paid a ruinous duty. If those who were liable to it did not imitate Mick Doherty’s prudence and hold aloof, the reason may have been that they had not fortitude enough to turn away from excitement offered on any terms, or that their position was less desperately tantalising than his; and the latter explanation is the more probable one, since few lads in and about Kilmacrone can have had their martial aspirations baulked by an impediment so flimsy and yet so effectual.

There was nothing in the world to hinder Mick from enlisting except just the unreasonableness of his mother, and that was an unreasonableness so unreasonable as to verge upon hat her neighbours would hare called “quare ould conthrariness.” For, though a widow woman, and therefore entitled to occupy a pathetic position, its privileges were defined by the opinion that “she was not so badly off intirely as she might ha’ been.” Mick’s departure need not have left her desolate, since she had another son and daughter at home, besides Essie married in the village, and Brian settled down at Murghadeen, here he was doing well, and times and again asking her to come and live with him. Then Mick would have been able to help her out of his pay much more efficaciously than he could do by his earnings at Kilmacrone, where work was slack and its wage low, so that the result of a lad’s daily labour sometimes seemed mainly the putting of a fine edge on a superfluous appetite. All these points were most clearly seen by Mick in the light of a fiercely burning desire; but that availed him nothing unless he could set them as plainly before some one else who was not thus illuminated. And not far from two years back he had resolved that he would attempt to do so no more.

The soldiers had been about in the district on the day before, scattered like poppy beds over the bog, and signalling and firing till the misty October air tingled with excitement. When you have lived your life among wide-bounded solitudes, where the silence is oftenest broken by the plover’s pipe or the croak of some heavily flapping bird, you will know the meaning of a bugle-call. Mick and his contemporaries had acted as camp-followers from early till late with ever intensifying ardour; one outcome whereof was that he heard his especial crony, Paddy Joyce, definitely decide to go and enlist at Fortbrack next Monday, which gave a turn more to the pinching screw of his own banned wish. It was with a concerted scheme for ascertaining whether there were any chance of bringing his mother round to a rational view of the matter that he and his friend dropped into her cabin next morning on the way to carry up a load of turf. Mrs. Doherty was washing her couple of blue-checked aprons in an old brown butter-crock, and Mick thought he had introduced the subject rather happily when he told her “she had a right to be takin’ her hands out of the suds, and dippin’ the finest curtsey she could conthrive, and she wid the Commander-in-Gineral of the Army Forces steppin’ in to pay her a visit.” Of course this statement required, as it was intended to require, elucidation, so Mick proceeded to announce: “It’s himself’s off to Fortbrack a-Monday, ‘listin’ he’ll be in the Edenderry Light Infantry; so the next time we set eyes on him it’s blazin’ along the street we’ll see him, like the boys we had here yisterday.”

“Ah! sure now, that’ll be grand,” said Mrs. Doherty, unwarily complaisant; “we’ll all be proud to behold him that way. ’T is a fine thing far any young man who’s got a fancy to take up wid it.”

“Och, then, bedad it is so!” said Mick, with emphasis, promptly making for the opening given to him.

“Bedad it is,” said Paddy.

“There’s nothin’ like it,” said Mick.

“Ah, nothin’ at all,” said Paddy.

Mrs. Doherty made no remark as she twisted a dripping apron into a sausage-shaped roll to wring the water out.

“How much was it you were sayin’ you’d have in the week, Paddy, just to put in your pocket for your divarsion like?” inquired Mick, with a convenient lapse of memory.

“Och, seven or eight shillin’s anyway,” said Paddy, in the tone of one to whom shillings had already become trivial coins; “and that, mind you, after you’ve ped for the best of aitin’ and dhrinkin’, and your kit free, and no call to be spendin’ another penny unless you plase. Sure, Long Murphy was tellin’ me he was up in the town awhile ago, on a day when they were just after gettin’ their pay, and he said the Post-Office was that thick wid the soldier lads sendin’ home the money to their friends, he couldn’t get speech of a clerk to buy his stamp be no manner of manes, not if he’d wrecked the place. ’T was the Sidmouth Fusileers was in at that time; they’re off to Limerick now.”

“But that’s a grand regulation they have,” said Mick, “wid the short service nowadays. Where’s the hardship in it when a man can quit at the ind of three year, if he’s so plased? Three year’s no time to speak of.”

“Sure, not at all; you’d scarce notice it passin’ by. Like Barney Bralligan’s song that finished before it begun--isn’t that the way of it, ma’am?”

“It’s a goodish len’th of a while,” said Mrs. Doherty.

“But thin there’s the lave; don’t be forgettin’ the lave, Paddy man. Supposin’ we--”

“Tub be sure, there’s the lave. Why, it’s skytin’ home on lave they do be most continial. And the Edenderrys is movin’ no farther than just to Athlone; that’s as handy a place as you could get.”

“You’d not thravel from this to Athlone in the inside of a week, if it was iver so handy,” said Mrs. Doherty.

“Is it a week? Och! blathershins, Mrs. Doherty, ma’am, you’re mistook intirely. Sure, onst you’ve stepped into the town yonder, the train’ll take you there in a flash. And the trains do be oncommon convenient.”

“Free passes!” prompted Mick.

“Ay, bedad, and free passes they’ll give to any souldier takin’ his furlough; so sorra the expense ’t would be supposin’ Mick here had a notion to slip home of an odd day and see you.”

“_Mick_!” said Mrs. Doherty.

“Och well, I was just supposin’. But I’m tould”--the many remarkable facts which Paddy had been tould lost nothing in repetition--“that they’ll sometimes have out a special train for a man in the army, if he wants to go anywhere partic’lar in a hurry; there’s iligance for you. And as for promotion, it’s that plinty you’ll scarce git time to remimber your rank from one day to the next, whether it’s a full private you are, or a lance-corporal, or maybe somethin’ greater. Troth, there’s nothin’ a man mayn’t rise to. And then, Mrs. Doherty, it’s the proud woman you’d be--_anybody’d_ be--that they hadn’t stood in the way of it. And pensions--he might be pensioned off wid as much as a couple of shillin’s a day.”

“Not this long while yet, plase the pigs,” broke out Mick, squaring his shoulders, as if Time were a visible antagonist, and momentarily forgetting the matter immediately in hand. “But there’s chances in it--splendid--och, it’s somethin’ you may call livin’.”

“And,” said his friend, “the rations, I’m tould, is surprisin’ these times. The top of everythin’ that’s to be got, uncooked, widout bone.”

Paddy and Mick discoursed for a good while in this strain about the dignities and amenities of a military life, and Mrs. Doherty had not much to say on the subject. During the conversation, however, she continued to rinse one of her aprons, and wring it dry very carefully, and drop it back into the water, like a machine slightly out of gear, which goes on repeating some process ineffectually. The two friends read in her silence an omen of acquiescent conviction, and congratulated each other upon it with furtive nods and winks. Mick went off to the bog in high feather, believing that the interview had been a great success, and that his mother was, as Paddy put it, “comin’ round to the notion gradual, like an ould goat grazin’ round its tetherin’ stump.” His hopes, indeed, were so completely in the ascendant that he summed up his most serious uneasiness when he said to himself: “She’ll do right enough, no fear, or I’d niver think of it, if Thady was just somethin’ steadier. But sure he might happen to git a thrifle more wit yet; he’s no great age to spake of.”

But when he came home about sunsetting, his mother was feeding her few hens outside their cabin, the end one of a mossy-roofed row, with its door turned at right angles to the others, looking out across the purple brown of the bog-land to the far-off hills, faint, like a blue mist with a waved pattern in it, against the horizon. Mick, brought up short by the group, woke out of his walking dream, in which he had been performing acts of valour to the tune of the “Soldier’s Chorus” in Gounod’s Faust, the last thing the band had played yesterday; and he noticed a diminution in the select circle of fowls, who crooned and crawked and pecked round the broken dish of scraps.

“I see the specklety pullet’s after strayin’ on you agin,” he said; “herself’s the conthrary little bein’; I must take a look about for her prisintly.”

“Ah, sure she’s sold,” said his mother; “it’s too many I had altogether. I was torminted thryin’ to git feedin’ for them. So I sold her this mornin’ to Mrs. Dunne at Loughmore, that gave me a fine price for her. ’Deed she’d have took her off of me this while back, on’y I’d just a sort of notion agin’ partin’ from the crathur. But be comin’ in to your supper, child alive; it’s ready waitin’ this good while. Molly’s below at her sister’s, and I dunno were Thady’s off to, so there’s on’y you and me in it to-night.”

In the room the more familiar odour of turf-smoke was overborne by a crisp smell of baking, and Mrs. Doherty picked up a steaming plate which had been keeping warm on the hearth. “Isn’t that somethin’ like, now?” she said, setting it on the table triumphantly. “Rale grand they turned out this time, niver a scorch on the whole of them. I was afeard me hand might maybe ha’ got out o’ mixin’ them, ’t is so long since I had e’er a one for you; but sure I bought a half-stone of seconds wid the price of the little hin, and that’ll make a good few, so it will, jewel avic, and then we must see after some more. Take one of the thick bits, honey.”

Probably most of us have had experience of the unceremonious methods which Fate often chooses when communicating to us important arrangements. We have seen by what a little seeming triviality of an incident she may intimate that our cherished hope has been struck dead, or that the execution of some other decree has turned the current of our life away. It is sometimes as if she contemptuously sent us a grotesque and dwarfish messenger, who makes grimaces at us while telling us the bad news, which is ungenerous and scarcely dignified. So we need not wonder if Mick Doherty had to read the death-warrant of his darling ambition in a pile of three-cornered griddle-cakes. At any rate, he did read it there swiftly as clearly. Most likely he knew it all before the plate was set on the table, and his heart had already gone down with a run when he replied to his mother’s commendations that they looked first-rate. As he indorsed this praise with what appetite he could, being, indeed, mechanically hungry, the uppermost thought in his mind was how he should at once let his mother understand that she had got the price she hoped for her pet hen; and after considering for a while, he said: “Did you ever notice the quare sort of lane-over the turf-stack out there’s takin’ on it? I question hadn’t we done righter to have took a leveller bit of ground for under it. But I was thinkin’ this mornin’”--of what a different subject he had been thinking!--“that next year I’d thry buildin’ it agin’ the back o’ th’ ould shed, where there does be ne’er a slant at all.”

“Ay, sure that ’ud be grand,” said Mrs. Doherty, much more elated than if she had heard of a large fortune; “you couldn’t find an iliganter place for it in the width of this world.” She felt quite satisfied that her craftily timed treat had dispelled the dreaded danger, which actually was the case in a way. But if Mick would stay at home with her, she was perfectly content to suppose that she came after a griddle-cake in his estimation. Her relief made her unusually talkative; but Mick was reflecting between his answers how he must now tell Paddy Joyce that they were never to be comrades after all.

He went out on this mission immediately after supper. The sun had gone down, and the cold clearness left showed things plainly, yet was not light. In front of the cabin-rows the small children of the place were screeching over their final romp and quarrel, as they did every evening; fowls and goats and pigs were settling down for the night with the squawks and bleats and squeals which also took place every evening; on the brown-hollowed grass-bank between Colgan’s and O’Reilly’s, old Morissy, the blind fiddler, was feebly scraping and twangling, according to his custom every evening, and, for that matter, all day long. Even the wisps of straw and scraps of paper blowing down the middle of the wide roadway seemed to have whirled over and over and caught in the rough patches of stone just so, as often as the sun had set. Close to the Joyces’, Mick met Peter Maclean driving home a brood of ducklings. A broad and burly man, who says “shoo-shoo” to a high-piping cluster of tiny yellow ducks, and flourishes a long willow wand to keep them from straggling out of their compacted trot, does undoubtedly present rather an absurd appearance; yet I cannot explain why the sight should have seemed to prick like a sting through the wide weary disgust which Mick experienced as he stood in the twilit boreen waiting for Paddy to come out. He had scarcely a grunt to exchange for Peter’s cheerful “Fine evenin’.” What does it signify in a universal desert whether evenings be fine or foul? Altogether, it was a bad time; and Mick acted wisely in taking precautions against its recurrence, especially as the obstacles which had confronted him nearly two years back were now more hope-baffling than ever. For the intervening months had not brought the desirable “thrifle more wit” to his unsteady brother Thady, who, on the contrary, was developing into one of those people whose good-for-nothingness is taken as a matter of course even by themselves; and a bolt was thus, so to speak, drawn across Mick’s locked door.

He set off betimes on his long ramble. It was a cloudless July morning--the noon of summer by air and light as well as by the calendar. Even the barest tracts of the bog-land, which vary their aspect as little as may be from shifting season to season, were flecked with golden furze-blossom, and whitened with streaming tufts of fairy-cotton, and sun-warmed herbs were fragrant underfoot. Mick rather hurried over this stage of his “stravade,” partly because he foresaw a blazing hot day, and he wished to be among more broken ground, where there are sheltered hollows scooped in the “knockawns,” and cool patches under their bushes and boulders. He entered the region of these things before his shadow had shrunk to its briefest; for not so very far beyond Kilmacrone the smooth floor of the big bog crumples itself into crusts and ridges, as if it had caught the trick from its bounding ocean; and the nearer it comes to the shore the higher it heaves itself, until at last it is cut short by a sheer cliff wall, with storm-stunted brambles and furzes cowering along the edge, fathoms above a base-line of exuberant weed and foam. The long sea-frontage of this rock-rampart is fissured by only a few narrow clefts. On the left hand, facing oceanward, the coast is a labyrinth of mountain fiords, straits, and bays, where you may see great craggy shoulders and domed summits waver in their crystal calm at the flick of a gull’s dipping wing, or add to the terror of the tempest as they start out black and unmoved behind rifts of swirling mists. On the right there is the same fretwork of land and water, but wrought in less high relief--a tract of lonely strands, where shells and daisies whiten the grass, and pink-belled creepers trail, entangled with tawny-podded wrack, across the shingle. You are apt thereabouts to happen on clattering pebble-banks and curling foam when you are apparently deep among meadows and corn-land, or to come on sturdy green potato-drills round some corner where you had confidently supposed the unstable furrows of the sea. And the intricate ground-plan of the district must be long studied before you can always feel sure whether the low-shelving swarded edges by which you are walking frame salt or fresh water.

Mick was bound eventually for one of those ravines which cleave the cliffs’ precipitous wall and give access to the shore, generally by a deep-sunken sandy boreen. Here, under a tall bank, there are a couple of cabins, besides another which, having lost its roof, may be reckoned as a half; so that Tullykillagin is not a large place, even as places go in its neighbourhood. He knew, however, that he could count upon getting something to eat at either of the two cabins first mentioned, and, indeed, at the bare-raftered one also, if, as often chanced, it was occupied by Tim Fottrel, the gatheremup; and this prospect served for an incentive, feeble enough, though it strengthened a little as the hours wore on. So languid, in fact, was his resolution that at one moment he thought he would just sthreel home again without going any farther; if he went aisy everybody would have cleared out of Kilmacrone before he got back. But at this time he was sitting among some broom-bushes, under which last year’s withered black pods were strewn, and he determined that if there were an odd number of seeds in the first one he opened he would go on to Tullykillagin. There were nine in it, and he logically continued to loiter seaward.

He dawdled so much that when he came to the cliff the sun already hung low over the water, and as he walked along the edge his shadow stretched away far inland across the dappled pale and dark green of the furze-fretted sward. The sea unrolled a ceaseless scroll of faint wild-hyacinth colour, on which invisible breeze-wafts inscribed and erased mysterious curves and strokes like hieroglyphics. Here and there it showed deep purple stains; for a flight of little snowflake clouds were fluttering in from the Atlantic, followed at leisure by deep-folded, glistering drifts, now massed on the horizon-rim to muffle the descending sun. Yet that tide, with all its smoothness, showed a broad band of foam wherever it touched the pebbles, which lay dry before its sliding, for it was on its way in. It had nearly reached the cliff’s foot in most places; but Mick presently came to a point where he looked down on a small field of very green grass, set as an oasis between the waves and the walling rock, with a miniature chaos of heaped-up boulders to left and right. A few of them were scattered over it, and even the highest of these wore a scarf of leathery flat sea-ribbon, in token of occasional submergence; but amongst them grew hawthorn and sloe bushes, and a clump of scarlet-tasselled fuchsia. To heighten the incongruity of its aspect, this pasture was inhabited by a large strawberry cow, who seemed to be enjoying the alternate mouthfuls of seaweed and woodbine, which she munched off a thickly wreathed boulder, untroubled by the fact that the meal bade fair to be her last, since the rising spring tide had already all but cut off access on either hand, and would still flow for some hours.

“Musha, now I’ll be skivered,” said Mick, standing still, “if that’s not Joe McEvoy’s ould cow. You’ll be apt to experience a dampin’, ould woman, if you don’t quit out of there. Whethen, it’s a quare man he is to lave the baste sthrayin’ about permiscuous in the welther of the tide.”

He peered over the edge of the cliff, evidently mistrusting its smooth face; and then he threw several stones and clods at the cow, with shouts of “Hi, out of that!” and “Shoo along!” But his missiles fell short of their mark, and if his voice reached her, she treated it with the placid disregard of which her kind are mistress on such occasions, and never raised her crumple-horned head.

“Have it your own way, then,” said Mick, cynically; “it’s nothin’ to me if you’ve a mind to thry a taste of swimmin’ under wather.”

He had not, however, strolled much farther when he met with somebody who was vastly more concerned about the animal’s impending fate. This was old Joe McEvoy himself, who, out of the mouth of a steep, sandy boreen, sprang up suddenly, like a jack-fn-the-box-one of the shock-wigged, saturnine-complexioned pattern. But no jack-in-the-box could have looked so flurriedly distracted, or have muttered to itself such queer execrations as he did, hobbling along.

“A year’s loadin’ of bad luck to the whoule of thim!” he was saying with gasps when Mick approached; “there’s not a one of thim but ’ud do desthruction on herself sooner than lose a chanst to be annoyin’ anybody, if she could conthrive it no other way.”

“If it’s th’ ould cow you’re cursin’,” said Mick, “she’s down below yonder.”

“Och, tell me somethin’ I dunno, you gomeral, not but what I’m nigh as big a one meself as can be, to go thrust her wid that little imp of mischief. Bad scran to it, I must give me stiff leg a rest, and she’ll be up here blatherin’ after me before you can look round, you may bet your brogues she will.”

“Gomeral yourself and save your penny,” said Mick, whose temper was not at its best after his long day of hungry discontent. “And the divil a call you have to be onaisy about the crathur follyin’ you anywheres. Stayin’ where she is she’s apt to be, until she gets the chanst of goin’ out to say wid the turn of the tide, and that’s like enough to happen her.”

“And who at all was talkin’ of the cow follyin’? It’s ould Biddy Duggan down below that nivir has her tongue off of me, nagglin’ at me for lettin’ the poor crathur pick her bit along the beach, and it a strip of the finest grass in the townland, when it’s above wather, just goin’ to loss. A couple of pints differ extry it does be makin’ in the milkin’ of a day she’s grazed there. But it’s threatenin’ dhrowndin’ and disthruction over it th’ ould banshee is this great while; and plased she’ll be, rale plased and sot up. Sure, that’s what goes agin’ me, to be so far gratifyin’ her, and herself as mischevious, harm-hopin’ an ould toad as iver I hated the sight of--Och, bejabers, didn’t I tell you so? It’s herself comin’ gabble-gobblin’ up.”

As he spoke, a very small, meagre, raggged old woman emerged swiftly from the lane, accompanied by one younger and stouter and less nimble of foot, her temporary neighbour, Mrs. Gatheremup. Mrs. Duggan seemed to bear out Joe’s character of her; for now, like Spenser’s hag Occasion, “ever as she went her tongue did walk,” and the path it took was not one of peace. “Maybe, after this happenin’, some she could name might have the wit to believe what other people tould thim, who knew bitter than to be thinkin’ to feed a misfortnit crathur of an ould cow on sand and sayweed as if she was a sayl or a saygull, and it a scandal to the place to behould her foostherin’ along down there wid the waves’ edges slitherin’ up to her nose, and she sthrivin’ to graze, and the slippery stones fit to break her neck.” Such was the purport of Mrs. Duggan’s remarks, which were punctuated by Joe McEvoy’s peremptory requests that she would lave gabbin’ and givin’ impidence, and his appeals to the others to inform him whether they weren’t all to be pitied for havin’ to put up wid the ould screech-owl’s foolish talk.

“Sure, that’s the way they do be keepin’ it up continial, Micky lad,” Mrs. Fottrel called to him, shrilly, as if athwart gusts of high wind. “I’ll pass yon me word the two of thim ’ll stand at their doors of an evenin” and give bad langwidge to aich other across the breadth of the road till they have us all fairly moidhered wid the bawls of thim, and I on’y wonder the thatch doesn’t take and slip down on their ould heads.”

“Belike it’s lave of the likes of _you_ I ought to be axin’ where I’m to git grazin’ for me own cattle?” a growl of sarcastic thunder was just then observing, to which flashed a scathing response: “And, bedad, then, it’s lave you had a right to be axin’ afore you sent off me poor son Hughey’s bit of a Pat, to be wastin’ his time mindin’ your ould scarecrow and gettin’ himself dhrownded in the tide. It’s no thanks to you if the innicent child isn’t as like as not lyin’ this minute under six fut of could wather, instead of fetchin’ me in the full of me kettle that I’m roarin’ to him for this half-hour, and niver a livin’ sinner widin sight or--”

“Saints above! is little Pat strayin’ along wid the cow?” said Mrs. Fottrel, much aghast. “I was noticin’ I didn’t see him anywheres this evenin’. What’s to become of him down there, and it risin’ beyond the heighth of iverythin’ as fast as it can flow? Sure, this mornin’ ’t was wallopin’ itself agin’ the wall, back of our place, fit to swally all before it.”

“Why didn’t you tell me the child was below?” said Mick. “I’d lep down there and fetch him up aisy enough; on’y there was no mortial use goin’ after the cow, for niver a crathur that took its stand on four hoofs ’ud git its own len’th up the cliff, unless it might be some little divil of a goat. And the wather’s dhrowndin’-deep alongside it afore now.”

“Musha, good gracious! sure, all I done was to bid the spalpeen be keepin’ an eye on her now and agin while he would be playin’ about there,” said Joe; “and it’s twinty chances if ivir he did at all. Trapesed off wid himself somewheres; he’ll be right enough be this time. ’T is n’t the likes of him to go to loss, it’s the quare five-poun’ note he’d fetch at Athenry fair.”

“He might ha’ broke his legs climbin’ disp’rit on the rocks,” said Mrs. Fottrel, unconvinced by the argument from unsaleability,” and be lyin’ there now waitin’ for the say-waves to wash the life out of him. Heaven pity the crathur!”

“Sure, I’ll step down and see what’s gone wid him,” said Mick.

The descent of the cliff, though not riskless, was no great feat for an active youth, and Mick accomplished it safely, but to little purpose, he thought at first, since the irreclaimable cow appeared to be the sole denizen of the shrinking beach. However, when he had shouted and scrambled for some time without result, he came abruptly upon a nook among the piled-up rocks, where a very small black-headed boy in tattered petticoats was digging the sandy floor with a razor-shell.

“Och, it’s there you are,” said Mick, stepping down from a weedy ledge; “and what have you in it at all that you didn’t hear me bawlin’ to you?”

“Throops,” said Pat, gloatingly, almost too absorbed t o glance off his work; “it’s Ballyclavvy, the way it did be in the school readin’-book at Duffclane. There’s the Roossian guns” (he pointed to a row of black-mouthed mussel-shells, mounted on periwinkle carriages), “and here’s the sides of the valley I’m makin’; long and narrer it was. Just step round and look at it from where I am, Micky, but don’t be clumpin’ your fut on the French cavalary.”

“The divil’s in it all,” said Mick, with a sudden bitter vehemence, which he accounted for to himself by adding, as he pointed toward the seething white line: “D’ you see where that’s come to, you little bosthoon? And you sittin’ grubbin’ away here as if you were pitaty-diggin’ a dozen mile inland.”