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By the Barrow River, and Other Stories

by Edmund Leamy · English · Gutenberg #42555 · 399,127 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: By the Barrow River, and Other Stories

Author: Edmund Leamy

Author of introduction, etc.: Katharine Tynan


        
Release date: April 17, 2013 [eBook #42555]
                Most recently updated: October 23, 2024

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BY THE BARROW RIVER, AND OTHER STORIES ***

  BY THE BARROW RIVER

  AND OTHER STORIES




  [Illustration: Yours faithfully Edmund Leamy]




  BY THE BARROW RIVER
  AND OTHER STORIES

  BY
  EDMUND LEAMY
  AUTHOR OF "IRISH FAIRY TALES," ETC.
  WITH A FOREWORD BY KATHARINE TYNAN

  _WITH PORTRAIT_

  DUBLIN:
  SEALY, BRYERS AND WALKER
  MIDDLE ABBEY STREET
  1907




  PRINTED BY
  SEALY, BRYERS AND WALKER,
  MIDDLE ABBEY STREET,
  DUBLIN.




FOREWORD


Edmund Leamy was the beau-ideal of a chivalrous Irish gentleman,
patriot, and Christian. During a friendship extending over many years,
I never knew him fall short in the slightest particular of the faith I
had in him. His nature was poetic and romantic in the highest degree.
Through sunny and cloudy day alike he was Ireland's man, and his faith
in her ultimate destiny was never shaken. I have never known a nature
more lofty or more lovable. Long years of weak health and suffering,
under which most people would have sunk, could not alter his noble
nature. He kept his great, loving, true heart to the last. Even if
things were sad enough for him, it was happiness if they were well with
friends and neighbours. He did not know what it was to have a grudging
thought. The experiences which usually make middle-age a period
of disillusionment came to him as to other men, yet he was never
disillusioned; he had the heart of an innocent and trusting boy till the
day he died. To be sure there was one by his hearth who helped to keep
his illusions fresh; and his burden of ill-health was lightened for him
by God's mercy through the same bright and devoted companionship. He was
Ireland's man; all he did was for Ireland. He could not have written a
line of verse or prose for the English public, however sure he might
be of its suffrage and reward. He wrote a great deal for Ireland, and
although, I believe, he reached his highest development as an orator, an
orator, alas, sorely hampered by physical weakness, yet his stories and
his poems have so much of the personality of the man, the fresh, honest,
and sweet personality, that it has been thought well to rescue just a
handful from his many writings in Irish journals extending over a number
of years. He had not the leisure to make himself exclusively a literary
man. He was always in the thick of the fight; it would have broken his
heart to be otherwise. But the work he has left, especially his fairy
tales and dramatic stories, with their wealth of colour and their
imaginativeness, give some earnest of the work he might have done. His
book of _Irish Fairy Tales_, which has long been out of print, has been
republished in a worthy form; and I am sure the present volume, which
shows his fancy in a different vein, which contains a set of stories
that have not been brought together before, will also be welcome to his
countrymen. Were I to write his epitaph it would be--"Here lies a white
soul!"; and if I had to name the virtue paramount in him it would be
Charity, which in him included Faith and Hope.

  KATHARINE TYNAN.
  ST. PATRICK'S DAY, 1907.




CONTENTS


                                            PAGE
  BY THE BARROW RIVER                          1
  "BENDEMEER COTTAGE"                         17
  A NIGHT WITH THE RAPPAREES                  26
  "WORSE THAN CREMONA"                        39
  MAURYA NA GLEANNA, OR REVENGED AT LAST      50
  STORY OF THE RAVEN                          64
  THE SPECTRES OF BARCELONA                   78
  THE BLACK DOG                              103
  THE GHOST OF GARROID JARLA                 112
  TRUE TO DEATH                              125
  "THE LIGHT THAT LIES IN WOMAN'S EYES"      136
  DEATH BY MISADVENTURE                      146
  A MESSAGE FROM THE DEAD                    154
  A VISION OF THE NIGHT                      164
  THE PRETTY QUAKERESS                       175
  MY FIRST CASE                              200
  A VISION OR A DREAM?                       221
  FROM THE JAIL TO THE BATTLEFIELD           234
  ALL FOR A WOMAN'S EYES                     241
  THE RUSE OF MADAME MARTIN                  268




NOTE.


Amongst the stories here given is the last story the author ever wrote,
"The Ruse of Madame Martin." It was written in France during his last
illness and is now for the first time published. It is one of the
freshest and raciest in the volume. It has a vivacious sense of
actuality as well as delightful humour, and it shows that the author's
talent was at its brightest when death came to extinguish it.




BY THE BARROW RIVER.


"There are some who see and cannot hear, and some who hear and do not
see, and some who neither see nor hear, and you are one of these last,
Dermod, son of Carroll."

The speaker was a man of about forty years, a little above the medium
height, of well-knit frame, of a sanguine complexion. His bushy brows,
shaded pensive eyes, that one would look for in a poet or a dreamer
rather than in a soldier, yet a soldier, Cathal, son of Rory, was, and
one of the guards of Cobhthach Cael, the usurper, who reigned over
Leinster; it was in the guard-room in the outer wall of the Fortress
of Dun Righ that he addressed these words to one of his companions, a
stripling of twenty, but of gallant bearing.

"But what did you see or hear, O Cathal?" said another of the guards,
who numbered altogether some six or seven. "They say of you, Cathal,
that the wise woman of the Sidhe came to you the night you were born and
touched your eyes and ears, and that you can see and hear what and when
others cannot see or hear."

"What matters it what I see or hear? What matters it what is seen or
heard, Domhnall, son of Eochy, when the king is blind and deaf, and
those about him also?" answered Cathal.

"Why say you blind and deaf, O Cathal?"

"Was it not but the last night," replied Cathal, "when the men of
Leinster were gathered at the banquet, and when the King of Offaly rose
up and the cry of _Slainthe_ sounded through the hall like the boom of
the waves on the shore of Carmen, that the king's shield groaned on the
wall and fell with a mighty clangour, and yet they heard and saw not,
and pursued their revelry. But seeing this, and that they had not
perceived, I rose and restored the shield to its place on the wall."

"And what else did you see, O son of Rory?"

"What else did I see? Was I not keeping watch on the ramparts of a
night, when the young moon was coming over the woods, and looking at
herself in the waters of the Barrow, and did I not see the Lady Edain
in her grinan looking out and waving her white arm--whiter than the
moon--and did I not hear her moaning, as the wind moans softly on a
summer night through the reeds of the river, and, as I listened and
watched, did I not see coming to the banks of the river, a woman with a
green silken cloak on her shoulders, who sat down opposite the dun, and
she was weaving a border, and the lath, or rod, she was weaving with was
a sword of bronze?"

"And what do you read from that, O Cathal, son of Rory?"

"What do I read from that? War and destruction I read from that,
Domhnall, son of Eochy--war and destruction; for when a king's shield
falls from the wall it means that his house will fall, and the woman
weaving with the sword was the long, golden-haired woman of the
Sidhe--dangerous to look on is she, Domhnall, son of Eochy, for whiter
than the snow of one night, is her form gleaming through her dress, and
her grey eyes sparkle like the stars, and red are her lips and thin, and
her teeth are like a shower of pearls, and dangerous is she to listen
to, Domhnall, for less sweet are the strings of the harp than the sound
of her voice; and she comes on the eve of battles, and she weaves the
fate of those who will fall; and she sat on the banks of the Barrow,
flowing brightly beneath the young moon, and when she will be seen there
again it will be red with blood."

"But the Lady Edain, was she talking to the woman of the Sidhe, Cathal,
son of Rory?"

"Evil betide you for your evil tongue, son of Eochy, mention not again
the name of the Lady Edain with that of the woman of the Sidhe, or it is
against the stone there, at the back of your heart, that the point of my
javelin will strike," and Cathal's soft eyes blazed with anger.

"Far be it from me to say or think evil of the Lady Edain, Cathal," said
Domhnall, "but you said the Lady Edain was looking from her bower when
the green-cloaked woman of the Sidhe came to the Barrow bank?"

"But she did not see her, Domhnall. No! no! she did not see the
green-cloaked woman, for who so sees her weaving spells, his hour is
come. No no! my little cluster of nuts did not see her, Domhnall, and if
she were moaning 'twas moaning she was for the youth that is gone away
from her--for the young hero, Ebor, who is away with Prince Labbraidh,
that is king by right, although you and I, are the guards of King
Cobhthach Cael here to-night. Oh, no, Domhnall, son of Eochy, my little
cluster of nuts did not see the woman of the Sidhe, for her life is
young and it is before her. I remember well, Domhnall, son of Eochy, the
night the dun was attacked, when I was as young as Dermod, the son of
Carroll, sitting there beside you, and when I caught the little girsha
from the flames, and she lay on the hollow of my shield--this very
shield against the wall here, Domhnall, and did it not gleam like gold,
ay, like the golden boss on the king's own shield, because of the golden
ringlets, softer than silk, that were dancing like sunbeams round her
little face, and did she not look up at me and smile, Domhnall, son of
Eochy, and the dun all one blaze. And, since then, wasn't she to me
dearer than my own, and have I not watched over her, and do you tell me
now that she saw the woman of the Sidhe?"

"Not so, Cathal, not so, son of my heart," said Domhnall, "but you saw
the woman of the Sidhe," said he, "and what does it mean for you?"

"Death," said Cathal, "death, Domhnall, did I not tell you it means
death for whosoever see her! But I am a soldier as you are, Domhnall,
and my father before me, and his father, and his father again died in
the battle; and why should not I, and no man can avoid his fate,
Domhnall? But the colleen of the tresses!--why should she die now,
Domhnall, why should she die now?" and Cathal spoke fiercely, "but woe
that she should be here to-night, where she has been for many a year
like a bird in a cage--and sure never bird had a voice so sweet--and
ruin and destruction coming as swift as the blue March wind comes across
the hills."

"The king will keep her here, Domhnall," he went on, answering himself;
"for did not the Druid Dubthach, dead and gone now--and evil follow him
and sorrow feed on his heart wherever he is--tell him that so long as
the Lady Edain was kept a prisoner--ay, a prisoner, that's what she is
in the grinan--and so long as she remained unwedded, the dun would be
secure against all assault; but love found its way into the grinan,
Domhnall, and the Lady Edain gave her heart to Ebor, son of Cailté,
though never a word she spoke to him; but he is gone, gone away with the
exiled prince--gone, he who should be here to-night when the black ruin
is marching towards the dun! But she did not see the woman of the Sidhe,
Domhnall. No! no! don't say she saw the woman of the Sidhe!" and Cathal
bent his head down on his hands, and for a moment there was silence.

Then he started:

"Do you not hear, Domhnall--do you not hear?" and all the guards
strained their ears.

In through the bare stone wall of the guardroom, a sound stole almost as
soft as a sigh; then it increased, and a melody as lulling as falling
waters in the heart of the deep woods fell on their ears, and, one by
one, the listeners closed their eyes, and, leaning back on the rude
stone benches, were falling into a pleasant slumber. Suddenly a brazen
clangour roused them. Cathal's shield had fallen from the wall on to the
stone floor. The bewitching music had ceased, and they were startled to
find that the "candle upon the candlestick," which gave light to the
room, had burned down half an inch. They must have been asleep for at
least half-an-hour. Cathal started up, and, bidding his comrades stuff
their ears if they heard the music again, he went out and mounted to the
rampart. Within it all was silent, and silent all without. The midsummer
moon, with her train of stars, poured down a flood of light almost as
bright as that of day. The Barrow River shone like a silver mirror, and
flowed so slowly that one might almost doubt its motion, and there was
not air enough stirring to make the smallest dimple upon its surface.
Cathal followed its course until it was lost in the forest that some
distance below stretched away for miles on either side of the river.
Between the forest and the dun, close to the latter, was the little
town, or burgh, with its thatched houses, in which dwelt the artificers
of the king. There too, all was silent, and as far as Cathal's eye could
see there was nothing stirring in any direction. He made the circuit of
the rampart, pausing only when he came to the grinan of the Lady Edain.
It was on such another night, only then the moon was not so full, he had
seen her at her open casement--on just such another night he had seen
sitting on the Barrow banks, the woman of the Sidhe. The casement was
closed, and there was no sign of the Lady Edain. But coming from the
woods along the bank, what was that gleaming figure? Cathal did not need
to ask himself. It was that of the woman of the Sidhe, and now she sits
upon the bank, and begins her task of weaving, and he notes the sparkle
of the points of the sword as she plies it in her work. And as he looks,
he sees, or thinks he saw, the Barrow river change to a crimson hue; but
the moon still shone from a cloudless sky, and he knows that he is the
victim of his imagination, and that its waters are silver bright.

But he knew also that this second coming of the woman of the Sidhe
betokens that before the moon rise again--perhaps before this moon
set--the river would be crimson with the blood of heroes, and yet King
Cobhthach sleeps, fancying himself secure, in his dun, and there is no
one to pay heed to Cathal's warnings or visions, except, perhaps, some
of his comrades in the guard-room. And when the moon arose again what
would have been the fate of the Lady Edain--his little cluster of nuts.
A groan escaped the lips of Cathal as the question framed itself in his
thought. He could touch with his spear the casement within which she lay
sleeping, dreaming, perhaps, of the young lover far away. For a moment
the thought leaped to his mind that he should scale the grinan, force
open the casement, and carry out the Lady Edain anywhere from the doomed
dun; but her maids, sleeping next her, would be terrified, and cry out
and spoil his plot, and the Lady Edain might see the woman of the Sidhe,
and nothing then could save her. With a heavy heart he retraced his
steps, and, coming over the guard-house, he descended and entered the
guard-room. His companions were fast asleep. He strove to rouse them,
but failed. Some spell had fallen on them, and even while making the
effort he himself was smitten with the desire of sleep. The lids closed
on his eyes as if weighted with lead. He sank down on the stone bench
beside Domhnall, the son of Eochy, and faintly conscious of weird music
in his ears, he, too, fell into a deep slumber.

The Lady Edain, even at the very moment when Cathal was looking towards
her casement, was tossing uneasily on her embroidered couch. Her maids
lay sleeping around her. She had been dreaming--dreaming that she was
wandering with her lover through a mossy pathway, lit with moonlight,
in the heart of the woods. And when her heart was full of happiness
listening, as she thought, to the music of his voice, suddenly through
the wood burst out on the pathway an armed band, and Ebor had barely
time to poise his spear when he fell pierced to the heart. She awoke
with a scream. There was light enough coming through the slits in the
casement to permit her to see that her maids were sleeping peacefully.
Yet, she was only half satisfied that she had been dreaming. She rose
from her couch, and, flinging a green mantle over her, fastening it with
a silver brooch, stepped softly to the casement, and, opening it, leaned
out. Her golden tresses fell to her feet, some adown her breast, others
over her shoulders, and as she sat there, in the full splendour of the
moon, one might well believe that it was the beautiful golden-haired,
green-robed woman of the Sidhe that had seated herself in the maiden's
bower. The soft influence of the moon descended upon the heart of Lady
Edain, and subdued its tumult. She glanced at the lucent waters of the
silent river, and along its verduous banks, but she saw no vision of the
woman of the Sidhe, for love had blinded her eyes to all such sights;
else she was doomed. Then she looked up at the moon, now slowly sailing
across the edge of the forest, and the thought came to her heart, which
has come to the lover of all ages and all countries, that the same moon
was looking down on him who was far away, and, perhaps, even at that
moment he, too, was gazing at it, and thinking how it shone on the
Barrow river; then her eyes rested on the line which divided the forest
from the fields that lay between it and the dun, and she saw the track
over which her lover had passed out into the forest on that fatal day
when he set out with Prince Labraidh into banishment.

And even as she watched she thought she saw something emerge from the
forest and come in the direction of the dun. After a while she caught
the glint of weapons, and saw it was a horseman approaching--some
warrior, doubtless, seeking the hospitality of Dun Righ. She watched as
they came along, horse and man, casting their shadows on the grass. They
came right up under the rampart of the dun farthest from where she was,
and near to the door that led past the guardroom.

While she was idly speculating whom he might be, she heard a strain of
music that seemed to creep along the rampart like a slow wind across the
surface of a river. She looked in the direction from which it seemed to
come, and then she saw a muffled figure somewhat bent, and saw gleaming
in his hands a small harp, while over his shoulder were two spears.

Immediately the thought of the harper, Craiftine, who had gone away with
the banished prince, came to her mind. Perhaps he had come back, sent by
her lover to bring a message!

"Only Craiftine," she said to herself, "could win from strings such
music as she now was listening to," and while she listened a soft
languor crept through her frame, and, leaning her head upon her hand,
felt as if she were falling asleep, but the music at once changed, and
it breathed now like the wind blowing over the fountain of tears on the
island of the Queen of Sorrow in the far western seas, and sorrow filled
her heart, and the tears, welling up into her eyes, banished sleep
from them, and, raising herself up, she looked straight at the harper
approaching.

Yes, it was Craiftine! His bent head and stooping shoulders betrayed him
and his bardic cloak. He came on, still playing, until he stood on the
rampart facing the casement.

Then the cloak was flung off. The stooping figure became erect, and in
the shining moonlight Edain beheld her warrior-lover, Ebor!

Making a gesture to her to draw back, he placed his two spear shafts
against the casement, and in a second he was in the room, and the Lady
Edain was in his arms.

He looked around him and saw the sleeping maidens.

"We need not fear their awakening," he said softly. "All in the dun,
even the guards, are under the spell of the strain of slumber. Craiftine
came hither a while ago, and reduced all to sleep, save Cathal, son of
Rory, the captain of the guard, but he, too, now is under its spell. He
lent me his harp, which, even in my hands, retains some of its power.
But we have no time to spare. Array yourself quickly. My horse is below
the rampart; we have not a moment to lose."

Edain needed no word to urge her. In a second she was ready. In another
Ebor was carrying her in his arms across the spear shafts to the
rampart.

Letting himself down and then standing on the horse's back, he caught
her descending, placed her on the steed before him, and swifter than
light galloped off to the shelter of the forest.

But, alas, for Ebor, as they rode away he glanced towards the banks of
the shining river, and he saw the woman of the Sidhe weaving her fateful
spells.

The pathways of the silent forest were well known to Ebor, and he rode
on with his charge over pleasant mossy ways, reminding Edain of those
which she had seen in her dream. They had gone not more than a quarter
of a mile when she, who had been prattling merrily to Ebor, uttered a
frightened cry:

"Oh, Ebor, look; there are armed men!"

"They are friends, Edain," he replied, "friends, and now my bonnie bride
is safe at last."

They had come to a wide glade. It was crowded with warriors, and through
the trees wherever the moonlight fell, Edain caught a glimpse of figures
and the glint of arms. Ebor jumped from his horse, and taking the Lady
Edain in his arms lifted her gently down. A warrior, of stately mien
and wearing the golden helmet of a king, advanced towards them.

"A hundred thousand welcomes, Edain," he cried, as he clasped her in his
arms.

It was her kinsman, Labraidh, the rightful King of Leinster, who had
come back to claim his own. Labraidh had been across the seas seeking
allies. On his return, he landed at the mouth of the Slaney, and, by
forced marches through the woods, had come hither. Unwilling to risk his
cousin's life by making an assault on the dun while she was still in it,
he easily yielded to the entreaties of his harper, Craiftine, and of
Ebor to allow them to undertake the task of effecting the escape of
Edain. He had known of old the skill of Craiftine and the courage and
address of Ebor, and did not doubt their success. And now that Edain was
free he determined to push on at once, and try the hazard of an assault
on the dun. But first he led the Lady Edain to his tent, where his wife,
the Lady Moriadh and her women were, and entrusting her to Moriadh's
care, he returned and put himself at the head of his troops, and gave
them their orders to push on as quickly as possible until they came to
the edge of the forest, within view of the dun. Ebor was at the prince's
side, happy in the knowledge that the Lady Edain was safe, and too full
of the desire of battle to give even a moment's thought to the vision of
the woman of the Sidhe. When they arrived at the edge of the forest they
halted for a while. They could see the ramparts plainly, and that no
one was moving on them. The moon had by this time gone down over the
forest, and in the east there was the first faint grey streak of dawn.
Then the prince drew out his forces into three battalions. The centre he
commanded in person, that to the right was under Ebor, and it was to
move along the river bank and make the assault in that direction. The
third battalion was to push round the fortress to the left. Orders were
given that no trumpets were to be sounded and no shout raised until the
troops were face to face with the foe.

The garrison not dreaming of the near approach of Labraidh, who was not
known to be in Erin, was buried in sleep almost as deep as that which
sealed the lids of Cathal and his comrades in the guard-room. The
ramparts were scaled without much difficulty, and it was not until they
had passed within the inner wall and had surrounded the house of the
usurper that their presence was discovered, and then only when they
began to batter in the door. The noise was followed by the cry, "to
arms!" which rang through the whole fortress. It was heard by the
warriors in the other houses, who, hastily arming themselves, burst out.
A desperate hand-to-hand struggle took place, but surprise had given
complete advantage to the assailants. They hemmed round the now
desperate garrison with a ring of steel, growing ever narrower as their
ranks were thinning. Soon the cry of fire was raised. The king's house
was ablaze. He in front of it was fighting desperately, but one by one
his men were falling round him. The roar of the flames, which had now
spread to the other houses, mingled with the cries of the warriors
and the clangour of stricken shields. Prince Labriadh again and again
pressed forward to engage Cobhthach, but the tide of battle swept them
apart. To save the dun had become impossible, and Cobhthach determined
if he could to cut his way out. By desperate efforts he drove those who
were in front of him back against the inner rampart, and before they
could recover succeeded in leaping on it. He was perceived by Ebor, who,
guessing his design, leaped, by the aid of the handles of his spears, on
the rampart, and called on Cobhthach to turn and fight like a warrior
and not run like a coward, and he launched a javelin against him which
glanced off the helmet of Cobhthach. But Cobhthach stayed not, and Ebor
launched the second with a surer aim, which, striking Cobhthach through
the back, pierced his heart as he was endeavouring to spring to the
outer wall, and the usurper fell dead in the intervening ditch. Ebor was
on the point of again descending into the dun when his eye caught the
sight of a figure on the river bank. It was the woman of the Sidhe, no
longer weaving, but dabbling her hands in the waters of the river that
were now running red with blood. A cold chill seized his heart, for he
thought of the Lady Edain, and he knew that his hour had come. But he
would die fighting. He turned round, and coming against him along the
rampart was Cathal, son of Rory. The latter hurled his spear, to which
Ebor presented his shield, but it had been hurled with such force that
it pierced the shield, and entered into the vitals of Ebor. His only
weapon now was his sword, and as Cathal, son of Rory, pressed on him,
he, with all his remaining strength, drove it into Cathal's side; but
the effort exhausted his last strength, and he fell back dead, and
Cathal, son of Rory, fell dead beside him, and the woman of the Sidhe
still continued dabbling her hands in the crimson waters of the Barrow
river.




"BENDEMEER COTTAGE."


Some years ago I was on a visit with a friend in the county of Wicklow,
whose house was situated in one of the most delightful valleys of "the
garden of Ireland." It was when the lilac and the laburnum were in full
bloom and the air was sweet with scent. The weather was delightful, and
I spent most of my time out of doors, taking long walks over the hills
and through the hedgerows, musical with the songs of birds and soon to
be laden with the perfume of the hawthorn.

In the course of my rambles I chanced one day to pass a rusty iron gate
fastened by an equally rusty chain, the base of which was partially
concealed by tall, rank grass, showing that it had not been opened for a
long time. The gate was hung upon two stone piers covered with lichen.
On the top of one was a stone globe. That which had surmounted the
other had been removed, or had fallen off through the action of time
and weather. From the gate a pathway once gravelled, but now almost
overgrown with grass, led up through a fair-sized lawn to a long,
one-storied cottage, stoutly built, the windows and door of which were
faced with stone, which, like that of the piers, was also stained with
lichen. The grass, pushed itself high over the threshold of the door and
almost reached the windowsills. The slates on the roof appeared to be
nearly all perfect, but were covered with brown or grey patches of moss
or lichen. A few of the slates had fallen away and exposed part of a
rafter. On the lawn, as doubtless was the case when the cottage was
inhabited, a number of sheep were browsing. In the centre of it was a
nearly circular piece of water, fenced by a wire railing. Towards this
pond the ground dipped gently, both from the roadside and from the
side immediately fronting the cottage. The gate pierced a long, high
hedgerow, and this it was, perhaps, that caused me stop to look over
it to see what lay beyond. The silent, almost grim desolation of the
cottage was a curious and striking contrast to the cheerful aspect of
all the others which I had seen in the neighbourhood, and this it was
that tempted me to cross a stile that was close to the gate and stroll
up to the cottage. The windows had been barred up with timber that was
giving way in some places. The door, which was of oak, was firm and well
secured, and over it I noticed a stone on which were carved some words,
of which at first, owing to the incrustation of lichen, I was able only
to distinguish the letters "ottage." By the aid of the ferule of my
walking stick I succeeded in clearing off the lichen so as to enable
me to decipher the inscription. It was "Bendemeer Cottage." The name
brought to my mind the familiar and delightfully melodious lines of
Moore:--

    "There's a bower of roses by Bendemeer's stream,
      And the nightingale sings round it all the day long."

And even while the echo of the melody was floating in my memory, my ear
caught the faint whisper of gliding water. I passed round the cottage
and saw a gentle stream close to a hedgerow, and between the cottage,
and near the stream, were a mass of tangled rose-bushes, which had long
ceased to flower, and were pushing forth only a few weak leaves.

"And this was their bower of roses," said I, "in the days long gone; and
where are they who enjoyed its fragrance? Whither have they departed,
and why has the blight fallen on the bloom?"

It was an idle question for there was none to answer it. I passed round
the cottage again and again. A few moments before I was unaware of its
existence, and already it had begun to exercise a fascination on me.

"Is there," said I, "anyone in a far away land asking his heart 'Are the
roses still bright by the Bendemeer?'" for I doubted not that the name
was given to the stream as well as to the cottage.

I turned home slowly and thoughtfully, and scarcely heard the blackbirds
trolling out their rich notes in the silence of the evening. The sight
of a ruined homestead--a sight, alas! so frequent in many parts of
Ireland, has always had a deep effect on me, for I cannot help conjuring
up the crackling fire upon the hearthstone lighting the faces of happy
children, and of speculating on the fate which awaited them when its
light was quenched and they were scattered far and wide across the seas.
But this desolate cottage whose name was so suggestive of youth and
bloom, and love and happiness, was like a ruined tombstone raised over
dead hopes--a mockery of their vanity.

That evening I questioned my friend as to its history. He knew nothing
of it, though he had lived twenty years not far from it, and he rallied
me on my sentimental mood, and suggested that its former inhabitants had
got tired of it, that probably they had found some thorns amongst its
roses.

"They were sentimental people like yourself," he said. "Probably town
bred, and that's what made them give it such an absurd name, and they
soon tired of love in a cottage."

My friend was an extremely good-hearted, generous fellow, ever ready to
help another in distress; but he was prone to regard any one who would
sorrow over what he called imaginary woes as little better than a
simpleton. I saw there was no information to be gained from him, and I
could hardly look for any sympathy from him with my desire to procure
it. But the desire, instead of abating, increased, and I found myself
again and again taking the direction of the lonely cottage. But day
after day I saw only the sheep browsing on the lawn, and heard only the
murmur of the stream; and I was about giving up all hope of learning
its history, when it chanced that one evening I fell in with an old
shepherd, who, as I was crossing the stile on to the road, was coming
towards it. He saluted me in the friendly way so common until recently
with people of his class. I acknowledged his salute with equal
friendliness. He remarked on the fineness of the weather, and seeing
that he was inclined to be communicative, I resolved to continue the
conversation. I thought he was about to cross the stile, but instead he
pursued the road leading to my friends' house.

"That's a lonely cottage over there," said I tentatively.

"Oh, then, you may well call it lonely," said he, "but I mind the time
when it was one of the brightest cottages ye'd see in a day's walk in
the whole of the county Wicklow."

"That must have been a long time ago," I rejoined.

"Ay, thin, it is. It's fifty years ago or more. 'Twas about the time
that poor Boney was bet at Waterloo. Sure I mind it well. I was only a
gorsoon then, yer honour, but 'twas often and often I did a hand's turn
for the lady, and sure 'twas the rale illegant lady she was, yer honour,
with her eyes that wor as blue as the sky above us this blessed and holy
evenin', and her smile was as light and as bright as the sunbeams, and
her voice was sweeter nor the blackbird that's singin' this minit in the
elm beyant there, only twice as low."

"And how long was she living there, and was she married?"

"Troth thin, she was married, or at laste the poor crater thought she
was, and her husband was an illegant man, too. He was taller nor yer
honour, but twice as dark. He was a foreigner of some kind, but his name
was English, or sounded like it. It was Duran. And sure 'twas happy
enough they seemed to be, although there were no childre, and they wor
livin' there more nor three years, your honour, and you couldn't tell
which of thim was fonder of the other. And the cottage, yer honour,
t'was all covered with roses, and sure, 'tis myself that many a time
trimmed the rosebushes that ye might see up by the strame at the back of
the cottage, where the summer-house was. And did ye mind the pond in
front of it, yer honour?"

"I did," I replied.

"Well then 'twasn't a pond at all, yer honour but a quarry hole, and
nothing would do the young mistress but that a lake should be made out
of it, and didn't myself help to dam up the strame to let the water run
into the hollow ye see in the field, and a purty little lake it made,
to be sure. Ay, sure, 'tis I mind it well, for a few days after 'twas
finished, the news kem in that Boney was bet."

"And did they live there long after that?" I asked.

"Little more nor two years, yer honour, for the lake was made the first
year they wor there. But sure, 'tis the quare story it was, but no one
minds it about here now but myself. The neighbours' childre, that wor
childre wud me are all dead and gone, and sure they were foreigners,
and they didn't mix nor make with anyone outside their own two selves,
and till the cross kem they were as happy as the day's long."

"And what was the cross?"

"Oh, then, meself doesn't rightly know the ins and outs of it, yer
honour; but ye see the way it was--one day when the master was away in
Dublin, there drove up to the door a dark woman, that was more like a
gipsy than anything else, and with big goold rings in her ears, and
myself chanced to be in the garden behind the house trimmin' them same
rose bushes, an' I only heard an odd word or two. But as far as I could
hear, the dark woman, she was saying that the poor darlin' lady had no
right to call herself Mrs. Duran at all, for that he was ayther promised
to marry her, or was married to her, meself didn't rightly know till
after, for I was only a gorsoon then, yer honour, and didn't know much
about it; but when the strange woman went away, and I went into the
cottage to ask the mistress if she had any more for me to do, she was as
white as a ghost, she, that used always to be bloomin' like one of the
roses ye'd see in them hedges there in the month of June. Well, yer
honour, she told me she wouldn't want anythin' till mornin', and sure
meself never set eyes on her alive again."

"Why, what happened?"

"What happened is it, yer honour? Sure there never was a mournfuller
story. The master kem home that night, but there was no sign of the
poor mistress. I heard long after that she had left a letter, but I
never heard tell of what was in it. Well, sure, he was nearly out of his
mind, and then when there was no sign of her comin' back he went away to
foreign parts, and myself thought he'd never come back ayther, but he
came home one mornin' and he went on livin' in the cottage as he did
before when they wor together. The only one, barrin' an old woman of a
servant, that he ever let about the house, was myself, for ye see, yer
honour, he knew the poor young mistress had a likin' for me, and he used
to employ me in lookin' after the roses and keepin' the summer house in
order, where I often saw himself and herself sitting together, and often
it was he sat there lookin' as lonesome as a churchyard in the night,
yer honour, and sure 'twas hardly a word he ever spoke. And then I
knew that he was as fond as ever of the poor mistress, and that 'twas
thinkin' of her all the time he was. And didn't myself see her picture
in his bedroom, and ye'd think 'twas smilin' at ye she was out o' the
frame, and then I knew the strange woman had wronged her and him."

"And how long did he live there alone?"

"Sure, that's the quarest part of the story, yer honour. Ye see, when
the poor mistress was gone he didn't mind the lake, and the water began
to sink into the ground, and then there kem one dry summer when all
the strames in the country ran dry. It was the driest summer I ever
remember, and the grass was as thin and as brown as my old coat, and as
little nourishin', and sure one mornin' we noticed somethin' under the
shallow water of the lake, and what was it but the body of the poor
mistress? And after that when we buried her in the churchyard beyond the
hill there, the poor master left the place and the cottage was shut up,
for no one would live in it, and the fields around it were tuk by Mr.
Toole that had a farm next to it, and 'tis in the hollow where you might
see the sheep browsin' this minnit the poor lady was found."




A NIGHT WITH THE RAPPAREES.

(_From the Memoirs of an Officer of the Irish Brigade._)


It was towards the end of October in the year before the Battle of
Fontenoy, and a few months before I joined one of the flocks of
"the Wild Geese" in their flight to France, that I fell in with the
experience which I am now about to relate. I had been staying for a few
days with a friend in the west of the County of Cork, and I had started
for home in full time, as I had hoped, to reach it before nightfall.
My shortest way, about five miles, lay across the mountains. It was
familiar to me since I was a child, and I felt sure I could make it out
in dark as well as in daylight. When I started a light wind was blowing.
Some dark clouds were in the sky, but the wind was not from a rainy
point, and I was confident that the weather would keep up. When,
however, I had traversed half the way, the wind changed suddenly and
a light rain began to fall. I pushed on more quickly, yet without
misgiving, but before I had gone a half-mile further the mountain was
suddenly enveloped in mist that became denser at every step. I could
scarcely see my hand when I stretched it out before me. The mossy
sheep-track beneath my feet was scarcely distinguishable, and now and
again I was almost tripped up by the heather and bracken that grew high
at either side.

I found it necessary to move cautiously and very slowly; yet,
notwithstanding my caution, I frequently got tangled in the heather, but
succeeded in regaining the path. I continued on until I judged that I
had made another half-mile from the spot in which I was first surrounded
by the mist. How long I had been making this progress it was difficult
for me to estimate, but I became aware that the night had fallen, and I
was no longer able to distinguish anything even at my feet. I began to
doubt whether I was on the proper path, for sheep tracks traversed the
mountain in all directions. It occurred to me to turn into the bracken
and try to make the best shelter I could. The bracken here grew to a
height of nearly three feet, and some of the stalks were thick and
strong. I had often amused myself when a child twining the stalks
together, and making them into a cosy house, and often escaped thereby
from a heavy summer shower. The mere recollection of my childish efforts
lightened my heart, though I was conscious enough that the experiment I
was about to make was not likely to be very successful. But I set to,
and tore up some of the bracken, and began to twist it around the
standing clumps so as to form a roof, but when I had gone on a few feet
from the track I felt the ground slipping from my feet. I caught hold
of a clump of bracken only to pull it from the roots, and to find myself
sliding down I knew not whither. Stones were rumbling by my side, but
fortunately none of them touched me, and quicker than I can tell it I
was lying prone on the earth. I stretched out my hands, and found level
ground as far as I could reach on either side. I struggled till I
regained my feet. I was dazed for a while, but when I fully recovered
myself I was utterly perplexed as to what I was to do. After the
experience which I had had I was afraid to move either to the right or
left. I stood still, and I am not ashamed to say that I could distinctly
hear the beating of my heart. The mist still enveloped me, so I was
unable to see anything. Suddenly I thought I heard the sound of voices,
but set that down to my imagination, for I knew there was no house
within miles of me. I listened, however, with the utmost eagerness, and
again I heard the voices.

I was about to shout when the mist a little in advance of me was
brightened, as if a light were thrown on it. Instinctively I advanced
in the direction of the luminous haze, when I felt myself caught by the
neck by a firm grasp, and I was flung forward. My feet slipped on some
projection, and I fell headlong.

When I managed to raise myself I saw I was in a dwelling of some
kind, partially lighted by the blaze of a turf fire. Several men were
present, and I distinctly saw the flash of firearms. There was at once a
confusion of voices, and I was pulled to my feet by one of the men, who
presented a horse-pistol at my head.

"Shoot him! He is a Sassenach spy!" came in a hoarse chorus from the men
around the fire.

"No Sassenach am I," I answered back, endeavouring to shake myself free
from the grip of the man who held me.

"And who are you? And whence come you?" he asked, fiercely.

"Frank O'Mahony," I said, "the son of Shaun O'Mahony, of the Glen."

"Let me look at him," cried an old woman, whom I had not previously
noticed, and she shook off the grip of my captor and brought me towards
the fire.

With a corner of her shawl she rubbed my face, and then she caught me in
her arms.

"Ah, then, 'tis Frank--Frank O'Mahony," said she. "Shure I nursed your
mother, avourneen, on my knee. But 'tis no wondher the boys didn't know
you, for your own mother wouldn't know you with the wet clay of the
mountain plastered over your face, and 'tis you are welcome, Frank
avourneen, in daylight or in dark, and shure no true Rapparee need close
the doore again your father's son."

When the old woman had done speaking, the man who had seized me clasped
my hand.

"Frank, my boy," said he, "you're welcome--welcome as the flowers of
May. Make room for him there, comrades; don't you see the boy is cowld
and wet."

And they made a place for me, and the old woman brewed a steaming jug of
poteen, and she said to the others that I wasn't to be asked a question
until I had taken some of her mountain medicine.

Hardly had I taken the medicine when I felt pretty comfortable, and then
when I got time to look about me I saw I was in something like a cave of
large dimensions, half of which was in shadow owing to the imperfect
light.

About half-a-dozen men came in shortly after my arrival, and then the
whole force numbered thirty.

When all who had been expected had come, the captain, who was the man
who had seized me said--addressing me:--

"Help and comfort we always got from your father, Frank O'Mahony. Ah,
and if the truth were known, my boy, he spent many a night on the hills
with the Rapparees. May Heaven be his bed to-night. You are over young
yet, but still not too young to strike a blow for Ireland. There isn't a
man here who wouldn't die for you if necessary."

"I hope to strike a blow for Ireland," I said, "but word has come from
my uncle, Colonel O'Mahony, that he wishes me to go to France and join
him." "God bless the Colonel, wherever he is," said the captain, "he'll
never miss the chance, but would to God he was with us at home. The
best--the best and the bravest have gone away from us."

"What are you saying, man," said the old woman, suddenly confronting
him. "There's not a colonel nor a general in the whole French army a bit
boulder or braver than our own Rapparees."

"We do our best, Moira asthoreen," said the captain, laying his hand on
her shoulder, "but the men who are gone away are winning fame for the
old land, God bless them all. For sure their thoughts are always with
poor Ireland, and every blow they strike they strike for her, and their
pride in the hour of victory is because their own old land hears of it."

"Ay, and every blow the Rapparees strike, they strike for her, too,"
said Moira, "and 'tis no living there would be no living at all at all
for poor people here at home if it weren't for the boys, and--come there
now, Jem Mullooney, and give us a stave about my bowld Rapparees. Yes,
you can do it when you like, and I bet Master Frank here never heard
it."

I admitted I never had, and I cordially joined in the chorus which
followed, and endorsed Moira's demand.

Moira, apparently delighted to hear me backing up her demand, said:

"Musha, good luck to the mist that brought you here, Master Frank," said
she, "and sure that same mist has often proved a great friend to the
Rapparees."

The men had seated themselves around the cave as best they could, some
on bunches of heather, some on sods of turf, some on roots of trees
roughly shaped into a seat. The captain, a few others and myself, were
sitting close to the fire.

Jem Mullooney was nearly opposite me. The firelight flashing in his
direction, enabled me to catch a full view of his face, and a fine face
it was, though a little too long. You knew at a glance you could trust
your life with him, but he looked like a pleased boy when he was
importuned to give us the song.

Clearing his throat with the least taste of Moira's medicine, he
struck out in a rich voice, to a rattling air, accompanying himself
occasionally with dramatic gestures, the following song:--

          "THE RAPPAREES.

    "Thirty troopers in the glen,
    Thirty, stalwart fearless men;
    All alert and cool and steady;
    Sabres loose and carbines ready,
    But who are moving through the trees?
    Bang! Bang! they are the Rapparees!

              CHORUS:

      Bang! Bang! they are the Rapparees!

    "Twenty troopers in the glen----,
    That volley emptied saddles ten?
    Twenty troopers gain the hill----,
    'Halt,' their captain cries 'until
    We breathe our horses.' 'If you please,
    You'll first ask leave of the Rapparees.'

              CHORUS:

      'You'll first ask leave of the Rapparees.'

    "The heather seems alive to-night;
    Muskets flash a-left, a-right.
    Troopers ten are scurrying fast
    As clouds before the winter blast,
    And empty ten more saddle trees.
    'Tis you can shoot, my Rapparees.

              CHORUS:

      ''Tis you can shoot, my Rapparees.'"

The applause which followed the song had barely ceased, when a low
whistle was heard from outside.

"Open!" cried the captain of the Rapparees.

The barrier closing the entrance to the cave was removed, and a man
covered with perspiration, and almost fainting for want of breath,
rushed in.

"Two troops of infantry left Adamstown Barracks three hours ago.
Shaun-na-cappal was with them."

"Shaun-na-cappal!"

"Yes! They made for the red lanes, and ought to be in the glen by this."

Another low whistle was heard, when the door was again opened, and a lad
burst in.

"The sojers are in the glen, captain, and the clouds are going and the
moon is coming."

"Well, my lads," said the captain, "our retreat is discovered. They
think they will catch us here like rats in a trap. Perhaps we can set
one for them. Bar the entrance. Pile up everything; make it as firm as
you can."

The men set to work with a will, and their task was soon completed. The
captain, having surveyed it, said:

"That will do, men. They won't burst in that in a hurry. We have a means
of escape, which I have hitherto kept to myself. Get a few picks and
loosen the hearth stone. That will do. Lift it up now, boys, and leave
it in the centre of the floor."

The men did as they were bidden, and when the stone had been set down,
the captain, catching up one of the flaming brands, held it over the
opening discovered by the removal of the hearth stone. It was large
enough to allow a man to go down through it.

"Nine or ten steps," said the captain, "lead to a narrow passage,
through which by stooping a man can make his way. It is not more than
fifty yards long. The outlet is blocked by a bank of earth; but just
there the passage is wide and high enough to allow two men to stand
abreast and erect. A hole can easily be cut or dug through this bank.

"You, O'Donovan," he said, turning sharply to one of the Rapparees,
"will know, once you are outside, where you are--close to the stream
that runs down to the glen. Take a dozen men with you, turn to the left,
and five minutes will bring you to the heathery height above the left of
the track leading to this cave. And you, Mullooney," said the captain
to the singer of "The Rapparees," "take a score of men with you, and
make for the right. You'll have a bit of climbing at first, but in ten
minutes you should be able to get down to the right bank of the track.
Be all of you as wary as foxes, and let not a sound escape from any of
you, even if you see the enemy coming right up to the door of the cave,
and none of you are to fire a shot until you see a flaming brand flung
out by us who will remain here to defend the cave against assault, but
when you see the lighted brand, blaze away! If they waver, down on them
like thunderbolts. When you beat them off, you will find us here, if
not, we shall be at the sally gap two hours from this. Now go!"

"Would you like to go or stay, Frank?" said the captain, turning to me.

"I should like to go," I replied.

"All right, my lad. Look to him, O'Donnell, and take this Frank," said
he, handing me a musket, "it has never missed fire."

The two bodies of men descended in single file. The air of the passage
was remarkably pure, and we made our way without difficulty. Then there
was a halt of a few minutes while the foremost men were forcing a
passage. One by one we passed out, and found ourselves knee-deep in the
heather. A brawling stream ran down a few feet below us. O'Donovan and
his men crept along by the stream. We, with O'Donnell at our head,
clambered up through the heather, and in about ten minutes we were
lying snugly concealed within fifteen yards of the rock in which was
the cave entrance.

We were lying at right angles to it, and about twelve feet above the
open space in front of the rock. It was from this very height I had
fallen an hour before. Opposite us the ground was about the same
elevation as ours, and in the cover of the heather which crowned it,
O'Donovan and his men were to ensconce themselves.

The moon was shining, and for about twenty yards we had a full view of
the pathway leading to the cave. At that distance it took a sharp turn.
I had barely time to make these observations, when we saw the moonlight
glint on the level arms of the advancing troops. In a few seconds
they were against the face of the rock. With the soldiers was a tall,
wiry-looking man, dressed in a long frieze coat that went to his heels.

"Where is the entrance?" cried the captain of the troops. "I can find
none."

"There," came the answer in a hoarse whisper.

"There, behind those furze bushes."

"Come, my lads," said the captain, "clear away those bushes."

The soldiers began to work. Our fingers were impatient. The desire to
fire grew upon me, when suddenly from the cave came a flash, a report,
and the tall man in the frieze coat fell without a moan. Another shot
and another and two soldiers were struck down.

"Quick, my lads, quick! Bring a canister, and we'll blow the door in or
out."

The soldiers advanced with the canister, and were about to set it down
at the cave's mouth. Only then was hurled out the red brand, the signal
for firing.

We poured a volley into their midst, O'Donovan's men firing at the same
time, while single firing was kept up from the cave.

The troops were staggered; their captain was shot dead. They paused for
a moment; then, as they turned to run, a second volley laid low more
than half their number.

"Down on them!" cried O'Donnell.

We hurled ourselves down into the path. O'Donovan's men as eager, but
with a view to cutting off all hope of retreat, had rushed down on the
other side so as to meet them retreating. Caught between the two forces,
the soldiers clubbed their muskets and fought desperately. Not more than
four or five escaped. Desisting from the pursuit, we returned to the
cave.

Our captain and the men with him had, in the meantime, removed the
barrier and were standing outside. We were all curious to see the
opening through which the captain fired, and through which he threw the
lighted brand. No one except himself had known of it. It was a fissure
in the rock which had been closed up with clay and moss, and which the
captain, when we left the cave, dug out with a bayonet.

In the meantime some of our men were examining the fallen enemy, and
found five that were wounded only. These were borne into the cave and
placed under the charge of the old woman, the captain saying that a
large body of troops were sure to come out next day who would take them
away.

There was one object that attracted universal attention--the corpse of
Shaun-na-cappal. He had fallen on his back; a bullet had pierced his
throat; from the round hole the blood was still flowing. His mouth
grinned horribly, and we felt it a relief when a dark cloud covered the
moon, which had been shining down on the upturned face and open eyes.
The captain having given his orders, and having arranged for the next
meeting with his followers they dispersed, and he, having given some
instructions to Moira with regard to the wounded, set out, taking me
along with him. We found shelter that night in a little shebeen about
two miles away from the cave.

And that is the story of my first night with the Rapparees.




"WORSE THAN CREMONA."

(_A Story of the days of the Irish Brigade._)


Towards the end of October, in the year 1704, a man of middling height,
with a face rather thin and long, was seated at a table on which were
spread some military maps. Over these he had been poring for some time.
When he looked up from them, his dark, eager eyes revealed a nature
alert, resourceful and vigorous. One glance at him, as he looked
straight before him, was sufficient to convince every observer that here
was a man accustomed to command by the right of genius. The military
costume in which he was dressed betrayed no evidence of high rank. It
was, it must be confessed, plain almost to the verge of sloveliness, and
the breast of his doublet was stained with snuff. Beside him on the
table was a golden snuff-box, on the lid of which, set in brilliants,
was a portrait of the Emperor Leopold I. of Austria, and to this he
frequently had recourse, even while studying the maps most carefully.

He was alone. The room in which he was sitting looked in the direction
of the camp of the allies, then besieging Landau, and from it a good
view could be had of the fortress. The siege had lasted longer than
had been anticipated, and no one chafed more at the delay than the
subject of our sketch. His one desire was to be for ever rushing from
battlefield to battlefield. Rapid in action as in decision, he found the
time hang heavily on his hands. While the siege was in progress he had
been considering the possibility of engaging in some other enterprise
which might redound to the honour of his Emperor, and at the same time
add to his own glory.

He pushed the maps away from him, rose from his chair, and taking
a large pinch of snuff, moved towards the window and stood a while
watching the operations of the siege. A knock at the door attracted his
attention.

"Enter!"

"The Governor of Freiburg awaits the pleasure of your Highness," said
the person who entered, evidently an officer of rank, who was, in fact,
an aide-de-camp to his Highness.

"I am ready to see him," was the reply.

His Highness took another heavy pinch of snuff.

A tall, military looking man, somewhat over middle age, and of resolute
countenance, entered. He made a low bow and then drew himself erect.

"Be seated," said his Highness, as he himself resumed his chair. The
Governor of Freiburg obeyed.

"You bring news of Brissach, Governor?"

"Yes, your Highness."

"Your informant?"

"My valet, your Highness. He has been a soldier, and possesses a
keen power of observation. He succeeded in getting into the Old Town
several times on the pretence of purchasing wines. The French are busy
strengthening the fortifications, but discipline is lax, and as there
are over twelve hundred labourers employed in the works there is
considerable disorder in the town."

"Good. What is the strength of the garrison?"

"Only four battalions, your Highness, and six independent companies."

"Any Irish among them?" and his Highness again had recourse to his
snuff-box.

"None, sir."

"Sure?"

"Certain, your Highness."

"So much the better. Those fighting devils upset the best laid plans, as
I learned to my cost at Cremona. And pardieu, they can fight!" And
Prince Eugene of Savoy, for it was he, shook his head, causing some of
the snuff he was taking to fall down, and increase the stain on his
doublet.

"But, let me see. Four battalions and six independent companies. What
time are the gates open in the morning?"

"At daybreak, your Highness. Many of the labourers live outside the
town."

Prince Eugene remained silent for a few moments.

"Then," he said, as he rapped the lid of his snuff-box, "you should be
able to surprise Brissach Old Town. We may also make an attempt on the
New Town. You will command the expedition--" a slight flush of pleasure
exhibited itself on the Governors face--"I shall place at your disposal
4,000 picked men from the German and Swiss infantry, and 100 cavalry;
with that force you should be able to possess yourself of Old Brissach
and hold it."

The Governor of Freiburg bowed as if in assent, but could not help
remembering that only the year before, King Louis of France had employed
40,000 men and 160 guns in the reduction of the two Brissachs.

"You shall have under you," continued the Prince, dabbing at
the same time his nostrils with snuff, "some capable officers,
including the Lieutenant-Colonel of the Regiment of Bayreuth and the
Lieutenant-Colonel of the Regiment of Osnabruck, who shall be Governor
of the town."

"He regards it as good as taken," thought the Governor, and he did not
feel too happy at the thought. There is so much chance in war.

"These mornings lend themselves to such an enterprise," continued the
Prince, again resorting to the snuff-box, for it had become a habit with
him to punctuate, as it were, his sentences with a pinch of snuff. "The
fog lies low upon the river until some hours after sunrise."

"He thinks of everything," said the Governor to himself.

"And," added the Prince, "you will hear from me by to-morrow as to the
time for your attempt."

The Governor of Freiburg accepted this as a dismissal, and saluting
Prince Eugene, passed from the room.

The morning of the 10th of November was fixed for the attempt on the
town. That day had been selected because it had come to the ears of the
Governor of Freiburg, whom we know was to command the expedition, that
a large quantity of hay requiring many carts to convey it, was to be
brought into the magazine at Brissach. The hay was to be coming from a
considerable distance, and the carters in charge would travel all night,
and endeavour to arrive at the town as soon as, if not earlier than, the
gates would be opened.

That this was their intention the Governor, who was well served by his
spies, had also learned. The opportunity was too good to be lost. Over
50 waggons had been requisitioned, and each would be attended by at
least two peasants. The entering of so many waggons into the town would
necessarily cause some distraction, and if it were possible, under the
cover of darkness, to follow close on them, the Germans and Swiss, might
hope to pour in after them without let or hindrance of any kind, as
discipline had become very much relaxed.

When the day came, fortune proved even kinder than the Governor of
Freiburg had hoped. A thick, dark fog was over the river, and hung like
a pall over the two Brissachs, so that those in the new town, on the
French bank of the Rhine, could not see their neighbours on the German
bank, nor could their neighbours see them. And it was through this fog,
that what might be called the advance guard of the waggons made their
way into the town.

It was then eight o'clock in the morning. The reveille had sounded long
before. The garrison were preparing for breakfast, and the labourers had
gone to work in the fortifications. There were, however, owing to the
thick fog, but few people about the streets, and the sentries at the
gate were watching, with no very keen interest, the lumbering hay
waggons passing in.

Several of the peasants who had followed them, other than the drivers,
stood inside the gates in an aimless fashion as if their task had been
completed.

Attracted by the rumble of the carts, the Overseer of the workmen on the
fortifications, a tall, brawny looking fellow, came towards the gate,
and seeing the group of idle peasants mistook them for some of his
labourers, and asked them why they were not at work. He received no
answer. He then addressed himself particularly to one who was a little
in advance of the others, and who had a keen eye and appeared to be a
man of intelligence.

"Why are you not at work?"

The man accosted, did not at once answer, and the Overseer had to step
back and make way for an incoming waggon.

"Why are you not at work, I say?" he repeated angrily.

Still no answer, and the Overseer thought he detected in the faces of
the other peasants something like a grin. His temper at the best was not
angelic, and this suspicion proved too much for him.

"By G----, I'll teach you how to talk," and before the astonished
peasant could lift a hand to defend himself, down came the blackthorn
on his shoulders with a rapidity that showed that the Overseer was well
versed in the _argumentum baculinum_. Instead of answering, the peasant
rushed to the nearest hay waggon, and crying out some word in German,
thrust his hand into the hay, drew out a loaded musket, aimed at the
Overseer, fired point blank and missed. A blow of the blackthorn sent
the peasant down. In the meantime others of the peasants had crowded
round the Overseer, who, while with every blow he felled an assailant,
kept crying, "To arms, to arms!"

But suddenly the hay was swept from the waggons, and from each a number
of armed men sprang out. The Overseer, unable to withstand so many foes,
having succeeded in getting round one of the carts, made a rush for the
sedge on the river.

The enemy, in an excess of folly, fired at the sedge, and the bullets
whizzed through it, cutting it just above his head, but the report of
the muskets was heard through the town, and the whole garrison turned
out. A rush was made for the gate, inside of which there were now some
hundreds of the enemy. The Overseer, seeing the troops coming out,
quitted his retreat and joined them, and threw himself into the midst of
the desperate hand-to-hand conflict, in which both sides were at once
engaged. Many a stout German went down with a cracked skull before the
wielder of the blackthorn. At length, after a stubborn resistance, the
enemy were driven out and pursued some distance, the Governor of
Freiburg covering their retreat with the cavalry. They left behind
them nearly two hundred dead, including the Lieutenant-Colonel of the
regiment of Osanbruch and the Lieutenant-Colonel of the regiment of
Bayreuth, and several majors and captains.

       *       *       *       *       *

Bad news travels fast, but the Governor of Freiburg determined that he
himself would be the bearer of it to the Prince. It was an unpleasant
task, but he thought it better that he should be the first to carry it,
so that rumour might have no time to make out a worse case against him
than his conduct of the affair warranted.

       *       *       *       *       *

On the following day he found the Prince alone, as on the former
occasion, and in the same apartment.

"You have taken Brissach?" said the Prince, with an eager glance.

The Governor flushed.

"After a stubborn fight we were driven out, your Highness."

"You were inside the gate?"

"Yes."

"Details. Briefly!" And the Prince rapped the lid of his snuff-box
sharply.

The Governor told what the reader has already learned.

Several times during the brief narrative the Prince's thumb, dipped into
the box, and small showers of snuff fell on his doublet.

"How many were inside the gate when the rascal with the stick came up?"

"About forty, your Highness."

"And they were unable to disarm him, or take him without firing and
raising the garrison?"

The Governor did not reply.

"Who was the idiot who fired the first shot?"

"The Lieutenant-Colonel of the regiment of Bayreuth."

The Prince looked hard at the Governor, who almost shrank before the
fierce gaze.

"Where is he?"

"Dead, your Highness. He fell fighting."

"The fate was too good for him."

The Prince made a gesture of dismissal. The Governor bowed, and was on
the point of withdrawing.

"Stay," said the Prince. "Did you chance to hear the name of the prodigy
whose single blackthorn foiled the attempt made by four thousand of the
best troops in the Imperial service?"

"He is called, your Highness, the Sieur O'Byrne."

"O'Byrne! O'Byrne! an Irishman!" exclaimed the Prince.

The Governor bowed.

"But you told me there were no Irishmen in Brissach."

"There was only one."

"Only one!" The Prince arrested his thumb as he was lifting up a pinch
of snuff. He made a gesture of dismissal and the Governor retired.

"Only one," the Prince repeated when he was alone. "If there had been a
hundred it is more than probable the Governor of Freiburg would never
have found his way back from Brissach."

The Prince made up for his interrupted pinch, and dabbed at both
nostrils as he moved to the window. The cannonade, which had been going
on for some hours, had ceased, but a puff of smoke from the trenches,
followed by a report, showed that the firing was kept up in a desultory
fashion. The Prince's eyes rested for a second on the portrait of the
Emperor on his snuff-box. "The loss of Brissach," he said half aloud,
"was a severe blow to the Emperor. I had recovered it for him if it were
not for that infernal Irishman with his blackthorn. Pardieu, but it is
worse than Cremona!" And the Prince, of whom it has been written that
his "passion was for glory and his appetite for snuff," flicking up the
lid of the precious box, scooped up between finger and thumb what was
left, and as he sniffed the fragrant but strong powder, "I must get more
snuff," he said.




MAURYA NA GLEANNA.

OR REVENGED AT LAST.


During the year of the '98 Centennial celebrations, it chanced that I
was staying on a short visit with a friend in the county of ----, whose
residence was not far from one of the battlefields of the rebellion. Our
talk turned one day upon '98, and I asked him if he knew if any stories
of the period were still current in the neighbourhood. He said he was
not himself familiar with any. He was not belonging to the county, and
had been residing in it only a few years. But he promised to find out if
any of the servants or workpeople could give me any information. That
evening he informed me there was an old man helping in the garden,
now almost past his work, who was at one time a schoolmaster, and had
originally come from the county of Antrim, and who had some stories of
the rising in the North. The next day I made the old man's acquaintance,
and from him took down the story of Maurya na Gleanna:--

"I wasn't more nor nine or ten years old when I first saw Maurya na
Gleanna, and although I'm over seventy years now I can see her face just
as if she was standing there foreninst me. She would have been very tall
if it were not for a stoop in her shoulders. Her face was rather long,
her cheeks shrunken and almost yellow. Her hair (and there was plenty
of it) was tied up in a wisp at the back of her head, and was gray
almost to whiteness, while her eyebrows were as dark as the night. Her
lips were full and might have once been red, but the colour had left
them and they looked dry and blanched. Her eyes were as black as a coal
with a red heart that would blaze up for a moment and then become dull.

"She had come into the glen many years before. She had wandered into it
of a wild March morning--a Patrick's morning, too, it was--when the snow
lay deep in the glen, and you could hardly see a bit of green for miles
around.

"The snow was in a drift against Jack M'Guinness's door when she knocked
at it just after the break of day. There was hardly one astir in the
house at the time, but when the knock was repeated the servant-man got
up and went to the door and opened it; before he could question the
woman he saw standing outside, she had stepped across the threshold.

"Her hair was then, so they afterwards told me, as white as when I first
saw her, but there was some colour in her cheeks, nor had it left her
lips. A kerchief covered her head, and a shawl thrown over her shoulders
was fastened above her breast by a skewer that had been beaten into the
semblance of a pike, and which served to keep in its place a bunch of
shamrocks. Her head-dress and shoulders were thickly coated with snow,
which clung to her dress that stopped short at her ankles. Her feet were
bare.

"The man said afterwards that the blaze of her eyes nearly blinded him,
and took the word out of his mouth.

"She laid her left hand upon his shoulder, and touching the shamrock
with one of the fingers of her right hand, she whispered in a tone
suggestive of mystery:

"'Is there green upon your cape?'

"'Twas then a few years after the troubles, but the servant boy had been
one of the United men, and had fought at Ballinahinch. He knew the words
of the rebel song, but as he didn't reply at once, she whispered again:

"'Is there green upon your cape?'

"For answer he took her hand, while a strange feeling came over him that
she was something 'uncanny,' and he gave her the 'grip' that showed he
was a United man. She returned it.

"'Who is there?' cried Jack M'Guinness, who came out of his room into
the kitchen, having heard the door open.

"He started back a step when he saw the blazing eyes and tall figure
(for the stoop had not fallen on her then).

"'Is there green upon your cape?' she asked him eagerly, almost
feverishly.

"'Ah, my poor woman, the day is over I'm afeard,' he said softly, for,
with a keener perception than that of the servant boy, he saw the poor
creature was demented.

"'Over! over!' she cried, almost hysterically, 'it will never be over
until he--he that you know--sure everybody knows him--until he, Red
Michil of the Lodge, comes to his own, his own, you know, the three
sticks, two standin' straight and one across. Red Michil, with the brand
of Cain and the curse of God on him. An' isn't this a purty posy?' and
she took the bunch of shamrocks from her breast and held it up to Jack
M'Guinness.

"'A purty posy it is, my girl,' said he, falling in with her humour;
'but shake the snow from yourself and come near the fire. Blow up the
turf, Shane,' and he turned to the servant boy, 'and let the girl warm
herself.'

"'Ay, sure enough, it's the purty posy,' the girl continued, 'but hadn't
I trouble enough finding it, with the snow here, there and everywhere,
every step I took goin' deeper than the rest; but I didn't mind the
snow, why should I? Sure his face was colder when I saw it last, and his
windin' sheet was as white.'

"'Sit down, achorra, and the good woman will be up in a few minutes and
will give ye something to warm ye.'

"'Ay, then! 'tis cowld ye think I am, and maybe I am cowld, too; an' I
gets tired sometimes; but there's a fire in my heart always--a fire
that'll niver go out--niver go out, I tell ye, until Michil of the
Lodge comes to his own.' And then the poor thing sat down by the hob,
and the boy blew up the turf till the blaze lighted the whole kitchen,
and the pewter on the dresser flashed back the ruddy rays. And when
the heat began to spread about the room, the head of the poor, tired
creature dropped on her breast and she fell into a deep sleep.

"This was the first coming of Maurya to the Glen, and that's the way the
story was told to me. For, as I told you, it was before my time. She was
treated kindly by Jack M'Guinness and his wife, who took to the poor
girl, and would have kept her with her if she could, but Maurya couldn't
be induced to spend more than a few days in any place.

"Who she was, or why she came to the glen, or where she came from nobody
in the glen knew.

"The women said it was love trouble that drove the poor thing wandering,
and that her question about the green upon the cape showed that the
lover had fallen a victim on the scaffold, or in the field, in the
struggle in '98.

"There wasn't a family in the glen that hadn't sent a man to
Ballinahinch, and not a few sent more than one, and there wasn't a
hearth in the glen where poor Maurya didn't find a welcome.

"But she was always roaming. After a night's rest she went 'scouting,'
as she used to say, hoping to catch Red Michil to bring him to his
own--'the three sticks.'

"And so in the first light of the morning she used to go out and ramble
over the hills, living any way she might, and coming back and seeking
hospitality--now in one house, now in another, in the glen.

"'I didn't see any signs of him to-day,' she used to say, on entering
the house which she had come to for her night's lodging. 'I didn't see
any signs of him to-day, but, please God, I soon will. Red Michil won't
escape me, never fear.'

"And this mode of life Maurya continued for years. The colour faded from
the cheeks and from the lips, and the tall form began to stoop, and they
noticed that she didn't ramble so far as she had been wont to do. She
had always been very gentle in her manner, but at times, and when she
seemed oblivious to everything passing round her, the flame would flash
from her eyes, and she would leave her seat by the fire, and despite
remonstrance, no matter what the weather or the hour, would start out on
her quest for Red Michil. Over and over again, some of her women friends
tried to get her story from her, not so much through curiosity as
through a belief that it might lighten the burden on her heart if she
would confide her sorrow to some one.

"But they could get nothing from her but a denunciation of Red Michil of
the Lodge; but who he was, or what he had done, they could not find out
from her.

"There was one house in the glen to which she came oftener than to any
other, and that was Shane O'Donnell's, an uncle of mine. I don't mind
saying it now (said the schoolmaster), but Shane had a little shanty
upon the hills, beyond the glen, where he carried on, in a small way,
the manufacture of the mountain dew. You'd hardly know the hut from the
heather. It was in a little dip on the side of a hill, just deep enough
for the walls, and until you were almost atop of it you could hardly
distinguish the roof from the heather, and no wonder, for it was
thatched with scraws, with the heather roots in them. The only thing
that betrayed its existence was the occasional smoke from the hole in
the roof that was the excuse for the absence of a chimney. Thither
Maurya na Gleanna often went, and there she was always welcome. Although
her wits were generally wandering, she was always able to lend a hand in
household matters, and in the cabin I've mentioned she used to boil the
potatoes and cabbage, and do other cooking what was necessary.

"The hut itself was little more than an excuse. It covered the descent
into a cave, in which was carried on the manufacture of poteen, and this
was reached through an opening which was disclosed when the hearthstone
was lifted up.

"The smoke from the operations below came up through an aperture close
to the hearthstone, and was carried off with that of the fire in the
hut, so that anyone who might drop into the hut would not suspect
anything. It was a shepherd's hut and nothing more.

I was occasionally called on to assist in making the poteen, and at this
time Maurya na Gleanna had been regularly employed as cook, that is to
say, whenever the men were at work Maurya was sure to come there, and
boil the potatoes and make the stirabout, and sometimes, too, a bit of
mountain mutton found its way into the pot.

Well, it happened one day Maurya was boiling a bit of mutton, and myself
was sitting near the fire, when Maurya said:

"It was a quare dhrame I had last night, Shamey."

"What was it, Maurya?" I asked, for all of us, young and old, used to
humour her.

"Well, then," said she, "do you see them three legs to the pot that's
boilin' there before you?"

"I do," said myself, "why wouldn't I?"

"Well, then, Shamey, and mind you, I didn't tell this to anyone but
yourself, I dreamt last night them three legs to the pot were the three
sticks; and rayson that out for me if you can, for I can't. I think
sometimes my poor head is goin', Shamey."

I knew what she meant by "the sticks," but, of course, I couldn't guess
the meaning of her dream.

"I don't know, Maurya," said I. "I don't know what it means."

"Ah, then, how could you, Shamey?" said she. "Sure you never supped
sorrow, and I hope you never will, avick, and 'tis only them that has
supped it year after year that could tell poor Maurya what she wants to
know."

And she swung the crane from which the pot was hanging out from the
burning turf.

"Do you see the three legs of it, Shamey?" she asked.

"I do, Maurya," said I.

"They are red now from the fire," said she. "And he was red--Red Michil,
you know--and I dreamt last night that they were the three sticks. But
dhrames are foolish, and there's no use minding them, Shamey. And how
could they be the three sticks? Sure, you couldn't hang a mouse on them,
could you, Shamey, let alone Red Michil?"

Though I was used to Maurya, I was beginning to feel frightened, sitting
there alone with her, while as she spoke she became excited in a way
that I know would frighten me now as it did then. She hardly raised her
voice as she spoke, but you heard something--something that was like
ringing through it, and the veins on her arms, that were bare, began to
swell, and her eyes flared in a way that would almost burn the very soul
out of you.

She swung the pot back over the blazing peat again, and examined its
contents, and I took my chance of stealing out of the hut.

I had hardly got outside the door when I saw a number of soldiers making
straight for it. I darted back.

"The soldiers are coming!" I cried down through the hole through which I
have mentioned the smoke from the still below used to escape.

I shouted twice. Then I heard the words 'All right,' and I knew that the
men below would be able to manage their escape, and perhaps destroy all
evidence of their trade should the soldiers discover their retreat,
which to me at this time seemed a most unlikely thing.

"The soldiers are comin', did ye say?" cried Maurya, when I had finished
speaking to the others. "Are ye sure, Shamey, 'tisn't the yeos?" And her
whole frame was quivering with excitement.

"It's the soldiers, Maurya," said I, "and I think the gauger is with
them, and there is another man along with them, with a cast in his eye.
He is sandy complexioned, and has red hair that's getting grey."

"Shamey," she cried, "Shamey!" and she caught me in her arms. "Look
at me. Am I tremblin' like a lafe? I think my dhrame is comin' true
somehow--but how, Shamey? how, tell me?"

I was so frightened I couldn't reply, and before Maurya could say
another word, three or four soldiers entered the hut, and with them two
men in civilian dress.

I drew into a corner. Maurya took no notice of them, and seemed to be
taken up with her cooking, her back turned to the intruders.

"What have you brought us here for?" asked the officer who was in
command of the military, and who was one of the soldiers who had entered
the hut.

"This man was my informant," replied the Excise officer, to whom the
question had been addressed.

"That's not enough for me," rejoined the officer. "I hope we have not
come here on a wild goose chase. We have had too much of that sort of
sport lately," said he, somewhat bitterly.

"Tell that woman to swing the pot from the fire, captain, yer honour,"
said the man whom the gauger had described as his informant, and who was
the man with the cast in his eye and the sandy complexion.

The captain requested Maurya to do so, but she took no notice.

"Do it yourself," said the captain, addressing the informer.

The latter approached the fire. As he did so, Maurya slunk back towards
the side wall of the big chimney, and in the same direction the informer
swung the crane, so that the pot came almost against her.

The informer, without saying a word, kicked the peats from the
hearthstone, and I knew then that he was acquainted with our secret. The
hearthstone fitted very tight into its casing, and unless one had been
previously informed he could never suspect that it was removable. The
informer begged the help of the soldiers to lift it, and two of them at
different corners having with some difficulty inserted the points of
their bayonets succeeded in raising it, and the others coming to their
aid, it was quickly removed, and an open space, showing a ladder was
disclosed.

"Go before us," said the officer, addressing the informer.

"I didn't undertake to do that," said the wretch, trembling in every
limb.

"We'll go, captain," said one of the soldiers, and, bayonet in hand,
he descended, followed by three of his comrades. Then the informer,
plucking up some courage, began to descend. Suddenly the noise of
shouting and the report of a musket shot was heard, and the informer,
white with fear, was climbing up again.

"Go down and be d----d to you," cried the officer, "and make way for my
men!"

"Oh, captain, darling, save me."

They were the last words he ever spoke. The crane was flung back from
the wall right over the hole. As quick as thought the heavy pot was
loosened from it, and it fell with a sickening thud on the informer's
head. A squirt of blood struck the wall just beside my head.

"Seize that woman," cried the astonished officer.

"Shamey! Shamey!" shouted Maurya to me, her whole face as bright as if
all her sorrow had left her. "Shamey, my dhrame came true."

I never saw Maurya na Gleanna again. I heard that they said (and sure
they were right, and they were wrong at the same time), that she didn't
know what she was doing, and they put her in an asylum somewhere.

"But did you," said I, "ever find out who Red Michil was, and was he the
informer?"

"I didn't then, till years after," said the old gardener, "and then I
learned it by accident like. Maurya na Gleanna, as we called her, was
one Mary M'Kenna, and at the time of the troubles, she was, everybody
said, one of the most beautiful girls in all Ulster. And it seems she
was in love with a boy called Pat Gallagher, who was one of the "United
Men," and he was in love with her, as many another man was also. And
sure amongst them was the one she called Red Michil, whose mother, who
was a widow woman, kept the lodge at the front gate of Pennington Hall
in the County of Antrim. And Red Michil pursued her, but 'twas the
back of her hand she gave him, and to take revenge on her and on Pat
Gallagher, who took her fancy, he informed on him, and made up a charge
against him, and Gallagher was tried by court-martial and hanged,
and the poor creature wouldn't leave until he was at the foot of the
gallows, and when she was taken away they saw that her mind was gone.

Her relatives did their best to look after her, but they were poor, and
so she rambled off from them till she found her way to our glen. Red
Michil, when he had wreaked his vengeance, sank lower and lower. He
became a common informer, and then, when the hangings were all over, he
secured employment under the Revenue as a scenter-out of illicit stills,
and, as he had some experience of the trade himself, he was well up in
the expedients which the potheen makers were wont to adopt in order to
evade the agents of the law. He was thus an instrument in working out
his own fate, and after long, weary years, poor Maurya na Gleanna had
her revenge at last.




STORY OF THE RAVEN.


When I was a lad of about nineteen summers, proceeded Brother Mailcoba,
I happened to be on a visit to my uncle, who was a _Brughfer_, and whose
house was on the road leading from _Baile atha Cliath_ (Dublin) to Tara.
My uncle, who was a widower, had met with a serious accident, and he
was laid up in the house of the leech (physician) who lived about a
quarter of a mile away, and in his absence the duty of attending to the
travellers who might seek the hospitality of the _Brugh_ fell on me.

The duty had been light enough for many days, for, though the great Fair
of Tara was close at hand, the weather was most unseasonable. The heavy
rains had beaten the ripening corn to the ground, and the road was
sodden, and it seemed at times as if all the winds had been let loose
and met in conflict, snapping in their struggle the leafy trees that
fell with a crash on hill and in valley, and their outstretched limbs,
cumbering the roads, made them almost impassable for man or beast.
During those days of rain and storm the sun never showed himself, and
the night came almost as quickly as in the wintertide, and men said that
the seasons had changed, and that ruin threatened the land. Yet no one
knew why it should be so, for the king was good and generous, and while
he maintained his own dignity, and insisted on his dues, his hand was
open as the doors of his hospitality, and to no man, simple or gentle,
was justice denied.

Night after night, when the day was drawn into the mouth of darkness, I
kindled the light on the lawn to guide the wayfarers who might seek food
and shelter, but night after night passed over, and no one came.

At length there was a day when the rain no longer fell, and the
winds, which had gone back to the hollows of the mountains, no longer
blustered. But sullen clouds covered the sky, and the night, as chill
as if the breath of winter was on it, crept early under them. I had lit
the light upon the lawn, and had come in and closed the door, and was
sitting facing the fire of pine logs that smouldered upon the hearth.
The servants of the _Brugh_ were in the outhouses attending to cattle,
or discharging other duties, and I was quite alone, for even the raven,
who was my usual companion, was out in the barn watching the milking
of the cows. I was thinking of going up to the house of the leech to
inquire for my uncle, when, suddenly, I heard the sound of chariot
wheels coming up the beaten road to the door of the _Brugh_. I had
hardly opened the door when I saw in the light cast from the "candle in
the candlestick" two horses covered with foam, and I distinguished in
the seat of the chariot two figures muffled up against the weather; but
I had no difficulty in recognising one as that of a lady.

"The blessing of God be on you," said the man.

"God and Mary be with you," I replied, "and _cead mile failte_."

The servants had heard the chariot approaching, and were ready to take
the horses to the stable as the guests stepped from the car. The first
offices of hospitality having been discharged, and father and daughter,
for such they were, having refreshed themselves from the fatigues of
their journey, and partaken of the fare that had soon been set before
them, took their places by the fire. The man was rather old, and wore
the dress of a chief; he and his daughter were going to the great fair
at Tara to witness the games and contests. The maiden was the fairest I
had ever seen, her face as beautiful as a flower, and when she lifted,
as she did occasionally, her long, dark lashes from her eyes, they were
as stars shining in a dark pool in the woodland.

"I fear, Brother Mailcoba," said the Abbot, "that thou wert over-given
to the vanities of this world at that time. The beauties you speak of
are transient, and perish."

"So shall the stars perish, Father, that to the brief life of man seem
eternal; but, nevertheless, we may admire their lustre in the dusk of
the summer night, and then I was young, and all that was beautiful
seemed to me to be good."

"Would it were so," said the Abbot, "but proceed with your story."

We had not been long seated together, continued Brother Mailcoba, when I
heard a halting step coming towards the door, and as I turned my ear I
caught the twang of chords.

"It is a harper who comes," said the lady in a sweet, low voice that was
almost timid. You will forgive me, Father, for saying that I thought her
voice was as musical as any harp ever sounded.

"You were very young then, brother," replied the Abbot with a smile.
"And remembering your youth, we forgive you."

We gave the harper his meed of greeting, continued Brother Mailcoba. He
was lame, and old, and seemingly weak of sight, but the lady laid on his
arm her hand, that was as soft and as white as a white cloud against a
blue sky----

"Brother, brother," put in the Abbot with a mild deprecatory gesture.

And she brought him towards her, continued Brother Mailcoba, not heeding
the interruption, and made him take the seat beside hers.

When I opened the door to admit the harper, the raven, who had finished
his self-imposed task in the cowhouse, hopped in and took up his perch
on the rafter, and eyed the company in the most critical manner. He
had only one eye, having lost the other in a scrimmage with one of
the cats, but this, instead of detracting from, rather added to,
the solemnity of his gaze. At the harper's heels, sniffing in the
friendliest way, came the house dog, Bran, who stretched himself before
the fire.

The harper made only a very slight repast, and when it was finished
the lady begged him to soothe the night with song. He, nothing loth,
proceeded to comply, and, after coaxing the strings to follow him, began
to sing of the wooing of Lady Eimer by Cuchullin. But suddenly the old
man, the maiden's father, started like one aroused from sleep.

"Have you no other song," he cried, "no song of battle, of burning, or
of voyages across the seas, that tell how heroes fight and fall? Sing of
Cuchullin when he stood alone against the hosts of Connaught in the
battle armour drest, or when he met Ferdiah at the ford, but waste not
your time and ours with the story of his love-sick fits."

The harper paused, the maiden's lashes hid her eyes, and a blush like
that which follows the grey light of the dawn stole to her cheeks. The
harper was about to make reply when the raven, from the rafter, and
behind where we were sitting, croaked, "_Grob! grob!_"

"A soldier is coming," said the old harper.

I noticed that the maiden cast a furtive glance at the door, which I
hastened to open, expecting, of course, to see a soldier, for the raven
never lied.

"But was not that a Druidic superstition, and unworthy of the credence
of a Christian?" queried the Abbot.

"May be so, father," replied Brother Mailcoba, "but they say the ravens
are very knowledgeable birds, and in my boyhood I was taught to believe
in them, and so was the harper."

"But you were deceived on this occasion," said the Abbot.

"I thought so," said Brother Mailcoba, "when, as I opened the door a
monk entered with his robe and cowl, but still the raven croaked '_grob!
grob!_'"

After the usual salutations the newcomer sat down to the table and he
ate like as one who had long fasted. I mention this only because it
seemed to justify the character in which he presented himself, but the
raven kept fidgeting on the rafter, and fixing his single eye on the new
guest, croaked "_grob! grob!_" in a fretful, almost angry voice.

When his repast was finished, the monk took a seat on a bench near the
harper, but, so that he had a full view of the lady, although he was
partly concealed from her father. His cowl almost concealed his face,
but what was visible of it suggested youth and comeliness. It was
natural, perhaps, that he should excite the curiosity of the maiden, but
I must confess I was surprised to find her lashes lifting so frequently
and her eyes turning towards him, and once or twice I thought those of
the monk responded to the questioning glances of the maiden.

"I fear thou wert uncharitable, Brother Mailcoba," said the Abbot.

"Not so, father, as the event proved." By this time the maiden's father,
overcome by the weary journey and the hospitality, had fallen into
a slumber. The harper, too, who was hurt by the rebuff which he had
received, seemed rather somnolent, and he sat back against the couch
with eyes almost closed, but his fingers strayed across his harp as
if he were playing in his sleep, and the numbers stole out clearly if
faintly, and if the spirit of music ever come and move the hand of the
harper it must have led his across the strings that night. I know not
how the others felt, indeed, I forgot their existence for the time. I
was under a spell. It seemed to me as if my body was inert, and as if my
listening soul was borne on sounds that would not stay, but would steal
out like a bird from an opened cage seeking on happy wings the lustrous
woodland. Suddenly I was brought to myself by the snarl of the hound and
the hoarse voice of the raven croaking.

"_Carna, carna! Grob, grob! Coin, coin!_"

"There are wolves about," cried the harper, starting up. "Listen to the
raven."[1]

      [1] Our Celtic ancestors believed that the raven was gifted with
      the power, among others, of describing the quality and character
      of any person or animal approaching the house. If a soldier is
      coming it cries "_grob, grob_"; if a layman, "_bacach, bacach_";
      if one in holy orders, "_gradh, gradh_!" etc; if wolves, as
      above.

The hound kept on snarling as the raven croaked, but he made no move
from the fire. I thought I heard a light, quick step on the path, but
the hounds around the sheepfold were baying so furiously that I was not
sure. However, I went to the door, and as I was about to open it, it was
struck rapidly as if by one in haste. When I had drawn it half back, a
tall, athletic looking man with a huge cloak wrapped about him almost
rushed in. He was scant of breath, as if he had been running, and I
noticed that his cloak was torn in several places. This he quickly cast
off, and darting a glance around him from restless and glittering eyes
took his seat.

I noticed the harper eyeing him curiously, and I thought I saw the
maiden shrink. The monk, too, seemed more curious than was hospitable or
polite. I gave the stranger the usual welcome, but his response was
brief, and so was his salutation to the other guests, and their replies,
and indeed, during the time that I was busying myself in getting him
some refreshment, the silence of the _Brugh_ was broken only by the
croaking of the raven, "_Carna! carna! Coin! coin!_" and the
snarls and smothered yelp of Bran. I was quite puzzled by the raven.
First he announced a soldier instead of a cleric, and secondly, at
his call of "_wolves! wolves!_" which had no longer any meaning, for
if there were wolves abroad they must have been scared away by the
watchdogs, who ceased barking as I closed the door after admitting the
new guest.

I had seen many a man eating in my time, but never saw I one who ate so
ravenously. I replenished his platter several times before his hunger
was satisfied, and indeed I was kept so busy that I had not time to pay
attention to the other guests. When at length I was able to do so I
noticed the old chief was still slumbering, and that the harper had
changed places with the monk, and the latter was sitting beside, or
rather close to the maiden, and indeed I thought I saw him drawing his
arm hastily away.

"I fear, brother, your story is far from edifying," said the Abbot.

"Well, maybe I was wrong," continued Brother Mailcoba, "and perhaps
it was the glow from the pine logs that caused the maiden's face to
look like a red rose. I think it was for the purpose of distracting
my attention that the harper began to play a low, sweet melody. I
recognised its first notes as those of the 'Song of Clumber.'"

"Not that, not that!" suddenly exclaimed the last come guest fixing his
glittering eyes on the harper. The vehemence of the exclamation and
the harsh tones in which it was uttered caused general surprise. The
stranger noticing this appeared somewhat confused, and he endeavoured to
explain himself by saying--"It was too early yet for slumber, and that
for his part he preferred that sleep should come to him naturally than
that it should be brought by song."

"It seems to me," quoth the harper, sadly, "that I can please no one to
night."

"Say not so," said the maiden softly, "and perhaps now,"--and she
glanced at her sleeping parent--"you might sing us of Lady Eimer."

The harper's face lighted up with pleasure, and soon under the skilful
fingers the harp gave out a witching strain, the accompaniment of his
song. When it ended the maiden slipped a gold brooch of exquisite
workmanship into his hand. Nor did he go without reward from the monk
and the stranger, as I must still call the last-comer.

By this time the night was pretty far advanced, and as the travellers
had stated that it was their intention to start early in the morning,
I reminded them that their couches were ready. The last-comer took the
hint at once, and sought the couch that was nearest to the door. The
maiden and the monk seemed loth to go. The former pretended--for I fear
it was but a pretence--that she was unwilling to disturb her father,
but, after a while, the old man roused himself, and looked about him.

"_Carna, carna! Coin, coin!_" croaked the raven from the rafters.

"There must be wolves at hand," said the old chief.

A long-drawn, low growl came from Bran, as if in response.

"That can hardly be," I said, "for the watchdogs without are silent."

"I never knew a raven to be wrong yet," replied the chief, "but let the
shepherds look to it. I had better lie down. We must start a little
after daybreak. I want to be at Tara early."

The old man and his daughter retired, and if my eyes did not deceive
me, those of the maiden rested longer on the monk as she bade him
"good-night" than was altogether seemly. The harper, who was very old,
also betook himself to rest, and only the monk and myself remained
sitting by the fire.

"It is not likely that any more travellers will come to-night," I said
to the monk, "so I think I had better look to the lawn light, and go to
bed, as I wish to be up to see the old chief and the maiden off." And I
added, "I suppose you will not start early?"

"I have not quite made up my mind on that point," he replied, "but I
think I shall also retire, as it is not fair to keep you up any longer.
But let me go with you to the lawn; I should like to see what the night
is doing, and what is the promise of the morrow."

Of course, I accepted his offer. We went on to the lawn together, and
when the light was supplied with fresh fuel, returned. As we were coming
towards the door, the monk remarked the chariot which had brought the
chief and his daughter, and that, although well constructed, it would
require a powerful horse to draw it.

"There are two horses," I answered; "splendid animals, that could fly
away with it. Perhaps, I had better look at them, to see if they are
all right," and I went towards the stable.

"They are, indeed, splendid animals," said the monk, who looked at them
with a critical eye, as he took the candle from my hand that he might
view them better, and he evinced an interest in, and a knowledge of,
horseflesh that surprised me not a little, seeing that he was a poor
monk, that was forced to make his journeys on foot. After bolting the
stable door we returned to the house, and shortly after the monk, who
refused to join me in a beaker of mead, although I urged he would sleep
all the better for it, went to his couch, and when I had finished my
beaker, I followed his example, and was soon fast asleep.

I slept soundly, as was my wont, but at daybreak I was awakened by the
frantic yelping of the hounds, while the raven, flapping his wings in
wild shouts of excitement, croaked "_Grob grob! Carna, carna! Coin!
coin!_" I felt the cold air of the morning on my face, and the grey
light came through the open door. I leaped from my couch, and looked
about me. The harper was sound asleep, so also was the old chief, but
the couch which the maiden had occupied was vacant, as was that of the
monk, and the stranger was nowhere to be seen.

I rushed out, the stable door was open, and the chariot had disappeared.
In the stable was a monk's robe and cowl. The hounds were still yelping
in the distance, but not frantically as at first, and I pushed on
towards them. I met them returning with bloody mouths, and in a few
seconds one of the shepherds followed with a huge coat, torn almost to
tatters, and stained with blood. It was the remains of the great coat
which the stranger had worn the night before!

"And the stranger?" asked the Abbot.

"The bloody mouths of the hounds supplied the answer, at least so said
the harper, when I related to him what had happened. The stranger was a
man wolf, who was allowed to assume human form by night, but had to take
that of the wolf by day.[2] He must have slept till daybreak, and not
being able to escape from the neighbourhood of the _Brugh_ in human
shape, fell a prey to the hounds."

      [2] This belief was common in the old days in Ireland, and wolf
      stories still survive in the Celtic romances which have come
      down to us.

"And what of the monk?" queried the Abbot.

"He was no more a monk than I was. When I related what had happened to
the old chief, he tore his hair, and declared that his daughter had been
carried off by a soldier with no more land or possession than would fit
on the edge of his sword. He had persistently wooed the maiden, but
had been rejected by the father, so that the story of Lady Eimer had a
special significance for her. The father threatened to have vengeance;
he would go to Tara and see the High King, and carry his complaints to
him. He begged for the loan of a chariot, which, of course, I supplied
him with, and he set off for Tara. A few days after the great fair
began, and I went to it. I hardly think that the chief carried out his
threat, or if he complained to the king the king must have induced him
to make the best of it, for as I was going round the course, on the day
of the chariot race, I saw seated in the Queen's pavilion, amongst the
ladies of the court, the maiden who had sought the hospitality of the
_Brugh_, but who was now the wife of a gallant soldier, and, I must
confess, that I shared her exultation when, in the last rush home, the
chariot that was guided by her soldier husband swept past the winning
post, amidst the thunderous plaudits of the multitude of the men of
Erinn. So you see, Father, the raven was right after all."




THE SPECTRES OF BARCELONA.

(_From the Memoirs of an Officer of the Irish Brigade_).


I was little over twenty when, as one of "The Wild Geese," I entered, in
the year 1695, the infantry regiment of the Honourable Charles Dillon,
who was serving under the Marquis de Sylvestre, then conducting a
campaign against the Spaniards in Catalonia. I was travel-stained and
weary when towards the close of a May evening I arrived in camp, and,
having shown my credentials, I was directed to the quarters of the Irish
regiment, and very glad I was to receive the hospitality of the mess,
I need not say that they gave me _Cead mile failte_. Every recruit to
their ranks seemed to bring with him some of the atmosphere of the home
which so many of them were destined to see nevermore--the home which
often rose before them in a vision on battle eves, and to which they so
often returned in their dreams. After the first fervent welcome was
over, and after the many enquiries as to how affairs were in Ireland,
they began to recount the services of the regiment, and to sing the
praises of their gallant colonel. They spoke of battles and sieges of
which I had never heard, but in which they had participated, and in all
of which Colonel Dillon had taken a distinguished part. Many of them
bore on their persons evidences of fierce encounters, but they said
nothing in praise of themselves; 'twas all of the colonel, who was, they
said, as beloved by every man serving under him as he was esteemed by
the great generals of the army of King Louis. These enconiums naturally
heightened my desire to meet Colonel Dillon.

I informed my new comrades that I was the younger son of a County Mayo
family, who were friends of the colonel's, and that I brought with me
letters of recommendation from his kinsmen, the Lallys of Tullenaghdaly.

"You come well credited, young gentleman," said the senior sergeant,
whose name, I learned later, was O'Kelly, a man of forty or thereabouts,
whose right cheek was marked by a sabre slash, and whose left sleeve was
empty (I heard afterwards that he had lost his arm the previous year
at the capture of Palamos from the Spaniards), "and you are sure of a
hearty welcome from our colonel; but let me tell you, without offence,
that if you came with nothing but your sword you would be equally sure
of a cordial welcome, for our colonel esteems his men for their valour,
and not for birth or connections, and if I may say it, without boasting,
wherever he leads we follow, and will, boys, to the end. Here's to the
colonel!"

Every man rose to his feet. There was a clinking of glasses, and a
cheer that nearly lifted the roof off the tent.

I joined heartily in the toast, and made an indifferent attempt to take
part in the chorus of a song which followed, but my eyelids began to
feel very heavy, and, notwithstanding my efforts, were closing on my
eyes.

This was noticed by my comrades, and one of them got up, and, putting
his arm around me as tenderly as if I were a child, said:--

"You're tired out, my lad. Come with me, you can't see the colonel
to-night; he is dining with the Marquis; but, to-morrow when you are
refreshed, I'll take you to his quarters."

I bade my new friends a sleepy good-night, and remembered nothing till I
heard the _reveille_ sound the next morning. I started up to find myself
lying in a tent with a half-dozen others. For a moment I was a little
bewildered. I rubbed my eyes. The bugle had ceased, and I heard the
voices of the birds saluting the bright May morning. The curtain of the
tent had been withdrawn, and the bright light and the sweet air came in.

"You can lie there as long as you like," said one of my comrades.
"There's no need for you to get up yet."

But I was eager to be up and about. It was a glorious morning. The sun
shone from a cloudless sky, and the tents, stretching far, were flashing
in its light. Everywhere was stir and motion, and many salutations of
comrade to comrade resounded on all sides.

I was delighted with the scene, the well-ordered tents with wide streets
between, the flags and bannerets fluttering in the brisk morning air,
the bustling soldiers, the neighing horses, the fanfare of the trumpets.
It was just the scene to captivate the heart of a youth. Here was all
the glorious pageantry of war untarnished, and that buoyant sense of
life that forbade all thoughts of disaster or defeat, and their woeful
consequences.

"That tent yonder," said one of my comrades, who was drying his hair
after dipping his head in a bucket of water, "with the French standard
over it is the tent of the Lieutenant-General, the Marquis de Sylvestre,
and that to the right of it at the end of our lines is the colonel's.
The Marshal, the Duke de Noailles ought to be in command, but he is ill,
and the marquis takes his place."

Just then Sergeant O'Kelly came up to me.

"I am glad to see you looking so fresh, young gentleman," said he, "this
morning. We shall have breakfast soon, and after it you shall call on
the colonel. The marquis intends to inspect all the troops to-day, and
we must be early on parade. Hard work is expected in a day or two, and
as the colonel is likely to be very busy you had better see him as soon
as possible."

About nine o'clock I presented myself at the colonel's tent, and
learned that he had just finished breakfast.

I handed my letters to the guard, and requested him to send them to
the colonel. He called one of the colonel's servants and gave him the
letters. In a few seconds the servant returned, and ushered me into the
presence of his master.

Young as I was I was surprised at his youth. He hardly looked his
twenty-five years, and he was one of the handsomest men I had ever seen.
He looked every inch a soldier--tall, well-knit and with an indefinable
suggestion of strength and activity in his shapely figure. I bowed as I
entered, and before I had well lifted up my head his hands were on my
shoulders.

"You're welcome, my lad," said he in the cheeriest voice, "and you are
not a day older than I was when I joined, and you are from the old
country, too. Well, I wish 'twas in my power to do something for you
for your people's sake and for your own; but, you see, since the new
formation of the Irish army of King James in the French service many
Irish gentlemen who had served as officers at home in the Williamite
wars, have been reduced; some even to the rank of privates, and not a
few are in my regiment in that category, and it would be invidious of me
were I to put a youth like you above them; but, _courage mon camarade_,
there are stirring times before us, and Dillon's regiment is sure to be
found where the bullets fall thickest and where ranks are thinned, and
a gentleman is sure of promotion if he be put beyond caring for it."

Here the colonel paused for a second, and looking full in my eyes,
added, "if he win his spurs."

I confess I was a little disappointed. I had hoped that, backed up as I
was by my family connections and my letters of recommendation, I would
have obtained the post of ensign. The colonel doubtless noticed my
disappointment.

"You were in camp last night?" he said.

"Yes, colonel."

"With whom did you stay?"

"In Sergeant O'Kelly's tent," I replied.

"Sergeant O'Kelly!" he exclaimed. "By right of service and of valour,
since he came to France, he should be captain. He was one in Ireland;
he has not grumbled at his reduction."

I felt the rebuke.

"I shall be glad to serve under him, colonel," I said.

"Good, my lad. You will serve under a gallant Irish gentleman, and it
will not be his fault if he does not give yon a thousand chances of 'a
bed on the field of honour.' "Death or Victory" is the motto of the
regiment."

An officer riding up to the tent announced that the lieutenant-general
was waiting for the colonel.

"_Au revoir, mon camarade_," as he held out his hand to me, adding, with
a laugh, "perhaps you have not yet caught up this foreign lingo, which
would hardly pass current in the County Mayo. So _slan leat_."

The colonel vaulted lightly into his saddle, and many an admiring eye
followed him as he rode with tossing plumes towards the tent of the
Lieutenant-General, the Marquis de Sylvestre.

I returned to that of Sergeant O'Kelly.

"Well, young gentleman, you saw the colonel, and what did he say to you
and what do you think of him."

"I think he is worth fighting with," I replied, "and worth dying with,
and he said--well he said that in serving under you I should serve under
a gallant Irish gentleman who would give me every chance of death or
glory."

The sergeant drew himself up.

"My faith, lad, the colonel himself will give it you, but I am proud to
have you with me."

For the next week we were kept very busy. The colonel was a strict
disciplinarian, and his men were exercised for several hours every day.
I quickly picked up a fair knowledge of my duties, and it was with
a certain self-confidence I heard the news that we were ordered to
revictual Ostalric which had been captured from the Spaniards a year or
two previously. The task was easily accomplished, as the enemy retired
on our approach, but when returning towards the evening, our regiment,
which formed the rearguard, was suddenly attacked by over three thousand
_miquelets_ or _guerillas_. They seemed to have sprung out of the
ground, and charged us with the utmost fury; but our men, facing round,
were as steady as a rock against which the wave dashes impotently. Some
of the guerillas impaled themselves on our bayonets, and a well-directed
volley threw their front ranks into confusion.

Our colonel, who had been riding in front, dashed round and put himself
at our head.

"Charge, boys!" and quick as the flash of his sword in the sun, he was
in the midst of the enemy.

We followed him with a ringing cheer. I was half beside myself with
excitement. The rattle of the musketry and the smell of powder were
intoxicating. Suddenly I was blinded. A warm spurt that I knew
instinctively was the blood of a wounded comrade hit me in the eyes. I
put up my hand; then I felt a sharp pang, and remember nothing more of
the combat.

I learned afterwards that it lasted only a few minutes. The _miquelets_
were driven off, leaving many dead and wounded on the field, and they
vanished almost as quickly as they had appeared.

We had only two killed and three or four wounded, of which I was one. I
was hit in the breast.

When I came to myself I was in hospital, and learned that the colonel
had been frequent in his inquiries, as had also O'Kelly, who had
distinguished himself in the repulse of the enemy.

My wound was rather serious; however, I expected to be up and about in
a few months. But in this I was disappointed, for when it was nearly
healed, owing to my headstrong ways, as I insisted on leaving my bed too
soon, it broke out afresh, so it came to pass that I missed several
engagements, notably the raising of the siege of Palamos by the Duke of
Vendome, in which our regiment took part, defeating the combined Spanish
and English forces, and the subsequent defeat of the Spanish cavalry
under the Prince of Hesse Darmstadt, who had fought at the Boyne. Like
every other Irishman I would have given one of my eyes for a blow at the
English enemy; but the day was to come.

Well, well; all this was a good many years ago. I was a stripling then.
I am an old man now; but I am not writing a history of my life, and,
indeed, I began this story not intending to speak much of myself, but
only to relate a curious incident which made a very deep impression
on me that time has not yet wholly effaced, but old men are apt to be
garrulous, and old soldiers like to talk of the

    "Battles, fortunes and sieges through which they have passed."

While I was lying ill of my wound outside Ostalric, I was attended by
one of the men of Dillon's regiment who also had been wounded, though
slightly, in the affair, and who I learned afterwards had begged
permission to attend me as a special favour. He was as tender to me as
a woman could have been, but he was curiously reserved, seldom speaking
except when spoken to, and there was a sad look in his eyes which
scarcely left them even when he smiled, which he rarely did, provoked by
some sally of mine. He was a brave man they told me afterwards--they who
themselves were brave--fought like a devil, they said, and was never
wounded except in that affair of Ostalric, and that was when trying to
save me, who was nearly trampled to death when I fell.

Well, in time I recovered my full health and strength, and rejoined my
regiment along with my kind attendant, whose name, by the way, was Ryan,
from the borders of Limerick and Tipperary, and I was in time to take
part in the reduction of Barcelona in the year 1697.

It was one of the most difficult tasks of the French commander, the Duke
of Vendome. The fortifications were so strong as to be deemed almost
impregnable, and were defended by at least two hundred and forty pieces
of artillery. The garrison consisted of eleven thousand regular troops
and four thousand militia, and there was also one thousand five hundred
cavalry, and it was well supplied with munitions of war. A complete
investment was impracticable owing to the compass of the walls and the
outlying very strong fortress of Monjuich, situated on a lofty hill,
commanding the town and port and a large extent of the plain. Moreover,
the Count de Velasco lay encamped about six miles outside the town with
a force mustering, all told, about twenty thousand men, mostly composed,
it is true, of irregulars and guerillas. The French troops did not
amount to quite thirty thousand men, including the marines landed from
the fleet.

We approached the town on the 13th of July, Vendome having the day
before surprised and routed the Count de Velasco, and on our approach
the Spaniards abandoned the Convent of the Capuchins, which was some
distance from the walls, and the Duke of Vendome ordered our regiment to
occupy it, and that night I found myself for the first time in my life
in a convent cell, having Ryan as my comrade.

The cell was small, and bore evidence not very agreeable of its recent
occupation by the Spanish soldiery, but Ryan, who persisted in treating
me as if he were my servant, soon set to work, cleaned it out, and
brought in some hay and made comfortable beds for himself and me in
opposite corners of the cell. It was quite bare of furniture of any
kind, but this we did not miss, as we were to use it only for sleeping
quarters.

We turned in about half-past ten, and I was soon sound asleep. I was
awakened by a shout from Ryan:

"Did you see it? Did you see it?"

"See what?" I answered bewildered.

The moon was shining in through the window and the cell was half in
light and half in shadow. The moonlight fell on Ryan's share of it.
I saw that he was sitting up and that his usually dark face was very
pale, and there was a wild gleam in his eyes.

"What was it?" I repeated.

"Oh nothing! What a fool I am. I had a horrible nightmare. I am sorry
for disturbing you."

"Well, you did startle me, I confess," said I. He lay down again, and I
did likewise, and slept without interruption until morning. I thought no
more of the incident of the previous night, although I could not help
noticing that my companion's face looked rather haggard.

Our second night in the cell passed, for me, very quietly, and Ryan said
nothing to suggest that it was otherwise with him. The third night the
incident of the first night was repeated. Ryan started up, shouting:

"Did you see it? Did you see it?"

I jumped from my bed and struck a light. The cell was, of course, empty,
the door fast closed.

"I am afraid you are ill, comrade," said I, and as I went towards him I
could see the perspiration in large beads on his forehead, and he was
trembling like a scared child.

"Yes, yes, I must be getting ill, I suppose--but you saw nothing?" he
added eagerly.

"Of course I saw nothing," I replied. "What was there to see?"

"And--and you saw nothing on the wall there?" He pointed his hand
towards one of the walls of the cell.

"Nothing. Wake up, man. You are still dreaming."

He shuddered like one feeling a sudden chill, and then he said:

"It's very foolish of me, and I'm sorry to be such a trouble to you."

"Oh, that is nothing," I said. "You had better see the doctor in the
morning."

The next day there was no time to see the doctor. We were early under
arms, and marched several miles in the direction of Llobregat on a
reconnoitring expedition. The day was very warm, and a good part of the
way was rough, and when we returned to our quarters in the evening, I,
for one, was pretty well tired out, and Ryan confessed to me that he
was also; but I suspected that a hardened soldier such as he, was not
fatigued by the march, and that want of rest and the disturbance of the
previous nights were what had done him up.

"I expect to sleep well to-night," he said, as we extinguished our
lights.

"And I also," said I.

But we were to be disappointed. Towards midnight a terrific thunderstorm
burst over the town and our camp, and the rain came down in torrents.
Nevertheless our battalions in the trenches, which had been opened
the night before, were pushing on their work. The enemy suspecting
this turned on them the fire of forty pieces of cannon, which,
notwithstanding the tempest, were very well served, and gave the quietus
to not a few of our men. The booming of the guns and the peals of
thunder made sleep impossible. Suddenly a vivid flash of lightning
illumined the cell.

"My God! my God! Do you see him now?" cried Ryan in a tone of agony.

I was spellbound. I couldn't answer.

There, standing between Ryan and me, was the figure of a Capuchin
monk in his brown habit and cowl, and holding up in his hand a plain
unfigured cross that in the lightning gleamed like fire. I saw the
figure only for a second or two. It retreated towards the door and
vanished.

"Look at the wall, look at the wall!" cried Ryan, hoarsely.

I looked, and on the wall appeared a cross, also without a figure, but
this too disappeared in a second.

The roar of the tempest still continued, and the booming of the guns.
Sleep now was out of the question. I got up and dressed myself. Ryan,
who appeared unable to speak or move, lay back in his bed, his eyes
closed. I roused him up.

"Tell me, did you see him, did you see him?" he whispered, clutching
convulsively my arm.

"Let us get up and go down to the guard room," I said. "The day is
breaking, and we are not likely to sleep any more, and you are ill."

Ryan dressed himself, and we went down, he more dead than alive, to the
guard room. His illness was manifest to all, and he was quickly restored
by portion of the contents of a brandy flask which seemed to work
wonders with him.

We did not sleep in the cell again, and the weather being very warm we
were not sorry when sometime after we were ordered to the outlying posts
of the left wing of our army.

Before we quitted the convent I paid a visit, in the daytime, to the
cell. There was nothing about it to suggest a ghostly visitant; but, on
looking at one of the end walls, I noticed the faint sign of a cross. I
was considerably startled by it, but on closer examination, I discovered
it was such a mark as anything placed against a wall for a long time
generally leaves, less through its own action as to that of the
atmosphere, on the uncovered portion of the walls. But it did seem a
little strange that it should be on the very part of the wall on which
I had seen the vision of a cross. Perhaps, I said to myself, Ryan
had noticed this mark, and it worked in some way on his disordered
imagination. But this could not explain the vision as seen by myself,
either of the cross or of the Capuchin, and it was with a feeling
akin to awe that I left the cell for the last time, wondering whether
anything would ever occur which might throw a light on the mystery.

Ryan, who shared the bivouac with me, had begged me not to mention to
anyone what he fancied (as he put it) he had seen, for I had not told
him that I had seen anything, and, after my promise to this effect, he
never alluded to the matter; but I noticed that, henceforth, he became,
even for him, unusually reserved, and that there was a deep seated
trouble in his eyes; but he continued to be attentive, more attentive,
if possible, to me than before.

For some weeks we lay close to the outposts, chafing under the
inactivity to which we were condemned. Meanwhile, the trenches were
being pushed forward, and, at intervals, we saw the flash and heard the
roar of the cannon from the ramparts; but this after a time ceased to
have much interest for us. Occasionally there were rumours of an attempt
about to be made by the enemy to revictual Barcelona, where provisions
had run low; but they came to nothing, and they no longer served to
rouse any hope of a brush with the Spaniards.

At last, however, the scouts brought us the news that nearly the whole
of the enemy's cavalry were moving from the side of Llobregat, covering
a large convoy, which they hoped to be able under the protection of
the guns of Fort Monjuich, to take safely into the town. The Duke at
once despatched a large body of troops to intercept the convoy, but,
unfortunately, as we thought, we were not of the number, and expected
another idle day at our posts. But our troops had hardly moved out
against the enemy when from a mountain in the rear of the posts a large
body of Spanish infantry swept down like a torrent, while from around
its base appeared several hundred cavalry. Their object, of course, was
to effect a diversion. They could not have hoped for a surprise; still,
I confess, they came on so suddenly and so swiftly, that we had but just
time to be ready to receive them.

We repelled their first fierce onset. They came on again and again, but
under the steady fire of our men, aided by the fire from the French
regiment under Colonel Solre, they at last gave way and broke, the
cavalry galloping off down the valley and the infantry climbing the hill
like goats, but with our colonel at our head we climbed up after them,
pausing only to fire and bring them down in dozens. Foremost in the
ascent was Ryan. With difficulty I kept within view of him, and when at
length I reached the top of the mountain with several others, I found
him lying thoroughly exhausted, and in his eyes was the wild look which
I had noticed on the occasion of the apparitions. His musket was some
paces from him.

Fortunately close to where he was lying was a mountain spring of
perfectly cool, clear water. I filled my shako with it, and put it
to his lips. The draught revived him and I sat down beside him, glad
enough of the rest. Ryan continued silent and so did I, gazing down
on the magnificent panorama that lay stretched before me--the wide,
far-reaching plains, the camp and the beleaguered town all framed in the
blue gleaming waters of the Mediterranean. Away in the distance to the
far right a cloud of dust and smoke and an incessant rattle of musketry
betrayed the whereabouts of the conflict between our troops and the
Spanish cavalry. On the mountain the firing had ceased, except for
a stray shot. The escaped Spaniards had fled precipitately down its
opposite side. Our colonel ordered the recall to be sounded, and with
the light hearts of victors we stepped down the mountain to our posts,
counting on our way some hundreds of killed of the enemy.

The attack on the convoy was successful. The Spanish cavalry were put to
flight, though not until after a sturdy resistance, and the convoy fell
into our hands. This decided the fate of the siege, for the next day
negotiations for the surrender of Barcelona were opened up, and on that
very day the Marshal the Duke de Vendome rode down to our posts and
publicly thanked Colonel Dillon and the Irish regiment for their
services and complimented them on their matchless valour, and, indeed,
to the last day of his life the gallant Duke never missed saying a good
word for the soldiers of the Irish Brigade, and he insisted that no one
had better opportunities of knowing what they could do in the face of an
enemy.

For several days Ryan continued very silent and was almost morose,
but on the day before that on which the enemy were to march out from
Barcelona he found me as I was lying by a small stream at the base of
the mountain up which we had chased the Spaniards, and enjoying what to
me then was a novel luxury--a pipe.

"Would you mind coming up a bit of the mountain," said he to me gravely,
"I want to speak to you."

The request seemed strange as the nearest soldiers were several yards
away from where we were, but I rose and followed him. When we had
ascended about thirty or forty yards he sat down under a bush and I
beside him. I waited for him to speak.

"I saw him again," he said, "when I came up here the other day. I had
just reached the spot where you found me. I aimed, as I thought, at the
back of a flying Spanish trooper. He whom I took for the trooper turned
round. It was he."

"Who?" I asked, although I anticipated the answer.

"The Capuchin!" and Ryan trembled as he said the word.

"I cannot bear it any longer. I must confess at last. God grant I have
not done you irreparable wrong."

"Me!"

"You! You are one of the Browns of the County Mayo; the youngest son of
that Captain Brown, who, when he was not much older than you, fought
against Cromwell and lost his patrimony, but who afterwards, having been
an exile with Charles II. regained it, though not till several years
after the Restoration."

"And what do you know of him or his family?" I asked curiously.

"Not much more than I have told you," he replied, to my surprise,
"except that your father went abroad again, and died not long after you
were born."

"That is so," I said.

"Your mother had not received a communication from him for some time
prior to his death."

"But how do you know that?"

"Let me go on," he replied, "I shall be the sooner finished. He died in
Madrid, and he sent home papers and valuables through a Spanish Capuchin
monk, who was visiting Ireland on a mission, which, I understood, was
part political and part religious."

"From whom did you learn this?"

"From himself."

"The monk?"

"Yes. He was riding by where I lived on a lonely, bare spot, that you
may chance to have heard of, Knockcreggan. The night was bad, dark, and
wild; the road couldn't be worse. It was like the bed of a torrent, huge
stones and boulders everywhere. Just opposite the door of my cabin the
horse stumbled and fell. I heard a cry, and went out and found the
prostrate monk bleeding badly from a wound over his temple. I brought
him in, put him down on a truss of straw, and bandaged him as well as I
could.

"After a while, for he was at first unconscious, he spoke faintly, and
asked for 'more light.' I made a blazing fire of turf, and lit a couple
of candles--all I had.

"'I know I am dying,' he said, 'are you a Catholic?' I told him I was.

"'I am a monk,' he said 'a Spanish Capuchin monk. I want you to swear
on this cross that you will do what I ask you; it being only an act of
charity,' and he held up the cross which had been hidden in the breast
of his riding coat.

"It blazed, my God! as I saw it blaze in the cell the night of the
storm," and Ryan shuddered, although we were then in the full light of
the evening, and the bustling camp below us. "I took the oath on the
cross," Ryan went on to say, "to carry to the captain's widow--your
mother--two parcels, one of papers, which the monk told me, while of
the greatest importance to your family were of no use to strangers; and
another containing some gold and valuable jewels.

"'You will be well paid for your trouble, I know,' the monk said to me;
'but promise me again on the cross that you will deliver both these
parcels safe and sound, and will not touch coin or jewel. If you do, I
warn you, you will be struck dead when you least expect it, and by an
invisible and supernatural hand. But tell no one of your mission.'

"The monk died that night. I sent for the neighbours, and we waked him
and buried him, and I thought of setting out for your mother's house,
but the weather grew worse and worse, and the roads were impassable.
'Twas unlucky for me. I meant well, and intended to do what I promised,
but the temptation came to me to look at the purse, and when I saw the
gold and the jewels shining, the temptation came to me to keep 'em--who
would be the wiser, and I was poor? I was living alone there on the side
of the Knock, and here was a fortune in my hands. Well, the temptation
grew stronger, and I yielded. I kept the money, and went to Dublin and
spent it, and I sold the jewels, and when the money got for them was
nearly all gone, the troubles broke out and the Viscount raised the
regiment for the young colonel, and I joined it. And 'tis many and
many's the time I've looked death in the face since, and he passed me
by. And when I saw you I thought I'd try and make up for my crime some
little bit, and that I'd guard and give my life for you."

I was so amazed at the story that I did not speak for a moment or two
after he had concluded.

"Will you forgive me, for God's sake?"

"The papers," I said. "What about the papers?"

"I have them here," he said, "here!" And with his bayonet point he
ripped open the lining of his coat and produced a bundle of papers in a
leathern wrapper. "I never opened them. I could not read. I don't know
what is in them. I thought they might be of use some day, and that I
could give them up to the rightful owner, as I am doing now."

I took the papers like one in a dream. I rose without another word, and
went down the mountain. I sought out a sequestered spot where I was sure
to be uninterrupted, opened the package and read. Well, it boots nothing
to anyone now to know what was in them. There were family secrets which,
if revealed at the time, would have changed the current of many lives,
including my own; but it could serve nothing but a selfish purpose of my
own were I to reveal them now; so having read the papers, and dropped a
tear over the handwriting of him who was my father, I tore the papers
into bits, set them alight, and waited until every vestige was consumed.

Ryan avoided me for the next few days, but if I had any resentment
against him it died out. I might still have taken advantage of the
information given by the papers, but deliberately decided not to do so.
As for the money and the trinkets--well, they were gone, and Ryan had
suffered terribly, was still suffering, had risked his life and shed his
blood at Ostalric to save mine.

We did not meet again until we entered Barcelona, the enemy having
marched out. That night it chanced that both he and I were ordered for
duty on the ramparts as sentries. Before our time came I went to him,
and holding out my hand, said, "Ryan, I forgive you with all my heart,
and forget."

"But _he_ won't," he replied with a slight tremor.

"Nonsense," I said, "you have confessed your wrong-doing, and all is
over. You shall never see him again."

The clock of the cathedral had sounded midnight. The officers went their
rounds, and I from my station was looking down on the port and out
over the Mediterranean, scarcely stirring beneath the stars. The clock
sounded one. All was quiet. Two o'clock struck. Suddenly I heard fierce
voices of challenge given in Spanish. I was on the alert, but could see
nothing. The voices appeared to be in the air, and to come close to the
ramparts. I shook myself to see if I were wide awake, but the voices
continued. Then I heard the sentries challenging "Qui vive?" one after
another. I too challenged. A musket shot rang through the night. The cry
to arms was raised, and the ramparts were quickly crowded with officers
and men. In the east the day was breaking. Its full light was soon
on the ramparts. Men looked curiously at each other. The sentries
questioned, all repeated the same story. They heard the voices, as they
thought, of Spanish soldiers, and had replied by challenging.

Who fired the shot?

There was not much need to ask. Ryan was lying dead close to one of the
batteries. His musket, which had been exploded, lay beside him. Even in
death his face wore the scared look of a man who had seen a dreadful
vision. I shuddered as I looked at him, and thought of the threat of
the Capuchin of the "invisible and supernatural hand." I kept my own
counsel. I myself never heard anything after that night, but others did,
or thought so, and this fact is attested by Captain Drake, of Drakerath,
in the county of Meath, who was of our regiment, and one of the coolest
and bravest officers of the brigade, and who has set forth in his
memoirs that he, while on night duty on the ramparts, thought he saw
and heard the Spectre of Barcelona.




THE BLACK DOG.


"Did you ever see a ghost, Tim?"

"No, then; I don't mane to say I ever see a ghost, nor I don't mane to
say that I didn't nayther; but maybe I see more than any of ye ever
saw in your born days," said old Tim Kerrigan, as he stooped over the
hearth, and, picking up a sod of turf, put the fire to his dhudeen.

His listeners were a group of light-hearted youngsters (of whom I was
one), who turned in to old Tim's one Christmas Eve a good many years
ago, and who, seated round the fire, were trying to coax him to tell
them some of his supernatural experiences, which, if Tim were to be
relied on, were as numerous as they were varied. Tim, at the time, was
an old man of about five-and-seventy, still hardy and supple; but his
brown face--"brown as the ribbed sea-sand"--was full of wrinkles. Over
these wrinkles he appeared to us, youngsters, to have wonderful power.
He had a trick of pursing, and withdrawing, and inflating his lips
before answering any question put to him, with the result that the
wrinkles appeared to close in and to open out after the manner of the
bellows of a concertina, and when, at the same time, he contracted his
forehead, and brought his shaggy, grey eyebrows down over his bright,
little, brown eyes, they peered out from under them in such a way as to
bear a curious resemblance to those of a rabbit peeping out under the
edge of his burrow.

"Troth and maybe I did," repeated Tim, "see more nor any of ye ever saw,
and maybe more than wud be good for any of ye to see, ayther."

"Oh, we don't doubt you, Tim," said I, putting in a word to mollify him;
"But that was a long time ago, for none of _them_ things are going about
now."

"Ar'n't they!" said Tim. "How mighty clever some people thinks they
are." And he took three or four strong whiffs of his dhudeen and sent
a blue cloud of pungent smoke through the room.

"Did ye ever hear of the black dog?" said he.

"No," said we in chorus.

"No; and I suppose none of ye would believe in it?"

"Oh, indeed, Tim, we'd believe anything you'd tell us."

"Well, I know ye are all dacent boys," said Tim, "an', seein' the night
that it is, I don't mind tellin' ye, but I hope that none of ye will
meet the likes of it. And, be the same token, 'twas a Christmas Eve,
too, it happened, before any of ye was born. I was only a gorsoon myself
then, but I remember it as if 'twas only last night. Ould Hegarty lived
up in the big house on the hill with the grove around it. 'Tis little
better nor a ruin now, with the jackdaws nesting in the chimneys and
the swallows buildin' in the drawin'-room, where the quality used to be.
Ould Hegarty, when I first saw him, was a fine, splendid-lookin' man, as
straight as a pikestaff. He had a free hand and an open house to them
that he thought was good enough for him, but he was as hard as flint to
the poor. There was a poor widow that lived in a cabin where the railway
is now, bad luck to it, and she had an only son, a poor angashore of a
fellow that didn't rightly know what he was doin', and one fine day me
bould Hegarty caught him stealin' a few turnips for his ould mother, an'
nothin' wud do Hegarty but to put the law agin' him, and the poor boy
was transported, and sure the luck was that he wasn't hanged, bekase
they'd hang you then for stealin' a tinpenny bit. And sure the night the
assizes was over myself seen the poor lone widow up at ould Hegarty's
doorstep, an' she cursin' him, and, says she, 'May the black dog follow
ye night and day till the hour of yer death,' and she was down on her
two knees, and her poor grey hairs was streamin' in the wind. And out
kem Hegarty with his ridin' whip in his hand, and he lashed her wud it
until the welts on her shoulders wor as thick as yer fingers. 'Do yer
worst, Hegarty,' sez she, 'but the curse of the widow and the orphan is
on ye, and the black dog will follow ye to your dyin' day,' and the poor
crather got up and she staggered away, an' sure before a fortnight was
over they buried her in the churchyard beyant. He murdhered her, as
sure as ye're sittin' there, but there was no one to take the law agin
him; an', sure, if there was 'twud be no use, for the likes of him could
do what they liked in them times wud the poor people. But, for all that,
they say he hadn't an easy day nor night from that out, and in daylight
or dark he always thought he saw a black dog following him. He wouldn't
sleep by himself if he got the world full of goold, and he always had
his servant-man--one, Jim Cassidy--to sleep wud him. An', sure, Jim
himself tould me that Hegarty wud often start up out of his sleep and
cry out, 'Cassidy, Cassidy, Cassidy, turn out the dog!' But Cassidy let
on to me that he never seed the dog, though he used to make believe as
if he wor huntin' him out of the room, but he said whenever he did that
he used to hear a dog howlin' outside for all the world like a banshee."

"Well, this went on for a year or two, and me bould Hegarty that used to
have a face, from eatin' and dhrinkin', as red as a turkey-cock's gills,
grew as white an' as thin as a first coat of whitewash, and he'd never
go home in the night, after playin' cards up at the club-house, without
havin' one or two friends along with him, and he used to keep them
playin' and dhrinkin' in his own house till cock-crow, and then he used
to get a bit easy in his mind, and Cassidy tould me he could get a few
hours' sleep."

"But one night as myself was comin' home late from buryin' of ould
Michil Gallagher, that was drowned on a rough night down near the bar,
when the hooker struck again' the Pollock Rock, who should I come up
with but Hegarty, and a couple of other spree-boys along with him. A
wild night it was, too, wud the moon, that was only half full, tearin'
every now and thin through the clouds that was as black as my hat, and
sure 'twas they wor laughin' and shoutin', as if the dhrink wor in 'em,
and, faix, maybe myself had a dhrop in, too, but sure that's neither
here nor there. Well, myself followed on, keepin' at a civil distance,
as was the best of me play, an' it wasn't long till they wor passin' the
churchyard, where the poor ould widow was buried, an' just then the moon
tore out through a cloud, an' may I sup sorrow to my dyin' day, if I
didn't see a black dog comin' boundin' over the gate of the churchyard,
an' every leg on him as big as my arm, an' his two eyes blazin' in his
head like two live coals. Well, faix, meself felt all at once as if a
lump of ice was slidderin' down the small of me back, till I was almost
as cowld as a corpse, God save the mark; but for all that I kept
follyin' on, an' didn't I see the black naygur of a dog sniff in' and
sniffin' at Hegarty's heels. I don't rightly know whether Hegarty
noticed him or no, but he began shoutin' louder than ever, and the divel
take me, Lord forgive me for cursin', if I ever heard such swearin' in
my life as he was going' on wud, and the play-boys that were wud him
wor nearly as bad as himself. Well, as soon as he got to his house, an'
they all went inside, may I never draw another breath if I didn't see
the black dog vanishin' in a flame of blue fire that nearly blinded me
eyes like a flash of lightnin'; and when I kem to myself again, what
should I see on the doorstep but the ould widow herself--and sure as she
was dead and buried over a year before, it must have been her ghost I
saw--an' she down on her two knees, an' she cursin' away as meself seed
her the night ould Hegarty horsewhipped the poor crather. Well, of
coorse, meself didn't meddle or make wud her, and I hurried home as fast
as I could, an' I never tould what I seen to man or mortal.

"Well, the next day the talk was all over the place that Hegarty was in
a ragin' fever, an' the best of doctors wor brought down from Dublin to
try an' cure him, but 'twas worse an' worse he was gettin', an' at last
he got so bad that they had to tie him down, an' Cassidy had to watch
him night an' day, an' the poor boy was nearly worn out like an ould
shoe, an' he asked me to come an' help him.

"I didn't like the job, at all; but Cassidy was an ould friend of mine,
an' we wor naybour's childre, so by dint of persuasion he got meself to
consint, an' sure 'twas the hard time we had between us. Every minute
Hegarty used to start up and cry out:

"'Hunt him away! Hunt him away; his nails are in my throat! His eyes are
scorchin' me! I'm burnin'! I'm burnin'!'

"The Lord save us, but 'twas awful to listen to him.

"'Hunt him out! Cassidy, hunt him out, or I'll horsewhip you as I
horsewhipped the widow, an' 'tis her curse is on me, the ould hag. Hunt
him out!'

"And we had to pretend we wor huntin' him out, an' daylight or dark we
used to hear a long howl outside that wud make your flesh creep.

"Well, begob, we wor almost wasted to a thread watchin' him, an' we
could hardly get a wink of sleep; but one night the two of us were
dozin' by the side of the bed when all of a sudden we heard glass
crashin', an' before we had time to rub our eyes wud our fists what
should we see but the black dog who had burst in through the window, an'
he in gores of blood an' his eyes blazin' like wildfire, and before we
could stir a foot he was up on the bed an' he tarin' the throat out of
ould Hegarty.

"'The Lord between us an' all harm!' says Cassidy, an' he caught up the
poker an' he hot the dog a belt that ought to have broken every rib in
his body. 'Ye divil get out of that,' says he, an' I gave him another
thwack, an', wud a screech that would waken the dead an' that made every
hair of our heads stand up like bristles, the black dog jumped out
through the windy, an' he tuk the whole sash along wud him, an' ye'd
take yer oath for a minnit that the whole house was on fire, an' there
was a smell of brimstone that would knock ye down. An' when we kem to
ourselves an' looked at ould Hegarty, there he was stiff and stark, an'
the blue mark of the dog's teeth across his windpipe. We called up the
house an' sent for the docthors, an' they kem, an' they said 'twas
somethin' or the other was the matter wud him that killed him; but
Cassidy an' meself knew betther nor they, but we kept our tongues quiet,
for what was the good of talkin' agin them docthors? Well, we waked him,
though sorrow the wan kem to the wake barrin' the playboys who kem to
have a look at him, an' he was buried up in the churchyard, and not far
from the poor widow ayther, an' when ye are goin' home to-night take my
advice and go round by the hill-road, and don't pass by the churchyard,
though 'tis your shortest way home, for as sure as ye do ye might meet
wud the black dog who is always about on Christmas Eve, for that was
when ould Hegarty bet the poor widow wud his horsewhip, and maybe if the
dog met any one of yees he'd do to ye what he did to ould Hegarty."

Perhaps we didn't believe Tim's story, but whether or no we all went by
the hill road, and though many a year is past and gone since Tim told
the story there is not one who heard it, who for love or money would
pass by that churchyard on a Christmas Eve, and it might after all be no
harm if those who read the story as I tell it now, and who dwell in the
place that knows old Tim no more, should take his advice as we did, and
follow the hill road. It is longer than the road by the churchyard, but
there is an old saying that the longest way round is the shortest way
home.




THE GHOST OF GARROID JARLA.


In fulfilment of a promise of many years standing, I went to pay a visit
to an old schoolfellow in the Christmas of the year 185--, and who then
resided within a few miles of the hill called Knock Cord Na Gur, in the
Queen's County. He was a retired naval surgeon, named Lynam, to whom a
substantial residence and farm had been left by an uncle whom he had
never seen, and who had been a bachelor, as was my friend, the doctor.
It was a lonely place for him to settle down in, but he had been for
over twenty years roving in his ship all over the world, and he was
tired of voyages, and he found, or professed to find, this comparatively
lonely spot an agreeable retreat. Besides his housekeeper, his only
servant was one Terry Brennan, who was at once coachman, gardener,
valet, and butler. The farm was pasture, and this the doctor let on
easy terms to the neighbouring tenants, and as he was ever ready on an
emergency to give his medical services, he was very popular for miles
round. He loved a book, a pipe, and could brew a glass of punch which
would "satisfy an admiral," as he was wont to boast, for this appeared
to him to be the highest proof of its efficacy and quality; but,
although he had read much, and travelled far and wide, he was as
superstitious as the most unlettered sailor, and firmly believed in
spiritual visitants, and had many a strange story of what he himself
had seen of the dead returning.

He met me at the station with an ordinary outside car, which he was
driving, having left Terry at home to have everything ready on our
arrival.

We had some miles to go. Night had already fallen a few hours before,
and the sky above was as black as ink. We made our way, driving
cautiously, all right, until, after going for about an hour, a bend in
the road brought us in view of a light, not more than half-a-mile ahead.

"That is the house," said the doctor. "We'll be there in five minutes."

The announcement was very welcome to me, as I was cold and very hungry,
and I was about to make some reply, when my companion suddenly
exclaimed:--

"By ----, there is the light on the Knock."

And I saw a second light higher up than the first, and at some distance
to the right of it, but it vanished in a second.

The doctor's tone was startling.

"What is it?" I queried.

"Quiet, pet; quiet, Molly; easy, girl." The doctor was speaking to the
mare and did not answer my question. "Hold on to the car. By heaven,
we're over!"

I felt the car was being overturned. I was flung out on to the side of
the road, and as I was recovering myself I heard the mare, who had in
some way broken from the harness, clattering down the hill.

I had fallen on the grassy margin near the ditch and escaped unhurt. The
car tumbled into it without touching me.

"Are you hurt?" said the doctor, who was by my side as I was lifting
myself up.

"No," I replied, "and you?"

"All right," he said, but I detected a tremor in his voice.

"Are you sure?" I asked.

"Oh, yes! Come, let us get on--away from here."

I was on my feet. "What is it, Lynam?"

"Do not ask. Come!" and the doctor caught my arm and hurried me along.
I saw he was labouring under some great emotion and forebore to speak.
We reached the gate leading up to the house. It was open, and in two
minutes we were at the hall door. That, too, was open, and on the steps
stood a man holding a lamp out from above his shoulder, and who seemed
framed by the doorway. It was Terry.

"Doctor, darlint, did you see him?"

"Where's the mare?"

"She's in the yard, doctor. She has not a scratch on her, but there's a
lather on her all over."

"Go and rub her down, put her up, and come back as soon as you can."

The doctor's tone had become calm again.

The excitement caused by this incident had made me forget the hunger
and the cold, but when I entered the doctor's cosy room with its bright
log fire glowing in the hearth and inhaled my first breath of the warm
temperature I shuddered, and the doctor, noticing my discomfiture,
uncorked a bottle of champagne and poured out a tumblerful. I observed
that his hand shook as he presented it to me, and also that he appeared
strangely put about.

I tossed off the wine and then accompanied the doctor to my room, and
made myself ready for dinner.

When I came down again to the dining-room the doctor was standing with
his back to the fire, looking still, as I thought, a little distrait.

But he brightened up at once, and saying: "I'm sure you must be hungry
after your long journey," he rang the bell for dinner.

It was brought in by the housekeeper in response to the summons, and
shortly after Terry appeared dressed in the orthodox waiter fashion.

Our talk during dinner was chiefly about old times and old
acquaintances. The wine, which was excellent, was done full justice
to by both of us, and by the time dinner was over we were in the best
possible humour with ourselves and all the world.

Then when the cloth had been removed, and Terry brought in the
"materials," the doctor set himself to brew two stiff tumblers of punch.
This task accomplished, we lit our pipes, and as often happens with
smokers, we relapsed for a while into silence.

We were rudely interrupted by Terry, who pushed in the door without
knocking, and who cried out excitedly:

"Doctor! doctor! you're wanted. Michael Cassidy's cart is overturned at
the trough below, God save us from all harm, although the horse was only
walking, and he's lying under it, and his boy, who was along with him,
has come up for you."

"Get the lamp at once, Terry, and Jack," said the doctor, addressing me,
"on with your coat, I may need your help."

In a few seconds, preceded by Terry with the lamp, and accompanied by
Cassidy's boy, we were hurrying down to the scene of the accident.

We found the cart upset in the middle of the road, and lying across the
body of poor Cassidy.

Terry set down the lamp, and the four of us lifted up the cart and
turned it over into the ditch, close to where our car was lying. The
doctor examined the prostrate man, Terry holding the light for him.

"Dead!" cried the doctor. "Dead! My God, it's awful."

The blood in my veins became icy cold. I felt I was not only in the
presence of death, but in the presence of a mystery still more weird if
that were possible.

"What is it, Lynam?" I whispered hoarsely.

"That is the rattle of a cart coming along, Terry?" said the doctor, not
heeding my question.

"It is, doctor."

"Show them the light."

Terry held out the light in the direction of the approaching cart. It
belonged to one of the neighbours. When the cart came up to where we
were standing around the corpse it halted. A few words were sufficient
to explain what had happened, and the owner of the cart agreeing we
lifted the corpse on to the cart and it was taken home.

The doctor, Terry and I returned towards the house. Not a word was
spoken by any of us until we were within a few yards of the hall door.

"Look, doctor, look!" cried Terry, "the light is on the Knock again!"

I turned round and looked towards the Knock, which rose to the left
about a quarter of a mile from the house. I saw a blue flame that
quivered for a moment like a flame in the wind, and then went out.

"Let us go in," said the doctor, "he has got his victim to-night."

We entered the hall and I turned into the doctor's room followed by him.
I felt like one in a dream. But the room was bright and cheerful, and
the logs were blazing merrily on the hearth. I flung myself into a
chair. The doctor had closed the door, and was standing near me.

"I am sorry, Jack," he said, in a serious tone, "that your visit has
begun so unpropitiously, but let us forget what has occurred and make a
pleasant night of it," and he pulled a chair close to mine and sat down.

He lit a pipe. I followed his example, and we puffed away for a while in
silence, but my curiosity got the better of me.

"Look here, Lynam, old man," I said. "There is some mystery about this
business of to-night. Our car was upset, as far as I know without any
cause, and it was the same in the case of Cassidy's cart. What is it all
about, and what did you mean by talking of 'a victim?'"

"It is a mystery," he began, "but you saw the light on the Knock
to-night?"

"Yes."

"And that is very strange. The only two about here who have seen it--at
least in our time--are Terry and myself. I saw it first on Christmas Eve
ten years ago--the first Christmas Eve after my coming. I have seen it
on three Christmas Eves since, and each time I saw it a man has been
found dead where we found Cassidy to-night."

The doctor spoke in low, measured tones, and a creepy feeling came over
me as I listened.

"But what connection can there be between the light and the dead man on
the road?" I asked.

"It is a curious story," he replied. "It was told to me by Terry. I
doubted it at first, but my own eyes bore witness before to-night to the
truth of part, at least of it. But I had better begin by telling you
what Terry told me. It seems that in the old times--three hundred years
ago or thereabouts--there was on the Knock-Cord-Na-Gur a strong castle,
in which dwelt one of the offshoots of the Fitzgeralds, who was known
as Garroid Jarla, or Garrett the Earl. He was a man of unrestrained
passions, who knew no law save his own will. He was practised in every
kind of devilry, and was dominated by a lust for blood and gold. Murder
was his chief delight. He was surrounded by a band of villains as
unscrupulous and as bloodthirsty as himself. His name was a name of
terror for miles around, and many a blackened rafter and blood stained
hearth bore witness to his infamous cruelties. Yet, for all that, he
could be seemingly courteous, and could easily deceive an unsuspecting
stranger into the belief that he was of a friendly and hospitable
disposition.

"And it was his wont, especially at Christmas time, to intercept
travellers who happened to be passing along the road which we have just
left, and, after a courteous inquiry as to their destination, to bid
them stay the night with him at his castle. Invariably he stationed
himself on the spot where the drinking trough is, of which you heard
Terry speak, and which, perhaps, you may have noticed when he held the
lamp as I was seeing to poor Cassidy."

"I saw something like a stone trough," I said, "but did not take
particular notice of it."

"That was the trough," continued the doctor. "It was not there at the
time I am speaking of. It was placed there long after the so-called earl
had gone to his account. The times were troublous times, and many a
belated traveller was glad of the invitation to spend the night at the
castle on the hill. Poor and rich were welcome there. The poor traveller
set out the next day with the pleasant recollection of a hospitable
night, carrying everywhere he went a good word for his host, Garroid
Jarla, but for the traveller who had money about him, his night in the
castle was his last. He was never seen or heard of again. But when the
earl was killed, and the castle sacked, the only record of his treachery
was a heap of bones and decaying corpses in a cellar under the
diningroom, the only entrance to which was a trap door, over which the
unsuspecting victim sat while he was enjoying the earl's hospitality.

"Garroid Jarla had many enemies, but not one whom he hated more than
Rory O'Moore, who then dwelt in the Castle of Cluin Kyle, and who, at
the head of the Rapparees, was carrying fire and sword into the English
territories. There was a price then on the head of Rory, fifteen
thousand pounds of our money now, and many a plot and plan was framed
and laid to entrap the dauntless Irish captain. Garroid Jarla determined
at any cost to secure the blood money, and tried, again and again, to
entice one of Rory's followers, by the offer of a large bribe, to betray
his master, but without success. Still he persisted, and, at last, he
gained, or thought he had, one over to his interests. The renegade
persuaded Garroid that he was desirous of avenging a grievous personal
wrong he had suffered at the hands of Rory, and that he was willing to
give his life to accomplish his destruction.

"Garroid's hunger for gold induced him to believe that with it he could
purchase a man's soul, and, therefore, he gave ready credence to Rory's
retainer, whose name was Teague O'Moore, and Teague humoured Garroid to
the top of his bent, and denounced Rory in all the moods and tenses. One
night he came to Garroid, and told him that his chance of overcoming his
enemy, Rory, had arrived. Rory, he said, had come to Cluin-Kyle, after
some desperate and successful fighting, and was holding high revel in
the castle. There was no watch kept, as Rory felt perfectly secure for
that night at least, and, therefore, he might easily be surprised about
midnight, and Teague undertook that he would see that the castle gates
were unlocked, and as for signal he would place a lighted candle in the
postern window.

"Garroid eagerly embraced the proposal, and decided to attempt the
surprise of Rory's castle, and, calling his retainers around him, he
made a feast, believing that men fought better if their stomachs were
not too empty, and that as there was stern and bloody work before them,
they would be all the better prepared for it if they imbibed some
draughts of _usquebaugh_. Teague remained until the party seated at
supper had begun to enjoy themselves, and then having taken care to see
that the window of the room opposite which Garroid was seated was not
curtained, he took his leave to go, as Garroid thought, to Cluin-Kyle;
but Teague, having passed out of the castle, entered the wood that
skirted the ford of Dysartgalen. He had not gone far through the fallen
leaves that strewed his path when he was challenged.

"'God and Our Lady and Rory O'Moore,' was his reply.

"'All right, pass on.'

"'Is the captain here?' said Teague.

"'Here,' answered a stalwart Rapparee.

"'I want your best marksman, captain.'

"'Come hither, Shan Dhu,' said the captain.

"A man stepped forward with musket on shoulder.

"'Follow me,' said Teague, 'and you captain and your men keep close to
our heels. When you hear the shot rush straight for the castle. If the
bullet does its work the castle is yours.'

"Teague and the marksman went ahead. They passed unnoticed within the
outer walls, and advanced close to the uncurtained window.

"'That candle that you see,' said Teague to the marksman, 'is in a line
with Garroid Jarla. Snuff it and you kill him.'

"The marksman took a cautious aim.

"'Bang!' A crash of glass, a fierce yell.

"'Oh, Captain!' cried Teague, with a wild shout, that made the night
tremble. The Rapparees burst in on the startled revellers. But, as the
latter had their weapons ready to hand, a desperate conflict ensued, and
it is said that, until the last of his followers was slain, Garroid
Jarla remained sitting where he had been shot, and that his face was
black as coal, while his eyes gleamed like fire. The Rapparees sacked
the castle before they left for Cluin-Kyle with the news of the tyrant's
death.

"The next day the peasantry entered the ruined castle, and, finding the
body of their arch-enemy, Garroid Jarla, they dragged it to the Ford of
Dysartgallen, and, having cut it in quarters, they flung them into the
river, and believed they had got rid, once and for all, of the ruthless
tyrant of their homes.

"But in this, according to Terry's story," said the doctor, "they were
mistaken. For, time after time, Garroid Jarla appeared at the very
spot where he used to meet travellers during his life, and whomever he
accosted never saw the morning break again.

"At last a friar coming this way heard of the apparitions and their
fatal results, and he bade the people bring a stone trough, and place
it on the spot, and this trough was fed with water from a running
stream, and the friar blessed the water, so that no evil spirit could
come near it. And after this, for generations, no one ever saw the ghost
of Garroid Jarla. But in the dark days of Ninety-eight, a band of Yeos,
coming along the road, broke the trough, and turned away the stream from
it, and ever since then it is dry, and of no service to man or beast,
and ever since then at irregular intervals, but always on Christmas Eve,
the ghost reappears and claims a victim, and when he appears a light
burns on the Knock. And that is Terry's story," said the doctor, and he
shook the ashes from his pipe.

"Have you ever seen the ghost?" I asked.

"I have seen the light on the Knock," he replied, "and I have seen the
dead men. You saw the light on the Knock to-night; you also have seen a
dead man. Do you doubt," said he, looking me straight in the face, "that
he is one of Garroid Jarla's victims?"

"Perhaps, after all, doctor," said I, "there are more things in heaven
and earth than are dreamt of in our philosophy."

"It is getting late," said the doctor, "and I am sure you must be
tired."

I was tired, and yet when I turned in I could not sleep. On that night
and many a night since I was haunted by the ghost of Garroid Jarla.




TRUE TO DEATH.


"Death!" The speaker was a tall, sinewy, athletic man, from twenty-eight
to thirty years of age. The single word came from his lips short and
sharp as a pistol shot. He looked around upon his auditors, who watched
his hard-set features in silence. A group of a dozen peasants stood
before him, the youngest not more than twenty, the oldest a man of sixty
years, above the average height, thin, cadaverous looking, with hollow,
sunken eyes, black as night, that contrasted strangely with the
prominent, grey, bushy eyebrows. Deep lines, traced by suffering and
bitter thought, furrowed his ample brow, and long, lank, white hair came
down almost to his shoulders. His eyes rested upon the speaker, whose
face became blanched under the terrible and earnest gaze that was
fastened upon him. Though dressed in peasant garb, it was easy to
see that the young man's life was not always spent in the peaceful
occupation of the peasantry; a scar on his right cheek told a story of
conflict, while the deep bronze that stained his face was suggestive of
travel in other lands. Born on the southern coast, his earlier years
were spent in the precarious pursuit of fishing, and just as he crossed
the threshold of manhood, an adventurous spirit prompted him to join
some of his comrades who sailed with a French captain bound from the
Shannon for Brest. He pursued the sea-faring life for a year or two,
when, falling in at one of the French ports with a detachment of the
Irish Brigade, then battling under the _Fleur-de-lis_, he took service
in it, and fought in several engagements, until a bullet in the breast
incapacitated him for the duties of a soldier's life. Returning to
Ireland, he found the peasantry engaged in the great agrarian struggle
which produced the "Whiteboys." His military and adventurous spirit, as
well as his sympathy with his class, invested the conspiracy with a
peculiar attraction for him. He became a member of it, and before many
months had passed was the leader of the organisation in his district.
His superior ability, and his power of swift and keen judgment,
commanded the respect and confidence of his followers. On many a night
before this on which our story opens, the terrible sentence of death had
fallen from his lips, but never before had his comrades observed the
deathlike pallor that was in his face to-night. The scene was a weird
one. A long, low-roofed cave, of irregular shape, not more than twelve
feet at the widest, and narrowing towards the aperture, which was scarce
large enough to allow of one man at a time crouching on his hands and
knees; a small opening in the roof, through which a hand might be
thrust, allowed the escape of the smoke from the pine logs, blazing in
the further end of the cave. As the flame leaped up and down, a thousand
shadows and flickering lights danced on roof, and floor, and walls,
flitting fantastically, bringing into occasional prominence, the
features of the group. As the speaker uttered the single word, a log,
displaced by the action of the fire, blazed fiercely, and threw its
light upon his face. In the searching light every lineament was clearly
portrayed, and the twitching of his mouth, and the white look that
chased the bronze from his cheek, became plainly visible to the eyes of
his followers.

"It is well," said the old man. "When shall we meet again?"

The question was addressed to the leader. All eyes were fastened on him
as he said with unusual slowness:

"This night fortnight."

"Too long," cried the old man, with a fierce cry that had a hard
metallic ring in it as it struck against the walls of the cave.

"Too long," murmured the others.

The leader looked around, scanning the faces of each one closely.

"Too long," repeated the old man, in deeper tones.

"Well, this night week, be it," said the leader.

"Agreed," came the response.

And one by one the party left the cave, save the old man and the leader.
The old man moved to the aperture, peered out, and waited until the
last of his comrades had disappeared. He then turned back, and, standing
with folded arms before his companion, said to him:

"We chose you to be our leader because we knew you were brave, and we
believed you to be true; you have never failed us up to this."

"Then why do you doubt me now?"

"Because," said the old man gravely, "there was a white look in your
face to-night, which was the sign of either fear or treachery; you
are too brave for fear; then what did it mean? You have decreed swift
doom to the petty tyrants; why did you seek to-night to postpone the
execution of the arch tyrant? You know the wrong he has done our
people--ay, the nameless outrages which he has inflicted upon their
honour, yet you sought to gain for him the long day, for him who would
string us up at short shrift. What does it mean?" And the old man's
tones became fiercer. "Is it true what they whisper of you, that the
nut-brown hair and the bright eyes and the red mouth of his daughter
have caught you in the net, and that your arm is no longer free, and
that your heart is unmanned? Look at me! I am old, and worn, and
withered. I was once young like you. I knew what it was to love, and
the sweetest maid that ever stepped down the mountain side, bright and
sparkling as a streamlet in the sun, was the girl of my heart. Forty
years ago the green carpet was laid over her in the old churchyard, and
a week after there was a bullet in the heart of him who was the father
of the man you want to save. Ah! You cannot know, God grant you may
never know what forty years of sorrow and bitterness are to the heart
of man. Yet you would save him, who follows in the footsteps of his
father--him who, as I have told you, has done us nameless wrong. Beware!
I am old and you are young; you are strong and I am weak, but I can
strike a traitor yet."

As the old man spoke these last words, he had drawn himself up to his
full height, his right arm was lifted, and the clenched fist drove
the nails into the palm of his hand. Suddenly it fell to his side,
and turning from his companion he sought the opening of the cave and
disappeared in the night. The leader stood alone. The light from the
pine logs began slowly to die out, shadows clothed the walls of the cave
and advanced along the floor, and save a small pool of red light below
and a faint flickering glow on the roof above, everything was in
darkness. Still the leader remained with his arms crossed, motionless;
various thoughts disturbed his heart, thoughts of the old days when he
was a fisher lad; thoughts of the bivouac and the battle, of the stories
of the camp fire, of the long yearning in foreign fields for his own old
island home, of the oppression of the people, of the loyalty of his
followers, of their faith in him, of the brave work he had hoped to do
for them, and then of the sweet face of the girl that he knew never
could be his, but for whose sake he would have plucked his eyes out and
gone through a thousand deaths. He knew the old man had spoken truly; he
knew that her father was one of the bitterest and most hated of the
oppressors of his people, and yet he had to confess to himself that for
her sake he had sought to gain for him the long day. The last flickering
embers were almost dead. Suddenly he became aware of the darkness
around, and with an effort, bracing himself up, he sought to chase the
harassing thoughts away from him and left the cave.

The cave was by the sea-shore; it was far up on the cliffs, its entrance
was concealed by a projecting rock, and was known to very few. A rugged
ascent scarcely safe to even the most practised feet, and dangerous to
any but a man of the firmest nerves, led up to it from the beach. When
the leader stepped through the outlet the strong sea breeze restored him
to himself. He descended cautiously until he reached the strand. To the
right lay his home. For a moment he turned in that direction, but only
for a moment, and then he went the opposite way. After walking for a
quarter of an hour he again ascended the cliff, and reaching the table
land advanced with quick steps until he found the road. Having gone
three or four hundred yards, a light piercing far through the darkness
from the window of a square building, that looked half fortress and half
mansion, caught his eyes. There was a wild stir in his heart, and the
blood rushed fiercely through his veins. He walked like one fascinated.
He knew not what he thought; he only felt that if with every forward
step death should grip him by the throat he should still go on. At last
he stood almost close enough to the lighted windows to touch them with
his hand. He looked into the room which was on the ground floor.
Pictures and books and embroidery were there; a bright fire sparkled on
the hearth, candles fixed against the walls made the room almost as
light as day. There was no one visible. Just as he was about to turn
away in despair the door opened and a radiant girl entered. She advanced
towards the fireplace, shuddered a little as if cold, and stretched her
soft white hands over the blaze, and the ruddy glow stained the white
lilies on her cheeks. Something like a sob stuck in his throat, and
when a moment after her father entered the room, and the Whiteboy chief
remembered the sentence in the cave, with a moan, like that of a dumb
animal in pain, he staggered helplessly away and sought his home.

The morning broke cold and grey, but soon the level lights of the winter
sun came into the room where he had spent a sleepless night. He rose
from his bed, and dressing himself opened the little window and looked
out upon the sea. The chill breeze of the morning, odorous with the
brine of the ocean, filled the room. Hours passed and he still watched
the glancing billows keen and cold, and thought of the Shannon river and
his voyage to Brest and the escape that was open to him, and he sank
into himself and thought and thought. Then looking out again he saw on
the strand below, moving along with pain, the old man of the cave, and
his heart was divided, and once more he remembered the oppressions of
his people.

"They trust me," he said, "and what am I to her? What am I to her?" he
cried out passionately, "she does not know of my existence. I am one of
the crowd that her father treats even worse than dogs, and whom she,
with all her graciousness, scarcely deigns to recognise. Ay! there you
go, old man, with your load of sorrow, greater than mine; and yet 'tis
hard, 'tis hard to think of it, that I should be the one to pronounce
his doom."

Wearily he closed the window and left the room and went down by the sea,
and watched its ebbing and its flowing with sinking heart. The following
night found him equally restless. How the week passed he did not know,
but the night came when he was to meet his followers again in the cave.
A week before he was a man of thirty years, looking resolute and brave
save for the white look that momentarily came into his face as he
pronounced the terrible sentence; to-night he looked old and haggard,
and the ruddy light from the blazing logs served only to make his face
look ghastly. The doom had been decreed. To-night was to decide who was
to carry it into execution. Hitherto the executioner had been selected
by lot. To-night it was proposed the same course should be followed. All
appeared to agree, when the old man lifted his voice and said:

"We have chosen this man as our leader; we have been faithful to him in
carrying out his orders; we have placed our necks within the gallows
noose; some of us have stepped up the gallows stair and died without
betraying him, when by betraying him they could have saved their lives.
The time has come when he should prove his fidelity to us by taking this
deed upon himself."

When the old man had ceased speaking there was perfect silence. In the
uncertain light it was impossible to discern clearly the features of the
leader. But he spoke no word. An indistinct muttering from the followers
scarcely broke the silence. Then a stout strapping fellow stepped to the
front and said:

"No! I believe in our leader. Up to this it has always been decided by
lot. It fell to me twice. I wished it fell to someone else; but when it
fell on me I did it. I don't see why the captain should not have the
same chance as the rest of us."

A chorus of approval answered this little speech.

"Well, then, comrades," said the leader, "are you all satisfied that it
should go by lot?"

"Yes, yes," was the answer, while the old man stood with folded arms and
remained silent.

"Then let it be by lot," said the leader.

This course having been determined upon, a pebble was produced for every
man present. One was a white pebble; the others were of various colours.
The man who drew the white pebble was to be the executioner. The pebbles
were placed in a small hole in the side of the cave, not touched by the
light of the fire, and too high, even if there was most perfect light to
allow anyone to see its contents. The old man was the first to try his
fate, and kept the pebble which he drew close in his clenched fist; the
others followed, and each also kept the pebble in his closed fist. The
last to draw was the leader. The old man, stirring the logs with his
feet, said as the blaze lit up the cave--

"Now, let us show our hands," and every man displayed the pebble upon
his level palm.

The white was in the leader's hand. He had no sooner shown it than his
fingers closed over it with a convulsive grasp that might have crushed
it into powder.

"Yes," he said, with a strident voice, "the lot has decided I'm to be
the executioner. I shall answer for the discharge of my duty with my
life."

"To-night," hissed the old man between his teeth.

"Yes, to-night," was the reply, cold, and brief and fierce.

The conspirators filed out of the cave; the last to leave was the
leader.

The new moon had just broken through the clouds, which flung their dark
shadows on the sea. He gained the strand, conscious that his comrades
were watching him. He took the direction of the doomed house; he moved
along like a man whose heart was dead within him. He crossed the lawn,
he advanced to the window; the lights were burning in the room as they
had burned on that other night. The father and the daughter sat, side by
side, in front of the cheerful fire, her arm round his neck, and from
the movements of her lips, the light upon her face, and the pleasant
laughter in her eyes, the chief knew she was talking fondly. In a moment
of madness he lifted his pistol, and aimed it at her father's head. Just
then the girl drew back, rose from her chair, and standing up to her
full height, displayed all her freshening beauty.

"God bless you, darling!" he sobbed; and when he was found dead outside
the window, with a bullet from his own pistol in his heart, the boys
knew that he was "True to them to the Death."




"THE LIGHT THAT LIES IN WOMAN'S EYES."

(_A Story of '98_).


Nora O'Kelly was just nineteen years of age--tall, lissome, with cheeks
like an apple blossom, hair as brown as a ripe beechnut glowing in the
sunset, lips like rowan-berries in the warm August days, and eyes like
twin stars looking at themselves in a woodland pool--a girl to dream
about in one's sleep, to rave about when awake.

This is high praise of a sweet Irish colleen, the critical reader may
say, but it was not half high enough for half the boys whose heads she
turned when she and they were young. Alas! they--the admired and the
admirers--have long since passed away, and are all now in noteless
graves, for the little story, if story it can be called, which is set
down here, is a story of a hundred years ago, when the war clouds
hovered over the land, and from out their dark bosoms flashed the
lightnings that rived many a home and made many places desolate.

She was a farmer's daughter in the county Kildare, who lived not far
from Naas. Her life had been uneventful until her mother died when she
was little over sixteen. Since then, she, the only child, had been the
solace of her father. He, as is the way with fathers, would have kept
her always by him; and in the happiness which her loving companionship
brought him, he persuaded himself that she was perfectly happy under his
roof, and that her thoughts never wandered away from it and him.

But as the wind bloweth where it lists, so love wanders at its own sweet
will. Sometimes it will steal in through the guarded gates of palaces;
sometimes it will creep in through the crannies of the mud-wall cabins;
no place is secure from it; the walled town is as defenceless against
its assault as the open plain. It marches down through centuries, the
overthrow of kingdoms and of nations cannot hinder its buoyant step, and
once in a way it came knocking at the heart of sweet Nora O'Kelly.
She did not at once understand the summons--what young girl sweet and
innocent as she ever does? But she heard the knocking at her heart all
the same, and when she looked through the windows of her eyes she saw,
or thought she saw, young Larry O'Connor looking straight at her with
such a look as she had never seen in a boy's eyes before, and she felt
as if she were walking on air, and that her heart was one sweet song
that could not find a word to interpret its music.

Oh! for the delicious dream that comes to a happy privileged youth or
maiden once in a lifetime, and that is, no matter what the sceptics and
the scoffers say, sometimes realised, and this was the dream that had
invaded Nora's heart and taken complete possession of it.

But Larry O'Connor was poor; one of half a dozen children who had to
live out of a farm not half as large as that of Nora's father, and she
was his only child. Her father also, like many men of property, thought
chiefly of it, and was utterly averse to change, and he had nothing but
hard words for the emissaries of the French Government as he said and
thought, who were going about the country, inculcating subversive ideas
in the minds of the young generation.

Conscious of the growing unrest amongst the people, Mr. O'Kelly
recognised, but not until after a long struggle with himself that it was
desirable he should settle Nora in life. She was young, beautiful and
attractive, and he had means greater than his station. He had discovered
for himself that young Captain Anthony of the Yeos, the son of his
landlord, had been smitten by his daughter's charms. And though very
loath to think of her leaving himself once or twice, perhaps oftener, it
crossed his mind that if she were to leave him she could do no better
than become Captain Anthony's wife. He was a gentleman to the manner
born, though a little self-willed and occasionally passionate--failings
common enough in these days when his class, a minority of the people
was in the ascendant, with scarcely anyone to question them, save some
fierce peasant seeking 'the wild justice of revenge.'

Young Anthony was a good-looking youth, with an air of distinction which
goes far to capture woman's hearts. He had first met Nora O'Kelly at a
ball given by his father to his tenants, and had danced with her on that
occasion twice or thrice. Nora met him with the freedom of a maiden who
looked upon him as above her in station, and she regarded his courtesy
towards her as a delicate compliment due from his superior position
rather than to herself. Her frankness did not deceive him for a moment.
There was that in her eyes--that which is in the eyes of every maiden of
guiless heart--which told more plainly than words can tell that he was
no more to her than a gracious stranger, here to-day and gone to-morrow.

But this only added fuel to the fire kindled in his heart, her beauty,
as marvellous, though happily not so fleeting, as that of the white rose
which wins the heart of the wayfarer through the hedgerows in the days
of June. A good-looking young fellow as he was, enjoying a high social
position, many longing eyes had bent upon him, and he had no doubt that
he could easily find a lady of his own station who would be willing to
share his fortunes as his wife. But he had hitherto kept himself aloof
from the snares of love, and now unwittingly he had fallen over head and
ears into it. He did not know this for a considerable time. He had, it
is true, directed his steps often towards Nora's house, on one pretence
or another to see her father, but really to catch a glimpse of her. But
he was seldom successful, as Nora had no desire whatever to come in his
way, and hardly ever gave him a moment's thought. Indeed, her whole mind
was constantly filled with the vision of Larry O'Connor, who was just as
constantly thinking of her, though neither of them had yet spoken of
love.

But Captain Anthony, although conscious of a growing interest in
Nora, did not suspect that he was really in love with her, and, as a
consequence, had not formed any 'intentions' concerning her. If he had
it would doubtless never have occurred to him that, in case he ventured
to offer his hand to her, he would meet with a refusal. But all at once,
in the most unexpected manner, he made the discovery that his heart was
in her keeping. Riding by the boreen leading up to her father's house in
the twilight of an April evening he caught a glimpse of two figures
moving up the boreen close together. One he knew at a glance, it was
Nora; the other he found to be Larry O'Connor. There was nothing very
remarkable in this, for the farms of the two families were joined, and
as neighbour's children they might naturally be on friendly terms, but
the sight smote the heart of Anthony like a sword thrust, and something
like hatred for O'Connor was stirred up in him. He rode on home slowly,
gnawed at by jealous pangs. The face of Nora was before his vision in
all its radiant beauty. The soft, sweet caressing voice which won all
hearts was in his ear, but now it was whispering, he had no doubt, words
of love into another's, and that other one wholly unworthy of her, a
mere peasant, for Captain Anthony prided himself on his gentility,
although he was only a descendant of a Cromwellian trooper. In
another mood he might perhaps have classed Nora's father in the same
category, but now his eyes were suddenly opened to her worth, and the
possibility--nay, the likelihood of losing her made her appear still
more precious. He made no attempt to shake himself free from his
torment. He surrendered himself all that night to it, the next day he
came to the rash determination as it proved to go straight to Mr.
O'Kelly and ask for Nora's hand. He had no doubt at all of his consent,
and he tried to persuade himself that Nora's heart was still free, and
that she would scarcely refuse him who might choose amongst so many.
When he arrived at the house he was disappointed to find that Mr.
O'Kelly had gone to Dublin, and would not be back till late, but Nora
was at home. He took a sudden resolve, he would see her and propose to
her there and then.

Nora at the time was in the garden, and when the message was brought
to her that Captain Anthony desired to see her in the absence of her
father, she came wondering what the captain could want, and without the
faintest suspicion of his purpose. She received him in the parlour,
offered him a chair, she herself remaining standing. For a second
Captain Anthony stood as if irresolute--then he plunged straight into
the heart of the business.

"I came to find your father, Nora. I have found you. I want to know,"
here he looked imploringly at her, "can I keep you for ever?"

Nora flushed crimson, and a startled look stole into her eyes. She
hardly knew what interpretation to put on such language, but before she
could say a word the captain rushed on impetuously--"I mean it, Nora, I
love you--yes, love you with all my heart. Will you be my wife?"

A look of great distress came over Nora's face. Startling as the
proposal was, all the more so because of its brevity and plainness, the
evident sincerity of it appealed to her more strongly even than the
honour of it. She held out her hand while the tears came to her eyes.

"It is impossible, captain; I love another."

The captain's face became white. He ignored the proffered hand, and
bowing stiffly left the room and the house. When he had ridden about a
quarter of a mile he crossed into the fields and put his horse to the
gallop until both horse and rider were well nigh exhausted. It was the
means almost instinctively adopted by him to try and subdue the tumult
of his soul.

From that day forward Anthony was a changed man. To the passion of
jealousy was added a feeling of deepest humiliation. To have been
refused by the daughter of one of his tenants in favour of a pauper
peasant youth was maddening, for though Nora had not mentioned
O'Connor's name, Anthony had no doubt that it was him she meant. But any
doubt he might have had was dispelled, for again it chanced he saw the
two lovers together, and he was witness, without their knowledge, of a
tender parting that still further added to his torments. The feeling,
akin to hatred which was stirred up on the first occasion developed into
actual hatred. But about this time there were some anxieties that came
as a distraction to the mind of the disappointed suitor. Rumours of an
intended rising had become persistent, and a few weeks was to prove
their truth. On the 23rd day of May Michael Reynolds stopped the mail
coaches, and on the following morning he made the attack on Naas.
Amongst his followers was Larry O'Connor, wearing for a favour a green
rosette, which had been made for him by Nora, who, deeply as she loved
him, was proud to see him go forth to battle for his native land. But we
are not writing history, and will not detain the reader by a description
of the battle of Naas. Information of the intended attack had been given
to the authorities, and a strong garrison was posted in the town, and
after a gallant effort to dislodge it, Reynolds was forced to order his
men to retreat. O'Connor, armed with a pike, had fought desperately by
his leader's side until the last moment. Then he, too, quitted the field
and got separated from the rest of his companions. As soon as the
insurgents were seen to be in retreat, the Fourth Dragoon Guards, the
Ancient Britons, and the Mounted Yeos, were let loose after them. The
latter were commanded by Captain Anthony. It was no quarter for anyone
they overtook, whether armed or unarmed. O'Connor finding himself alone,
crossed the fields as fast as he could, but still keeping his pike.
The pounding of a horse close behind him and a bullet whizzing by his
ear caused him to turn round. It was a dragoon, who also had become
separated from his troop. He had drawn his long sabre and made a cut at
O'Connor as he came up. The latter caught the sword on the guard of his
pike. After a combat of a few seconds the dragoon was unhorsed with a
fatal gash in his throat, and O'Connor, having possessed himself of his
sword, and the horse galloped away in the direction of his home. He was
within a few yards of the boreen leading up to O'Kelly's farm house,
when he caught sight of Nora. She was down at the road waiting for
tidings of the battle. O'Connor reined in his horse. At that moment
round a bend of the road appeared Captain Anthony, his horse covered
with foam.

"Surrender, you rebel, or I will shoot you."

He held the pistol out before him. O'Connor crying, "Go back, Nora
darling!" urged his horse forward, raising his sword the while. But
Anthony fired and the bullet struck O'Connor in the sword arm, which
fell helpless. In a second Anthony had gripped O'Connor, and in the
struggle the two men rolled off their horses. Anthony was on top, and
he drew a second pistol from his belt. Before he could use it his hand
was seized.

It was Nora. Her assistance enabled O'Connor to regain his feet.

"By G----, I'll make him swing on this very spot!" cried Anthony,
foaming with passion.

"Thank God! Captain Anthony, I've saved you from committing murder!"

For a moment his eyes met Nora's. Their deep, soft, tender influence,
and the soft, low, sweet voice fell like a happy calm on his soul. For a
second a fierce, wild longing to clasp her in his arms took possession
of him, and all his heart's love went out to her. Then there was the
noise of galloping horses below the bend of the road.

Turning to O'Connor, Captain Anthony said gently, "The Yeos are coming,
save yourselves."

And Larry and Nora went down the boreen together.




DEATH BY MISADVENTURE.


"Superstitious?" Well, I confess I am a little. I would rather not sit
down at table with twelve others, and I think that no really good host
should expose his guest to such a predicament. I have, indeed, made one
of thirteen at dinner on more than one occasion, and was not a penny the
worse, nor, as far as I can recall, was anyone else. But all the same, I
don't like the number. And I would rather see two magpies than one any
day, and I don't like to hear the 'tick' of the death watch at night.

I would rather not pass a churchyard alone after dark, but then I don't
like churchyards even in the daytime, and would avoid them if I could. I
was once induced to make one at a seance of Spiritualists, and sat for
at least half an hour, with five or six others, round a table in the
dark, vainly hoping for a glimpse of a spirit from the other world, or
for a sound of the rapping, the system of telegraphy said to be employed
by its denizens, but I neither saw nor heard anything.

The reader will gather from this that I am like nine out of ten of his
acquaintances in matters of this kind. I am not a convinced sceptic as
to supernatural visitations, and, on the other hand, I am not a believer
in them. All I know is that I had never seen anything to bring me in
touch, real or imaginary, with the other world until a certain night in
the first days of the month of September, over twenty years ago, when I
was staying at one of the most charming seaside resorts on the eastern
coast of Ireland.

The weather was simply delightful. The breath of summer seemed still to
linger in the leaves, almost as many as they are in June, and which had
hardly begun to put on their autumn tints. The sea for days had been
like a mill-pond. The tide glided in and out almost imperceptibly, and
only in the still night could one hear its soft sighing voice.

I was lodged in a 'furnished house' close to the sea. My rooms were very
bright, and offered splendid views of sea and mountain, and of the rich
foliage that crowned the hills that rose up, gently sloping, almost from
the strand.

The house was furnished after the fashion of many seaside houses let
for the season, and idle during the winter months. The furniture was
indifferent, but sufficient. But of this I had not taken much notice. I
was easily satisfied, and moreover I spent most of my time out of doors.
But there came a day when the sky was covered with black clouds, from
which the rain poured down unceasingly, and the sea was hidden in a
mist.

I had smoked and read for two or three hours, and then got up, stretched
my legs and walked about my sitting room. And for the first time, I
think, I paid serious attention to the pictures on the walls. With one
exception, they were all photographs. This exception was the allegorical
representation of Hope--a beautiful female figure. The others were
photos of family groups, churches, etc., and they suggested in an
unmistakeable way a "job lot" at an auction.

This suggestion set me speculating on the fortunes of their former
owner. And what encouraged me in this was the character of the largest
photograph. It was a wedding group, evidently taken just after the
arrival from church. The persons forming it stood on the steps of a
rather fine house, over the porch of which the word 'Welcome' was formed
in rosebuds. There were in the group about twenty persons in all. The
bride, with a bouquet in her hand, was standing beside the bridegroom,
on the top step, and both came out very well in the photo, and as the
central figures, of course they naturally excited more interest than the
others. The bride was tall, shapely and decidedly good-looking, while
the bridegroom, on the other hand, was stumpy, thick-necked, and of an
ill-favoured countenance, and apparently much older than the bride. Was
it a match of love or convenience? How did it fare with the two standing
here side by side, whose future life till death would them part were
linked together for good or ill, for happiness or misery?

An idle question, the reader may say,

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