though by daylight there seemed to lie but a step of space between the ruined castle of muirisc and the portal of the convent of the hostage’s tears, it was different under the soft, starlit sky of this april evening. the way was long enough, at all events, for the exchange of many views between kate and jerry.
“’tis flat robbery he manes, jerry,” the girl said, as the revolted twain passed out together under the gateway. “with me safe in the convint, sure he’s free to take everything for his son—me little stepbrother—an’ thin there’s an ind to the o’mahony’s, here where they’ve been lords of the coast an’ the mountains an’ the castles since before st. patrick’s time—an’, luk ye! an o’daly comes on! i’m fit to tear out me eyes to keep them from the sight!”
“but, miss katie,” put in jerry, eagerly, “i’ve a thought in me head—egor! the o’mahony himself put writin’ to paper, statin’ how every blessed thing was to be yours, the day he sailed away. sure ’twas meself was witness to that same, along wid o’daly an’ your mother an’ the nuns. to-morrow i’ll have the law on him!”
“ah, jerry,” the girl sighed and shook her head; “ye’ve a good heart, but it’s only grief ye’ll get tryin’ to match your wits against o’daly’s. what do you know about papers an’ documents, an’ the like of that, compared wid him? why, man, he’s an attorney himself! ’t is thim that putts the law on other people—worse luck!”
“an’ him that usen’t to have a word for anny-thing but the praises of the o’mahonys!” exclaimed jerry, lost once more in surprise at the scope of o’daly’s ambitions.
“i, for one, never thrusted him!” said kate, with emphasis. “’t was not in nature that anny man could be that humble an’ devoted to a family that wasn’t his own, as he pretinded.”
“weil, i dunno,” began jerry, hesitatingly; “’t is my belafe he mint honest enough, till that boy o’ his was born. a childless man is wan thing, an’ a father’s another. ’t is that boy that’s turnin’ o’daly’s head.”
kate’s present mood was intolerant of philosophy. “faith, jerry,” she said, with sharpness, “’t is my belafe that if wan was to abuse the divil in your hearin’, you’d say: ‘at anny rate, he has a fine, grand tail.’”
jerry’s round face beamed in the vague starlight with a momentary smile. “ah, thin, miss katie!” he said, in gentle deprecation. then, as upon a hasty afterthought: “egor! i’ll talk with father jago.”
“ye’ll do nothing of the kind!” kate commanded.
“he’s a young man, an’ he’s not muirisc born, an’ he’s o’daly’s fri’nd, naturally enough, an’ he’s the chaplain of the convint. sure, with half an eye, ye can see that o’daly’s got the convint on his side. my taking the vail will profit thim, as well as him. sure, that’s the point of it all.”
“thin why not putt yer fut down,” asked jerry, “an’ say ye’ll tek no vail at all?”
“i gave me word,” she answered, simply.
“but aisy enough—ye can say as mickey dugan did on the gallus, to the hangman: ‘egor!’ said he, ‘i’ve changed my mind.’”
“we don’t be changin’ our minds!” said kate, with proud brevity; and thereupon she ran up the convent steps, and, after a little space, filled with the sound of jangling bells and the rattle of bars and chains, disappeared.
jerry pursued the small remnant of his homeward course in a deep, brown study. he entered his abode by the churchyard postern, bolted the door behind him and lighted a lamp, still in an absent-minded way. such flickering rays as pierced the smoky chimney cast feeble illumination upon a sort of castellated hovel—a high, stone-walled room with arched doorways and stately, vaulted ceiling above, but with the rude furniture and squalid disorder of a laborer’s cottage below.
but another idea did occur to him while he sat on the side of his bed, vacantly staring at the floor—an idea which set his shrewd, brown eyes aglow. he rose hastily, took a lantern down from a nail on the whitewashed wall and lighted it. then with a key from his pocket, he unlocked a door at the farther end of the room, behind the bed, and passed through the open passage, with a springing step, into the darkness of a low, stone-walled corridor.
the staircase down which we saw the guns and powder carried in secrecy, on that february night in 1867, led jerry to the concealed doorway in the rounded wall which had been discovered. he applied the needful trick to open this door; then carefully closed it behind him, and made his way, crouching and stealthily, through the passage to the door at its end. this he opened with another key and entered abruptly.
“god save all here!” he called out upon the threshold, in the half-jesting, half-sincere tone of one who, using an ancient formula at the outset by way of irony, grows to feel that he means what it says.
“god save you kindly!” was the prompt response, in a thin, strangely vibrant voice: and on the instant the speaker came forward into firelight.
he was a slender man of middle age, with a pale, spectacled face, framed by a veritable mane of dingy reddish hair thrown back from temples and brow. this brow, thus bared, was broad and thoughtful besides being wonderfully white, and, with the calm gray eyes, which shone steadily through the glasses, seemed to constitute practically the whole face. there were, one noted at a second glance, other portions of this face—a weak, pointed nose, for example, and a mouth and chin hidden under irregular outlines of straggling beard; but the brow and the eyes were what the gaze returned to. the man wore a loose, nondescript sort of gown, gathered at the waist with a cord. save for a table against the wall, littered with papers and writing materials and lighted by a lamp in a bracket above, the chamber differed in little from its appearance on that memorable night when the dead monk’s sleep of centuries had been so rudely broken in upon.
“i’m glad ye’ve come down ag’in to-day,” said the man of the brow and eyes. “since this mornin’, i’ve traced out the idintity of finghin—the one wid the brain-ball i told ye of—as clear as daylight. not a man-jack of ’em but ’ll see it now like the nose on their face.”
“ah, thin, that’s a mercy,” said jerry, seating himself tentatively on a corner of the table. “egor! it looked at one toime there as if his identity was gone to the divil intoirely. but l’ave you to smoke him out!”
“it can be proved that this finghin is wan an’ the same wid the so-called fiachan roe, who married the widow of the o’dubhagain, in the elevinth cintury.”
“ah, there ye have it!” said jerry, shaking his head dejectedly. “he wud marry a widdeh, w’u’d he? thin, be me sowl, ’tis a marvel to grace he had anny idint—whatever ye call it—left at all. well, sir, to tell ye the truth, ’tis disappointed i am in finghin. i credited him with more sinse than to be marryin’ widdehs. an’ i suppose ye’ll l’ave him out of your book altogether now. egor, an’ serve him right, too!”
the other smiled; a wan and fleeting smile of the eyes and brow.
“ah, don’t be talkin!” he said, pleasantly, and then added, with a sigh: “more like he’ll l’ave me, wid me work undone. you’ll bear me witness, sir, that i’ve been patient, an’ thried me best to live continted here in this cave of the earth, an’ busy me mind wid work; but no man can master his drames. ’tis that that’s killin’ me. every night, the moment i’m asleep, faith, i’m out in the meadehs, wid flowers on the ditches an’ birds singin’, an’ me fishin’ in the brook, like i was a boy ag’in; an’ whin i wake up, me heart’s broke intirely! i tell ye, man, if ’t wasn’t for me book here, i’d go outside in spite of ’em all, an’ let ’em hang me, if they like—jist for wan luk at the sky an’ wan breath of fresh air.”
jerry swung his legs nonchalantly, but there was a new speculation twinkling in his eyes as he regarded his companion.
“ah, it won’t be long now, major lynch,” he said, consolingly. “an’ have ye much more to state in your book?”
“all the translatin’ was finished long since, but ‘t is comparin’ the various books together i am, an’ that takes a dale o’ time. there’s the psalter o’ timoleague abbey, an’ the psalter o’ sherkin, an’ the book o’ st. kian o’ cape clear, besides all the riccords of muirisc that lay loose in the chest. yet i’m far from complainin’. god knows what i’d a’ done without ’em.”
there are many marvels in irish archaeology. perhaps the most wonderful of all is the controlling and consuming spell it had cast over linksy, making it not only possible for him to live twelve years in an underground dungeon, fairly contented, and undoubtedly occupied, but lifting him bodily out of his former mental state and up into an atmosphere of scholarly absorption and exclusively intellectual exertion. he had entered upon this long imprisonment with only an ordinary high-school education, and no special interest in or bent toward books. by the merest chance he happened to have learned to speak irish, as a boy, and, later, to have been taught the written alphabet of the language. his first days of solitude in the subterranean chamber, after his recovery from the terrible blow on the head, had been whiled away by glancing over the curious parchment writings and volumes in the chest. then, to kill time, he had essayed to translate one of the manuscripts, and jerry had obligingly furnished him with paper, pens and ink. to have laboriously traced out the doubtful thread of continuity running through the confused and legendary pedigrees of the fierce eugenian septs, to have lived for twelve long years buried in ancient munster genealogies, wearing the eyesight out in waking hours upon archaic manuscripts, and dreaming by night of still more undecipherable parchment chronicles, may well seem to us, who are out in the busy noonday of the world, a colossal waste of time. no publisher alive would have thought for a moment of printing linsky’s compilations at his own risk, and probably not more than twenty people would have regretted his refusal the whole world over. but this consideration has never operated yet to prevent archaeologists from devoting their time and energies and fortunes to works which nobody on earth is going to read, much less publish; jerry was still contemplating linsky with a grave new interest.
“ye’ve changed that much since—since ye came down here for your health. ’tis my belafe not a mother’s son of ’em ’u’d recognize ye up above,” he said, reflectively.
linsky spoke with eagerness:
“man alive! i’m jist dyin’ to make the attimpt!”
“what—an’ turn yer back on all these foine riccords an’ statements that ye’ve kept yer hand to so long?”
the other’s face fell.
“sure, i c’u’d come down ag’in,” linsky said, hesitatingly.
“we’ll see; we’ll see,” remarked jerry. then, in a careless manner, as if he had not had this chiefly in mind from the beginning, he asked: “usen’t ye to be tellin’ me ye were a kind of an attorney, major lynch?”
“i was articled to an attorney, wance upon a time, but i’d no time to sthick to it.”
“but ye’d know how to hev the law on a man, if he was yer inemy?”
“some of it is in me mind still, maybe,” replied linsky, not with much confidence.
jerry sprang lightly down from the table, walked over to the fire, and stood with his back to it, his legs wide apart and his thumbs in his waistcoat armholes, as he had seen the o’mahony bear himself.
“well, linsky, i’ve a bargain to offer ye,” he said, bluntly.
linsky stared in wild-eyed amazement. he had not heard the sound of this name of his for years.
“what—what was that name ye called?” he asked, with a faltering voice.
“ah, it’s all right,” remarked jerry, with assurance. “faith, i knew ye wor linsky from the beginning. an’ bechune ourselves, that’s but a drop in the bucket to the rest i know.”
linsky’s surprise paralyzed his tongue. he could only pluck nervously at the cord about his waist and gaze in confusion at his jailer-friend.
“you believed all this time that ye were hid away down here by your fri’nds, to save ye from the poliss, who were scourin’ the counthry to arrest fenians. am i right?” jerry asked, with a dawning smile on his red face.
the other nodded mechanically, still incomplete mystification.
“an’ you all the time besachin’ to go out an’ take yer chances, an’ me forever tellin’ ye ’twould be the ruin of the whole thund’rin’ brotherhood if ye were caught?” jerry continued, the smile ripening as he went on.
again linsky’s answer was a puzzled nod of acquiescence.
“well, thin, there’s no brotherhood left at all, an’ ’t is manny years since the poliss in these parts had so much as a drame of you or of anny fenian under the sun.”
“but why,” stammered linsky, at last finding voice—“why—thin—”
“why are ye here?” jerry amiably asked the question for him. “only a small matther of discipline, as his reverence w’u’d say, when he ordered peas in our boots. to be open an’ above-board wid ye, man, ye were caught attimptin’ to hand over the lot of us to the sojers, that day we tried to take the fort. ’t is the gallus we might ’a’ got by rayson of your informin’. do ye deny that same?” linsky made no answer, but he looked now at the floor instead of at jerry. in truth, he had been so long immured, confronted daily with the pretense that he was being hidden beyond the reach of the castle’s myrmidons, that this sudden resurrection of the truth about his connection with fenianism seemed almost to refer to somebody else.
“well, thin,” pursued jerry, taking instant advantage of the other’s confusion, “egor, ’t was as a traitor ye were tried an’ condimned an’ sintenced, while ye lay, sinseless wid that whack on the head. there wor thim that w’u’d—uv—uv—well, not seen ye wake this side of purgatory, or wherever else ye had yer ticket for. but there was wan man that saved yer life from the rest—and he said: ‘no, don’t kill him, an’ don’t bate him or lay a finger to him, an’ i’ll be at the expinse of keepin’ him in a fine, grand place by himsilf, wid food of the best, an’ whishky aich day, an’ books an’ writin’s to improve his learnin’, an’ no work to do, an’ maybe, be the grace o’ god, he’ll come to think rightly about it all, an’ be ashamed of himsilf an’ his dirty doin’s, an be fit ag’in to come out an’ hold up his head amongst honest min.’ that’s the m’anin’ of what he said, an’ i’m the man he said it to—an’ that’s why i’m here now, callin’ ye by yer right name, an’ tellin’ ye the thruth.”
linsky hesitated for a minute or two, with downcast gaze and fingers fidgeting at the ends of his waist-cord. then he lifted his face, which more than ever seemed all brow and eyes, and looked frankly at jerry.
“what ye say is a surprise to me,” he began, choosing his words as he went. “ye never let on what your thoughts were concernin’ me, an’ i grew to forget how it was i came. but now you spake of it, sure ’tis the same to me as if i’d niver been thinkin’ of anything else. oh, thin, tell that man who spoke up for me, whoever he may be, that i’ve no word but praise for him. ’t was a poor divil of a wake fool he saved the life of.”
“wid a mixin’ of rogue as well,” put in jerry, by way of conscientious parenthesis.
“’tis the same thing—the worst fool is the rogue; but i tuk to ’t to keep soul an’ body together. sure, i got into throuble in cork, as manny another boy did before me, an’ fled to ameriky, an’ there i listed, an’ came in at the tail of the war, an’ was shot down an’ robbed where i lay, an’ was in the hospital for months; an’ whin i came out divil a thing was there for me to putt me hand to; an’ the fenians was started, an’ i j’ined ’em. an’ there was a man i knew who made a livin’ be sellin’ information of what winton, an’ the same offer came to me through him—an’ me starvin’; an’ that’s the way of it.”
“an’ a notorious bad way, at that!” said jerry, sternly.
“i’m of that same opinion,” linsky went on, in all meakness. “don’t think i’m defindin’ meself. but i declare to ye, whin i look back on it, ’t is not like it was meself at all.”
“ay, there ye have it!” exclaimed jerry. “luk now! min do be changin’ and alterin’ all the while. i know a man—an old man—who used to be honest an’ fair-spoken, an’ that devoted to a certain family, egor, he’d laid down his life for ’em; an’ now, be rayson that he’s married a widdeh, an’ got a boy of his own, what did he but turn rogue an’ lie awake nights schamin’ to rob that same family! ’tis that way we are! an’ so wid you, linsky, ’tis my belafe that ye began badly, an’ that ye’re minded to ind well. ye’re not the man ye were at all. ’t is part by rayson, i think, of your studyin’ in thim holy books, an’ part, too,” his eyes twinkled as he added, “be rayson of enjoyin’ my society every day.” linsky passed the humorous suggestion by unheeded, his every perception concentrated upon the tremendous possibility which had with such strange suddenness opened before him.
“an’ what is it ye have in mind?” he asked breathlessly. “there was word of a bargain.”
“’tis this,” explained jerry: “an old thief of the earth—him i spoke of that married the widdeh—is for robbin’ an’ plunderin’ the man that saved your life. there’s more to the tale than i’m tellin’ ye, but that’s the way of it; an’ i’ll die for it but i’ll prevint him; an’ ’t is beyant my poor wits to do that same; an’ so ’t is your help i’m needin’. an’ there ye have it!”
the situation thus outlined did not meet the full measure of linsky’s expectations. his face fell.
“sure ye might have had me advice in anny case,” he said “if that’s all it comes to; but i thought i was goin’ out.”
“an’ why not?” answered jerry. “who’s stop-pin’ ye but me, an’ me needin’ ye outside?”
linsky’s eyes glowed radiantly through their glasses.
“oh, but i’ll come!” he exclaimed. “an’ whatever ye bid me that i’ll do!”
“ah, but,” jerry shook his head dubiously, “’t is you that must be biddin’ me what to do.”
“to the best of me power that i’ll do, too,” the other affirmed; and the two men shook hands.
“on to-morrow i’ll get clothes for ye at bantry,” jerry said, an hour later, at the end of the conference they had been holding, “an’ nixt day we’ll inthroduce ye to daylight an’ to—o’daly.”
