CHAPTER X

CAPTAIN LESTER, R.M.

"Did you hear what happened last night?" said Anstace when she came into the breakfast-room next morning. "The whole neighbourhood is in excitement, and Biddy has been up in the kitchen to tell me about it. A table-cloth which had been left hanging up on one of the trees in the Monk's Walk had a charge of shot fired through it, and it is all riddled with holes."

"And what is the object of that piece of marksmanship supposed to be?" enquired Roderick as he took his seat at the table.

"Well, no one seems exactly to know; but the general impression is that it is a sort of warning to Uncle Nicholas, in place of the usual threatening letter with a skull and cross-bones on it--an intimation that something worse may happen if he does not dismiss M'Bain and give way to the men's demands."

"It looks as if a bad spirit was getting up in the country," observed Roderick thoughtfully.

"I am afraid it does; and I could see that Biddy was secretly delighted, though she did not want to betray it to me. 'Maybe the boys wud sarve th' ould masther a worse turn yet if he doesn't mind himself,' she said. Uncle Nicholas was out last night, it seems, when the outrage occurred, there were only Ella and Miss Browne at home; but he is furious about it, and says that if the people think he is to be frightened by tricks of that sort they are very much mistaken, and that if the offenders can be discovered he will show them no mercy."

Manus and Norah had not ventured to lift their eyes from their plates during this conversation. Fortunately for them neither Roderick nor Anstace noticed this very unusual silence on their part, as in general they were by no means backward in giving their opinion on any topic that might be under discussion.

Norah had come down to breakfast listless and heavy-eyed, and evinced a nervous tendency to start at the least noise. Anstace, too, testified that she had been awakened in the night by unaccountable sounds proceeding from the little room of which Norah had lately, at her own earnest request, been put in possession, and going in to see what was the matter, had found her little sister crying out and struggling under the bed-clothes in the throes of some unpleasantly vivid dream. Roderick declared curtly that it was clear seal-hunting did not suit Norah, and issued an absolute prohibition against her accompanying Manus and Lanty upon any other expedition unless he himself were of the party. Poor Norah, who knew that her troubled night was in no way owing to the seal-hunt but to the fright of encountering the supposed ghost, had perforce to submit to the mandate.

"If you will be a goose what else can you expect?" was all the consolation Manus had to give her when she lamented herself to him after breakfast.

Norah brisked up, however, considerably under the effects of the bright sunshine and the strong sea-wind, as a little later they all four walked across the fields to Portkerin to inspect the seal. Manus looked eagerly this way and that to descry the body of his late adversary as they came down the narrow track into the little horse-shoe-shaped bay.

"Hallo, old chap, don't you know where you left him last night?" was Roderick's enquiry.

"Oh yes, but Lanty thought he'd have to haul him over somewhere else--somewhere better suited for cutting him up, you know," Manus muttered confusedly, carefully avoiding meeting Norah's eye.

It was Anstace who caught sight of the seal at last, lying on a large flat rock in the shadow of the cliff. He was indubitably a monster of his kind, and his proportions could be better seen now than when he had been lying in the bottom of the coracle. Roderick paced the rock beside him carefully, and pronounced him to be full five feet in length. Manus's only and most poignant regret was that he could not be stuffed whole as he was. He consoled himself, however, with the reflection that, even if this could have been done, it would have been quite impossible for him to carry the stuffed monster back amongst his baggage to exhibit to the boys at school.

Lanty came down the path at that moment carrying a huge three-legged iron pot, a formidable looking knife, and all the other implements necessary for flaying the seal and depriving the carcass of the thick coating of blubber which intervenes between the skin and the flesh, and contains the valuable seal-oil. Lanty's eyes were bloodshot, and he looked pallid and dishevelled, as if his night upon Drinane Head had not been beneficial to him.

Anstace and Norah, who had no desire to witness the skinning and boiling-down process, took their leave, and Roderick, too, had soon had enough of the operation. Manus, however, remained to the last, and was able to report, when he came home to dinner, that the yield of oil had been highly satisfactory. He had brought the seal's head with him, tied up in Lanty's red pocket-handkerchief, and in answer to Anstace's enquiries as to what he intended to do with it, explained that he was going to preserve the skull by a method, much in vogue amongst the boys at his school, for obtaining skeletons of bats, field-mice, and other small animals, namely, by placing it in a vessel of water and leaving it to macerate there till the flesh dropped off the bones.

As the process was not likely to be a very agreeable one, Anstace begged that the vessel with the seal's head might be placed at a considerable distance from the house, but to this Manus objected that wandering cats or dogs might find his treasure and carry it off to devour it. Finally, on Roderick's suggestion that the roof of the house offered a secure and yet sufficiently remote repository, the head was carried up thither, and left between the chimney-stacks for the sun and winds to bleach it.

The affair of the table-cloth made a considerable stir in the country, and an investigation was made upon the spot in the hope of discovering some clue to the perpetrators of the outrage. A force of police were occupied for a day or two in beating the underwood and examining every square inch of ground near the Monk's Walk. They found nothing to reward them for their labours, however, and little by little interest in the matter died away. Most people thought with Anstace that the outrage was a consequence of the dispute between Mr. O'Brien and the miners, and probably an attempt to intimidate him into dismissing the unpopular Scotch manager. There could be no doubt, however, that it had failed of its effect. Age might have enfeebled Mr. O'Brien's bodily powers, but it had failed to rob him of his energy and determination. To sullen threats that if the men were not suffered to work in the old, easy-going fashion to which they had been used they would not work at all, he responded by closing down the mine and summarily dismissing all hands.

"If they don't know who is master of the Moyross mine they had better learn," he was reported to have said grimly.

M'Bain, not less resolute, had hinted that, if a few weeks' idling did not bring the miners to their senses, there would be no difficulty in finding others to take their places. Mr. Lynch shook his head over it all in the drawing-room at Kilshane.

"We've a bad winter before us, I fear," he said, gloomily.

Meanwhile, what remained of the summer was passing over, and August was nearing its end. Dr. Ford, the principal of Manus's school, wrote to Roderick that all needful repairs and alterations having been carried out to the satisfaction of a high sanitary authority, he hoped to see his pupils reassemble early in September. Manus groaned at the thought of his glorious holiday-time being so near its close, and of the boating and fishing and other outdoor enjoyments having to be exchanged for Latin and algebra, and the routine of school life. Lanty had been much less about Kilshane of late, but Manus seemed to understand his comings and goings very well, and evinced no surprise thereat.

Manus's return to school was only a week off when Lady Louisa Butler, who on a former occasion had driven over to make the O'Briens' acquaintance, sent a friendly invitation to Roderick and Anstace to dine and sleep at her house upon a certain evening when she hoped to have a few friends to meet them.

"My dear, you must on no account refuse," said kindly Mrs. Lynch, whom Anstace had consulted; "Lady Louisa's little parties are always delightful, and she is sure to have people whom you would like to know, and who will be interested in you for your father's sake."

So a note of acceptance was written, and then the question of ways and means had to be considered, as Dromore, Lady Louisa's place, was fourteen Irish miles distant. Biddy, though dismissed from active service with the O'Briens, kept herself posted up in all the family affairs by frequent visits to the kitchen, and was always ready to tender advice on knotty points. She was urgent that the old chariot in the coach-house, in which Miss Ansey had been wont to take her drives in state, should be brought out from its retirement for the occasion.

"An' what wud the O'Briens be dhrivin' in, to mate all the quality o' the county, if 'twasn't their own ekeepage?" she demanded indignantly. "Shure it's not on a common jauntin' car, that any shoneen wid a shillin' in his pocket could pay for as well as yerself, that ye'd have Miss Anstace sottin', Masther Roderick?"

"I've no doubt that Miss Anstace and I would create a sensation amongst the quality if we arrived in the family equipage, Biddy," Roderick answered with much gravity, though there was a twinkle in his eyes, as he surveyed the crazy, antiquated chariot which had been drawn out into the grass-grown yard for inspection.

Cobwebs festooned it inside and out, the iron-work was red with rust, and the lining of the interior mouldy with damp, and perforated by moths. It was hung so high from the ground that it had to be entered by a flight of steps, let down and fastened up from the outside. Roderick shook his head as he turned away with a laugh.

"No, Biddy; I'm afraid that however humiliating it may be to Miss Anstace and me, there is nothing for it but for us to make our first appearance amongst the aristocracy of Clare upon a hack car."

A ragged, shoeless boy came running into the yard at that moment and thrust a note into Roderick's hand.

"Captin Lester's complimints, yer honour, an' I was to give that to you at wanst."

Roderick opened the note and then called to Anstace, who, the carriage-parade being at an end, was going back into the house.

"Hullo, Anstace; what do you say to entertaining a guest? Are your household resources up to the mark?"

"A guest! Roderick! who?"

"Lester, the resident magistrate. You haven't met him, but he's a capital fellow; you're sure to like him. Here's what he says--I suppose it's no harm for the children to hear it."

For Norah and Manus, with eyes brimming with curiosity, had drawn near to listen, leaving it to Biddy and Bride, with the assistance of Captain Lester's messenger, to push the ancestral chariot back to slumber once more within the dilapidated coach-house.

_Dear O'Brien_,--the note ran,--_Should I be taking a great liberty if I asked you and Miss O'Brien to give me a shake-down at Kilshane to-morrow night? There is to be a seizure effected in your neighbourhood the following day, and in the present state of the country it would be idle to attempt it except immediately after daybreak. I should, therefore, be saved a long night-drive by sleeping at your house, and this must be my excuse for troubling you._

_Yours, &c. CHARLES LESTER._

_P.S. I know I can trust you to keep the object of my visit secret, otherwise its purpose would be rendered nugatory._

"Well, Anstace, what do you say?" looking at her with the open note still in his hand.

"I don't really know," Anstace returned dubiously. "Bride is a good little girl, but she has not got many ideas yet about cooking or attending at table, or anything of that sort, and a man like Captain Lester is accustomed to having everything comfortable and well done."

"Oh, nonsense! Lester's not that sort of fellow at all. Give him a good plain dinner and he'll be quite satisfied. I should think a man would prefer any sort of dinner at all to having to drive over from Ballyfin at one o'clock in the morning You can get Biddy in to help, you know, if necessary."

Anstace smiled a little at the latter suggestion, but she saw that Roderick was anxious for the invitation to be given, and if Roderick wished for anything it was certain that Anstace would gratify him if it was within her power to do so.

"Oh yes, ask him by all means," she said pleasantly, "and we'll do the best we can for him. He knows we're not millionaires, so he won't expect too much."

"It fits in first-rate, too," said Roderick, reading the letter over again. "If he'd wanted to come the next night we couldn't have had him, as that's the evening we're going to Lady Louisa's. Now remember, you two," to Norah and Manus, "not a word of this to anyone." And he walked off into the house to write his answer to the note.

Manus and Norah were in quite a tumult of expectation next evening. Captain Lester was the first visitor who had passed a night under the roof at Kilshane, and to their minds a resident magistrate, to whom the peace of the district was committed, and who could incarcerate offenders and order the constabulary hither and thither, was a very tremendous personage to be brought in contact with. Captain Lester, on his arrival, did not appear the least awe-inspiring however; he was a big, sandy-haired, good-humoured looking man, with a loud voice and cheery manner, and Anstace owned to herself, with a sigh of relief, that she would not mind so very much if Bride did commit a few blunders during the course of the dinner.

This was just as well, since Bride, although Anstace had spent a good part of the day in drilling her and rehearsing to her what she would have to do, evinced a capacity for making mistakes which was absolutely marvellous. Manus and Norah were partaking of late dinner for the first time in their lives, and Manus grew purple in the face in his efforts to choke down his laughter, as poor Bride, blushing to the roots of her hair in her bashfulness, went floundering round the table, setting down plates where dishes should have been, and knocking over glasses. It was only by an agonized frown, which Bride fortunately caught just in time, that Anstace brought to her mind that it was the mustard and not the powdered sugar which was to be handed round with the roast-beef. All her signals, however, failed to prevent the cauliflower from being presented to the guests as a course all by itself, while the dish of _croquettes_, which Anstace had prepared herself, with the expenditure of much time and trouble, as an entrée, appeared later on in the company of the potatoes. Besides which, Bride persistently left the door open whenever she went out to the kitchen, where Biddy was assisting to the best of her ability, so that scraps of conversation, not intended to be heard in the dining-room, were only too audible to the party seated at table.

"Bride, will I pull the tart out o' the oven yit, 'tis the beautifullest brown that iver ye see? Gorra, but it's hot; it has the fingers burnt off of me!--Och, but the captin's the fine lump of a man, an' I'll be bound he's not takin' his two oyes out o' Miss Anstace this minit. I'll jist shlip to the doore an' have a look at her, the darlin', sottin' at the head of her table, as swate as a flower, an' as shtately as a queen."

This was too much for Manus, who from his seat opposite the door had a full sight of Biddy trying to post herself where she could command the best view of the room, and he winked knowingly at her. Biddy, much discomfited at being detected, retreated backwards on some crockery which Bride, notwithstanding all Anstace's injunctions to the contrary, had set down in her hurry on the floor of the hall, and there arose a terrible outcry.

"The saints 'twixt us an' harm! Bride, joo'l of me sowl, if 'tisn't the mashed pitaties I've sot me fut in, an' the dish gone clane in two undher me!"

Everyone laughed; even Anstace could not prevent herself from joining in the general merriment, though for an instant she had flushed red with mortification. Captain Lester, however, enjoyed the joke so thoroughly, and told so many ludicrous stories of what his own experiences had been when he had first set up house in the west of Ireland, that Anstace speedily forgot her annoyance.

Manus elected to remain with the gentlemen when Anstace and Norah withdrew after dinner. Roderick and Captain Lester must have found something very interesting to talk about, they made such a prolonged stay in the dining-room, and Norah, who had only been granted a scanty half-hour beyond her usual bed-time, and who had looked forward to hearing some more of Captain Lester's stories, grudgingly watched the clock upon the chimney-piece as it ticked on towards the fateful half-past nine.

"What an age they are in there, Anstace," she grumbled, "why can't they come in and talk here? I did want to ask Captain Lester to tell us the end of that story about the old woman and her goose. Don't you remember he was in the middle of it when Biddy stood in the potato dish? It's twenty-five minutes past nine, so I have only five minutes more. Oh, they're coming at last!" as the dining-room door was heard to open.

The trio made their appearance. Captain Lester first, with his broad expanse of shirt-front and jolly red face; Roderick, taller and slighter, followed, and Manus brought up the rear. To Norah's thinking the last-named had become strangely quiet and dispirited. He ensconced himself in a corner, and hardly even laughed at the conclusion of the goose story, which, lest Norah should be disappointed, Anstace begged Captain Lester for. Immediately afterwards, however, she contrived to make a sign to her little sister to come to her where she sat at a small table pouring out the coffee, and whispered to her that it was a quarter to ten, and quite time for her to go to bed.

"You need not mind bidding good-night. Just slip quietly out of the room and run upstairs. I'll send Manus up after you, as soon as I get a chance of speaking to him. He seems half-asleep as it is, sitting over there in the corner."

Norah stole off as she was bidden, the last thing she heard was Captain Lester saying to Anstace, as he took his cup of coffee from her: "I am going to show your brother a little real Irish life, Miss O'Brien. He is going to accompany me on the raid I am making on some gentry who are distilling illicit whisky near this. We shall have to be off before five in the morning--"

More Norah did not hear, as she was obliged regretfully to close the door. It would be nice to be grown-up, she reflected, as she went upstairs, and to sit up just as long as one liked without an elder sister to order one off to bed.

Norah had been in that safe refuge for some time, lying wide awake, with the door open so that she could hear the murmur of voices downstairs, and Captain Lester's loud, hilarious laugh ringing out every now and again, when a light pattering footfall came along the passage, and Manus appeared in the doorway. A quaint figure he was, as seen by the light of the lamp on the stairs, for he was barefooted, and only attired in his nightshirt with his flannel cricketing-jacket drawn over it.

He came over towards the bed, groping his way in the dark.

"Norah!" he whispered, "I say, Norah, are you awake?"

"Yes, as wide as anything. What's the matter?"

"There's the most awful thing going to happen, and I'm sure I don't know what's to be done. I've been lying awake, thinking and thinking till my head feels like splitting, and I thought at last I'd come and tell you."

"Gracious, Manus!" starting up in bed as she spoke; "what on earth is it?"

"Hush, don't speak so loud!" in an apprehensive whisper. "That still which you heard the captain speak about, that they're going to seize to-morrow morning--well, it's Lanty's!"

Manus paused to see what effect this tremendous communication would produce, but as Norah had never heard of a still before, and had not the least idea what it was, she was not as much dismayed as Manus had expected.

"But if it's Lanty's," she said stupidly, "how can anyone take it from him?"

"You don't understand one little bit," Manus returned impatiently. "A still is for making whisky with--potheen,[1] Lanty calls it--and all whisky has got to pay tax to the government, why, I'm sure I don't know. But Lanty says he's not going to pay taxes to the English government any way, so he and the fellows who work with him have their place hidden away on Drinane Head, where they thought no one was likely to find it."

[1] Pronounced putcheen.

"Oh, and it was up there Lanty was going the night that he left us to come home by the Monk's Walk?" exclaimed Norah, a sudden light breaking in upon her.

Manus, who had by this time established himself on the side of her bed, nodded, forgetful that that manner of signifying assent is not of much use in the dark.

"You remember that boat with a lot of men in it which pulled out to us, just under the Head? Those were the other fellows who help in the business, and they wanted him up there for something special that night. They have meetings up in that place of theirs, and talk over all sorts of things, as well as making the potheen. Lanty didn't like leaving us, but they made him; he told me about it while I was helping him to drag the seal up over the rocks. Lanty knew I was safe to trust, only of course I said nothing to you, as it was such a tremendous secret."

And Manus assumed an air of conscious rectitude which was unfortunately also lost in the darkness.

"And have you ever been up where they make the--whatever the stuff is called?"

"No; Lanty's promised to take me up there ever so often, and let me see it all, but we've never been able to manage it somehow. But, Norah, the question is, what's to be done? Captain Lester has got wind of it somehow; he told Roderick after dinner, when you and Anstace had gone, that he had known there was this still working somewhere hereabouts, and he had been trying to hunt it out for ever so long, but now he had got certain information of it's being up on Drinane Head, and right enough he is, for he described it all to Roderick, just as Lanty did to me. There's a tarn--that's a sort of lake, you know--on the very top of Drinane Head, and a little stream flows out of it and falls right over the cliffs; that's the water they make the potheen with--real mountain-dew, Lanty calls it. They've built some kind of a hovel there, up against a rock, and they work days and nights together sometimes when there's a brewing going on."

"Hew did Captain Lester find out about it? Did he go up there to see?"

"I'm sure he did not; they'd have smelt a rat fast enough if he'd been poking about anywhere within miles of them. But he has found it out somehow or other, and he's going to pounce down on them at sunrise and capture the whole gang--that's what he called them--a gang!" said Manus in high indignation. "He has it all laid off pat, how he's going to surround the place and all, and he's so afraid of its leaking out that he hasn't told a single soul what's brought him here,--even the police who are coming won't know what they're wanted for till he meets them at the cross-roads at five to-morrow morning. Of course he knew he was all safe in telling Roderick, and he didn't think I was of any account at all. I went on eating the dessert things and didn't pretend to be listening much. And now, Norah, we've got to get Lanty out of the mess somehow or other."

"Perhaps he's not there at all; perhaps he's at home," suggested Norah hopefully.

"Oh yes, he is though, he's been up there for days past," said Manus, who seemed extremely well informed of his ally's movements. "He hasn't been out fishing or boating with me once the whole of this week."

To both Manus and Norah it seemed that if Lanty were only safe the capture of his confederates, of the wild-looking crew whom they had seen under Drinane Head, was of comparatively little importance.

Norah sat silent and reflected--in former childish days it had always been her little brain which had done the contriving necessary to get them out of any scrape in which they happened to find themselves. Manus of late had got into the way of speaking of girls as of an inferior race of beings, but now that he was in trouble he came to her as of old for help and advice.

"I wonder if Biddy has gone home yet," she said at last. "I could slip down to the kitchen and tell her, and she would tell Tom. He could go up to Drinane Head and let Lanty know that Captain Lester was coming."

"No, that wouldn't do at all," said Manus. "You see they none of them know anything about it--about Lanty's being in with all those other fellows, and making potheen and all that--and Lanty doesn't want them to find out. He says his father's 'raal ragin' mad' as it is, about his 'goings-on', as he calls them."

"O--oh!" This was a new light on the matter to Norah, whose code of right and wrong was a very simple one. Breaking the law was a thing quite outside any experience of hers, and which she understood nothing about. There seemed something absolutely heroic in Lanty's manufacturing his whisky on the solitude of Drinane Head that he might defy Captain Lester and the police in their efforts to make him pay taxes to the English government. But that he should be doing something which his father and Biddy did not know of, and which, if they did know, they would not approve--that was another matter altogether in Norah's eyes.

"Making potheen must be wrong, Manus," she said gravely, "if Lanty doesn't want anyone to find out about it."

"Well, if you come to that, I suppose it is," Manus admitted. "But if Lanty and the rest of them are caught to-morrow, they'll all be marched off to Ennis jail--handcuffed, mind you--and locked up there for months perhaps. Just think of Lanty handcuffed and shut up in jail! I declare I've half a mind to try and get up on Drinane Head now and give them warning to clear out, but it's as black as pitch, not a gleam of light in the sky; and I don't believe I'd find the way."

Then it was that Norah had a brilliant inspiration.

"I'll tell you what, Manus," she cried; "Captain Lester and Roderick won't start till five. I heard Captain Lester tell Anstace so, and it's light--a sort of light--hours before that. I know, because when I was bad with toothache last week and couldn't sleep, I saw everything in the room quite plain before the clock struck three. If you stole out then no one would hear you, they'd all be sound asleep, and you could go to Drinane Head and tell Lanty the police were coming."

"Oh, but I say, Norah, if I go you'll have to come too!" said Manus.

"I'll come of course if you want me," Norah rejoined promptly, trying not to let her voice betray her satisfaction at Manus's sudden desire for the feminine companionship at which he was generally wont to rail. "I only hope we'll manage to awake in proper time."

"Oh, I'll wake, no fear! I've never any difficulty in waking up any time that I want to, and I'll come and call you," Manus said valiantly. "I don't feel as if I could sleep a wink to-night, thinking of it all; but I'd better be off, lest the others should come up and catch me--they won't sit up late, as Captain Lester and Roderick have to turn out so early. Oh, I say! won't it be fun, their going off solemnly all that way and drawing a cordon round the place and all the rest of it, when we've been there before them and given the fellows warning. Be sure and jump up at once, Norah, when I come to call you. I won't be able to make a noise for fear of someone hearing me."

And with this parting injunction Manus withdrew.