CHAPTER XIII

MALACHY'S ORATION

Norah was very silent and thoughtful all the rest of that day; so much so, indeed, that her preoccupation could hardly have escaped Anstace's notice if she had not been more than usually busy, making all the needful arrangements for her brief absence from home. In the afternoon she and Roderick set out upon Connor's car for their long drive to Dromore, Lady Louisa Butler's place, where, according to invitation, they were to dine and sleep.

"Do be good children, and don't get into any mischief while we are away," was Anstace's parting exhortation to Norah and Manus, as the car drew off.

They turned back into the house with the comfortable knowledge that they had a whole long evening before them, in which to do exactly as they pleased, and that even its termination, bed-time, was a very indeterminate epoch, since there was nothing but their own inclination to decide when it should be.

They tried and grew weary of various amusements and occupations, till at last Manus, throwing down the chisel with which he had been shaping the keel of a toy boat, exclaimed:

"Oh, I say, Norah, wouldn't it be fun to pay a visit to the mine, Uncle Nicholas's mine, you know? Roderick never would let me go there, because none of the Moyross lot have taken any notice of us since we came here; but now that Uncle Nicholas has stopped the work, and turned off all the men, there won't be a soul about the place, and no one will know of our going there."

"But it's rather late," objected Norah. "It's six o'clock and past it."

"Well, and what does that matter on a lovely night like this? We'll tell Bride to leave our supper ready for us, and then we can poke about the place as long as we like. I'd like awfully to see all the machinery, and the shaft, and everything."

Norah offered no further objection; she was always very ready to agree to any proposal of Manus, and even more so than usual just now, when his return to school loomed large upon the horizon.

It was a lovely evening in late August, the corn was ripening fast in the little weedy fields on either side of the road--the same road off which Norah had branched that morning on her expedition to Drinane Head--and here and there the work of harvesting had already begun. They got beyond the verge of cultivation after a while; the small oat and potato fields, separated from each other by loose-built, lace-work walls, gave place to wild, open pasturage, with gorse and bracken growing up through it, and the heathery hillside rising above. The sun was sinking down towards the sea, turning the broad plain of the western ocean into a dazzling flood of gold.

"It will be quite dark before we get home," Norah remarked presently.

"What matter if it is? You're not afraid of meeting another ghost on the road, are you?"

Manus could afford to be quite jocular now about the spectre of the Monk's Walk, though for days and weeks after that episode he and Norah had only ventured to speak to each other of it in out-of-the-way corners, and with bated breath, so great had been their dread lest their guilt should be discovered, and they would be dragged forth publicly as the destroyers of their uncle's table-cloth. Everyone seemed to have forgotten the matter now, and they felt themselves secure.

The rough road, which was worn into deep ruts by the passage of heavy carts over it, surmounted a slight acclivity, and all at once they found themselves close upon the buildings belonging to the mine. There they stood, gaunt and ugly, the tall, square chimney, the stamping-houses and engine-house, and in their midst the quarried opening in the mountain-side, from which the galleries ran in far underground to reach the rich metalliferous lodes. Great heaps of slag and refuse lay on one side, and the whole seemed strangely out of keeping with the rugged grandeur of the spot, the great headland rising on one side, the Atlantic rolling in far below on the other.

The works were all silent and untenanted now, without any of the busy life and bustle that generally reigned there, and in the gathering twilight there was something weird and solemn about that grim range of deserted buildings that stood almost upon the verge of the cliff, thrown out sharp and clear against the background of sea. Even Manus and Norah were impressed with a sense of awe, and they hushed their steps involuntarily and lowered their voices as they approached.

When they got quite close, however, they became aware of a hoarse, suppressed murmur, a sound quite different and distinct from that of the sea chafing against the rocks--the sound as of a great crowd close pressed together. The children paused to listen, and then a voice became audible, speaking, somewhere behind those very buildings, in what seemed a torrent of wrath.

Norah and Manus exchanged questioning glances--no human being was in sight, but still that voice went on, growing fiercer and more rapid in its utterance as it proceeded. The children crept onwards cautiously, and on tiptoe, till they had reached a large shed, the door of which stood open. Shovels, pickaxes, and upturned wheel-barrows lay on the floor within, the implements of the industry that was at a stand-still, and in the opposite wall there was a window with dirt-encrusted panes through which a view could yet be had.

"Keep well back; don't let them see you. Who knows who they are!" whispered Manus as he and Norah stole towards the window. Tales which he had heard of the secret gathering of Ribbonmen and Whiteboys, and of the vengeance they had taken on those who had surprised them unawares, were floating in his brain.

Standing on one of the overturned barrows, some little distance within the shed, they were able to peer out without much risk of being seen, and then a strange spectacle presented itself to them.

A great crowd was gathered in an open space at the back of the mine buildings--wild, excited-looking men and half-grown lads for the most part, though the blue cloaks and red petticoats of a few women mingled with the throng. A warm, orange light which glowed in the west shone on the uplifted faces that were all gazing at a man who stood on an overturned trolly, one of the little trucks employed for bringing the metal out of the depths of the mine. To Norah's amazement it was none other than Malachy Flanagan, her acquaintance of that morning, who, with his arms raised above his head, was addressing the crowd which pressed round his extemporized platform with a vehemence which at times made him almost incoherent.

"I'd ax ye this, boys," cried the orator fiercely and excitedly: "If 'twas Nich'las O'Brien's money that dug that mine undherground into Drinane Head, an' his cliverness an' his ingeenuity that consaved it all, an' made the thrack down the racks for the shtuff to thravel to the say, an' to the ships, whose toilin' an' moilin' was't that cut into thim racks for to bring the good ore out? Who crushed it, an' riddled it, an' sint it down in the thrucks? Wasn't it you an' me, boys, an' our childher, an' our fathers afore us, since first a pick was shtruck into the ground, here where we shtand? Nich'las O'Brien says he'll have us larn who's the masther of the Moyross mine, but if he's the masther we're the men, an' maybe 'tis ourselves might larn him somethin' too. We've worked the mine an' sarved him well this thirty years, an' now he brings in his manager from Scotland wid his new fashions, an' his new notions, to dhrive us, an' grind us, an' rack us, an' whin we renague an' say we'll work the mine as 'twas always worked or we'll not work at all, what's all the talk Misther M'Bain has for us? 'I'll bring over Scotchmin,' says he, 'ivery man o' whom'll do as much work in a day as a lazy Irish pisant wud do in three.' Aye, boys, that's the word for us--lazy Irish pisants."

A howl of hatred and of fury broke in upon his speech; the faces of the men were contorted with rage, and clenched fists were shaken over their heads.

"An' what'll yez do now, boys?" Malachy went on in wheedling tones as soon as he could make himself heard again. "Will yez kape tame, an' quite, an' saft as silk, an' see the Scotchmin brought in to take the wark out o' yer hands an' the bread out of yer childher's mouths, or will yez stand up like min an' show the ould masther, an' M'Bain, an' the whoule of thim, what thim same lazy Irish pisants is like whin the blood is hot widin thim?"

Another roar, wilder and fiercer than the last, answered him.

"Come on thin, come on, ivery mother's son of yez! Come on till we go to Moyross an' spake to the masther, to Nich'las O'Brien his own self. We'll malivogue it into him that we'll sarve no Scotchmin nor furriners. Isn't there thim of the ould shtock, of his own name an' his own blood, in the country? If he's ould an' wakely himself, why isn't he for puttin' in his brother's son? It's young Roderick O'Brien we'll have, an' the back of me hand to M'Bain, an' to that young spalpeen that's bein' larned in Jarmany for to tyrannize over us. We'll have our rights, boys, an' if the masther's not for givin' thim to us, or if he's not willin' to be shpoke to, there's ways an' manes of makin' him hear raison. There's arms in that house, boys, an' there's hands here as can use thim--"

His voice was drowned in an uproar of yells and hootings. A hundred throats caught up the cry: "To Moyross, boys! Come on to Moyross till we shpake to the masther!" One voice, high and strident above the others, shouted out: "An' whin we've spoke to Nich'las O'Brien we'll have a word for M'Bain that'll maybe not be plisant hearin'."

And the whole crowd swayed forward and made one wild, tumultuous rush for the road.

It had grown dark within the work-shed by this time, Norah and Manus could just see each other's white faces through the gloom, and Norah, without a word, caught her brother's hand, and pulled him away from the window, back into the darker recesses of the shed.

"Keep back, they mustn't see us," she whispered imperatively.

Manus had no inclination to disobey, and they remained motionless, still holding each other's hands, whilst with oaths and shouts and curses the human torrent swept past their hiding-place. Norah drew a long breath of relief when the voices and the trampling of feet had died away.

"Come now, quick, quick!" she cried, "we must run as fast as ever we can."

"Where to?" Manus asked stupidly.

"To Moyross, of course, to tell Uncle Nicholas and Ella that those men are coming."

Manus positively gasped at the suggestion.

"But I say, Norah, we've never been there before; not up to the house at least, and Uncle Nicholas hates us all like poison because of the family feud, you know. He may be awfully angry with us for coming, and we couldn't get there in time either."

"Oh yes, we can, they've all gone by the road, and we'll run straight across the fields. I should think Uncle Nicholas would be very much obliged to us for coming to tell him that his house is going to be attacked; if he isn't, we can't help it. You wouldn't stand here doing nothing, would you?"

It was a very unusual tone for Norah to adopt towards the brother whom she idolized. Perhaps her adventure of that morning had inclined her to be more independent and self-reliant; at any rate, without waiting for further parley, she darted out of the shed and dashed away down the hillside. Manus followed her after a minute's hesitation, and overtook her before she had got clear of the rubbish heaps and the rough, broken ground.

Two or three old women, whom the crowd in their stampede had left behind, came round the corner of the shed just then.

"Musha! saints in glory! Did iver ye see the likes o' that?" they exclaimed to each other, as they caught sight of the two flying figures racing down the hill.

The children, however, never paused or turned their heads, on and on they ran, as if their lives depended on their speed.