CHAPTER XXIX

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THE LAST OF CASTLE ANGRY.

We captured little Tim Brophy from Brandon village, just as he turned away after delivering his basket of eggs at the kitchen-door, and kept him till Esther's note to her godmother was written.

"Run fast, Tim," said Esther as she gave it to him, "or you'll be drenched before you get back."

"Never fear, Miss Esther," he answered cheerfully. "I'll be back before I'm gone."

And, to judge by the rate of speed at which his bare legs and red head disappeared, he would keep his word in the spirit, if not in the letter.

We sat with Aline in her lamp-lit room over the teacups, and Esther made her confession, even to the events of the morning.

Poor Aline looked bewildered as the tale proceeded.

"Well," she said at last, "you seem to have been making your own life, Esther. I hope you are going to be happy, my dear, but"--with a little hurt look--"I am so much in the dark nowadays. First it is Freda, and now Essie who has a story to tell, and I am the last to hear it. Perhaps it is my own fault that I do not understand you girls."

Now at this I had a great qualm, for here was I, too, keeping Aline in the dark.

"It is only because they had troubles, darling, that they kept secrets from you," I cried impulsively. "You have always been carrying the whole of us on your shoulders, and have had so much trouble already."

And with that I burst out with the whole story of my own lover, which I had indeed intended to tell no one but Esther, until he returned. When I had finished, Aline kissed me and then laughed.

"It is too much for one day, children," she said. "Perhaps even now the twins are on their way to me with news of their betrothal."

Then I knew she was pleased that I was to marry Lance. Indeed, when did she ever think of anything but our happiness? To both Esther and myself she was full of sweetness, but I could see that she was anxious lest further trouble should be on its way to poor Essie, though she said frankly that she believed Harry De Lacy was as good as his grandfather was wicked. Still, his delicate health troubled her, and I imagine that in her heart she dreaded further evil from Sir Rupert.

While we sat in the white-panelled room we heard the rain beating sharply against the windows, and as the evening darkened came the rumbling of distant thunder. Aline sent hurriedly to know if all her little flock was safe indoors. Yes, the boys were amicably engaged in teaching the twins to play chess, in the comfortable downstairs room which belonged to the younger ones, and which we seldom invaded.

"Ah!" said Aline with a sigh, "we ought to be thankful, this inclement night, that the tempest threatens no head dear to us."

We said nothing, for we knew she was thinking of Pierce, who had been out in the wind and rain so many comfortless nights, and who was now safe and warm within his Father's House.

After dinner we sat in the dining-room till nearly bed-time, all of us together. Outside, the rain still poured, and there was an incessant flashing of lightning across the drenched country, so that at last we drew the heavy curtains to shut it out.

The boys had heard the tales that Mike O'Flaherty had been telling me, and eerier stories still. One was that Mathew Hanrahan, a sad-faced widower whom we all knew, had seen his own corpse brought to his door by Brandon river. Another was that when they were waking a young woman over by Barnacree side, the tide had risen and carried the dead with it out to sea.

"I wish we had the money," said Hugh the practical, "to see to those old upper rooms. The rain is in them to-night, I daresay, and some night of high wind we shall have the chimneys through the floors down upon our beds."

"Ah! dear boy," said Aline, "many things come to Brandon, but never money: I believe we shall be the poor Brandons to the end of time."

"And to think," grumbled Donald, "that there are chests full of gold in Angry--at least so the poor people say--which ought to be ours by right!"

"We don't grudge Sir Rupert his gold," said Aline with a little shrug of her shoulders.

"Not if the other things must be thrown in, you mean," said Hugh shrewdly. "But, Aline, we--Donald and I--are going to save the old place yet."

"But how, dear boy? You don't know how much money we should want."

Hugh, who had been lying on the hearth-rug, stretched himself all his young length, with a suggestion of a creature cramped for space.

"You must let us go, Aline. We are no longer children, and there are fortunes to be made in the world."

"But where would you go?" asked Aline in a hushed voice. Her face had grown a little paler, but she hardly seemed surprised. Perhaps she had been dreading some such thing for long.

"We will go to Africa to Mr. Desmond. He told us long ago that he should have room for us when we were men. Now we are men, and he has room for us. He has opened up a new diamond field, as you would know, Aline, if you ever read the newspapers."

"Must both of you go?" said Aline in the same hushed voice. "We are only women and children here, and Pierce left us to you, Hugh."

"There is nothing for a man to do here, and we will stick together till we bring home the ransom of Brandon in our hands. We have friends now. It is not as in the old days when we knew no one. There is the General, and there is Captain MacNeill always at hand."

Hugh looked at me curiously. It made me suspect that he knew something of the state of affairs.

"They will befriend you," he went on earnestly. "Captain MacNeill knows, and thinks we are right. The General wanted me to go into the army, but that means cadging on him, and I prefer, and so does Donald, to make our fortunes."

"How do you know Mr. Desmond will help you?" said Aline. "He helped Pierce, and they quarrelled."

"He would not remember it against us," cried the boys together.

"He is coming home, Aline," said Donald, suddenly turning all the contents of a miscellaneous pocket on to the table.

There were five pocket-handkerchiefs, a clay pipe, a roll of string, a pocket-knife, some loose matches, a piece of shag tobacco, a book of flies, and several more or less dilapidated wads of paper. He smoothed out one of these with his hands, and pointed to the conclusion of a paragraph.

"_It is rumoured that Mr. Desmond will spend a portion of next summer in revisiting his native country._"

He read it aloud, and then handed it to Aline.

"We have known it for some time," said Hugh. "We shall wait till he comes, and ask him if he has room for us. If he says he has not, we must go somewhere on our own hook. We want no more from him, Aline, than anyone else, but it would be less lonesome if he were our friend."

"The old nest will soon be deserted," said Aline, looking round on us. "I shall be like the wood-pigeon we saw last summer after the hawk had eaten her mate and the young ones, and she used to call them about the empty nest."

"The hawk is the world, Aline," I said, "but the world shall not swallow us. We shall be with you, and the boys will return."

"Ah, yes!" said Aline, "they will return, perhaps."

She got up suddenly and went out of the room, and after a little while, when we went to look for her we found she had gone to her room for the night.

We went to bed somewhat melancholy in consequence, and I think Esther and I were glad to have each other's company. With the night the wind had risen, and as we went along the corridors to our bedrooms it raved and shrieked outside, and whistled through every key-hole as though it were trying to drown the noise of the thunder. We scurried fast along the upper floor, for the lightning made the well of the staircase as light as day with its almost incessant flashing, and the ragged tapestry on the walls trailed out like banners, and flapped in our faces as we passed by.

When we had reached my room at last, I ran to draw the curtains and shut out the night. Very vividly in the white lightning I saw the sister mountains of Brandon and Angry, for now that the trees were leafless the latter showed its frowning head.

I paused an instant to gaze at them, and as I did so the lightning passed, leaving a gulf of profound blackness. The side of Castle Angry was towards us as we stood, and I could see the flashing of a light travelling apparently from floor to floor.

"Come, Esther, and look," I said. "There is a light in Angry. I wonder how they are feeling over there about the escape of the captive."

Esther looked with me an instant, and then cried to me to come away, for a zigzag of blue lightning smote the head of Angry, and then seemed to leap down the chasm. As the thunder rattled and roared behind it, I closed the shutters and then stirred the fire, so that the room was cheerful.

We went to bed after praying for the poor people who were in danger from the night's storm. We lay awake for long talking of our own affairs, and of the boys and their resolution. Esther was the first to sleep. I looked at her where she lay in the shadow, smiling in sleep--for I had kept a lamp burning to mitigate the glare of the lightning,--and I thanked God for the peace the events of the last twenty-four hours had brought to my sister's heart. Mine, too, felt at peace about her and her love. I remember thinking, the last thing before I slept, that God was stronger than Sir Rupert De Lacy, and the thought sent me asleep smiling.

When I awoke the room was dark, for the lamp had died down. Paudeen, who always sleeps on a mat at my door, was howling in the most melancholy way, but, full of horror and omen as a dog's howl is, I did not think it was that which had wakened me. For a second or two I lay dazed and terrified. Then Esther stirred at my side.

"Oh, Hilda! what is it?" she cried. "What a horrible night it is! I think something terrible has happened."

"I will see," said I, getting out of bed in the dark.

As my foot touched the floor Paudeen again raised his voice. I ran to the door and opened it, and spoke to the dog. He was trembling as he came in fawning against my feet. The house outside was full of the gray dawn, and on the glass skylight overhead I heard the rain streaming.

But another sound than the rain was in our ears. There was a roaring as of many waters, a groaning and rumbling as of the earth itself. One could hardly say if it was near or distant; it seemed all about us.

I opened the shutters with a hand that shook.

"Oh, Hilda," moaned Esther again, "what has happened? It is like the Day of Judgment."

"Something has happened," I replied, "or is happening, but old Brandon is safe. I'm afraid there must be a great flood, or an earthquake, or something, but we are firm. There is not a tremor in the house."

I took up Paudeen, who was shivering miserably, and put him into my bed.

"There, you two poor frightened things," said I, "comfort each other."

But I did not feel at all so brave myself. Just then there came a knocking at the door, and Hugh's voice.

"Are you awake, Hilda?"

"Yes, and up," I answered. "What has happened?"

"I can't tell yet, except that I believe we are safe. Dress yourself and come out till we see. The rain is leaving off."

Esther and I dressed ourselves hastily, and joined the two boys. As we went downstairs the twins came flying after us, and we met Oona coming up from below.

"Go up and see if Miss Aline is awake," I said to her. "We must not leave an empty house."

"Don't go into any danger, childher," she said with a groan, and then broke out into a string of _wirra wirrasthrues_.

But Donald, who had been the first to open the hall door, came running back.

"There is a flood or something over at Angry," he cried. "Stay back, you young ones, you can look from the windows; but there may be help needed, and men. Keep them at home, Hilda," he said to me.

"No," I said, "I will go to watch over you boys. I dare not let you go alone."

"It is the bog! it is the bog!" cried Oona suddenly; "an' there are little houses in its thrack, an' little childher, an' men an' women! Oh, Lord, have mercy! The time the bog was out at Docra five-an'-forty years ago, my own sister and her three little childher were among the dead!"

She flung her apron over her head, and began rocking herself to and fro. I pushed her into a great chair that was in the hall.

"There, you children," I said to the twins, "stay with Oona, and comfort her. And here, keep Paudeen; he must not follow us."

We shut the door on the disappointed twins, and hurried away down the long avenue. The rain had indeed stopped, and the air was sweet with a salt breeze from the sea. Every minute the day grew clearer about us, and the morning would have been sweet and gentle enough, save for the menace and fear of the roaring bog.

By the time we had reached the road it was day, and we came upon groups of men, women, and children, all hurrying one way, and that way towards Angry. We joined the hurrying groups with a hasty word or two.

"'Tis the bog, sure enough," said a woman to me, "an' in its track to the sea there is many a cabin. Lord, have mercy!"

All this time we were under the walls and the trees of Brandon Woods. Now we emerged from them, and came on the climbing road that winds between Brandon and Angry, skirting the slope of Brandon. As we reached it we saw people standing in motionless groups, all looking towards Angry. Below them a little way the bog was widening like a sea.

"There is nothing to be done here," I heard Hugh cry suddenly. "But there is time yet to warn some of the people that the bog is coming. Here, you boys that are fast runners, cut across the mountain for your lives to Docra and Doorish. And any of you men that have a horse, mount it and ride to Adeelish and Araglen, and let them know the bog is out."

The crowd scattered in many directions, and as I saw the lads, fleet as mountain goats, speed up the pathways, I felt sure that by my brother's presence of mind many lives would be saved.

"Ropes and ladders may be useful," he said, "but not here. I think there is nothing to be done here."

From where we were we could see Angry Woods, but not Castle Angry, and the woods were tossing as in a tempest, though there was no wind. Hitherto the woods had offered some barrier to the bog. Now, as we watched, they bent one way, as though they would lay their faces against the earth, and then with a huge groaning and tearing, a great slice of the centre of the woods began to move.

We who saw this terrible sight ran back aghast at the terror of it. We climbed Brandon higher and higher, though we were already far out of reach of the bog. Then at last we flung ourselves on the sward exhausted, and some of us gained courage to turn and look. I found Esther by my side. Hugh and Donald had vanished. They were seeing what could be done to save life, I knew, as Brandons ought, and I would not be afraid for them.

But Castle Angry! where was it? I stood up in the cold white light, that showed everything in sharp lights and shadows, and looked with amazement upon Angry Mountain. The ravine was full of the bog, moving, a great black sluggish mass. Now that the wood no longer held it back, it came on narrower and swifter. Below us in the valley there was an inextricable mass of tree-trunks, mixed up with debris of all kinds. But where Castle Angry had lifted its gateway with the two square towers there was nothing now, nothing but bog.

[Illustration: "THE RAVINE WAS FULL OF THE BOG, MOVING, A GREAT BLACK SLUGGISH MASS."]

I seized Esther's hand and pointed.

"Look!" I cried; "see how God saves the innocent! If the bog had moved a day earlier, where would Harry De Lacy have been?"

And now something more terrible than all happened, for as the flood came down from Angry through the gap in the wood, someone cried out that there was a man or a body floating. We were all women, and panic-stricken, yet with some vague feeling that life might be saved, we turned back as impetuously as we had come, and ran, outstripping each other, as near as we dared to where the bog had filled the valley, as though it were the bed of a river. Then we waited.

And presently there came down with the bog the wretch we were unable to help. He was crouched on something, a plank, or a tree-trunk, what it was we could not rightly see, for all was equal in the black bog-water. There he sat, as one astride a raft, an awful image of fear.

Nor was he alone. Facing him on his raft was a great yellow dog, with bared fangs and bristling hair, as though terror had driven the creature mad.

"It is Gaskin!" said someone, and then a moan broke from the crowd, but no one spoke, though many there had cause to curse his name. The doomed wretch gave us a horrible glare of appeal as he swept by, and his raft, caught by the current, swayed this way and that way. But we could do nothing. He was in mid-stream, and so he and the dog that was called Venom swung on with the bog, round the foot of Brandon Mountain, and out of the sight of man.

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