Part 11

But his favorite haunt where I could always find him at need was in the churchyard under the shadow of the square, ugly tower of the barn-like church, amongst 'the beautiful uncut hair of graves.' At that time he did very little work, and used to spend the greater part of his day there stringing rhymes together, while he renewed the inscriptions upon the old weather-beaten stones, and made them once more legible; for the lapse of time and lichen-growth make those memorials of us in stone hardly more enduring than human life itself. There I used to seek him out with offerings of snuff, to get him to tell me those stories of the ancient grandeur of his race which I loved to hear; for youth has always a tinge of snobbishness, which is at the root of that hero-worship common to all children.

But Shan's mind was fixed on other things. He would parry my inquiries by bringing out a roll of old newspaper cuttings, which he always carried about with him, and use me as an audience for the lack of a better, spreading the precious morsels out on the flat tombstone on which we were sitting, and holding the fluttering paper down with a thumb on each corner as he read them aloud, although he knew every word by heart. Or he would say, as he chipped away at his labor of love with deft strokes of the hammer on the head of his chisel,--

'Tell ye how I knew that oul' ladle really belonged to the great Shan O'Neill, is it? Well, this is the way ov it, d'ye see? Min' the shparks, sonny, or they'll be fly in' in yer eye. While I'm thinkin' ov it, did I iver tell ye the shtory of the road Kathleen an' yours kim to be thegither. It was whin yous was a wee fellah, a weeshan roun' roll of fat in yer perambulator, an' ye kim down to the big meady wan day whin they was puttin' in a shtack of hay; I mind it was the year afore I got the toss off of the cart of hay, an' tuk harrum in me innards, an' I was niver the same man afther; an' ahl the quality from the big house was there havin' a picnic, an' Kathleen she was a bit slip ov a gurl ov thirteen at the time, an' she kim to help carry the tay. Well, yous an' she made great frien's, an' ye rouled in the hay an' covered aich other up till many's the time ye were shtuck be the forkers ahl but. An' whin they tuk yous home in the evenin', Kathleen she started to roar an' to cry afther yous, an' there was no houlin' her; we thried ahl we knew to quiet her, but deil a hate wud she quit, an' her mother was fair moidhered wid her, an' at last she ups an' takes her in unner her shawl, an' walks her ivery fut ov the road up to the big house, an' lan's her in there at ten o'clock ov night, an' she ups an' says, says she, to the misthress, as bowl' as ye plaze, "Mam," says she, "ye've made Kathleen here that conthrairy, yous an' that babby ov yours, that there's no houlin' her. I'm fair broke wid her, so I am. So I've brought her up till ye, an' ye must just kape her, for I can do nothin' wid her." An' the misthress she laughs an' says, says she, "Well, if I must, Biddy, I shuppose I must. Must is a harrud worrud," says she; an' so Kathleen she shtops from that day out in the house an' luks afther yous. I min' well she used to wheel ye in the perambulator, an' many's the time she shpilt ye in the shtreet, but devil a hate did yous care, ye just rouled in the gutter, an' laughed till she picked yous up agin. An' she shtayed as long as yous was there,--she was terrible fond ov yous; it bet ahl iver I see. But when yous was eight year oul', an' she was goin' on near han' twinty, an' a fine han'some soople lass she was too, glory be! They tuk an' sint yous away to school in England, an' she was that lonesome afther yous she was neither to houl' nor to bind, an' she just tuk a notion, an' she ups an' she emigrates to Australey. An' she was there in service for foor year, an' she wint wid wan and wid another, an' no wunner, for she was the purtiest gurl in the foor baronies, an' at last she marries a squatter-fellah out there, an' now I hear tell she has a grand carriage an' servants galore to her back. But she doesn't forgit her oul' daddy, she's not the wan to go for to do that; but she sinds me enough ivery month to kape me at me aise like a lord wid lashins ov tobaccy, an' shnuff, an' tay, an' shugar. But ahl the time she thinks a power ov yous till this minit, more be a dale, I'm thinkin', than ov her oul' man himself, as she calls him. Many's the time she's axed me to go out till her, but I wouldn't lave the oul' place even for her; I'll lay me bones, plaze God, where I spint me youth. May the saints purtect her, and may her children stan' by her as she has stud be her oul' father an' mother.'

At this point in the story the old man always found it necessary to see in which direction the clouds were blowing, and I took diligently to making out the rest of the inscription upon which he was at work. He told his story all in a breath, and always in the same words, as a parrot might, from long habitude. It was the old story of Irish emigration. Sons and daughters, not content with a fare of potatoes and tea and a futureless outlook at home, drift off one by one as they grow up to different parts of America and Australia; there they form new ties, and forget the old folks at home and all they owe them. In this case one of the daughters did not forget her debt; and, as rarely happens in this world, it was the most prosperous and best beloved of all who was thus mindful of her old parents and supported them in their age.

It was seven years before I revisited the sleepy little town, and I had heard nothing of old Shan for a long time. The day after my arrival I went for a drive on a hired car; the Jarvey was the same old character that I remembered from my youth up, but I had outgrown his failing memory; the mare was the same old screw, only a little grayer and scraggier than of old. She was painfully climbing the steep hill just outside the town, when she suddenly stopped in the middle and turned round her head to look at us.

'Ah, luk at that now. She says she's tired, the crathur, an' wud like a rist,' cried her compassionate driver with the familiarity of a privileged class. 'Shure yous is in no hurry. What 'ud ail ye?' and he got down and put a stone behind the wheel to keep the car in position, while we surveyed the view.

Opposite and behind us another hill rose steeply, even more precipitous than the one we were on, which had proved too much for the mare--a green knoll crowned with the gray old church, its summit fenced with the back wall of the churchyard. Along the strip of level ground on the dividing line, from which the twin hills sprang, wound a gray ribbon of dusty road; and as we watched, a singular procession crawled slowly along its length below us. Four old men in the light blue workhouse uniform painfully bore a long oblong black box upon their shoulders; behind them followed two old women, also in light blue. It was a pauper funeral.

'Luk at yon now. Troth, there's a sight ye wudn't see the like ov anywhere outside of the foor baronies, an' mebbe ye might niver see agin,' said the driver, with a complacency in this unique local spectacle evidently bred by the remarks of previous strangers.

As he spoke the procession halted at a stile, from which a footpath sprang straight up the hill to an opening in the shoulder of the churchyard wall: it led to the portion of ground outside 'God's Acre' allotted to those outcasts, who, by venturing to die within the walls of the 'Poorhouse,' forfeited that last right of miserable humanity, a resting-place in consecrated ground.

The old men rested their burden on the stile and grouped themselves round it.

'What are they doing now?' I asked.

And the driver replied, 'They're fittin' the rope till it. Them oul' flitters isn't fit to carry a heavy corp, lit alone the coffin, up yon brae, the crathurs, so they tie a rope till it and dhrag it up.'

The group opened out and resolved itself into its parts as it slowly climbed the hill. First came two old men bent double, each straining at a loop of rope passed over one shoulder and across their chests; behind them jolted the coffin, to which they were harnessed, over the uneven ground; next came the other two men as a relay, ready to relieve their comrades when tired; and behind them the mourners, the two old women.

I now noticed that the path was composed of three parallel lines upon the green sward. On each side was a footway, worn smooth and bare by the feet of the men and the following mourners. In the middle was vaguely outlined a strip less distinct where the grass was beaten down like a pock-marked field of oats after a rainstorm, and was thinned and straggling like the hair upon a head beginning to grow bald. That was the mark where the coffin was dragged.

'Whose funeral is it?' I asked, with a pitying sigh at this outrage upon the dead.

'Oul' Shan O'Neill's,' came the startling answer; 'he was a stone-cutter, and a gran' han' at the pothery; he cud write a pome as fast as another man cud mow a fiel' ov hay. Troth cud he!'

'But I thought his daughter kept him.'

'Holy Post-Office, how did ye come to know that?' exclaimed the driver, in surprise at the unexpected extent of my information; 'that was Kathleen, the wan dacint wan ov the whole bilin'. She kep' him till a year ago. But thin she lost ahl her money in wan ov thim banks in Australey, and the other childher' wudn't give no help, and so the oul' man come on the parish, an' he niver hel' up his head from that day out, and now they're buryin' of him.'

And so the descendant of all the O'Neills was haled at the end of a rope to a pauper's grave.

THE GAUGER'S LEP

There was agitation in Kilcross. For years the fishing industry of the place had been deteriorating. Steam-trawlers owned by English and Scotch firms in Liverpool and Glasgow had gradually come to infest the bay, and tugs came twice a week to relieve them of their takings. The primitive appliances and means of transport of the native fishermen had left them unable to cope with this competition; so that it was with difficulty they could get their fish sold, and often it was left to rot on their hands. Further than that, the huge beams of these new-fangled engines disturbed the bottom of the bay, raked up the spawning beds, and interfered with the habits of generations, so that no man knew where to look next for the fish.

But all that was going to be altered now; the press had taken the matter up and interested itself on behalf of this distressed class; busybodies who saw an opportunity of gaining a cheap notoriety for themselves wrote to the papers and caused questions to be asked in Parliament. The result was that relief works had been undertaken in the shape of a boat-slip, with a jetty to protect it from the weather, and to form a harbor for incoming boats. Up to this time the open beach had been their only landing-place, and dragging the heavy boats, over the rough shingle every time they were launched or taken out of the water had not tended to increase their lasting qualities; while often, when it was at all rough, it was impossible to land at all, and a sandy cove further round the coast had to be sought out. So now, with a placid gratitude to Providence, all Kilcross was sitting on the shore watching the first stone being laid.

For weeks afterwards the new works afforded great employment for eye and tongue to the inhabitants of the little village. In the reunions on the beach or round the fires at night in the cottages, there was no other subject of conversation but 'the gran' new kay;' and when there was nothing else to do, the large square stones lying about came in handy to sit upon and smoke a pipe while watching the masons at work. Some of the men even went the length of earning an occasional day's wages by helping to transport the stones to their resting-places; but the general opinion was that, when everything was being done for them, it was unnecessary to jog the elbow of Providence, and that such sustained energy as regular work entailed could not be expected of a people used to the precarious calling of the sea.

Presently the works were finished, and the idlers' occupation was gone. The particular busybody who took the credit to himself for all that had been done, broke a bottle of champagne over the new pier and made a speech. The fishermen quite believed him when he told them that they were very fine fellows; but with the narrow shrewdness of their class, thought that he was rather a fool to take so much trouble over other people's affairs that did not concern him, for they did not know how it served his interest to do so.

On the following Sunday morning, a lovely day in the late Donegal summer, when the women and the younger men were preparing to set out for chapel, the word went round that 'the fish is in the bay,' and in a moment all thought of devotions was abandoned. First there was seen a dark-blue ripple on the surface of the water, coming rapidly nearer, and shot with flashes of silver in the sunlight; this was caused by the 'sprit' or small herring-fry leaping out of the water to escape their natural enemies. Above them hovered screaming flocks of gulls; every now and then one of these would mount to a height, and sheathing its wings, would drop with a splash like a stone into the water, emerging with a small fish in its beak. Hard upon the track of the 'sprit' followed shoals of shehans, glascon, whiting, mackerel, herring, and pollack; after them came porpoises, dolphins, and seals; conger-eels twined themselves among the wrack along the rocks lying in wait for the fry; and even a whale was seen spouting in the offing. The larger fish devoured the smaller, only to be themselves devoured in turn by others.

In a moment the nets were got out and the boats launched. The women and boys remaining on shore armed themselves with baskets and seine-nets. With these they rushed into the water up to the waist and lifted out baskets full of the fry and even of the mackerel, which sometimes ran themselves up dry upon the beach in their eagerness after their prey. A shoal of mackerel entered the mouth of the little harbor, and a seine-net being quickly stretched across the entrance, not one escaped.

That evening there were rejoicings in the little village. Enough fish had been caught in that one day to salt down and last them through the winter, leaving a handsome surplus to hawk through the inland towns and villages. The whiting had been caught in such numbers that no one had any use for them, and they were left to rot in heaps upon the shore, until the country people came with carts and drew them for manure. But the old men shook their heads, and said it was a bad sign for the weather; they had never known so plentiful a take, and the fish must be flying before some prodigious storm.

Upon this occasion the croakers proved right for once. For when the people awoke two days later, they found that the first of the equinoctial gales was upon them before its usual time. The clouds were scurrying in huge banks across the sky, and the sea, turned leaden-gray, was running violently shorewards, beaten flat by the furious force of the wind, and breaking upon the beach with a low moaning sound. As the day progressed the wind abated slightly and allowed the waves to rise, and they roused themselves in their might and beat upon the devoted pier. For a time their efforts were unavailing, for the back that it presented to them was encased in concrete and proof against assault; but at last a huge roller launched itself over the top of the pier and fell upon the stone-work in its centre; the mortar, impregnated with the salt air and the spray, had never had a chance to dry and get properly hard; the force of the water, gripping the edges of one of the huge stones in the centre, whisked it from its feeble hold and carried it hurtling into the sea beyond. The waves laughed, exulting in their success, and hurled mass after mass into the breach thus begun, churning stones and mortar up in a circular whirlpool, until by evening there was a huge round hole in the new pier reaching to the bed-rock beneath.

Meanwhile the sights and sounds of wrecks at sea were beginning to be apparent. Minute-guns were heard in the offing, the reports almost drowned in the rush of the storm; a three-masted vessel went ashore on the opposite side of the bay under the lighthouse upon St. John's Point, and could be seen rapidly breaking up. Masts of vessels, beams, and pieces of wreckage began to come ashore, brought by the set of the currents and the force of the wind. All the fishermen were gathered upon the beach apathetically watching the destruction of the quay, from which they had hoped so much, and on the look-out for prizes.

'What's yon?' presently said Big Dan Murphy, the leader of the group, pointing to a dark object tossing among the surf. They formed a line joining hands, and he dashed in and pulled it ashore. It proved to be a cask of rum.

'Lend a hand, boys,' he said, 'to take it up to me shanty, an' we'll have a sup the night whin ahls over.'

Nothing further came ashore, and the night saw a dozen men gathered in Murphy's hut. The village stood a little back from the beach in a dip of the land that sheltered it from the boisterous fury of the Atlantic gales; but Murphy's hut stood alone on higher ground and nearer the sea, the sentinel and outpost of the rest.

The men sat round the open turf fire upon the hearth, each with a tin porringer in his hand, and the cask in their midst.

'It's well that the ould gauger's gone,' said one with gloomy satisfaction, 'or he'd be pokin' his ugly nose into this. He always kim down on the night ov a storrum to say what had kim ashore.'

'They say,' replied another, 'that this man is worse agin. New twigs swape clane an' he's for iver drivin' aroun' the counthry wid his trap an' his little wee black pony.'

As he spoke there was a knock at the door, and the gauger stood in their midst.

'How's this, boys?' he said. 'What have you got here? Your name's Dan Murphy, isn't it?'

'Ay, till the bone breaks,' returned Dan briefly.

'Don't you know that this doesn't belong to you? Flotsam and jetsam belongs to the Crown and the owner of the land upon which it is washed ashore.'

The other men looked anxious, Dan dogged.

'Findin's is kapin's,' he said; 'I niver hear tell that the open baich belonged to no man. I pulled yon barrel out ov the say at the risk av me own life, an' I've as much right to kape it as any man else, an' what's more, I mane to kape it.'

'I've heard of you, Dan Murphy,' replied the gauger sternly, 'and you'd better not give any trouble. I'm not the kind of man to stand any nonsense. I seize this rum in the Queen's name.'

In an instant he was on his back on the floor with two men on top of him; but the red-bearded gauger was a strong man and a bold, and struggling fiercely, he gave vent to a shrill whistle. The door burst open, and in rushed six policemen, whom he had brought, expecting resistance. The biggest of them made at Big Dan, but found more than his match; the giant stepped lightly aside, and catching his assailant as he passed by the scruff of the neck and the waistband, he swung him round with the impetus of his own rush, and hurled him back through the door the way he came.

Then seizing an axe that stood in the corner, he shouted above the uproar, 'If us is to git no good ov it, no man else will neither,' and he brought down the axe on the head of the cask, smashing it in and overturning it.

The rum gurgled placidly out of the hole, and ran in little streams about the floor, forming a pool round the gauger where he lay on his back, and soaking into his clothes; above him the fight raged fiercely, the men whirled close-locked in the narrow space of the hut. Presently a rivulet of rum meandered gently into the fire upon the hearth, and immediately the floor of the hut was intersected by rivers of blue flame. The rest of the combatants rushed stamping and swearing out of the hut. The gauger still lying on his back could not see what had occurred; and thinking that the others were escaping, he grappled his two assailants more fiercely to him, so that they could not rise. In a moment he was an island in a lake of fire, the flames lapping his sides, fastening upon his clothes, and licking his beard. With a yell of surprise and pain he released his opponents, who fled shouting from the hut. He rose and rushed after them. But the flames had caught, and were fanned to fury by the gale. He threw himself down and rolled upon the ground in agony, but they had got firm hold of his rum-soaked clothes, and relit in one place as fast as they were extinguished in another. At last he could bear the torture no longer, and uttering shriek on shriek, he rushed headlong down the slope a pillar of towering flame, and threw himself over the cliff into the sea a hundred feet below.