Part 5

The bag he wrapped in oil-cloth to keep it from the damp, carried it out into the garden at the first opportunity, and hid it in an apple-tree, high up among the branches, in a hole, which had been his secret alone since boyhood.

Late that night the rumor reached the house that his cousin had fallen off his car and broken his neck. They all scouted the idea, and Philip mentioned having met him that afternoon a couple of miles out of the town, but Dick wouldn't stop to speak to him. The next day the rumor was confirmed: Philip had been the last person to see him alive.

For himself, Philip was physically prostrated, he could hardly move, and ached in every limb and every muscle: the fatigue resulting from the emotions which had racked him on the previous day was so much greater than any mere bodily fatigue he had hitherto known. The day afterwards--the Monday--he received a visit from the police-sergeant. He went cheerfully down. It was to summon him, he supposed, as a witness at the inquest, which was fixed for the morrow. Judge, then, of his surprise when he was arrested on a charge of having murdered his cousin.

He was very angry at first. Then the absurdity of the situation struck him, and he laughed aloud. Here had this lumbering country lout stumbled on the truth by accident, where a cleverer man would not have dreamt of looking for it. But it might prove no laughing matter for him, once the scent had been struck. The sergeant had applied, it seemed, to the magistrate for the warrant, upon his own responsibility, on the strength of a rumor that Philip was at the bottom of the affair somehow. How the rumor originated he never discovered--probably from some distortion in the repetition of his own story of the meeting. But it made matters very unpleasant for him for the time. He said that he would go quietly to the police-barracks if he were not handcuffed.

When he arrived there, the officer in charge--the District Inspector, and an old friend of Philip's, named Fitzgerald--cried out:

'Hullo, young 'un, what have you been doing now?--run in for being drunk and disorderly?' He thought that Philip had dropped in to see him, and that the presence of the sergeant was only a coincidence. Great was his surprise when he heard that the young man was really a prisoner--and upon what charge? He was more angry than Philip had been, and called the sergeant a blundering idiot, only in stronger language. At last he cooled down again and said:

'Well, never mind, you'll have to stop here to-night, but you'll be let loose again to-morrow, and everybody will think it only a good joke.'

'Yes, that's all very well,' replied Philip; 'but Richards, the coroner, has a grudge against me. As you know, he is the town baker; last year he set up a carriage, and heard me call it the bread-cart. He is sure to seize the opportunity of taking the change out of me. And I entirely fail to see where the joke comes in.'

When he arrived in the court next day, everybody was talking and laughing. They thought it an absurd farce that he should be accused of such a crime at all. Even the police-sergeant had been sneered out of his momentary inspiration of shrewdness long ago. Philip alone knew what a hair's-breadth removed from earnest the affair was capable of proving. He was like a man sitting on a powder magazine with people ignorantly letting off crackers all round him, one of which might at any moment blow him into eternity.

The body of the court was crowded as usual with corner-boys--a shiftless race of loafers peculiar to Ireland, who hang about the streets and the corners of the public-houses, and never do a day's work from year's end to year's end. They sponge upon their wives, spending all the money that they can beg upon drink during that short portion of the year that they are not retained in jail at their country's expense. 'God presarve yer ahner, wherever ye may go,' cried one of these as he entered. Philip had given him many a screw of tobacco, and knew that it was not for him, but for the loss of his tobacco that the man feared.

That bit of smartness about the bread-cart cost him an anxious time. The doctor gave his evidence that there were two injuries upon the body of the deceased--a cut upon the back of the head, which had been caused by falling off the car onto a stone, and a very small bruise on the temple. What had occasioned the latter, or if it were connected with the accident, he couldn't say. But neither injury was sufficient to cause death. That had resulted from stoppage of the heart's action, which had long been diseased. Philip paid little attention to this; he was sufficiently honest with himself to recognize that he had committed murder in intention if not in actual fact.

Then the coroner wanted to know could the bruise on the temple have been caused by a blow from a whip or a stick? The doctor thought not. Nevertheless Philip's whip and all his sticks were fetched. The servants gave evidence as to the one he had used that day; it was handed round. Everybody was surprised at its lightness. Philip's heart stood in his mouth. The doctor and the coroner examined it minutely. If either of them had a grain of penetration, he was a lost man; but he could reckon with confidence on their stupidity. The air-gun preserved its secret well; for once it did not betray him. Its lightness proved even in his favor. The doctor decided that it was incapable of inflicting a stunning blow, that it was probably hollow, and would break on slight provocation.

He was acquitted, a verdict of accidental death returned, and the jury remarked severely upon the hasty action of the sergeant in adding to his natural grief at his cousin's death by such an unnatural accusation.

But Philip was in a fever until that wretched air-gun should be safely disposed of. At any moment it might change its mind and inform against him. He hooked his arm in Fitzgerald's directly the inquest was over, and said, 'Come along, and have a bathe after this beastly stuffy court; and as you have the custody of my sticks, I suppose you won't mind letting me have one now?' Fitzgerald laughed, and he took the air-gun. The other wanted to look at it, and see if it was really as light as they all made out. But Philip was not such a fool; the officer's trained eyesight was likely to prove too sharp.

They went to bathe in the river channel, a couple of miles below the town, and about half a mile from its mouth. When they had undressed, Philip threw the stick as far as he could into the middle, under pretence of sending Fitzgerald's retriever in after it. But the tide was on the ebb and the stream ran strong, so, as he knew would be the case, the dog turned back long before he reached the stick. Philip hoped never to see the wretched thing again. Suddenly a terror seized him; he could not leave it to the mercy of blind chance like that. What if the sea gave up its prey?--the next tide might wash it ashore again. Some one might find it and return it again, or worse still, find out the secret. He must get rid of it more effectually at all hazards. He plunged in after it, and quickly reached it; then pretending to put his feet between his hands, while holding the stick at either end he snapped it in two and cast it from him.

Meanwhile he had not noticed that he had rounded the last turn in the channel in its journey seaward. He had got into the strength of the current, and it swept him away like a leaf. He swam against it aslant with all his strength, but could not reach the edge, and in a moment he was among the breakers on the bar.

For a short time he succeeded in swimming over the waves or diving through them, and hoped to be able to get right out to sea. But soon he was seized by a huge roller, the ninth wave, and carried resistlessly back again upon its crest. The edge of the breaker curled thin beneath him like a shaving, dissolving into spray. He looked down as he reached the bar, and suddenly the water seemed to vanish under him. One moment he was ten feet in the air, the next he fell with stunning force upon the sand, covered only with a couple of feet of surf. Before he recovered his senses, the broken water of the next wave was upon him, and the black-surge of the first was fighting with it for him. He was rolled over and over. Sand entered his eyes, mouth, nostrils, and ears. He was conscious of swallowing oceans of water. He struggled blindly for a time; he, at any rate, would not give in until the last gasp. But gradually there stole over him a feeling of drowsiness, of disinclination for further effort, a feeling that Fate had been too much for him. 'It's all that damned air-gun's fault,' he muttered again obstinately; and the waters closed over him.

When he came to himself again, he was lying on the strand, and Fitzgerald was bending over him. He had been washed by chance into the corner of an eddy near the shore, the D.I. had run along the bank, rushed in and rescued him before the life was quite buffeted out of him.

Thanks, old boy,' he said, looking up at his friend; 'you have saved my life, and I won't forget it.'

'Oh, nonsense; you would do as much for me any day.'

They dressed in silence. At last Philip remarked:

'That stick was hollow after all; it snapped like a twig in my hands. I suppose it will fill with sand now and stop at the bottom of the sea.'

'Yes; you will never see it again, and a good job too: it was near being the death of you.'

'Yes,' said Philip, with a slow smile; 'it was very near being the death of me.'

THE GIANTS' CASTLE

'Will you come out with me on revenue duty to-day, and try some still-hunting?'

The speaker was the District Inspector of police at Lisnamore, where I was spending my Long, as usual, some years ago. He was almost the only civilized being within miles of us, and as I discovered he hailed from the same public school as myself, we soon struck up an acquaintance and saw a great deal of each other.

On the present occasion, however, I hesitated a moment before accepting his invitation. The fact was, that it was his duty to search for illicit whisky, and only part of his ordinary routine, so that no one would think any the worse of him for doing it. But it was not mine: I was very good friends with the peasantry all about, and didn't wish to make myself unpopular by interfering with their making 'a sup of putcheen,' when they liked. On the other hand there wasn't the least chance of our finding any just then. The priests had lately taken a dislike to the practice of the illicit trade as having a deteriorating influence on their flock, and had preached a crusade against it, and, what the police had been utterly powerless to effect for years, they had accomplished in a couple of months. To an Irishman it is a positive temptation to break the law--what else is it for? But to disobey the priests, at the risk of his soul's damnation, is quite another thing. So the convictions had dwindled immediately, Fitzgerald told me, from twenty a week to none at all, at which he was not a little chagrined, as besides being a sarcasm on the efficacy of the civil as opposed to the religious arm, the cessation of confiscations had deprived him of a source of income in the royalty upon captures.

Under these circumstances it couldn't be much harm to accompany him upon his rounds. It only meant walking a certain number of miles through the surrounding bogs and mountains with a chance of an occasional shot, so I said, 'All right, wait till I get my gun and some cartridges, and I'm with you,' and we set off.

The construction of these private stills is primitive in the extreme, as they consist almost entirely of a coil of copper piping called a 'worm,' for distilling the fermented barley. This is boiled, and, passing through the 'worm,' which is placed in a tub of cold water, the steam comes out at the other end raw spirit: the operation is repeated a second time to increase the strength of the brew. The potheen thus made, is, like all pure spirit, a colorless liquid. But, when desired, it is colored by the simple process of taking a red-hot poker and a lump of sugar-candy and dropping the burnt sugar into the whisky until the required tinge is reached.

The most usual method of concealing the still when not in use is to choose a lonely part of the mountain, cut a circular piece out of the sod large enough to sink a barrel, containing the plant, and then replace the sod. This hiding-place is called by the peasantry a 'coach,' probably from some corruption of the French _cache_, and the only means of discovering its secret is that a trained eye can detect the very slight difference between the color of the turf on the circular patch and the grass around it. So, as may be imagined, it is possible to walk a good many miles and pass a good many stills without making any discovery.

Sometimes the barrel is concealed by sinking it at the end of a piece of rope into a mountain lough; to the rope a thick piece of string is attached; to that a thinner piece; to that again a piece of thread, which is fastened round an ordinary bottle-cork. To recover the barrel, it is necessary first to find the cork, and then to haul up the lengths of increasing thickness until the original rope is reached. Of course it is a hopeless task for any one not acquainted with the exact spot of concealment to try and find one of these corks except by tracking the owner.

An instance has even been known, when the barrel was sunk in the middle of a highway, and the road levelled over it to look the same as usual; a quick-eared policeman, however, noticed the hollow sound as he drove over the place, and earned the praises of his superiors and the curses of the owners by unearthing a fine cask of malt.

Fitzgerald and I were not so lucky; the only bag we made was a few hares and snipe, and to get these we walked upwards of thirty miles. We had six of Fitzgerald's policemen with us to help in our search, fine long-legged men like all the members of the force. The D. I. himself was considerably the smallest of the company, for naturally the standard is not so high for the officers as for the ordinary rank and file. So for the first fifteen miles he was clean out of it in walking powers, but every mile after that length of stride told for less and stamina for more, and by the end of the day Fitzgerald with his long back and duck legs had walked us all to a standstill.

Our way lay across wild mountainous slopes clad in heather, varied by swampy patches where the rushes grew thickly, and studded with large boulders. Spread out on either side of us the policemen made a fine line of beaters, which roused every living thing before us that there was to rouse. To tell the truth we did not take the trouble to look for much else, knowing it hopeless, and my adventures did not begin until the business of the day was over.

It was in the evening on our return that we struck the coast a couple of miles from home, near the Giants' Castle. This was an old ruin, built on a projecting headland, concerning which the legends current in the country-side were more numerous than I could mention. That dearest to the minds of children and the simple peasantry about was embodied in its name, and had its origin in the Cyclopean nature of the masonry that yet remained. Another account had it that this was one of the castles of the O'Donnells, the ancient kings of Ulster, while yet later stories described its inhabitants as smugglers, who had run many a valuable cargo at this out-of-the-way spot.

The Castle was built on an immense slab of rock which completely overhung the sea, and a feature in all the legends was the existence of a well at the outermost corner of the building, which was bored clean through the solid rock with a perpendicular drop into the sea beneath. In the legends of the Giants they had used this well as a rubbish hole for the bones of the victims they had devoured; by the O'Donnells it had been employed as a means of escape in time of danger; while it was through its cavity that the smugglers had raised their goods from the boats below. The champions of each account clinched their several legends, with the triumphant argument, 'an' av ye don't believe me, ye can go an' see far yersilf av the well isn't there,' which of course was irrefutable.

Well, to return to my story, I wanted a specimen of the large black-backed gull to stuff, and thought this a good opportunity of getting one. It was their habit to come in round the cliffs at sunset, and the well, which was now choked with rubbish, would make a very good place to lie in wait for them; there was a breach in the walls just at the corner where it was situated, which would afford an opening for a shot when the birds came opposite to me, while I should be completely concealed from them.

Fitzgerald was hungry, so he went on home with his policemen, and left me sitting in the well. I was tired, and my moss-lined resting-place proved so comfortable, that I fell asleep almost immediately, and didn't wake until it was already too dark to be able to see to shoot.

I started up, and was just going to clamber out of the hole, when I heard the sound of voices near me, and presently perceived that just when I least expected it, I had come across the owners of what was probably the last still in the country-side.

There were about a dozen men sitting in a group, evidently waiting to begin operations when it grew darker. It was even then too dark to see their faces, but I could tell by their voices they were all the worst characters of the neighborhood, most of them being fishermen belonging to that part of the coast.

Why I didn't go up to them at once and explain matters I really cannot tell, for I had nothing to fear from them. They all knew 'young Master Harry,' and under ordinary circumstances would not dream of doing me any harm, or think that I should do them any. But I suppose, remembering my occupation during the day, I had an uneasy conscience. Besides, the danger they ran of excommunication might render them rougher than usual. They certainly would not be pleased to see me there, while I could tell by their tones that they had already been partaking rather too freely of their own manufacture. If I stopped where I was they would never be any the wiser, as some scattered stones concealed me from them. I could tell from what they said that the 'coach' where they had their still hidden, was close at hand, and that they were going to fetch it soon; when they did, I could slip out and get away unperceived.

But my plans were upset by an unforeseen accident. Once or twice since I stood up in the well, I had heard a faint splash, as of earth or stones dropping into the sea beneath, and now of a sudden the ground under my feet gave way and disappeared with a sudden rushing sound. Instinctively I dropped my gun, which I have never seen since from that day to this, spread my arms out over each side of the hole, and was left dangling there with my feet over the abyss.

I was in no further danger from that source, as I could easily draw my body up onto the ground, but the sudden shock upset my nerve, and caused me to take the most unwise course possible in my position, one which I should never have chosen had I not been thus startled out of my presence of mind. I scrambled up onto the level ground, and as I saw the men coming towards me I dodged behind the outer wall of the ruin and ran off as hard as I could.

Of course they saw me almost immediately, and in a moment I had the whole crew yelling at my heels, making a clamor that sufficiently attested their condition. I had a pretty fair start, and at first my course lay along level ground. But presently I came to a dip, and I took the slope at a pace that would have made my reputation forever on the 'Varsity running-track.

But when I reached the bottom of the hollow I suddenly received a check. The ground disappeared from under my feet for the second time that day, and at the same instant rose up and hit me on the head. I felt stunned by the shock, which almost rent me in pieces, but had not time to indulge in luxuries just then, so without understanding exactly how I did it, I pulled the ground down over me again, and covered myself up not a moment too soon, as immediately afterwards I heard my pursuers tearing past my place of concealment. It was fortunate for me that the night was so dark, and their brains so muddled, that the fact of their not seeing me when they reached the top of the ridge did not rouse their suspicions, and they would go some way before they found they had lost me.

When I had time for reflection I discovered I was in the same hole with the smugglers' still. I had trod on the lid of the barrel which worked on a swivel in the middle, and as I pitched forward the opposite side had risen and caught me in the face; the wonder was it had not taken the head off me. Besides that my legs had fared badly amongst the smugglers' apparatus in the barrel, and my shins and their 'worm' had done about an equal amount of damage to each other.