Part 7

'I know,' replied Fitzgerald briefly, whipping up his horse afresh, and soon the boy was hidden from them in a rolling cloud of dust. But on turning the next corner they found themselves at the beginning of the long street of the little town, and he had to slacken pace again. The roadway was blocked with heaps of wood and tar-barrels, and behind each pane of glass in the wretched windows the length of the street was fixed a tallow candle, in readiness for the illumination of the evening. Groups of men were lounging about the doorways, amongst whom were seen a few women wearing white aprons, the badge of 'the most ancient profession in the world.'

The car threaded its way with difficulty through these varied obstructions, the police officer and his friend being the recipients of more than one scowling glance or smothered curse; but once clear of them, Fitzgerald urged the horse to his speed again, and galloped up the hill beyond.

'What's all the hurry about?' asked Trevor, now awake to his surroundings.

'That boy is here to tell them about you,' was the reply; and he relapsed into silence again, his position brought home to him more forcibly than ever.

The next moment a shout was heard, followed by a hoarse roar; and looking down the slope they could see, in the gathering dusk, a black mass surging up the hill behind them, the white aprons gleaming in the forefront like the feathering of surf upon a wind-blown billow. But the barrack gates had clanged to behind them before the foremost of their pursuers could come within reach, and the mob swept in a torrent round the base of the building, uttering cries of rage, and leaping up against the walls, like wolves who have been disappointed of their prey.

'Give him up to us,' they shouted. 'We want the murdherer of Pether Flannigan. We'll tear the heart out of the bloody tyrant.'

'The black curse be on the quality,' screamed a woman's strident treble, high above the rest. 'Give us the man that's made orphans of a poor man's childer, or we'll pull the whole place about yer ears.'

'Faith,' said Fitzgerald with a gentle chuckle, 'that was a near thing; and, all things considered, I'm just as well pleased after all that the barracks are not in the middle of their quarter to-night, or there's no knowing what might happen.'

The whole of that night all kinds of rumors were rife in the town, but nothing definite was ascertained. Orators declaimed to excited crowds round the bonfires, rousing them to boiling-point. The Catholics, especially those of the baser sort, were loud in their accusations against Trevor, denouncing the accident as a deliberate cold-blooded murder, and finding in it a political significance as the last act of despairing tyranny on the part of the Saxon in revenge for his overthrow. They swore that the man who had thus dared to insult the hopes of a budding nation should pay for his insolent mockery with his blood. The other party shrugged their shoulders, and declared it would be folly to interfere with the Nationalists in such a mood; it was hard lines on Trevor, no doubt, but it was his own fault for being such a fool. If he were once returned for trial, it would be all up with him; for no Irish jury would be found to acquit him, and the Government would not dare to interfere at such a crisis. The only hope for him was that the man should not die at all, and that could hardly be called a hope.

The next morning, hearing that Flannigan had taken a turn for the worse, Fitzgerald set out with a magistrate, in order to take his deposition before the end should come. Half-way there they met the doctor returning from his visit. He told them that the charge of shot had completely shattered the shoulder-blade--a wound which was not necessarily mortal in the case of a young man of strong constitution; but at his patient's age, the shock to the system alone was bound to prove fatal, and he was rapidly sinking, though he had still some hours of life before him. As he was leaving, the priest had actually arrived to administer the last offices to the dying man.

'I think,' said Fitzgerald, as the doctor drove on upon his way, 'that I'll walk up one or two of these hills. This poor beast of mine got rather a gruelling last night, and I don't want him to have a permanent grudge against this road;' and, to the magistrate's surprise, he walked the whole of the remainder of the journey.

As they came up to the cottage, they could see, as once before, over the half door into its interior. The priest was standing by the bedside holding the vessel of holy oil in his hands; and through the crisp morning air the last words of the sacrament of Extreme Unction rang clear upon their ears:

'Through this holy unction,' and they could see the sweep of the priest's arm, as he made the sign of the cross upon the sick man's forehead, 'and through His most tender mercy the Lord pardon thee whatever sins thou hast committed with the senses of thy body and with the thoughts and desires of thy heart. Amen.'

'Amen,' echoed the two men, and swinging open the half door entered the room. The priest turned from bestowing the blessing, and his eyes fell upon the magistrate; he started, and a sudden flame of apprehension leapt into life in his eyes, which was answered by a smile deep down in Fitzgerald's. And then was seen a curious sight: a conflict of religions, of parties, of races, over the dying body of one man. Another human life was the stake.

'I have come to take your deposition,' said the magistrate, advancing into the room to the side of the bed.

'Why, how is this?' interrupted the priest hoarsely, licking his lips with his tongue. 'Why was I not told that this had not been done?'

'Why, what differ does it make?' asked the girl anxiously from the foot of the bed.

The priest's nostrils distended and he opened his mouth to speak, but restrained himself. He turned to the bed and said: 'You wish to depose that Mr. Trevor shot you after having threatened to do so?'

'Ay,' said the man; 'he said he'd shute me, an' shute me he did.'

Anxiety gave way to triumph in the priest's eyes, but prematurely, for the dying man's gaze followed Fitzgerald's significant look to the sacred vessel that the priest still grasped in his hand, and he continued--'But what is all that to me? I'm done with the affairs of this life. I've had my absolution for all my sins thought and done. I'm done with the wurruld an' the wurruld's done with me. I'm nat to ate nor spake more. An' I forgive him.'

'You needn't mind about the absolution,' urged the priest in his eagerness, letting the mask slip, and the glare of fanaticism shine through, 'I'll see that that's made all right: I'll get you a dispensation. But you must make some statement before you die.'

'I tell ye,' said the old man querulously, and raising himself excitedly upon his elbow, 'I forgive him. Foreby, Misther Trevor's bin a good master to me up to now. An' I'll make no statement. An' I won't be stirred from that wurrud by man nor praste.' But the effort was too much for him, and the next moment he fell back upon the pillow gasping, the bed dyed red with his life-blood; his wound had broken out afresh.

With a despairing cry his daughter threw herself on her knees by the bedside, and the two laymen unbaring themselves reverently in the presence of Death, withdrew into the open air to await his advent. Ten minutes afterwards the old man had ceased to breathe, without having again opened his lips.

'It's lucky for our friend Trevor,' said Fitzgerald to his companion, as they drove thoughtfully homeward, 'that the priest made that mistake about the sacrament, and that the Irish peasant has such an ingrained reverence for forms. The old man was evidently set upon his delusion, whether he got it from his daughter or no, and if he had made that statement, you would have had to commit Trevor for trial, and he would equally surely have been hanged. As it is, I don't think any committal is necessary.'

'Now I know why you were so anxious to walk up all those hills,' the magistrate dryly replied; 'but it wouldn't have done to arrive after his death.'

'No; that wouldn't have done at all. The fat would have been in the fire then, with a vengeance. But, as it is, they have no cause for complaint.'

It turned out as Fitzgerald said. When the case was brought before them for a preliminary hearing, the magistrates decided that in the face of his victim's refusal to testify against Trevor there was no case for a jury. At this decision there was agitation in some quarters, and talk about class feeling and the straining of justice on behalf of individuals; but everybody felt that both sides were tarred with the same brush, and the Catholics no doubt perceived that they had sold themselves: the better sort amongst them sympathized with Trevor's misfortune, and held aloof from the more extreme element. The matter was not vigorously pushed, and soon dropped into oblivion.

But the incident left its permanent mark upon Trevor. He was too soft-fibred to pass through such a fiery ordeal unscathed. Added to the fact of having a fellow-creature's life upon his hands, a man of his inoffensive type could not feel a whole community thirsting for his blood and show no sign thereafter. From that day he retired completely into himself, holding aloof from his neighbors, and within a few months had grown old and broken down before his time.

A BORDER WAR

'For God's sake give me a drink of whisky and soda to wash my heart down; it's been in my mouth all day,' said Fitzgerald, clattering into the room in his war panoply, his sword clanking against his spurs, and throwing himself into my favorite easy chair.

'What's the matter?' I asked, as I filled him a three-finger drink and put the decanter and siphon beside him.

'What! Haven't you heard the news, you benighted heathen? Why, the whole country's ringing with it.'

'Cease to praise your own exploits, and trot out your story,' I said firmly, 'or I'll take away the whisky.'

'Well,' he began, after draining his glass at a draught, 'from information received, as they say in the force, I learnt yesterday that there had been the beginnings of a pretty little fight up in the near end of Robertson's district. And I knew that he was due at the Assizes at the other end of the County to-day, so I thought I'd keep my eye on the case for him.

'It seems that up in that part there is a spot where the two counties meet and also the boundaries of two large properties. By a mistake in the survey at some time a strip of field just there was omitted: the county line runs down the middle of it, but it is claimed by neither of the landowners. It is mere rushy land, not worth ten shillings an acre, and of no account to a rich man, but to the half-starved peasant of these parts even that much grass is a perfect treasure-trove.

'Under these circumstances the tenants of the two nearest cabins on either side of the field have been accustomed by tacit agreement to look upon this strip as their own property. Each took the county line as the boundary or marin of his claim, and each mowed his own half. But the one that came first generally encroached a little, and stole as much of his neighbor's grass as he thought he could with safety. Of recent years this habit had increased, and led to considerable jealousy between the two men; and as the land belonged to nobody except by prescriptive right, it became more or less of a public question in the district, and the men of each county espoused the cause of their respective champions.

'Well, yesterday morning, as luck would have it, both men took it into their heads to mow their piece on the same day, and both arrived on the ground together. They eyed each other suspiciously: then they started mowing at the two extremities opposite each other and began to race for the middle of the field, each determined to see that the other did not trespass on his portion.

'The faster mower arrived first, and in his haste appropriated a scytheful of his neighbor's grass, which was easy to do, as nothing but an imaginary line divided the two halves of the field.

'Directly afterwards the other man came opposite him and saw what had occurred, and a black scowl gathered upon his face. He stooped down and picked up a stone against which his scythe-blade had just rasped: he spat on it and put it carefully upon the middle of the imaginary line, then he said:

'"That's the marin, Larry Scanlan, and that's my mark. Stir a fut acrost it agin, if ye darr, an' I'll stretch ye as dacint a corp as ever ye seen."

'"Ah," replied the other, roused by this insult, "give me any more ov yer lip, Con Doherty, an I'll jist dhraw me han' an' hit yous a skelp that ull knock ye endways from here to Ameriky."

'They glared fiercely at each other, and having thus crowed their mutual defiance, there seemed nothing left to do but to fight.

'But each looked at the scythe in the hands of the other, and hesitated to begin the fray. The ideal scythe-blade is not smooth and sharp: such would soon lose its edge and be a cause of bad language to its owner. But the scythe that delights the mower's heart has a ripple like the teeth of a saw ground down, that grips the grass-stalks and shears straight through them. A heavy blade like this would drive through cloth and flesh and bone, and lop off limbs as a pruning-knife lops twigs. It is a formidable weapon in a row. Each man pondered the unknown quantity of how far his neighbor would be prepared to go if his blood were up. Meanwhile the situation lagged.

'Doherty was the smaller man and already regretted his rash procedure. As he gazed round to the earth and sky for inspiration his eye lit upon his brother digging potatoes in the adjoining field, and thoughts of reinforcements came to him.

'"Come over here a minute, Roger," he shouted, "I want ye."

'Roger came with his spade. And a neighbor that was passing by sat upon the wall to watch the fight.

'"Now," said Con triumphantly, "quit the groun', or we'll scarify ye."

'But Scanlan scented an opportunity to base his private quarrel on the grounds of public principle, and said to the neighbor, who fortunately lived on the same side of the marin as himself:

'"Shure now, Father, ye wudn't stan' by an say a man av yer own county putt upon by them dhirty land-grabbin' furriners."

'Peter looked at the group and saw that Larry was the biggest of the three. He was not above having "a bit ov fun," so long as he was likely to be on the winning side. He had his spade with him also. So he spat on his hands, grasped the handle, and ranged himself on the side of his county, saying briefly:

'"I'll stan' by ye, Larry."

'So once more the situation had arrived at a deadlock. The advantage lay with neither side. But the delay had allowed the blood of the two original combatants to cool, and their thoughts turned upon strategy. After a few more mutual recriminations they separated by tacit consent, and each went his way, muttering darkly to himself:

'"Wait till the morra, an' we'll see what yous ull luke like thin."

'But when two men hit upon a plan, whose methods of life and grooves of thought have been the same from their birth upward, it is likely that the ideas of both will be very similar. So that night the fiery cross, as it were, ran through the surrounding district on both sides of the border ... This morning at the hush of dawn a murmur arose on each side of the field in dispute. And the sun shed its first rays upon a hundred men sitting upon the stone ditch on one side of the field, and a hundred upon the other. Each side gazed in blank surprise to find its idea anticipated. And all through the forenoon men came dropping in by twos and threes, armed with their scythes, to reinforce their own party and reap the grass for their county.

'About twelve o'clock two boys came to me within a few minutes of each other with a message to "Come up to Doherty's marin at wanst, or there'll be could murther done."

'I thought two messengers argued great urgency, and set off in hot haste with my four-and-twenty policemen. When we arrived upon the ground we found a full couple of thousand men sitting on each ditch facing each other. I drew up my forces in the middle of the field between them, facing both ways, felt like Leonidas, and wished myself somewhere else.

'But neither party took the slightest notice of our presence. They sat on their respective walls and went on shouting their challenges across our heads as though we did not exist. One man would shout:

'"Ah, come over here, Tim Daly, an' I'll put a face on ye that yer own mother wudn't know ye."

'And the other side would reply:

'"Wait till I come te you, ye yelpin' cub, an' I'll stritch yer mouth both ways roun' yer head."

'Both parties waited and nothing occurred.

'At last the situation began to dawn upon me. Neither of them cared a damn for me and my policemen, but each faction had too healthy a respect for the strength of the other to take the first step. And then the meaning of the two messengers also became plain--one had been despatched by either side at the same time both desiring an honorable retreat from the difficult position into which they had got themselves. For nowadays even Irishmen are not used to a faction fight in which the combatants upon either side number two thousand strong and are armed with scythes. The situation was too big for their stomachs, and each man said to himself, as he gazed upon the black mass gathered at the other side of the field, "This job is a bit too thick. I wish I was safe at home."

'Now a novice, as soon as he discovered the position of affairs, would have thought everything quite safe, and would consequently have made a mess of it. But I know these people thoroughly: I have lived--'

'Cut the cackle,' I said, 'and continue the story. We'll take all your perfections as read.'

'Well, as I was saying, when you interrupted me so rudely, I knew that because I had fathomed the situation we were not necessarily safe out of it. If but a spark were added to their combativeness, we were in for the biggest fight that I had seen in my time, and between the two we police would be the first to suffer.

'So I walked warily. I waited until one of the men came to a well near us for a drink of water. Then I called him, and after several other questions about the condition of affairs, I asked him the name of the leader upon the other side.

'Directly he had gone back to his fellows, I walked towards the opposite crowd and asked for Larry Scanlan.

'He came out to meet me, and I said to him,

'"I've done my best, but Doherty's men are simply raging for a fight, and I can't keep them in hand a minute longer. For God's sake, draw off your party, or I won't answer for the consequences: they'll eat you up body and bones."

'The man went a grayish green, shaking with terror, and said, "For the luv of Mary, sir, don't let us be murthered. What will we do at ahl?"

'Then I said that if they were out of sight of their opponents my task would be easier: if they withdrew in a body to the next ditch when I waved my handkerchief I would reason with Doherty's men, and would be able to bring him their proposals for an agreement.

'Scanlan consented, and I went over to the opposite side, drew an equally terrifying picture of the bloodthirsty eagerness of their adversaries, and made the same arrangement.

'Then I returned to my devoted corps, waved my handkerchief, and Hey, Presto! not a man was to be seen anywhere.

'I waited patiently for five minutes, and then sent a couple of my men to reconnoitre. They returned and reported that when they arrived at the second ditch in each direction not a figure was to be seen on the whole countryside. As soon as they had got out of sight of the enemy both armies had fled swiftly, every man to his own home.

'Well, I wasn't going to leave the occasion of offence behind me, so I drew a line down the centre of the field from marin stone to marin stone, sent into the surrounding parts and hired a dozen mowers, and in three hours I had that field mown and the grass gathered upon either hand with a space of twelve yards between; and if they like to go back and fight over it now, they can fight: for I'm not going to interfere again. I've had enough of them.'

'And what are you going to get out of all this heroism and astuteness?' I asked.

'I? Oh if it ever comes to the ears of the authorities, I shall get a slating for interfering outside my own district, and I consider I richly deserve it. As it is I have already got out of it a beautiful thirst, that I wouldn't sell for half-a-crown. Give us another drink, old man.'

'And how much of that story is true?' I asked, 'and how much is your tropical imagination?'

'That,' said he, 'is for you to decide, my boy,' and he deliberately winked his left eye at me.

A NIGHTMARE CLIMB

'No, I like you very much, but there can never be anything of that kind between us.'

'I expected this. But I think you are very foolish,' replied the young man slowly, twisting his moustache.

The girl was too astonished at this superior way of taking a rejection to say anything. It was beyond her experience entirely.