James Hope kept his promise. About noon the next day he came to the inn
and found Neal waiting for him impatiently.
“We are going,” he said, “to James Finlay’s house. Before we start I
think I ought to tell you that in any case you could not stay here any
longer. I saw this morning a proclamation offering a reward of fifty
pounds for your capture, and I have no doubt that Finlay will earn it if
he can, even if the soldier you mauled does not trace you here.”
“I am ready,” said Neal.
“You are not afraid? I see you are not, and we are not going to run into
any unnecessary danger. Finlay will not betray you at once. He will not
run out and call soldiers to take you the moment he sees you. He has a
deeper plan. He has arranged that a meeting of our leaders will be held
in Aeneas Moylin’s house to-morrow night. He is to be there himself, and
he has received assurance that most of our chief men will be there. We
have little doubt that he has given information about the meeting, and
made his arrangements for capturing us all. We shall tell him that you
are to be there, too. Then he will not want to risk exposing himself
by betraying you at once. He will wait for you till to-morrow. But when
to-morrow comes he will not find our leaders at Donegore. I have not
asked, and I do not wish to know, what he will find when he gets there.”
“I understand,” said Neal. “When we meet I am to pretend that I trust
him thoroughly.”
Hope smiled.
“You are a good soldier. You are prepared to obey, and you do not ask
too many questions. But I am going to trust you fully, and tell you
why we are going to Finlay’s house to-day. Some time ago we stored some
cases of ball cartridges there. They are in a cellar, and I have no
doubt that Major Fox knows all about them, and thinks them as safe as
if they were in the munition room of the barrack. You and I are going to
carry off those cases. We want the cartridges badly, and we cannot wait
for them. We shall be using them, I hope, the day after to-morrow, and
if we leave them there till Finlay goes to Donegore to-morrow evening I
fear they may be seized by the soldiers. We must take them at once, and
it seems to me that our best chance will be to walk off with them in
broad daylight without an attempt at concealment. We shall bring them
here.”
“How many cases are there?” asked Neal.
“Eight,” said Hope. “We must manage to carry four each, but the distance
is not very great.”
Neal drew a deep breath of relief when he reached the street. Any
service, however dangerous, any form of activity in the open air, was a
joy to him after his long confinement in the house.
The streets, as he and Hope passed through them, were full of soldiers.
Companies of yeomen marched and countermarched in indifferent order
through every thoroughfare. Pickets of regulars, their bayonets fixed,
stood at the street corners and in front of the principal buildings.
Troops of dragoons, rattling and jingling, trotted briskly in one
direction or another. Orderlies cantered their horses from place to
place. Business in the town was almost suspended. Many of the shops
were shut. Grave citizens, engaged in pressing affairs, hurried, with
downcast eyes, along the causeways, seldom stopping to speak to each
other, greeting acquaintances with hasty nods. Women of the better sort,
if they ventured out at all, walked quickly, heavily cloaked and veiled.
The trollops and street walkers of a garrison town emerged from
their lairs even at midday, and stood in little groups at the corners
exchanging jests with the soldiers on picket duty, or shouted ribaldries
to the yeomen and dragoons who passed them. Idle maid servants, sluttish
and dishevelled, leaned far out of the upper windows of the houses
to gaze at the pageant beneath them. In the High Street a crowd of
loafers--coarse women and soldiers off duty--was gathered in front of
an iron triangle where, it was understood, some prisoners were to be
flogged. Town, Major Fox, Major Barber, and some other officers in
uniform, strolled up and down in front of the Exchange, rudely jostling
such merchants as ventured to enter or leave the building.
James Hope walked slowly through the streets, chatting cheerfully
to Neal as he went. Now and then he even stopped to watch a troop of
dragoons go by or to gaze at the uniforms of the soldiers who stood on
guard. In crowded places he waited quietly until he saw a way of passing
on without pushing or attracting attention to his movements. The trial
was a severe one for Neal’s nerves. It was hard to pose as a curious
sightseer within a few feet of men who could have earned fifty pounds by
arresting him.
At last, after many pauses, and what seemed an interminable walk, Hope
stopped at the door of a respectable looking house and knocked. A woman
half opened the door and eyed them suspiciously. Then, recognising
a whispered pass-word of some sort from Hope, she admitted them and
ushered them into a room on the ground floor. James Finlay sat at a
table with writing materials spread before him. He started slightly when
he saw Neal, but recovered himself instantly. He came forward, shook
hands with Hope, and then said to Neal--
“You and I know each other, Mr. Ward. I trust your father is in good
health, and that all is well at Dunseveric?”
Neal, though he had schooled himself beforehand to greet Finlay
cordially, shrank back. He felt a violent loathing for the man. It
became physically impossible for him to take Finlay’s hand in his, to
speak smooth words to this hypocrite who inquired of the good health of
the very people he had betrayed. Hope saw the hesitation and tried to
cover it with a casual remark. Finlay also saw it and misinterpreted it.
“I hope,” he said, “that you do not bear me any malice on account of the
little trouble there was between us long ago in the north. You ought to
forgive and forget, Mr. Ward. We are both workers in the same cause now.
At least, I suppose you are a United Irishman like your father or you
wouldn’t come here with James Hope to-day.”
“Neal Ward,” said Hope, “is going to the meeting at Donegore to-morrow
evening.”
Neal recovered himself and held out his hand to Finlay.
There was another knock at the door of the house. Finlay started
violently and ran to the window.
“It’s all right,” he said, “it’s only a lad I keep employed. I sent
him out an hour ago to find out what was going on in the streets and to
bring me word.”
He returned to Hope with a smile on his face, but he had grown very
white, and his hands were trembling slightly. A boy burst into the room,
followed by the woman who had opened the door for Hope and Neal.
“Master,” he cried, “they’ve brought out Kelso into the High Street. The
soldiers are dragging him along. They are going to flog him.”
The boy’s eyes were wide with excitement. Having delivered his message,
he turned and fled. A flogging was too great a treat for Finlay’s boy
to miss. The woman, without staying to don hat or shawl, went after him.
Finlay called to her to stay. She shouted her answer from the threshold.
“Do you think I’m daft to be sitting my lone in your kitchen and them
flogging a clever young man in the next street?”
Then the hall-door slammed. Finlay turned to Hope. He was whiter than
ever, and his whole body shook as if with an ague.
“Kelso will tell,” he said. “Kelso knows, and they’ll flog the secret
out of him. He’ll tell, I know he will. He must tell; no man could help
it.”
If Finlay was pretending to be terrified he acted marvellously well. It
seemed to Neal that he really was afraid of something, perhaps of some
sudden betrayal of his treachery, of vengeance taken speedily by Hope.
“What ails you?” said Hope. “You needn’t be frightened.”
“The cartridges, the cartridges,” wailed Finlay. “Kelso knows they are
here.”
“If that’s all,” said Hope, “Neal Ward and I will ease you of them. We
came here to take them away.”
“You can’t, you can’t, you mustn’t. They’d hang you on the nearest lamp
iron if they saw you with the cartridges.”
There was a bang on the door and a moment later a knocking on the window
of the room, and then a woman’s fate was pressed against the glass. Hope
sprang across the room and flung open the window. The servant woman who
had gone to see the flogging pushed her head into the room and said--
“They’re taking down Kelso, and he’s telling all he knows. Major Barber
and the soldiers are getting ready to march. It’s down here they’ll be
coming.”
“It’s time for us to be off, then,” said Hope.
“Come along, Neal, down to the cellar, and let us get the cartridges.”
James Finlay followed them downstairs, begging them not to attempt to
carry off the cartridges. He held Hope by the arm as he spoke.
“Don’t do it,” he said, “for God’s sake don’t do it. The soldiers are
coming. They will be here in a minute. They will meet you. They will
hang you. I know they will hang you. Oh! for God’s sake go away at once
while you have time. Leave the cartridges.”
Hope shook off the grip on his arm with a gesture of impatience. He
pushed open the cellar door.
“Now, Neal,” he said, “pick up as many of the cases as you think you can
carry.”
James Finlay turned from Hope and seized Neal by the hands. The man was
trembling from head to foot; his face was deadly white; the sweat was
trickling down his cheeks in little streams.
“Don’t let him. Oh! don’t let him. He won’t listen to me. Stop him. Make
him fly.”
He fell on his knees on the floor and clasped Neal’s legs. He grovelled.
There was no possibility of doubting the reality of his emotion. This
was not acting. The terror was genuine. James Finlay was desperately
frightened.
“Get out of my way. No one is going to hurt you in any case.”
“It’s not that,” he said. “Believe me if you can. Believe me as you hope
to be saved. I can’t, I won’t see _him_ hanged. I can’t bear it.”
He was speaking the literal truth. He believed that James Hope would be
caught and would then and there be hanged. Finlay had betrayed many men,
had earned the basest wages a man can earn--the wages of a spy. He knew
that his victims went to flogging and death, but he never watched them
flogged, he never saw them die. He even bargained never to stand in a
witness box. The results, the inevitable issues of his betrayals, were
never immediately before his eyes. Between him and the punishment of
his victims there was always some space of time spent in prison, some
appearance of a legal trial, some pretence of a just judgment. He was
able, with that strange power of self-deception which most men possess,
to conceal from himself that it was his information which led to the
brutalities which followed it. If James Finlay had been obliged himself
to execute the men whose execution his testimony secured; if he had been
forced to lay the lash on quivering flesh or fit the noose round the
necks of living men; it is likely that no bribe would have bought him,
that sheer cowardice and an instinctive horror of death and pain would
have saved him, as no consideration of honour and truth did, from the
extreme baseness of an informer’s trade. Here lay part of the meaning
of his terrified desire for Hope’s escape. He could not bear to see men
hanged before the door of his own house, or hear with his ears their
shrieks under the lash.
But there was more behind this feeling than utter cowardice. He knew
James Hope, knew him intimately, though he had known him only for a
short time. Like Neal Ward he had walked with Hope along the roads and
lanes of County Antrim, had heard him talking, had seen--as no man, even
the basest, could fail to see--the wonderful purity and unselfishness
of Hope’s character. James Finlay had sold his own honour, but there
remained this much good in him, he refused to sell Hope’s life. God,
reckoning all the evil and baseness of James Finlay’s treachery and
greed, will no doubt set on the other side of the account the fact that
even Finlay recognised high goodness when he saw it, that he did not
betray Hope, that he grovelled on the floor before a man whom he hated
for the chance of saving Hope from what seemed certain death.
Neal pushed Finlay aside and stepped forward. He took five of the cases
of cartridges--three under his right arm two under his left. Hope raised
the other three. Then, picking up a bundle from a corner, he said--
“There is more gear here, which we may as well take with us. There is
a green jacket which some of our young fellows may like to wear, and a
flag; we ought to have a flag to fight under.”
They turned to leave the house. Neal cast one glance behind him and saw
Finlay lying curled up on the ground, his face covered with his hands,
as if he were already trying to shut away from his eyes the sight of
Hope’s body dangling from a lamp iron.
Reaching the street, Hope stood for a moment and glanced up and down
it. A party of soldiers was marching towards them. Hope looked at them
carefully.
“These are not the men whom the woman warned us of. Major Barber, if he
were coming here from High Street, would be marching the opposite way.
This is some company of yeomen.”
A band played at the head of the approaching company, and the men
stepped out briskly to the tune of “Croppies Lie Down.” Their uniforms
were gay, their arms and accoutrements in good order, the officer in
command was well mounted; a crowd of idle young men and some women were
walking beside and behind the soldiers, attracted by the music and the
unusually smart appearance of the men.
“I know these,” said Hope, “they are the County Down Yeomanry. They
have just marched in, and are no doubt going to report themselves. Come,
Neal, this is our chance.”
He joined the crowd which walked with the soldiers. Neal followed him
closely. Hope, as if feeling the weight of the boxes he carried, walked
slowly until he found himself in that part of the crowd which followed
the regiment. Then, pushing forward briskly, he and Neal came close
behind the last soldiers. The ranks were not well kept, nor the march
orderly. Hope made his way forward until he and Neal were walking
amongst the yeomen. As they swung out of the street they were met by
another body of troops.
“These are regulars,” whispered Hope, “and Major Barber is in command of
them. That is he.”
The two bodies of troops halted. There was a brief conversation between
their commanding officers. Then an order was given. The yeomen, their
band playing briskly again, marched on. Hope and Neal, now in the very
middle of the ranks, marched with them. The royal troops presented arms
as they passed. Major Barber watched them critically.
“It’s a pity these volunteers won’t learn their drill,” he said to a
young officer beside him. “Look at that for marching. The ranks are as
ragged as the shirt of the fellow we’ve just been flogging; but they’re
fine men and well armed. By Jove, they have two country fellows with
them carrying spare ammunition. I’ll bet you a bottle of claret there
are cartridges in those cases.”
He pointed to Hope and Neal.
“Ought to have a baggage waggon,” said the officer, “or ought to put the
fellows into uniform. They might be damned rebels for all any one could
tell by looking at them.”
“I’d expect to meet a rebel pretty near anywhere,” said Major Barber,
“but, by God, I would not expect to find one marching in the middle of a
company of yeomen.”
The yeomen passed and the infantry marched again towards Finlay’s house.
Hope turned to Neal. Laughter was dancing in his eyes, but, except for
his eyes, his face was grave.
“Now,” he whispered, “we’ve got to slip out of the ranks and make our
way into North Street.”
As he spoke he lurched against the yeoman next to him and allowed the
bundle he carried to slip from his arm. The soldier cursed him for a
clumsy drunkard. Hope, in return, abused the soldier for knocking the
parcel out of his arms, and then called to Neal--
“Wait for me, mate, wait till I gather up my goods again.”
He deposited his cartridge cases on the ground, went after the bundle
which had rolled into the gutter, and then, arranging his load slowly,
allowed the yeomen to march past.
“Did you hear Major Barber say that he’d be ready to bet that these
cases held cartridges? A sharp man, Major Barber! But there are more men
than him about with eyes in their heads. The next officer we meet will
be wanting to know where we are taking the cartridges. We won’t have
another company of yeomen to vouch for our characters. I think, Neal,
we’d better get something to cover these up. There’s a man here in
charge of a carman’s yard who is sure to have a couple of sacks which
will suit us very well.”
He passed under an archway, followed by Neal, and entered a small yard.
“Charlie,” he cried, “are you there, Charlie?”
A young man emerged from one of the stables. He started at the sight of
Hope.
“Are you mad, Jemmy Hope?” he said. “Are you mad, that you come here,
and every stable full of dragoons’ horses? They have them billeted on
us, curse them, and the villains are in the coachhouse polishing their
bits and stirrup irons. Hark to them.”
“I hear them,” said Hope. “Get me two of your oat sacks, Charlie, good
strong ones. I have goods here that want protecting from the sunlight.”
The man cast a swift glance round, ran to one of the stables, and
fetched the sacks.
“Now, Neal, pack up, pack up.”
He pushed his own cases into one of the sacks. Neal followed his
example.
“It won’t do,” said Hope, “the sacks don’t look natural. There are too
many sharp corners bulging out. Charlie, lad, fetch us some straw--a
good armful.”
While they were stuffing the sacks with the straw one of the dragoons
swaggered across the yard. He stood watching Hope and Neal for a minute
or two, and then said.
“What have you there that you’re so mighty careful of?”
“Whisht, man, whisht,” said Hope, “it’s not safe to be talking of what’s
here.”
He winked at the soldier as he spoke--a sly, humorous wink--a wink which
hinted at a good joke to come. The dragoon, a fat, good-natured man’,
grinned in reply.
“I won’t split on you, you young thieves. I’ve taken my share of loot
before this, and I expect some pickings out of the croppies’ houses
before I’ve done. I won’t cry halvers on you. What’s yours is yours. But
tell us what it is.”
“It’s cases of cartridges,” said Hope, winking again. “We’re taking them
to the general in command of the rebel army, so don’t be interfering
with us or maybe they’ll hold a courtmartial on you.”
The fat dragoon laughed. The idea of packing up ammunition for the
croppies in the temporary barrack of a squadron of dragoons, and using
His Majesty’s straw to stuff the sacks, appealed to him as extremely
comic. Hope and Neal shouldered their bundles and left the yard.
“I’m afraid,” said Hope, “that we can’t store these in Matier’s house.
When Barber learns that the cases are gone he’ll search high and low for
them, and Matier’s will be just one of the places he’ll look sooner or
later. Are you good for a tramp, Neal, with that load on your back?”
“Yes,” said Neal, “I’ll carry mine for miles if you like.”
“Then,” said Hope-, “we’ll just look in at Matier’s as we pass, and if
the coast’s clear I’ll leave word where we’re going. I know a snug place
on the side of the Cave Hill where we can lie for the night. To-morrow
you can join your uncle at Donegore.”
There were no soldiers round the inn when they reached it. Felix Matier
and Donald Ward were both out. Hope left his message with Peg Macllrea,
who was sanding the parlour.
“So you’re going to sleep out the night on the Cave Hill?” she said to
Neal. “That’ll be queer and good for your clouted head I’m thinkin’.”
“It’ll do my head no harm,” said Neal. “You know well enough, Peg, that
there never was much the matter with it.”
They shouldered their loads again, walked up the street, and then,
quickening their pace, tramped along the Shore Road for about three
miles.
“Now,” said Hope, “turn to the left up that loaning, and we’ll strike
for the hill.”
They crossed the fields round the homesteads which lay between the hill
and the road, reached uncultivated and stony ground, and then commenced
their climb. Neal was strong, active, and accustomed to fatigue, but he
began to feel the weight of his sack of cartridge cases before he had
climbed five hundred feet. When Hope bade him halt he was glad enough to
lie panting on the springy heather.
“We’re safe now,” said Hope, “but we’ve got further to go before night.
We must make the place I named so that the men will be able to find me
and the cartridges to-morrow morn.”
Neal, ashamed of his weariness, bade Hope lead on.
“I might have trysted with them for Mac Art’s Fort,” said Hope. “It was
there that Neilson and Tone and M’Cracken swore the oath. That would
have been a brave romantic spot for you and me to spend the night. We
might have thought of great things there with the stars over us and
nothing else between us and God’s heaven. But it’s a draughty place,
lad.” The laughter came into his eyes as he spoke. “A draughty place and
a stony, like Luz, where Jacob lay, and maybe the angels wouldn’t come
near the likes of us. The place I have in my mind is warmer.”
They reached it at last--a little heathery hollow, lying under the
shelter of great rocks.
“You might sleep in a worse place, Neal. It was here that Wolfe Tone and
the men I told you of dined three years ago--and a merry day they had
of it. I could wish we had a few of the scraps they left. It’s cold work
sleeping in the open on an empty stomach, but we must just cheer each
other with Tone’s byword--
“‘’Tis but in vain
For soldiers to complain.’”
Neal, lying full length on the heather in the warmth of the afternoon
sun, dropped off to sleep. He had undergone severe physical exertion,
which told on him. He had been through an hour and more of great
excitement, which exhausted him far more than the exertion. When he woke
the sun had sunk behind the hill, and the air was pleasantly cool. Hope
sat beside him, gazing out across the Lough and the town which lay below
them.
“I’ve been thinking, Neal, of that man Finlay. He was frightened to-day
when we were in his house. Now what had he to be frightened about?”
“I don’t know,” said Neal, “but I agree with you. The man certainly
wasn’t play-acting. He was in real fear.”
“I think,” said Hope, “that he was afraid the soldiers would take us and
hang us.”
“But,” said Neal, “why should he fear that when he has betrayed us?”
“The human heart,” said Hope, after a pause, “is a strange thing. The
Book tells us that no man is altogether good; no, not one, and that’s
true. Never was a truer word. We try, lad, we try, and the grace of God
works in us, but there remains the old leaven of evil; ay, it’s there,
even in the heart of a saint. Now, it isn’t written, but I think it’s
just as true that there’s no man altogether bad. There’s a spark of good
somewhere in the worst of us, if we could but get at it. There’s a spark
of good in Finlay.”
“How can there be?” said Neal, angrily. “The man’s a spy, an informer, a
paid liar, a villain that takes gold and perjures himself.”
“That’s true, over true. And yet he wanted to save our lives to-day. I
tell you the man’s not all bad. There’s something of the grace of God
left in him after all.”
Neal was not inclined to argue about the matter. He sat silent, watching
star after star shine out of the moonless sky. After a long silence Hope
spoke again.
“There are men among us who mean to take Finlay’s life. I can’t
altogether blame them. He deserves to die. But Neal, lad, don’t you have
act or part in that. Remember the word,--‘Vengeance is mine and I will
repay, saith the Lord.’ If there’s a spark of good in him at all, who
are we that we should cut him off from the chance of repentance? ‘The
bruised reed shall he not break; the smoking flax shall he not quench.’
Remember that, Neal.”
From far down the side of the hill the sound of a woman’s voice reached
them faintly. It drew nearer.
“That’s some slip of a lassie from off the farms below us,” said Hope.
“She’s looking out for some cow that’s strayed.”
“She’s singing,” said Neal. “I catch the fall of the tune now and then.”
“She’s coming nearer. It can’t be a cow she’s seeking. No beast would
stray that far up amongst the heather and the stones.”
The voice came more and more clearly. The words of the song reached
them--
“I would I were in Ballinderry,
I would I were in Aghalee,
I would I were in bonny Ram’s Island
Sitting under an ivy tree.
Ochone, ochone!”
“I know that song,” said Neal.
“Everybody knows that song. There isn’t a lass in Antrim or Down but
sings it.”
“But I know the singer too. I heard Peg Macllrea sing it once, Matier’s
Peg, and I’m not likely to forget her voice.”
“If you’re sure of that, Neal, I’ll let her know we’re here. Anyway
it can do no harm. There isn’t a farm lass in the whole country would
betray us to the soldiers. Wait now till she sings it again.”
By the firesides of Irish cottages when songs are sung during the long
winter evenings the listeners often “croon” an accompaniment, droning in
low voices over and over again a few simple notes which harmonise with
the singer’s voice. When the girl began her tune again Hope sang with
her, repeating “Ochone, ochone” down four notes from the octave of the
keynote through the mediate to the keynote again. When she reached the
end of the last line his voice rose suddenly to an unexpected seventh,
which struck sharply on the ear. Prolonging the note after the girl’s
voice died away, he rose to his feet and waved his arms. Soon Peg
Macllrea was beside them.
“I tell’t the master where ye were,” she said, “and I tell’t Mr. Donald.
They couldn’t come theirsells, and they were afeard to let me out my
lone. But I knew finely I could find you. I knew Neal here would mind my
song. I brought you a bite and a sup so as you wouldn’t be famished out
here on the hillside.”
She took a basket from her arm and laid it at Neal’s feet.
“Sit down, Peg,” said Hope, “sit down and eat with us. You’re a good
girl to think of bringing us the food, and you’ll be wanting some
yourself after your walk.”
“I canna bide with you, and I ate my supper before I made out. I must be
gettin’ back now. But I’ve a word to give you from your uncle, Neal. He
bid me tell you that you’re trysted with him for Aeneas Moylin’s house
the morrow night at eight o’clock.”