"It is true that one of you is Terence Gorman's boy, I knew it, but only
Biddy knows which it is. I had no hand in Terence's murder, nor had
Mike Gallagher, though I tried to put it on him. Write that down
quickly, and I'll sign it."
I wrote his words hurriedly down, and read them over; but when it came
to putting the pen in his hand, he fell back, and I thought all was
over. But after a few minutes he rallied again.
"Hold me up--guide my hand--it all swims before me."
The paper with his woeful scrawl affixed lies before me at this moment
as I write.
"Gallagher," said he, more faintly yet, "be good to Kit, and forgive
me."
"God will do that, your honour," whispered I.
"Pray for me.--Ah!" cried he, starting suddenly in bed, and throwing up
his arm as if to ward off a blow, "I'll take the oath, boys. You shall
have the money. God save--"
And he fell back, dead.
Next day an inquiry was held which ended in nothing. No trace of the
murderer was to be found, and no evidence but that of us who saw the
tragedy with our own eyes. Plenty of folk, who had given him a wide
berth living, crowded to the place to look at the dead Gorman; but in
all their faces there was not one sign of pity or compunction--nay,
worse, that very night, on Fanad and Knockalla bonfires were lit to
celebrate his murder.
The next day we buried him. For miles round no one could be found
willing to make his coffin, and in the end we had to lay him in a common
soldier's shell. Nor would any one lend horse or carriage to carry him
to his grave, and we had to take him by boat to his resting-place,
rowing it through the gathering storm with our own arms. The flag half-
mast on the _Gnat_ was the only sign of mourning; and when we bore the
coffin up to the lonely graveyard on the cliff-top at Kilgorman, and
laid it beside that of his lady, in the grave next to that of the
murdered Terence, not a voice but mine joined in the "Amen" to the
priest's prayer.
When all was said and done, I lingered on, heedless of the wind and
rain, in the deserted graveyard, full of the strange memories which the
place and scene recalled.
Eight years ago I had stood here with Tim at the open grave of her whom
we both called mother. And on that same day her ghostly footstep had
sounded in our ears in the grim kitchen of Kilgorman, summoning us to a
duty which was yet unfulfilled. What had not happened since then? The
boatman's boys were grown, one into the heir of half the lough-side, the
other into a servant of his Majesty. Tim, entangled hand and foot in
the toils of a miserable conspiracy, was indifferent to the fortune now
lying at his feet; I, engaged in the task of hunting down the rebels of
whom he was a leader, was eating my heart out for love of her who called
by the sacred name of father the murdered man who lay here, to whom we
owed all our troubles. Was the day never to dawn? Was there never to
be peace between Tim and me? And was Kit, like some will-o'-the-wisp,
always to be snatched from my reach whenever I seemed to have found her
for my own?
I lingered beside his honour's grave till the daylight failed and the
waters of the lough merged into the stormy night, and the black gables
of Kilgorman behind me lost themselves against the blacker sky. The
weather suited my mood, and my spirits rose as the hard sleet struck my
cheek and the buffet of the wind sweeping the cliff-top sent me
staggering for support against the graveyard wall. It made me feel at
home again to meet nature thus, and I know not how long I drank in
courage for my sick heart that night.
At length I turned to go, before even it occurred to me that I had
nowhere to go. The _Gnat_ lay in the roadstead off Rathmullan, beyond
reach that night. The cottage on Fanad was separated from me by a waste
of boiling water. In Knockowen the bloodstains were not yet dry.
Kilgorman--yes, there was no place else. I would shelter there till
daylight summoned me to my post of duty on the _Gnat_. Looking back
now, I can see that destiny led my footsteps thither.
As I turned towards the house, I thought I perceived in that direction a
tiny spark of light, which vanished almost as soon as it appeared.
Still more remarkable, a faint glimmer of light appeared in a small
gable-window high up, where assuredly I had never before seen a light.
It may have been on this account or from old association that, instead
of approaching the place by the upper path, I descended the cliff and
made my way round to the cave by which so many of my former visits had
been paid. Fortunately the gale was an easterly one, so that the water
in the cave was fairly still, and I was able in the dark to grope my way
to the ledge on which the secret passage opened.
All was quiet when at last I reached the recess of the great hearth and
peered out into the dark kitchen. By all appearance no one had looked
into the place since I was there last a year ago and left my note for
Tim, and found the mysterious message which warned me of the plot to
carry off Miss Kit. I wondered if the former paper was still where I
left it, and was about to step out of my hiding-place in search of a
light, when the crunching of footsteps on the path without and the
flitting of a lantern past a window sent me back suddenly into
retirement.
A moment's consideration told me that it was easy to guess who the
intruders might be. The night that Maurice Gorman had been laid in his
grave would be a grand night for the rebels of Fanad. And who could say
whether the object of their meeting might not be to consider the fate of
Miss Kit herself, who, now that her father was dead, was no longer a
hostage or the price of a ransom in their hands? There might at least
be news of her, and even of Tim.
So I stood close, and waited as still as a mouse.