"Sure, all's fair in war. The girl's safe enough." [Here Martin
laughed in a sinister fashion.] "And now that all is settled up with
Maurice Gorman at last--"
"Is Maurice Gorman dead, then?" asked Tim, controlling himself with a
mighty effort, as was plain by his white lips and flashing eyes.
"He is so. We had him watched day and night, and on Sunday came our
chance. He's gone to his account; and it's not six hours since he was
put out of harm's way under the turf. By Saint Patrick, but it's a
grand day for Ireland this."
"And you mean to tell me," said Tim, in a voice which made his hearers
shift on their feet uncomfortably--"you mean to tell me that you dare to
commit murder and outrage like this in the name of Ireland?"
"Why, what's amiss? Wasn't it yourself was saying with your own lips
the Gorman was a dirty coward?" retorted one of the group testily.
"And that means the same to you as saying a man should be shot in the
dark without a word of warning, and his innocent daughter carried off,
who never did a hand's turn in the place that wasn't kindly and good?"
Guess who it was that loved Tim as he spoke those words?
"It's no time to be squeamish," persisted the man who had first spoken.
"It's a blow for the good of the country, and there's them will give us
credit for it, if you don't."
"You curs! I give you credit for being the meanest cowards unhung. And
I don't mind telling anybody as much. Pray, is it you and the like of
you I'm captain to?"
"When we chose you, we thought you were for the people," snarled Martin.
"Then take back your choice, you crew of blackguards," cried Tim, now in
a towering rage. "I've nothing to do with such as you. No more has
Ireland, thank God!"
"That's well enough," said Finn savagely; "but what's done is done, and
in your name too, whether you like it or not. You should have let us
know in time if your stomach wasn't strong enough for the work."
"My name! The girl carried away in my name, and her father murdered.
How dare you, you dirty whelp, you!"
And he struck Finn across the cheek with his hand.
Instantly the scene became one of wild uproar. The blow was all the men
had wanted to give vent to the bitter resentment which Tim's
contemptuous reproaches had called up. As long as the quarrel was one
of words, they were sullen but cowed. Now it was come to blows, events
befell rapidly. Ere I could push my way into the room, sword in hand--
in truth, more rapidly than I can narrate it--Tim, my brave, impulsive
brother, had sent one of the rascals to his last account, and had
stepped to the wall, with his back there, holding the others at sword's
point.
Martin--that malign spirit, fated to thwart and injure me at all
points--more cunning than his comrades, had stepped back behind the
other two while Tim was engaged with them, poised a long knife above his
head, and at the moment when Tim was lunging at the nearest of his
assailants, I saw the brute, as in a nightmare, strike with all his
might. The cowardly blow struck Tim full on the forehead, and brought
him down with a crash on the floor. I had sprung at Martin's raised
arm, but, alas! had just missed him by a flash of time.
"Take _that_ for many an old score!" I shouted, as I brought him down
on the instant with a cut which laid him bleeding and prostrate at my
feet.
Then stepping across Tim's senseless body, I let out at the other two.
My sudden appearance--for I seemed to have dropped from the clouds--
amazed and paralysed them. They were too terror-stricken to show much
fight; and it was as well for them, for I was in a killing mood, and
could have sent them to their last reckoning with a relish had they
invited me. As it was, with white faces they backed to the door, and
presently howled for mercy.
"It's Barry himsilf!" exclaimed Finn. "Be aisy now Barry darlint, and
don't harm a defenceless man." And he dropped his weapon on the floor.
The other man laid down his knife and tried to edge through the door;
but I stopped him.
"Now you are here," said I, "you shall stay here till I please. Help me
to lift Tim; and the first of you that stirs for anything else is a dead
man."
We lifted Tim tenderly--I could see, now that the heat of passion was
cooled, that the men really respected him and deplored the upshot of the
unexpected encounter--and we laid him gently on the table. My heart
almost stopped beating as I noted the ghastly pallor of his face and saw
the blood running over his temple. He opened his eyes in a dazed way
for a moment; but if he saw me he did not know me. I bandaged his wound
as best I could, and soaking my kerchief in a pool of rain-water, which
had oozed through and on to the window-ledge, moistened his parched
lips.
"Now," said I, sternly enough, stooping over Martin, on whom--with
hardly a ray of pity for him in my heart, I fear--I could see the hand
of death was laid, "one question for you: where is Maurice Gorman's
daughter?"
Martin half opened his eyes. I think he saw the gleam of my pistol,
which, though still in my hand, I had no intention of using. A
convulsive look of terror passed over his face as he muttered thickly,--
"Take that thing away, for mercy's sake, and you shall know all. We
took her and Biddy to the priest's at Killurin; but Father Murphy would
have nothing to say to us. We didn't know _what_ to do. So we--we--
we--ah, Lord, forgive all."
There was a painful pause. For a moment I thought his secret would die
with him. Then he murmured, pointing to the ceiling with his thumb, "We
brought her _here_!"
"What?" I cried in amazement; "Miss Kit is in this house now?"
Martin raised himself with difficulty on his elbow, fumbled feebly in
his belt, and handed me a rusty key. Before I could seize it he fell
back on the floor, and I had to take the key from his dead hand.
In the midst of my woe a wild throb of joy shot through me as I realised
what this unlooked-for news meant.
As I looked from Martin to his dead comrade, and from him to my poor
bruised Tim, from whom, as I feared, life was rapidly ebbing away, my
mind was filled with the pathos and a sense of the useless suffering of
it all. Addressing the two men who only a minute or two ago were his
assailants and mine, but who now stood with downcast faces, I said,--
"Boys, I don't doubt that ye are both acting from what ye consider to be
a sense of duty to old Ireland, and maybe even to your Maker, in all
this terrible bloodshed and unhappiness. To my thinking it's a sadly
mistaken sense of duty, and will only land you and the dear country in
shame and misery. But that is not here or there. Let us part without
hatred. You will find a passage here to the sea," said I, showing them
the opening by the fireplace through which I had entered the room; "and
in a cave at the end of the passage you will find a boat. Carry your
dead to it, and see them taken to their places."
Both men said gravely, as in a chorus, "God save Ireland!" to which I
could utter, though in a different sense from theirs, "Amen!"
Then they did as I bade them, and laboriously carried away their dead
comrades.
I turned to Tim. He was stirring slowly and feebly. I took off my coat
and rolled it into a pillow for his head. Presently he opened his eyes,
and a smile like the smile of an angel passed over his face.
"Barry," said he, "dear old Barry, and is it you, my brother?"