"Barry, are ye there, dear?--I can't see ye at all, at all. Why don't
ye light the lamp?--there is no air!--open the window!--light, light,
give me light!" and he fell back dead.
It was the bitterest, saddest moment of my life. Yet I felt a curious
envy of him. He was out of the whirl and confusion and chaos of our
unhappy time! Peace be with him! I loved him as my own soul, with a
love which was not weakened but made only more pathetic to me that his
ideals for the happiness of our loved country were not my ideals.
But there was comfort for me--of a kind I perhaps little deserved--close
at hand. When I had drawn my coat over Tim's face, I rushed upstairs,
calling aloud as I went,--
"Kit, Kit, I am coming! where are you, Kit?"
Then by-and-by I heard, far off, from a remote attic up in the roof of
the rambling old building to which I had never before penetrated--I
heard, faintly, a voice calling me by name, which fell on my heart like
sweetest music. And when the rusty key had turned in the rusty old
lock, and the crazy door was pushed open, I found a pair of arms flung
tightly about my neck, and a pair of lips pressed close against mine,
with cries of "Thank God, Barry! thank God, Barry! you are here at
last."
It was a meeting of smiles and tears, of most delicious joy, with a
background of infinite sadness.
Kit and Biddy McQuilkin were quickly brought by me to more comfortable
quarters in Knockowen, and where they were more likely to have better
protection. Captain Felton, on my signal, came ashore from the _Gnat_,
and I found in him a friend indeed. He urged me to take Kit and Biddy
to the house of his aunt (the widow of one of the canons of Salisbury
Cathedral), who lived a peaceful life in one of the quaint old houses in
the Close of that lovely cathedral city--at any rate until quieter times
for Ireland. Not only this, but he managed so that Kit and Biddy and I
were landed at Stranraer, on the Scottish coast, bearing letters from
him to his aunt, who received us hospitably, and in whose care I was
content to leave my beloved one, with a lighter heart concerning her
than I had experienced during all the years I had known her.
I am not going to detail here all the bloody work of the next few months
in our loved country. The wars of brothers are best left untold. Of
the terrible doings in the north and south and west, but especially in
County Wexford, at Enniscorthy and Vinegar Hill, where blood was spilt
like water, we had enough, and more than enough, in the public prints,
and on the loud tongue of rumour, at the time. But I was in the sea-
fight off Lough Swilly, when we made mincemeat of the French squadron in
October of that black year 1798, and pluckier fighting against enormous
odds than was done on that day by the French frigate _Hoche_ I had never
seen, nor ever again wish to see. It was courage worthy of a better
cause.
It was for the part I had in that affair that, later on, to my joy, I
received my promotion, and gained the coveted right to place the
honoured word "captain" after my name. With the defeat of the French
expeditions in the west and north, and the capture and subsequent tragic
death of the heroic if erratic genius Wolfe Tone, and after many weary
days of suffering on the part of Ireland's noblest sons and daughters,
there came gradually a modifying of the brutal spirit of hatred and
bloodshed throughout the land. And with the better and more kindly
understanding between the peoples there came by-and-by a measure of
peace and prosperity and a calm after the long period of storm and
disturbance.
In the spring of 1799 Kit and I were wedded in Salisbury. My friend
Captain Felton was my "best man." At first our home was in Belfast, but
we made frequent expeditions to Knockowen and Kilgorman as the
countryside became more settled; for the place, in spite of all that had
passed, had a fascination for both of us. And as the painful
associations died away, we have long since returned to Donegal. There
for many a day we and our little ones--beloved Tim and Kit and Eileen--
have made our home by the side of our lovely lough, as happy a home as
any to be found throughout Ireland, in a renovated and regenerated
Kilgorman.