Mr. Washington Irving has already given to the public a version of an
American legend, which, in a principal feature, bears some likeness to
the following transcript of a popular Irish one. It may, however, be
interesting to show this very coincidence between the descendants of a
Dutch transatlantic colony and the native peasantry of Ireland, in the
superstitious annals of both. Our tale, moreover, will be found original
in all its circumstances, that alluded to only excepted.
Shamus Dempsey returned a silent, plodding, sorrowful man, though a
young one, to his poor home, after seeing laid in the grave his aged,
decrepit father. The last rays of the setting sun were glorious,
shooting through the folds of their pavilion of scarlet clouds; the last
song of the thrush, chanted from the bough nearest to his nest, was
gladdening; the abundant though but half-matured crops around breathed
of hope for the future. But Shamus’s bosom was covered with the darkness
that inward sunshine alone can illumine. The chord that should respond
to song and melody had snapped in it; for him the softly undulating
fields of light-green wheat, or the silken-surfaced patches of barley,
made a promise in vain. He was poor, penniless, friendless, and yet
groaning under responsibilities; worn out by past and present suffering,
and without a consoling prospect. His father’s corpse had just been
buried by a subscription among his neighbours, collected in an old
glove, a penny or a half-penny from each, by the most active of the
humble community to whom his sad state was a subject of pity. In the
wretched shed which he called “home,” a young wife lay on a truss of
straw, listening to the hungry cries of two little children, and
awaiting her hour to become the weeping mother of a third. And the
recollection that but for an act of domestic treachery experienced by
his father and himself, both would have been comfortable and respectable
in the world, aggravated the bitterness of the feeling in which Shamus
contemplated his lot. He could himself faintly call to mind a time of
early childhood, when he lived with his parents in a roomy house, eating
and sleeping and dressing well, and surrounded by servants and workmen;
he further remembered that a day of great affliction came, upon which
strange and rude persons forced their way into the house; and, for some
cause his infant observation did not reach, father, servants, and
workmen (his mother had just died) were all turned out upon the road and
doomed to seek the shelter of a mean roof. But his father’s discourse,
since he gained the years of manhood, supplied Shamus with an
explanation of all these circumstances, as follows.
Old Dempsey had been the youngest son of a large farmer, who divided his
lands between two elder children, and destined Shamus’s father to the
Church, sending him abroad for education, and, during its course,
supplying him with liberal allowances. Upon the eve of ordination the
young student returned home to visit his friends; was much noticed by
neighbouring small gentry of each religion; at the house of one of the
opposite persuasion from his met a sister of the proprietor, who had a
fortune in her own right; abandoned his clerical views for her smiles;
eloped with her; married her privately; incurred thereby the irremovable
hostility of his own family; but, after a short time, was received,
along with his wife, by his generous brother-in-law, under whose
guidance both became reputably settled in the house to which Shamus’s
early recollections pointed and where, till he was about six years old,
he passed indeed a happy childhood.
But, a little previous to this time, his mother’s good brother died
unmarried, and was succeeded by another of her brothers, who had
unsuccessfully spent half his life as a lawyer in Dublin, and who,
inheriting little of his predecessor’s amiable character, soon showed
himself a foe to her and her husband, professedly on account of her
marriage with a Roman Catholic. He did not appear to their visit,
shortly after his arrival in their neighbourhood, and he never
condescended to return it. The affliction experienced by his sensitive
sister from his conduct entailed upon her a premature accouchement, in
which, giving birth to a lifeless babe, she unexpectedly died. The event
was matter of triumph rather than of sorrow to her unnatural brother.
For, in the first place, totally unguarded against the sudden result,
she had died intestate; in the next place, he discovered that her
private marriage had been celebrated by a Roman Catholic priest,
consequently could not, according to law, hold good; and again, could
not give to her nominal husband any right to her property, upon which
both had hitherto lived, and which was now the sole means of existence
to Shamus’s father.
The lawyer speedily set to work upon these points, and with little
difficulty succeeded in supplying for Shamus’s recollections a day of
trouble, already noticed. In fact, his father and he, now without a
shilling, took refuge in a distant cabin, where, by the sweat of his
parent’s brow, as a labourer in the fields, the ill-fated hero of this
story was scantily fed and clothed, until maturer years enabled him to
relieve the old man’s hand of the spade and sickle, and in turn labour
for their common wants.
Shamus, becoming a little prosperous in the funeral we now see Shamus
returning, and to such a home does he bend his heavy steps.
If to know that the enemy of his father and mother did not thrive on the
spoils of his oppression could have yielded Shamus any consolation in
his lot, he had long ago become aware of circumstances calculated to
give this negative comfort. His maternal uncle enjoyed, indeed, his
newly acquired property only a few years after it came into his
possession. Partly on account of his cruelty to his relations, partly
from a meanness and vulgarity of character, which soon displayed itself
in his novel situation, and which, it was believed, had previously kept
him in the lowest walks of his profession as a Dublin attorney, he found
himself neglected and shunned by the gentry of his neighbourhood. To
grow richer than those who thus insulted him, to blazon abroad reports
of his wealth, and to watch opportunities of using it to their injury,
became the means of revenge adopted by the parvenu. His legitimate
income not promising a rapid accomplishment of this plan, he ventured,
using precautions that seemingly set suspicion at defiance, to engage in
smuggling-adventures on a large scale, for which his proximity to the
coast afforded a local opportunity. Notwithstanding all his pettifogging
cleverness, the ex-attorney was detected, however, in his illegal
traffic, and fined to an amount which swept away half his real property.
Driven to desperation by the publicity of his failure, as well as by the
failure itself, he tried another grand effort to retrieve his fortune;
was again surprised by the revenue officers; in a personal struggle with
them, at the head of his band, killed one of their body; immediately
absconded from Ireland; for the last twenty years had not been
authentically heard of, but, it was believed, lived under an assumed
name in London, deriving an obscure existence from some mean pursuit, of
which the very nature enabled him to gratify propensities to drunkenness
and other vices, learned during his first career in life.
All this Shamus knew, though only from report, inasmuch as his uncle had
exiled himself while he was yet a child, and without previously having
become known to the eyes of the nephew he had so much injured. But if
Shamus occasionally drew a bitter and almost savage gratification from
the downfall of his inhuman persecutor, no recurrence to the past could
alleviate the misery of his present situation.
He passed under one of the capacious open arches of the old abbey, and
then entered his squalid shed reared against its wall, his heart as
shattered and as trodden down as the ruins around him. No words of
greeting ensued between him and his equally hopeless wife, as she sat on
the straw of her bed, rocking to sleep, with feeble and mournful cries,
her youngest infant. He silently lighted a fire of withered twigs on his
ready-furnished hearthstone; put to roast among their embers a few
potatoes which he had begged during the day; divided them between her
and her crying children; and, as the moon rising high in the heavens
warned him that night asserted her full empire over the departed day,
Shamus sank down upon the couch from which his father’s mortal remains
had lately been borne, supperless himself, and dinnerless, too, but not
hungry; at least not conscious or recollecting that he was.
His wife and little ones soon slept soundly, but Shamus lay for hours
inaccessible to nature’s claims for sleep as well as for food. From
where he lay he could see, through the open front of his shed, out into
the ruins abroad. After much abstraction in his own thoughts, the
silence, the extent, and the peculiar desolation of the scene, almost
spiritualised by the magic effect of alternate moonshine and darkness,
of objects and of their parts, at last diverted his mind, though not to
relieve it. He remembered distinctly, for the first time, where he
was--an intruder among the dwellings of the dead; he called to mind,
too, that the present was their hour for revealing themselves among the
remote loneliness and obscurity of their crumbling and intricate abode.
As his eye fixed upon a distant stream of cold light or of blank shadow,
either the wavering of some feathery herbage from the walls or the
flitting of some night-bird over the roofless aisle, made motion which
went and came during the instant of his alarmed start, or else some
disembodied sleeper around had challenged and evaded his vision so
rapidly as to baffle even the accompaniment of thought. Shamus would,
however, recur, during these entrancing aberrations, to his more real
causes for terror; and he knew not, and to this day cannot distinctly
tell, whether he waked or slept, when a new circumstance absorbed his
attention. The moon struck fully, under his propped roof, upon the
carved slab he had appropriated as a hearthstone; and turning his eye to
the spot, he saw the semblance of a man advanced in years, though not
very old, standing motionless, and very steadfastly regarding him. The
still face of the figure shone like marble in the night-beam, without
giving any idea of the solidity of that material; the long and deep
shadows thrown by the forehead over the eyes left those unusally
expressive features vague and uncertain. Upon the head was a
close-fitting black cap, the dress was a loose-sleeved, plaited garment
of white, descending to the ground, and faced and otherwise checkered
with black, and girded round the loins; exactly the costume which Shamus
had often studied in a little framed and glazed print, hung up in the
sacristy of the humble chapel recently built in the neighbourhood of the
ruin by a few descendants of the great religious fraternity to whom, in
its day of pride, the abbey had belonged. As he returned very
inquisitively, though, as he avers, not now in alarm, the fixed gaze of
his midnight visitor, a voice reached him, and he heard these strange
words:
“Shamus Dempsey, go to London Bridge, and you will be a rich man.”
“How will that come about, your reverence?” cried Shamus, jumping up
from the straw.
But the figure was gone; and stumbling among the black embers on the
remarkable place where it had stood, he fell prostrate, experiencing a
change of sensation and of observance of objects around, which might be
explained by supposing a transition from a sleeping to a waking state of
mind.
The rest of the night he slept little, thinking of the advice he had
received, and of the mysterious personage who gave it. But he resolved
to say nothing about his vision, particularly to his wife, lest, in her
present state of health, the frightful story might distress her; and, as
to his own conduct respecting it, he determined to be guided by the
future; in fact, he would wait to see if his counsellor came again. He
did come again, appearing in the same spot at the same hour of the
night, and wearing the same dress, though not the same expression of
feature; for the shadowy brows now slightly frowned, and a little
severity mingled with the former steadfastness of look.
“Shamus Dempsey, why have you not gone to London Bridge, and your wife
so near the time when she will want what you are to get by going there?
Remember, this is my second warning.”
“Musha, your reverence, an’ what am I to do on Lunnon Bridge?”
Again he rose to approach the figure; again it eluded him. Again a
change occurred in the quality of the interest with which he regarded
the admonition of his visitor. Again he passed a day of doubt as to the
propriety of undertaking what seemed to him little less than a journey
to the world’s end, without a penny in his pocket, and upon the eve of
his wife’s accouchement, merely in obedience to a recommendation which,
according to his creed, was not yet sufficiently strongly given, even
were it under any circumstances to be adopted. For Shamus had often
heard, and firmly believed, that a dream or a vision instructing one how
to procure riches ought to be experienced three times before it became
entitled to attention.
He lay down, however, half hoping that his vision might thus recommend
itself to his notice It did so.
“Shamus Dempsey,” said the figure, looking more angry than ever, “you
have not yet gone to London Bridge, although I hear your wife dying out
to bid you go. And, remember, this s my third warning.”
“Why, then, tundher an’ ouns, your reverence, just stop and tell me-“
Ere he could utter another word the holy visitant disappeared, in a real
passion at Shamus’s qualified curse; and at the same moment his confused
senses recognised the voice of his wife, sending up from her straw
pallet the cries that betoken a mother’s distant travail. Exchaning a
few words with her, he hurried away. professedly call up, at her cabin
window, an old crane who sometimes attended the very poorest women in
Nance Dempsey’s situation.
“Hurry to her, Noreen, acuishla, and do the best it’s the will of God to
let you do. And tell her from me, Noreen--” He stopped, drawing in his
lip, and clutching his cudgel hard.
“Shamus, what ails you, avick?” asked old Noreen; “what ails you, to
make the tears run down in the gray o’ the morning?”
“Tell her from me,” continued Shamus, “that it’s from the bottom o’ the
heart I’ll pray, morning and evening, and fresh and fasting, maybe, to
give her a good time of it; and to show her a face on the poor child
that’s coming, likelier than the two that God sent afore it. And that
I’ll be thinking o’ picturing it to my own mind, though I’ll never see
it far away.”
“Musha, Shamus, what are you speaking of?”
“No Matter, Noreen, only God be wid you, and wid her, and wid the
weenocks; and tell her what I bid you. More-be-token, tell her that poor
Shamus quits her in her throuble wid more love from the heart out than
he had for her the first day we came together; and I’ll come back to her
at any rate, sooner or later, richer or poorer, or as bare as I went;
and maybe not so bare either. But God only knows. The top o’ the morning
to you, Noreen, and don’t let her want the mouthful o’ praties while I’m
on my thravels. For this,” added Shamus, as he bounded off, to the
consternation of old Noreen--“this is the very morning and the very
minute that, if I mind the dhrame at all at all, I ought to mind it; ay,
without ever turning back to get a look from her, that ’ud kill the
heart in my body entirely.”
Without much previous knowledge of the road he was to take, Shamus
walked and begged his way along the coast to the town where he might
hope to embark for England. Here the captain of a merchantman agreed to
let him work his passage to Bristol, whence he again walked and begged
into London.
Without taking rest or food, Shamus proceeded to London Bridge, often
put out of his course by wrong directions, and as often by forgetting
and misconceiving true ones. It was with old London Bridge that Shamus
had to do (not the old one last pulled down, but its more reverend
predecessor), which, at that time, was lined at either side by quaintly
fashioned houses, mostly occupied by shopkeepers, so that the space
between presented perhaps the greatest thoroughfare then known in the
Queen of Cities. And at about two o’clock in the afternoon, barefooted,
ragged, fevered, and agitated, Shamus mingled with the turbid human
stream, that roared and chafed over the as restless and as evanescent
stream which buffeted the arches of old London Bridge. In a situation so
novel to him, so much more extraordinary in the reality than his
anticipation could have fancied, the poor and friendless stranger felt
overwhelmed. A sense of forlornness, of insignificance, and of terror
seized upon his faculties. From the stare or the sneers or the jostle of
the iron-nerved crowd he shrank with glances of wild timidity, and with
a heart as wildly timid as were his looks. For some time he stood or
staggered about, unable to collect his thoughts, or to bring to mind
what was his business there. But when Shamus became able to refer to the
motive of his pauper journey from his native solitudes into the thick of
such a scene, it was no wonder that the zeal of superstition totally
subsided amid the astounding truths he witnessed. In fact, the
bewildered simpleton now regarded his dream as the merest chimera.
Hastily escaping from the thoroughfare, he sought out some wretched
place of repose suited to his wretched condition, and there mooned
himself asleep, in self-accusations at the thought of poor Nance at
home, and in utter despair of all his future prospects.
At daybreak the next morning he awoke, a little less agitated, but still
with no hope. He was able, however, to resolve upon the best course of
conduct now left open to him; and he arranged immediately to retrace his
steps to Ireland, as soon as he should have begged sufficient alms to
speed him a mile on the road. With this intent he hastily issued forth,
preferring to challenge the notice of chance passengers, even at the
early hour of dawn, than to venture again, in the middle of the day,
among the dreaded crowds of the vast city. Very few, indeed, were the
passers-by whom Shamus met during his straggling and stealthy walk
through the streets, and those of a description little able or willing
to afford a half-penny to his humbled, whining suit, and to his spasmed
lip and watery eye. In what direction he went Shamus did not know; but
at last he found himself entering upon the scene of his yesterday’s
terror. Now, however, it presented nothing to renew its former
impression. The shops at the sides of the bridge were closed, and the
occasional stragglers of either sex who came along inspired Shamus,
little as he knew of a great city, with aversion rather than with dread.
In the quietness and security of his present position, Shamus was both
courageous and weak enough again to summon up his dream.
“Come,” he said, “since I _am_ on Lunnon Bridge, I’ll walk over every
stone of it, and see what good that will do.”
He valiantly gained the far end. Here one house, of all that stood upon
the bridge, began to be opened; it was a public-house, and, by a
sidelong glance as he passed, Shamus thought that, in the person of a
red-cheeked, red-nosed, sunken-eyed, elderly man, who took down the
window-shutters, he recognised the proprietor. This person looked at
Shamus, in return, with peculiar scrutiny. The wanderer liked neither
his regards nor the expression of his countenance, and quickened his
steps onward until he cleared the bridge.
“But I’ll walk it over at the other side now,” he bethought, after
allowing the publican time to finish opening his house and retire out of
view.
But, repassing the house, the man still appeared, leaning against his
door-jamb, and as if waiting for Shamus’s return, whom, upon this second
occasion, he eyed more attentively than before.
“Sorrow’s in him,” thought Shamus, “have I two heads on me, that I’m
such a sight to him? But who cares about his pair of ferret eyes? I’ll
thrudge down the middle stone of it, at any rate!”
Accordingly, he again walked toward the public-house, keeping the middle
of the bridge.
“Good-morrow, friend,” said the publican, as Shamus a third time passed
his door.
“Sarvant kindly, sir,” answered Shamus, respectfully pulling down the
brim of his hat, and increasing his pace.
“Am early hour you choose for a morning walk,” continued his new
acquaintance.
“Brave and early, faix, sir,” said Shamus, still hurrying off.
“Stop a bit,” resumed the publican. Shamus stood still. “I see you’re a
countryman of mine--an Irishman; I’d know one of you at a look, though
I’m a long time out of the country. And you’re not very well off on
London Bridge this morning, either.”
“No, indeed, sir,” replied Shamus, beginning to doubt his skill in
physiognomy, at the stranger’s kind address; “but as badly off as a body
’ud wish to be.”
“Come over to look for the work?”
“Nien, sir; but come out this morning to beg a ha’-penny, to send me a
bit of the road home.”
“Well, here’s a silver sixpence without asking. And you’d better sit on
the bench by the door here, and eat a crust and a cut of cheese, and
drink a drop of good ale, to break your fast.”
With profuse thanks Shamus accepted this kind invitation, blaming
himself at heart for having allowed his opinion of the charitable
publican to be guided by the expression of the man’s features. “Handsome
is that handsome does,” was Shamus’s self-correcting reflection.
While eating his bread and cheese and drinking his strong ale, they
conversed freely together, and Shamus’s heart opened more and more to
his benefactor. The publican repeatedly asked him what had brought him
to London; and though, half out of prudence and half out of shame, the
dreamer at first evaded the question, he felt it at last impossible to
refuse a candid answer to his generous friend.
“Why, then, sir, only I am such a big fool for telling it to you, it’s
what brought me to Lunnon Bridge was a quare dhrame I had at home in
Ireland, that tould me just to come here, and I’d find a pot of goold.”
For such was the interpretation given by Shamus to the vague admonition
of his visionary counsellor.
His companion burst into a loud laugh, saying after it:
“Pho, pho, man, don’t be so silly as to put faith in nonsensical dreams
of that kind. Many a one like it I have had, if I would bother my head
with them. Why, within the last ten days, while you were dreaming of
finding a pot of gold on London Bridge, I was dreaming of finding a pot
of gold in Ireland.”
“Ullaloo, and were you, sir?” asked Shamus, laying down his empty pint.
“Ay, indeed; night after night an old friar with a pale face, and
dressed all in white and black, and a black skull-cap on his head, came
to me in a dream, and bid me go to Ireland, to a certain spot in a
certain county that I know very well, and under the slab of his tomb,
that has a cross and some old Romish letters on it, in an old abbey I
often saw before now, I’d find a treasure that would make me a rich man
all the days of my life.”
“Musha, sir,” asked Shamus, scarce able prudently to control his
agitation,” and did he tell you that the treasure lay buried there ever
so long under the open sky and the ould walls?”
“No; but he told me I was to find the slab covered in by a shed that a
poor man had lately built inside the abbey for himself and his family.”
“Whoo, by the powers!” shouted Shamus, at last thrown off his guard by
the surpassing joy derived from this intelligence, as well as by the
effects of the ale; and at the same time he jumped up, cutting a caper
with his legs, and flourishing his shillalah.
“Why, what’s the matter with you?” asked his friend, glancing at him a
frowning and misgiving look.
“We ax pardon, sir.” Shamus rallied his prudence. “An’, sure, sorrow a
thing is the matter wid me, only the dhrop, I believe, made me do it, as
it ever and always does, good luck to it for the same. An’ isn’t what we
were spaking about the biggest raumaush [Footnote: Nonsense.] undher the
sun, sir? Only it’s the laste bit in the world quare to me how you’d
have the dhrame about your own country, that you didn’t see for so many
years, sir--for twenty long years, I think you said, sir?” Shamus had
now a new object in putting his sly question.
“If I said so, I forgot,” answered the publican, his suspicions of
Shamus at an end. “But it is about twenty years, indeed, since I left
Ireland.”
“And by your speech, sir, and your dacency, I’ll engage you were in a
good way in the poor place afore you left it?”
“You guess correctly, friend.” (The publican gave way to vanity.)
“Before misfortunes came over me, I possessed, along with a good hundred
acres besides, the very ground that the old ruin I saw in the foolish
dream I told you stands upon.”
“An’ so did my curse-o’-God’s uncle,” thought Shamus, his heart’s blood
beginning to boil, though, with a great effort, he kept himself
seemingly cool. “And this is the man fornent me, if he answers another
word I’ll ax him. Faix, sir, and sure that makes your dhrame quarer than
ever; and the ground the ould abbey is on, sir, and the good acres round
it, did you say they lay somewhere in the poor county myself came from?”
“What county is that, friend?” demanded the publican, again with a
studious frown.
“The ould County Monaghan, sure, sir,” replied Shamus, very
deliberately.
“No, but the county of Clare,” answered his companion.
“Was it?” screamed Shamus, again springing up. The cherished hatred of
twenty years imprudently bursting out, his uncle lay stretched at his
feet, after a renewed flourish of his cudgel. “And do you know who you
are telling it to this morning? Did you ever hear that the sisther you
kilt left a bit of a gorsoon behind her, that one day or other might
overhear you? Ay,” he continued, keeping down the struggling man, “_It
is_ poor Shamus Dempsey that’s kneeling by you; ay, and that has more to
tell you. The shed built over the old friar’s tombstone was built by the
hands you feel on your throttle, and that tombstone is his hearthstone;
and,” continued Shamus, beginning to bind the prostrate man with a rope
snatched from a bench near them, “while you lie here awhile, an’ no one
to help you, in the cool of the morning, I’ll just take a start of you
on the road home, to lift the flag and get the threasure; and follow me
if you dare! You know there’s good money bid for your head in
Ireland--so here goes. Yes, faith, and wid this-_this_ to help me on the
way!” He snatched up a heavy purse which had fallen from his uncle’s
pocket in the struggle. “And sure, there’s neither hurt nor harm in
getting back a little of a body’s own from you. A bright goodmorning,
uncle dear!”
Shamus dragged his manacled relative into the shop, quickly shut to and
locked the door, flung the key over the house into the Thames, and the
next instant was running at headlong speed.
He was not so deficient in the calculations of common sense as to think
himself yet out of his uncle’s power. It appeared, indeed, pretty
certain that, neither for the violence done to his person nor for the
purse appropriated by his nephew, the outlawed murderer would raise a
hue and cry after one who, aware of his identity, could deliver him up
to the laws of his country. But Shamus felt certain that it would be a
race between him and his uncle for the treasure that lay under the
friar’s tombstone. His simple nature supplied no stronger motive for a
pursuit on the part of a man whose life now lay in the breath of his
mouth. Full of his conviction, however, Shamus saw he had not a moment
to lose until the roof of his shed in the old abbey again sheltered him.
So, freely making use of his uncle’s guineas, he purchased a strong
horse in the outskirts of London, and, to the surprise if not under
heavy suspicions of the vender, set off at a gallop upon the road by
which he had the day before gained the great metropolis.
A ship was ready to sail at Bristol for Ireland; but, to Shamus’s
discomfiture, she waited for a wind. He got aboard, however, and in the
darksome and squalid hold often knelt down, and, with clasped hands and
panting breast, petitioned Heaven for a favourable breeze. But from
morning until evening the wind remained as he had found it, and Shamus
despaired. His uncle, meantime, might have reached some other port, and
embarked for their country. In the depth of his anguish he heard a brisk
bustle upon deck, clambered up to investigate its cause, and found the
ship’s sails already half unfurled to a wind that promised to bear him
to his native shores by the next morning. The last light of day yet
lingered in the heavens; he glanced, now under way, to the quay of
Bristol. A group who had been watching the departure of the vessel
turned round to note the approach to them of a man, who ran furiously
toward the place where they stood, pointing after her, and evidently
speaking with vehemence, although no words reached Shamus’s ear. Neither
was his eye sure of this person’s features, but his heart read them
distinctly. A boat shot from the quay; the man stood up in it, and its
rowers made a signal.
Shamus stepped to the gangway, as if preparing to hurl his pursuer into
the sea. The captain took a speaking-trumpet, and informing the boat
that he could not stop an instant, advised her to wait for another
merchantman, which would sail in an hour. And during and after his
speech his vessel ploughed cheerily on, making as much way as she was
adapted to accomplish.
Shamus’s bosom felt lightened of its immediate terror, but not freed of
apprehension for the future. The ship that was to sail in an hour
haunted his thoughts; he did not leave the deck, and, although the night
proved very dark, his anxious eyes were never turned from the English
coast. Unusual fatigue and want of sleep now and then overpowered him,
and his senses swam in a wild and snatching slumber; but from this he
would start, crying out and clinging to the cordage, as the feverish
dream of an instant presented him with the swelling canvas of a
fast-sailing ship, which came, suddenly bursting through the gloom of
midnight, alongside of his own. Morning dawned, really to unveil to him
the object of his fears following almost in the wake of her rival. He
glanced in the opposite direction, and beheld the shores of Ireland; in
another hour he jumped upon them; but his enemy’s face watched him from
the deck of the companion vessel, now not more than a few ropes’ lengths
distant.
Shamus mounted a second good horse, and spurred toward home. Often did
he look back, but without seeing any cause for increased alarm. As yet,
however, the road had been level and winding, and therefore could not
allow him to span much of it at a glance. After noon it ascended a high
and lengthened hill surrounded by wastes of bog. As he gained the summit
of this hill, and again looked back, a horseman appeared, sweeping to
its foot. Shamus galloped at full speed down the now quickly falling
road; then along its level continuation for about a mile; and then up
another eminence, more lengthened, though not so steep as the former;
and from it still he looked back, and caught the figure of the horseman
breaking over the line of the hill he had passed. For hours such was the
character of the chase, until the road narrowed and began to wind amid
an uncultivated and uninhabited mountain wilderness. Here Shamus’s horse
tripped and fell; the rider, little injured, assisted him to his legs,
and, with lash and spur, re-urged him to pursue his course. The animal
went forward in a last effort, and for still another span of time well
befriended his rider. A rocky valley, through which both had been
galloping, now opened at its farther end, presenting to Shamus’s eye, in
the distance, the sloping ground, and the ruin which, with its
mouldering walls, encircled his poor home; and the setting sun streamed
golden rays through the windows and rents of the old abbey.
The fugitive gave a weak cry of joy, and lashed his beast again. The cry
seemed to be answered by a shout; and a second time, after a wild
plunge, the horse fell, now throwing Shamus off with a force that left
him stunned. And yet he heard the hoofs of another horse come thundering
down the rocky way; and, while he made a faint effort to rise on his
hands and look at his pursuer, the horse and horseman were very near,
and the voice of his uncle cried, “Stand!” at the same time that the
speaker fired a pistol, of which the ball struck a stone at Shamus’s
foot. The next moment his uncle, having left his saddle, stood over him,
presenting a second pistol, and he spoke in a low but distinct voice.
“Spawn of a beggar! This is not merely for the chance of riches given by
our dreams, though it seems, in the teeth of all I ever thought, that
the devil tells truth at last. No, nor it is not quite for the blow; but
it _is_ to close the lips that, with a single word, can kill me. You die
to let me live!”
“Help!” aspirated Shamus’s heart, turning itself to Heaven. “Help me but
now, not for the sake of the goold either, but for the sake of them that
will be left on the wild world widout me; for them help me, great God!”
Hitherto his weakness and confusion had left him passive. Before his
uncle spoke the last words, his silent prayer was offered, and Shamus
had jumped upon his assailant. They struggled and dragged each other
down. Shamus felt the muzzle of the pistol at his breast; heard it
snap--but only snap; he seized and mastered it, and once more the uncle
was at the mercy of his nephew. Shamus’s hand was raised to deal a good
blow; but he checked himself, and addressed the almost senseless ears of
his captive.
“No; you’re my mother’s blood, and a son of hers will never draw it from
your heart; but I can make sure of you again; stop a bit.”
He ran to his own prostrate horse, took off its bridle and its
saddle-girth, and with both secured his uncle’s limbs beyond all
possibility of the struggler being able to escape from their control.
“There,” resumed Shamus; “lie there till we have time to send an ould
friend to see you, that, I’ll go bail, will take good care of your four
bones. And do you know where I’m going now? You tould me, on Lunnon
Bridge, that you knew _that_, at least,” pointing to the abbey; “ay, and
the quare ould hearthstone that’s to be found in it. And so, look at
this, uncle, honey.” He vaulted upon his relative’s horse. “I’m just
goin’ to lift it off o’ the barrel-pot full of good ould goold, and you
have only to cry halves, and you’ll get it, as, sure as that the big
divil is in the town you came from.”
Nance Dempsey was nursing her new-born babe, sitting up in her straw,
and doing very well after her late illness, when old Noreen tottered in
from the front of the ruin to tell her that “the body they were just
speaking about was driving up the hill mad, like as if’t was his own
sperit in great throuble.” And the listener had not recovered from her
surprise when Shamus ran into the shed, flung himself, kneeling, by her
side, caught her in his arms, then seized her infant, covered it with
kisses, and then, roughly throwing it in her lap, turned to the
fireplace, raised one of the rocky seats lying near it, poised the
ponderous mass over the hearthstone, and shivered into pieces, with one
crash, that solid barrier between him and his visionary world of wealth.
“It’s cracked he is out an’ out of a certainty,” said Nance, looking
terrified at her husband.
“Nothing else am I,” shouted Shamus, after groping under the broken
slab; “an’, for a token, get along wid yourself out of this, ould gran!”
He started up and seized her by the shoulder. Noreen remonstrated. He
stooped for a stone; she ran; he pursued her to the arches of the ruin.
She stopped half-way down the descent. He pelted her with clods to the
bottom, and along a good piece of her road homeward, and then danced
back into his wife’s presence.
“Now, Nance,” he cried, “now that we’re by ourselves, what noise is this
like?”
“And he took out han’fuls after han’fuls of the ould goold afore her
face, my dear,” added the original narrator of this story.
“An’ after the gaugers and their crony, Ould Nick, ran off wid the uncle
of him, Nance and he and the childer lived together in their father’s
and mother’s house; and if they didn’t live and die happy, I wish that
you and I may.”