THE BOLTED WINDOW.
Followed at some distance by a wondering crowd, he entered the
inn-yard, where, for the first time, he checked his flight, and
returned his sword to the scabbard.
"Here, ostler, groom--quickly, here!" cried Ashwoode. "In the devil's
name, where are you?"
The ostler presented himself, gazing in unfeigned astonishment at the
distracted, pale, and bleeding figure before him.
"Where have you put my horse?" said Ashwoode.
"The boy's whisping him down in the back stable, your honour," replied
he.
"Have him saddled and bridled in three seconds," said Ashwoode,
striding before the man towards the place indicated. "I'll make it
worth your while. My life--my _life_ depends on it!"
"Never fear," said the fellow, quickening his pace, "may I never buckle
a strap if I don't."
With these words, they entered the stable together, but the horse was
not there.
"Confound them, they brought him to the dark stable, I suppose," said
the groom, impatiently. "Come along, sir."
"'Sdeath! it will be too late! Quick!--quick, man!--in the fiend's
name, be quick!" said Ashwoode, glaring fearfully towards the entrance
to the inn-yard.
Their visit to the second stable was not more satisfactory.
"Where the devil's Sir Henry Ashwoode's horse?" inquired the groom,
addressing a fellow who was seated on an oat-bin, drumming listlessly
with his heels upon its sides, and smoking a pipe the while--"where's
the horse?" repeated he.
The man first satisfied his curiosity by a leisurely view of Ashwoode's
disordered dress and person, and then removed his pipe deliberately
from his mouth, and spat upon the ground.
"Where's Sir Henry's horse?" he repeated. "Why, Jim took him out a
quarter of an hour ago, walking down towards the Poddle there. I'm
thinking he'll be back soon now."
"Saddle a horse--any horse--only let him be sure and fleet," cried
Ashwoode, "and I'll pay you his price thrice over!"
"Well, it's a bargain," replied the groom, promptly; "I don't like to
see a gentleman caught in a hobble, if I can help him out of it. Take
my advice, though, and duck your head under the water in the trough
there; your face is full of blood and dust, and couldn't but be noticed
wherever you went."
While the groom was with marvellous celerity preparing the horse which
he selected for the young man's service, Ashwoode, seeing the
reasonableness of his advice, ran to the large trough full of water
which stood before the pump in the inn-yard; but as he reached it, he
perceived the entrance of some four or five persons into the little
quadrangle whom, at a glance, he discovered to be constables.
"That's him--he's our bird! After him!--there he goes!" cried several
voices.
Ashwoode sprang up the stairs of the gallery which, as in most old
inns, overhung the yard. He ran along it, and rushed into the first
passage which opened from it. This he traversed with his utmost speed,
and reached a chamber door. It was fastened; but hurling himself
against it with his whole weight, he burst it open, the hoarse voices
of his pursuers, and their heavy tread, ringing in his ears. He ran
directly to the casement; it looked out upon a narrow by-lane. He
strove to open it, that he might leap down upon the pavement, but it
resisted his efforts; and, driven to bay, and hearing the steps at the
very door of the chamber, he turned about and drew his sword.
[Illustration: "Driven to bay ... he drew his sword."
_To face page 338._]
"Come, no sparring," cried the foremost, a huge fellow in a great coat,
and with a bludgeon in his hand; "give in quietly; you're regularly
caged."
As the fellow advanced, Ashwoode met him with a thrust of his sword.
The constable partly threw it up with his hand, but it entered the
fleshy part of his arm, and came out near his shoulder blade.
"Murder! murder!--help! help!" shouted the man, staggering back, while
two or three more of his companions thrust themselves in at the door.
Ashwoode had hardly disengaged his sword, when a tremendous blow upon
the knuckles with a bludgeon dashed it from his grasp, and almost at
the same instant, he received a second blow upon the head, which felled
him to the ground, insensible, and weltering in blood, the execrations
and uproar of his assailants still ringing in his ears.
"Lift him on the bed. Pull off his cravat. By the hoky, he's done for.
Devil a kick in him. Open his vest. Are you hurted, Crotty? Get some
water and spirits, some of yees, an' a towel. Begorra, we just nicked
him. He's an active chap. See, he's opening his mouth and his eyes.
Hould him, Teague, for he's the devil's bird. Never mind it, Crotty.
Devil a fear of you. Tear open the shirt. Bedad, it was close shaving.
Give him a drop iv the brandy. Never a fear of you, old bulldog."
These and such broken sentences from fifty voices filled the little
chamber where Ashwoode lay in dull and ghastly insensibility after his
recent deadly struggle, while some stuped the wounds of the combatants
with spirits and water, and others applied the same medicaments to
their own interiors, and all talked loud and fast together, as men are
apt to do after scenes of excitement.
We need not follow Ashwoode through the dreadful preliminaries which
terminated in his trial. In vain did he implore an interview with
Nicholas Blarden, his relentless prosecutor. It were needless to enter
into the evidence for the prosecution, and that for the defence,
together with the points made arguments, and advanced by the opposing
counsel; it is enough to know that the case was conducted with much
ability on both sides, and that the jury, having deliberated for more
than an hour, at length found the verdict which we shall just now
state. A baronet in the dock was too novel an exhibition to fail in
drawing a full attendance, and the consequence was, that never was
known such a crowd of human beings in a compass so small as that which
packed the court-house upon this memorable occasion.
Throughout the whole proceedings, Sir Henry Ashwoode, though deadly
pale, conducted himself with singular coolness and self-possession,
frequently suggesting questions to his counsel, and watching the
proceedings apparently with a mind as disengaged from every agitating
consciousness of personal danger as that of any of the indifferent but
curious bystanders who looked on. He was handsomely dressed, and in his
degraded and awful situation preserved, nevertheless, in his outward
mien and attire, the dignity of his rank and former pretensions. As is
invariably the case in Ireland, popular sympathy moved strongly in
favour of the prisoner, a feeling of interest which the grace, beauty,
and evident youth of the accused, as well as his high rank--for the
Irish have ever been an aristocratic race--served much to enhance; and
when the case closed, and the jury retired after an adverse charge from
the learned judge, to consider their verdict, perhaps Ashwoode himself
would have seemed, to the careless observer, the least interested in
the result of all who were assembled in that densely crowded place, to
hear the final adjudication of the law. Those, however, who watched him
more narrowly could observe, in this dreadful interval, that he raised
his handkerchief often to his face, keeping it almost constantly at his
mouth to conceal the nervous twitching of the muscles which he could
not control. The eyes of the eager multitude wandered from the prisoner
to the jury-box, and thence to the impassive parchment countenance of
the old ermined effigy who presided at the harrowing scene, and not one
ventured to speak above his breath. At length, a sound was heard at the
door of the jury-box--the jury was returning. A buzz ran through the
court, and then the prolonged "hish," enjoining silence, while one by
one the jurors entered and resumed their places in the box. The verdict
was--Guilty.
In reply to the usual interrogatory from the officer of the court, Sir
Henry Ashwoode spoke, and though many there were moved, even to sobs
and tears, yet his manner had recovered its grace and collectedness,
and his voice was unbroken and musical as when it was wont to charm all
hearers in the gay saloons of fashion, and splendour, and heedless
folly, in other times--when he, blasted and ruined as he stood there,
was the admired and courted favourite of the great and gay.
"My lord," said he, "I have nothing to urge which, in the strict
requirements of the law, avails to abate the solemn sentence which you
are about to pronounce--for my life I care not--something is, however,
due to my character and the name I bear--a name, my lord, never, never
except on this day, never clouded by the shadow of dishonour--a name
which will yet, after I am dead and gone, be surely and entirely
vindicated; vindicated, my lord, in the entire dispersion of the foul
imputations and fatal contrivances under which my fame is darkened and
my life is taken. Far am I from impeaching the verdict that I have just
heard. I will not arraign the jurymen, nor lay to _their_ charge that I
am this day wrongfully condemned, but to the charge of those who, on
that witness table, have sworn my life away--perjurers procured for
money, whose exposure I leave to time, and whose punishment to God.
Knowing that although my body shall ignominiously perish, and though my
fame be tarnished for an hour, yet shall truth and years, with
irresistible power, bring my innocence to light--rescue my character
and restore the name I bear. He who stands in the shadow of death, as I
do, has little to fear in human censure, and little to gather from the
applause of men. My life is forfeited, and I must soon go into the
presence of my Creator, to receive my everlasting doom; and in presence
of that almighty and terrible God before whom I must soon stand, and as
I look for mercy when He shall judge me, I declare, that of this crime,
of which I am pronounced guilty, I am altogether innocent. I am a
victim of a conspiracy, the motives of which my defence hath truly
showed you. I never committed the crime for which I am to suffer. I
repeat that I am innocent, and in witness of the truth of what I say, I
appeal to my Maker and my Judge, the Eternal and Almighty God."
Having thus spoken, Ashwoode received his sentence, and was forthwith
removed to the condemned cell.
Ashwoode had many and influential friends, and it required but a small
exercise of their good offices to procure a reprieve. He would not
suffer himself to despond--no, nor for one moment to doubt his final
escape from the fangs of justice. He was first reprieved for a
fortnight, and before that term expired again for six weeks. In the
course of the latter term, however, an event occurred which fearfully
altered his chances of escape, and filled his mind with the justest and
most dreadful apprehensions. This was the recall of Wharton from the
viceroyalty of Ireland.
The new lord-lieutenant could not see, in the case of the young Whig
baronet, the same extenuating circumstances which had wrought so
effectually upon his predecessor, Wharton. The judge who had tried the
case refused to recommend the prisoner to the mercy of the Crown; and
the viceroy accordingly, in his turn, refused to entertain any
application for the commutation or further suspension of his sentence;
and now, for the first time, Sir Henry Ashwoode felt the tremendous
reality of his situation. The term for which he was reprieved had
nearly expired, and he felt that the hours which separated him from the
deadly offices of the hangman were numbered. Still, in this dreadful
consciousness, there mingled some faint and flickering ray of hope--by
its uncertain mockery rendering the terrors of his situation but the
more intolerable, and by the sleepless agonies of suspense, unnerving
the resolution which he might have otherwise summoned to his aid.