Kilgorman

Three low taps sounded at the window, and Martin, taking the candle, hurried down the pa.s.sage to admit the new arrival.

The other three men advanced to the door.

A quick, jaunty step sounded down the pa.s.sage. The door opened, the men drew themselves up and saluted, Martin held the candle above his head, and there entered--Tim! At the sight of him the great fount of brotherhood that was in me welled up and nearly overflowed.

Tim was in the dress of a merchant sailor, and very handsome he looked, although the cut of his beard gave him a half-foreign look. His frame was knit harder than when I saw him last. His open face, tanned by the weather, was as fearless and serene as ever, and the toss of his head and the spring of his step were those rather of the boy I had known on Fanad years ago than of the dangerous rebel on whose head a price was set.

"Well, boys," said he, as Martin replaced the light on the table, "what's the best of your news?"

"Faith, that you're welcome, Tim Gallagher," replied Finn; "and it's right glad we are to get our captain."

"'Deed if it pleasures you to call me captain, you may," said Tim; "but I've no time to spend in these parts. I have business that won't keep.

How goes the cause since I was here last?"

"Badly enough," replied one of the men. "The boys are slack, and we've been desperately thwarted by traitors and dirty informers and the English gang."

"And, saving your presence," said Martin, "we've to thank your own brother Barry for some of that same trouble. It was him who thwarted us on the Black Hill Road, and nearly spoilt our trip to Holland--"

"Barry?" said Tim sharply. "What of him? He's no 'dirty informer.'

What's all this about Black Hill Road and Holland?"

"'Deed, Tim," said Finn, "it's an old story, and has been righted by now. You mind his honour, Maurice Gorman of Knockowen?"

"Mind him? of course I do--a coward that blew hot and cold, and led the boys on to mischief only to betray them. Yes; I mind Maurice Gorman."

This invective seemed greatly to encourage the men present, who had evidently feared Tim might for some reason have harboured a regard for their victim.

"It was him was to be settled with on the Black Hill Road a year ago; and settled he would have been but for Barry."

Tim's anger, I could see, was rising.

"Settled?" he said; "do you mean murdered?"

"Shot, any way. He got off that time; and a purty use he made of his chance, hanging boys by the dozen, and giving us no peace at all, at all. But since the young lady was lost to him--"

"What?" exclaimed Tim again; "how lost?"

"Didn't we have her over the seas to Holland for a hostage? And ever since he durstn't do a hand's turn against us. But he wouldn't come in for all that, or pay the money. It was Barry as nearly spoilt that game for us too; for he spirited the girl away in Holland, and if it hadn't been for some of the boys who got hold of her again in Dublin, she'd have been clane lost to Ireland for all our trouble."

"You dogs!" cried Tim, starting forward with his hand on his sword.

"You mean to say you carried away an innocent girl to spite her father?

You're a shame to your country!"

They looked at him in amazement. Then the speaker went on,--

"Sure, all's

"Is Maurice Gorman dead, then?" asked Tim, controlling himself with a mighty effort, as was plain by his white lips and flas.h.i.+ng 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 s.h.i.+ft 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 G.o.d!"

"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 a.s.sailants, 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 pa.s.sion 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 pa.s.sed 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."