BY

HAROLD FREDERIC

THE PATH OF MURTOGH

A curse is laid on one long narrow strip of the sea, down in front of Dunlogher.

No matter how lifeless the sunlit air may hang above; no matter how silken-smooth the face of the waters nearest by, lifting themselves without a ripple in the most indolent summer swell,—an angry churning goes always forward here. Disordered currents will never tire of their coiling and writhing somewhere underneath: the surface is streaked with sinister markings like black shadows, which yet are no shadows at all; and these glide without ceasing out and in among the twisted lines of grey-white scum, and everything moves and nothing changes, till Judgment Day. It has the name of the Slighe Mhuircheartaigh (spoken Shlee Vurharthee), or the Path of Murtogh.

Though 'tis well known that the grandest ling and turbot and wonderful other big fishes lie swaying themselves in the depths of this wicked water, with giant crayfish and crabs to bear them company, the fishermen of Dunmanus and Goleen and Crookhaven, and even the strangers from Cape Clear, would not buy a soul from Purgatory at the price of drawing a net through it. They have a great wish to please the buyers in the English ships, and the Scotch and Manx, O yes,—but a creel of gold would not tempt them to meddle in 'Murty's Path.' They steer their boats far to one side, and bless themselves as they pass, in the manner of their fathers and grandfathers before them.

These poor men, having not much of the Irish now, and not rightly understanding what their elders may have heard the truth of, say that this snake-like forbidding stretch wears its name from Murty Oge O'Sullivan. Their thought is that the uncanny boiling began in the wake of the English Speedwell, as the corpse of the vanquished privateer spun and twirled at her keel through the foam, on its savage last journey from Castletown to Cork. But it is enough to look down at this evil place, to see that the malediction upon it must be older than Murty Oge's time, which, in the sight of Dunlogher, was as yesterday. Why, men are living this year who talked with men who saw his head spiked over South gate. There were no great curses left unused in Ireland at so late a day as his. And again, would it be the waters of Dunlogher that would tear themselves for an O'Sullivan?

Saw his head spiked over South Gate.

No, the curse threads back a dozen lives behind poor Murty Oge. The strange currents weave and twine, and the greasy foam spreads and gathers, gathers and spreads, in the path of another, whose birthright it was that they should baptise him. The true tale is of Murty the Proud, or if you will have his style from the Book of Schull,—Murtogh Mordha O'Mahony, chief in Dunlogher. And his time is not so distant, in one way, as men take account of years. But in another it is too remote for any clear vision, because the 'little people' of the old, fearful kind had left every other part of Ireland, and they were just halting together for a farewell pause in Dunlogher, by reason of its being the last end of the land, and their enchantments fanned up a vapour about Murty Mordha to his undoing. And it is as if that mist still rose between us and his story.

I

When the sun began to sink out of sight, down behind the sea, two men stood on the edge of the great cliff of Dunlogher, their faces turned to the west.

The yellow flame from the sky shone full in the eyes of Murtogh, and he held his huge, bare head erect with boldness, and stared back at it without blinking. His companion, a little, shrivelled old man, whom he held by the arm, had the glowing light on his countenance as well, but his eyelids were shut. He bent himself against his chief's thick shoulder and trembled.

'Are we to the brink itself?' he asked; his aged voice shook when he spoke.

'Here, where I stand, when I would grip you, and hold you forth at the length of my arm, and open my hand, you would fall a hundred fathoms in the air.' Murtogh's free arm and hand made the terrible gesture to fit his words, but he tightened his protecting clasp upon the other, and led him back a few paces. The old man groaned his sigh of relief.

'It is you who are the brave nobleman, Murty,' he whispered, admiringly. 'There is none to equal your strength, or your grand courage, in all the land. And the heart of pure gold along with it!'

Murtogh tossed his big head, to shake the twisted forelock of his hair to one side. 'I looked straight into the sun at noon on St. John's Day,' he said, quietly, with the pride of a child. 'If it were a hundred times as bright, I would look at it, and never fear for my eyes. I would hold my own son out here, stretched over the abyss, and he would be no safer in his bed. Whatever I wished to do, I would do it.'

'You would—O, you would!' assented the old man, in tones of entire sincerity.

The chieftain kept his eyes on the skyline, beneath which, as the radiance above deepened, the waters grew ashen and coldly dark. Musing, he held his silence for a time. Then, with abruptness, he asked:—

'What age were you, Owny Hea, when the McSwineys put out your eyes? Were you strong enough to remember the sun well?'

'I was of no strength at all,' the other whimpered, the tragedy of his childhood affecting his speech on the instant. 'I was in my mother's arms. There were the men breaking in through the wall, and the kine bellowing outside, and my father cut down; and then it was like my mother drew her cloak tight over my head,—and no one came ever to take it off again. I forget the sun.'

Murtogh nodded his head. 'I will go to Muskerry some day,' he said, in a kindly way. 'I cannot tell when, just now; but I will go, and I will burn and desolate everything for six miles around, and you shall have a bag for your harp made of eyelids of the McSwineys.'

Old Owny lifted his sightless face toward his master, and smiled with wistful affection. 'Ah, Murty, dear,' he expostulated, mildly, 'it is you who have the grand nature; but think, Murty,—I am a very old man, and no kin of yours. It is fifty years since the last man who took my eyes drew breath. If you went now, no living soul could tell what you came for, or why the great suffering was put upon them. And, moreover, the O'Mahonys Carbery have wives from the McSwineys these three generations. No feud lies now.'

The lord of Dunlogher growled sharply between his teeth, and Owny shrank further back.

'How long will you be learning,' Murtogh demanded, with an arrogant note in his voice, 'that I have no concern in the O'Mahonys Carbery, or the O'Mahonys Fonn-Iartarach, or any other? I do not take heed of Conogher of Ardintenant, or Teige of Rosbrin, or Donogh of Dunmanus, or Donal of Leamcon. I will give them all my bidding to do, and they will do it, or I will kill them, and spoil their castles. You could not behold it, but you have your song from the words of others: how last year I fell upon Diarmaid Bhade, and crushed him and his house, and slew his son, and brought away his herds. His father's father and mine were brothers. He is nearer to me in blood than the rest, yet I would not spare him. I made his Ballydevlin a nest for owls and bats. Let the others observe what I did. I am in Dunlogher, and I am the O'Mahony here, and I look the sun in the face like an eagle. Put that to your song!'

The sound came to them, from the walled bawn and gateways beyond the Three Castles, a hundred yards behind, of voices in commotion. The old bard lifted his head, and his brow scored itself in lines of listening attention. If Murtogh heard, he gave no sign, but gazed again in meditation out upon the vast waste of waters, blackening now as the purple reflections of the twilight waned.

'Blind men have senses that others lack,' he remarked at last. 'Tell me, you, does the earth we stand on seem ever to you to be turning round?'

Owny shuddered a little at the thought which came to him. 'When you led me out beyond here, and I felt the big round sea-pinks under my feet, and remembered they grew only on the very edge—' he began.

'Not that,' the chief broke in, ''tis not my meaning. But at Rosbrin there was a book written by Fineen the son of Diarmaid, an uncle to my father's father, and my father heard it read from this book that the world turned round one way, like a duck on a spit, and the sun turned round the other way, and that was why they were apart all night. And often I come here, and I swear there is a movement under my feet. But elsewhere there is none, not in the bawn, or in the towers, or anywhere else but just here.'

The old man inclined his face, as if he could see the ground he stood upon, but shook his head after a moment's waiting. 'It would not be true, Murty,' he suggested. 'Old Fineen had a mighty scholarship, as I have heard, and he made an end to edify the angels, but—but—'

Murtogh did not wait for the hesitating conclusion. 'I saw his tomb when I was a lad, in the chapel at Rosbrin. He was laid at his own desire under a weight of stone like my wall here. I saw even then how foolish it was. These landsmen have no proper sense. How will they rise at the blessed Resurrection, with all that burden of stone to hold them down? I have a better understanding than that. I buried my father, as he buried his father, out yonder in the sea. And I will be buried there, too, and my son after me—and if I have other children—' he stole a swift glance at the old man's withered face as he spoke—'if I have others, I say, it will be my command that they shall follow me there, when their time comes. I make you witness to that wish, Owny Hea.'

The bard hung his head. 'As if my time would not come first!' he said, for the mere sake of saying something. Then, gathering courage, he pulled upon the strong arm which was still locked in his, and raised his head to speak softly in the O'Mahony's ear.

'If only the desire of your heart were given you, Murty,' he murmured; 'if only once I could hold a babe of yours to my breast, and put its pretty little hands in my beard,—I'd be fit to pray for the men who took my eyes from me. And Murty dear,'—his voice rose in tremulous entreaty as he went on,—'tell me, Murty,—I'm of an age to be your father's father, and I've no eyesight to shame you,—is she—is your holy wife coming to see her duty differently? Have you hope that—that—?'

Murtogh turned abruptly on his heel, swinging his companion round with him. They walked a dozen paces towards the sea-gate of the castles, before he spoke. 'You have never seen her, Owny!' he said, gravely. 'You do not know at all how beautiful she is. It is not in the power of your mind to imagine it. There is no one like her in all the world. She is not just flesh and blood like you, Owny, or even like me. I am a great lord among men, Owny, and I am not afraid of any man. I would put the MacCarthy, or even the Earl of Desmond, over my cliff like a rat, if he came to me here, and would not do me honour. But whenever I come where she sits, I am like a little dirty boy, frightened before a great shrine of our Blessed Lady, all with jewels and lights and incense. I take shame to myself when she looks at me, that there are such things in my heart for her to see.'

Owny sighed deeply. 'The grandest princess in the world might be proud to be mated to you, Murty,' he urged.

'True enough,' responded Murtogh, with candour. 'But she is not a princess,—or any mere woman at all. She is a saint. Perhaps she is more still. Listen, Owny. Do you remember how I took her,—how I swam for her through the breakers—and snapped the bone of my arm to keep the mast of their wreck from crushing her when the wave flung it upon us, and still made land with her head on my neck, and hung to the bare rock against all the devils of the sea sucking to pull me down—?'

'Is it not all in my song?' said Owny, with gentle reproach.

'Owny, man, listen!' said Murtogh, halting and giving new impressiveness to his tone. 'I took her from the water. Her companions were gone; their vessel was gone. Did we ever see sign of them afterward? And her family,—the Sigersons of that island beyond Tiobrad,—when men of mine sailed thither, and asked for Hugh, son of Art, were they not told that the O'Flaherty had passed over the island, and left nothing alive on it the size of a mussel shell? Draw nearer to me, Owny. You will be thinking the more without your eyes. Have you thought that it may be she—whisper now!—that she may belong to the water?'

They stood motionless in the gathering twilight, and the bard turned the problem over deliberately. At last he seemed to shake his head. 'They would not be displaying such piety, as the old stories of them go,' he suggested, 'or—I mean it well to you, Murty—or breaking husbands' hearts with vows of celibacy.'

The O'Mahony pushed the old man from him. 'Then if she be a saint,' he cried, 'why then it were better for me to make ten thousand more blind men like you, and tear my own eyes out, and lead you all headlong over the cliff there, than risk the littlest offence to her pure soul!'

The old bard held out a warning hand. 'People are coming!' he said. Then gliding towards his chief, he seized the protecting arm again, and patted it, and fawned against it. 'Where you go, Murty,' he said eagerly, 'I follow. What you say, I say.'

Some dancing lights had suddenly revealed themselves at the corner of the nearest castle wall. Murtogh had not realised before that it was dusk. 'They will be looking for me,' he said, and moved forward, guiding his companion's steps. The thought that with Owny it was always dark rose in him, and drove other things away.

Three men with torches came up,—rough men with bare legs and a single skirt-like tunic of yellow woollen cloth, and uncovered heads with tangled and matted shocks of black hair. The lights they bore gleamed again in the fierce eyes which looked out from under their forelocks.

'O'Mahony,' one of them said, 'the liathan priest is at the gate,—young Donogh, son of Donogh Bhade who fled to Spain. He is called Father Donatus now.'

'What will he want here?' growled Murtogh. 'I have beaten his father; if I have the mind, his tonsure will not hold me from beating him also.'

'He has brought a foreign Spaniard, a young man with breeches and a sword, who comes to you from the King of Spain.'

Murtogh straightened himself, and disengaged the arm of the blind man. 'Run forward, you two,' he ordered sharply, 'and call all the men from the bawns and the cattle and the boats, and I will have them light torches, and stand in a line from the second tower to the postern, and show their spears well in front, and be silent. I will not have any man talk but myself, or thrust himself into notice. We were Kings of Rathlin, and we have our own matters to discuss with the Kings of Spain.'

II

Three score fighting men, some bearing lights, and all showing shields, and spears, or javelins, or long hooked axes, crowded in the semblance of a line along the narrow way to the large keep—and behind them packed four times their number of women and children—watched Murtogh when he brought his guests past from the gate.

He moved proudly up the boreen, with a slow step, and the gleam of a high nature in his eyes. His own people saw afresh how great was his right to be proud. The broad hard muscles of his legs, straining to burst their twisted leather thongs as he walked; the vast weight and thickness of the breast and shoulders, under the thin summer cloak of cloth from the Low Countries which he held wrapped tight about them; the corded sinews of his big bare neck; above all, the lion-like head, with its dauntless regard and its splendid brown-black mane, and the sparkle of gold in the bushing glibb on his brow,—where else in all Ireland would their match be found? But for that strange injunction to silence, the fighters of the sept would be splitting the air with yells for their chieftain. They struck their weapons together, and made the gaze they bent upon him burn with meaning, and he, without looking, read it, and bore himself more nobly yet; and the mothers and wives and little ones, huddled behind in the darkness, groaned aloud with the pain of their joy in Murty mordha.

It swelled the greatness of Murtogh when they looked upon those who followed him. 'It is the soggarth liathan,' they whispered, at view of the young priest, with his pointed face and untimely whitened hair. He would not turn his ferret glance to right or left, as he followed close in his cousin's lordly footsteps, for the reason that these sea-wolves of Dunlogher had ravaged and burnt his father's country within the year, and slain his brother, and gnashed their teeth now, even as he passed, for rage at the sight of him.

And the messenger who came to speak to Murty the words of the King of Spain! They grinned as they stared upon him. An eel-fly, a lame fledgeling gull, a young crab that has lost its shell,—thus they murmured of him. His legs were scarce the bigness of a Cape woman's arms, and were clad in red silken cloth stretched as close as skin. He had foolish little feet, with boots of yellow leather rising to the knee, and from the mid-thigh to the waist were unseemly bulging breeches, blown out like a buoy, and gashed downwise with stripes of glowing colours, repeated again in his flowing sleeves. His burnished steel corslet and long reed-like sword would be toys for children in Dunlogher. His face, under its wide plumed hat of drab felt, was that of no soldier at all,—a thin smooth rounded face of a strange smoky darkness of hue, with tiny upturned moustachios, and delicately bended nose. And the eyes of him! They seemed to be the half of his countenance in size, what with their great dusky-white balls, and sloe black centres, and their thick raven fringes and brows that joined each other. The armed kernes who stood nearest took not much heed of these eyes, but the older women, peeping between their shoulders, saw little else, and they made the sign of the cross at the sight.

When two hours had passed, the baser folk of Dunlogher knew roughly what was in the wind. Two wayfaring men of humble station had come in the train of the Spaniard, and though they had no Irish, their story somehow made itself told. A ship from Spain, which indeed Dunlogher had seen pass a week before, had put in at Dingle, on the Kerry coast, and had landed James Fitzmaurice, the Papal legate Sanders, some other clergy, and a score and more Spanish gentlemen or men at arms, with a banner blessed by the Holy Father. A great army from Spain and Italy would follow in their wake. But, meantime, the first comers were building a fort at Smerwick, and the clan of Fitzgerald was up, and messengers were flying through the length and breadth of Munster and Connaught, passing the word to the Catholic chiefs that the hour of driving the English into the sea was at hand.

The lower floors of the castle and the pleasant grassy bawns outside, cool with the soft sea wind of the summer night, were stirred to a common fervour by these tidings. The other O'Mahonys, the chiefs of Dunmanus and Dunbeacon to the north, of Ballydevlin, Leamcon, Ardintenant, and Rosbrin to the south, and elsewhere in Desmond the O'Sullivans, MacCarthys, O'Driscolls and the rest, were clashing their shields. Ah, when they should see Murty striding into the field!

In the big hall overhead, where—after three courses of stone stairs were climbed, so narrow that a man in armour must needs walk sideways—the abode of the chieftain and his own blood began, Murtogh was ready to hear the message of the King of Spain.

The broad rough-hewn table, with its dishes of half-cleaned bones and broken cheeses and bread, its drinking horns and flagons, and litter of knives and spoons, had been given over to the master's greyhounds, who stood with forepaws on the board and insinuated their long necks and muzzles noiselessly here and there among the remains of the meal. A clump of reeds, immersed in a brazier of fish oil, burned smokily among the dishes for light.

When, at the finish of the eating, Murtogh had given the signal for departure to the dozen strong men nearest akin to him, or in his best favour, there were left only his son, a slow, good lad born of a first wife long since dead, the blind Owny, the Spaniard and the liathan (or prematurely grey) young priest.

Then Murtogh said to this last man: 'Donogh, son of Donogh Bhade, I have not frowned on you nor struck you, for the reason that you are my guest. But because my hand is open to you, it is no reason that I should lie, and pretend that I am your friend or you mine. Your brother, Diarmaid, the one I could not get to kill, calls himself my heir, and twice has sought to take the life of my son here, my Donogh baoth. Therefore, I will have you go now, and sit below with the others, or read your prayers in your chamber where you are to sleep, because I will hear now what the King of Spain says to me, and that is not meant for your ears.'

The priest stood on his feet. 'Your pride does not become you, Murty Mordha' he said, 'when I am come to you for your soul's sake and the glory of religion.' His voice was thin and high-pitched, but there was no fear in it.

'I will not be taking trouble for my soul just now,' replied Murty; 'that will be for another time, when I am like to die. And then I will have my own confessor, and not you, nor anyone like you. So you will go now, as I bid you.'

Father Donatus, standing still, curled his lips in a hard smile. 'You are a great man, Murty! You could dishonour my father, and slay my brother like the headstrong bullock that you are; but there are things you cannot do. You cannot lay your finger to me because I come on the business of God.'

'It is the business of the King of Spain that I will be thinking of,' said Murty, with curtness.

'They are the same,' rejoined the young priest. 'And you are wrong to say what you will be thinking of, because you have not a mind to think at all. If you could think, you would know that you cannot have the words of the King of Spain except when I interpret them to you. This noble gentleman who comes with me speaks more tongues than one, but he has no Irish, and you,—it is well known that you have nothing else. Don Tello has sat at your side for two hours, and you have not observed that each word between him and you came and went through me. Oh, yes; you are a great man, Murty, but your mind is not of a high order.'

The chieftain rose also. The blood came into his face, and he laid a strong hand on the hilt of his broad sword. But the foot that he lifted he set down again; and he looked at his kinsman, the liathan priest, and did not move towards him. 'You are in the right to wear a gown,' he said slowly, 'because you have the tongue and the evil temper of an ugly girl. You speak foolish things in your heat, and they disgrace you. I have the best mind that any man in my family ever had. I have more thoughts in my mind than there are words in your Latin book. I would speak whatever I chose to this gentleman, and I would understand his speech when I troubled myself to do so. But I will not do that,—for some time at least; I will have my wife come, and she will sit here, and she will tell me his words, and I will be taking my ease.'

Murtogh Mordha called his son to his side, and gave him a message to deliver.

The priest, smiling in his cold way, leant over and spoke for the space of a minute in a tongue strange to Dunlogher into the Spaniard's ear. Then he stood erect, and gazed at Murtogh with an ill-omened look, and so turned and strode after the lad out of the door.

III

A young woman of the rarest beauty, tall and slender, and with the carriage of a great lady, came into the chamber and moved across to the high, carved chair which Murtogh made ready for her, and seated herself upon it as upon a throne. She had a pale fair skin, and her hair, coiled heavily in plaits upon her shoulders, was of the hue of a red harvest sun. There were jewels in this hair and upon her throat and hands, and her long robes were of rich shining stuffs. A chain of wooden beads, with a cross of gold at the end, hung from her girdle, and she gathered this in her fingers as she sat.

The boy, Donogh baoth, came with her, and crouched in humility on the floor at her side. His thick form and dark hair, and his over-large head, spoke a likeness now to his father which was not to be noted before. When, as if under the spell of her attraction, he nestled nearer the lady's chair, and touched her garment with his hand, she drew it away.

Murtogh Mordha, before he took his seat again, and leant back to half lie upon the skins thrown over it, told her the Spaniard's name, and explained to her his errand. The Spaniard, bowing himself low, sank upon one knee, and reverently kissed her hand, as Murty had seen his father kiss the ring of the Bishop of Ross. He was proud to observe this, because his wife was holier and more saintly still than any bishop.

The lady smiled upon the Spaniard, and all that she said to him, and he to her, was in his tongue. 'I cannot speak it well,' she said. Her voice had the sweetness of a perfume in the air. 'I lived at Seville, in the old convent there, for only two years. I have no joy of remembrance now, save in the peace and charm of those years there; but I fear my memory of the dear speech is dimmed. But I will listen with all my ears,—and oh, so gladly!'

She fastened her regard upon his eyes,—the great, rolling, midnight eyes,—and held it there, that she might the better follow his speech.

'Beautiful lady,' the Spaniard said, 'I learn only now the power our language, spoken by such lips, may have to enthrall the hearing. Condone my error, I pray you, but I caught from Father Donatus that you were this strong chieftain's wife, and I see that you are his daughter; and even that is strange, to look upon him and you!

'I am his wife, but only in name, naught else,' she answered. The wave of comprehension sweeping over the surface of the Spaniard's eyes made instant confidence between them. 'I am in captivity here. He is a pirate, a Goth, a murderous barbarian. He and his savages here—but of this more a little hence. I beg you now to speak something of your mission,—your errand here. He is as helpless to follow our words as one of those hounds; but no dog is keener to suspicion.'

The Spaniard, with eager swiftness of speech, piled one upon another the curtailed topics of his business. The lady, moving her fingers along the beads, gleaned the narrow pith of it, and dressed it forth in new phrases for the lord of Dunlogher.

'The King of Spain will send this month,' she said in the Irish, 'a mighty army to drive the heretic English to the last man from this Island of Saints. They have wounded God too long! The last drop of Heavens patience is dried up by their crimes. Their Queen was not born in lawful wedlock, and the Blessed Sacraments are daily profaned by her and her accursed people. Those who sustain and honour God now will be sustained and honoured by Him through glorious Eternity.'

'These things are well known to me,' said Murtogh. 'I would not need the King of Spain to tell them to me. How will he speak concerning myself?'

The lady was not afraid to smile into the eyes of the Spaniard. 'You are to speak after a moment or two,' she told him, with a calm voice; 'but hear me this little first. My heart is broken here. I do not know how I have had the courage to live. These jewels I wear, the fabrics of my raiment, the wines on the board yonder, are all the booty of blood-stained waves down at the foot of this terrible cliff. He and his savages burn false lights, and lure ships to the rocks, and rob and murder their people. It was thus unhappily I came here, and in fear of my life, while I was still half dead from the water, I suffered the marriage words to be read over me,—but now you must speak.'

'I would show you tears rather than words, dear lady,' the Spaniard said; 'and blows on your behalf more preferably than either. Father Donatus whispered the tithe of this to me. The whole truth burns like fire in my heart. As my fathers gave their life blood to drive the infidel from Grenada,—so I lay my own poor life at your dear feet. If aught but harm to you could come from it, I would slay him now where he lolls there on the skins. He is looking at you now, waiting for you to speak.'

'The King of Spain has heard much of you,' she began in the Irish, without turning her head. 'He is filled with admiration for your strength and valour. He desires deeply to know what you will be doing. When you will take arms, and join him with your great might in the battles, then there cannot be any doubt of his victory.'

'That it is easy to see,' replied Murtogh. 'But the King of Spain's battles are not my battles. There would be some reason to be given, to call me out for his wars. The English will be doing me no hurt. They cannot come here to me, by water or by land; and if they did I would not let any of them depart alive. For what cause should I go to them? Let the King of Spain tell me what it would be in his mind to do in my behalf, when I did this thing for him.'

The lady spoke to the Spaniard. 'The last of my people are killed. They would not have seemed different to you perhaps,—to you who were bred in the gentle graces of Spain,—but they were not the ferocious barbarians these O'Mahonys are. My father was learned in Latin and English, and it was his dream that I should wed in Spain.'

'Oh, rapturous vision!' said Don Tello, with new flames kindling in his eyes. 'And if it shall be proved prophetic as well, beautiful lady! Something of this, too, the priest whispered; but the precious words return to me as your dear lips breathed them forth,—"wife only in name." I long to hear them once again.'

The lady repeated them, with tender deliberation, and a languorous gleam in her blue eyes began to answer his burning gaze. 'I have held the fierce beast at arm's length,' she said, 'because he is also a fool. I would give a year of my life to be able to laugh in his face, and slap these beads across it. I have told him—the blessed thought came to me even while we knelt at the altar together—that I am bound by a vow. His big empty head is open to all the fancies that fly. He believes that an enchanted woman drives up her horses from the bottom of the lake, down at the foot of the small tower here, every night for food; and he spreads corn for them which the thieves about him fatten on. He believes in witches rising from the sea, and leprechauns, and changelings, like any ignorant herdsman out in the bog, but he is a frightened Churchman, too. He believes that I am a saint!'

'As I swear by the grave of my mother, you are!' panted Don Tello. 'But speak now to him.'

'The King of Spain will do very great things in your behalf,' she recited, in Murtogh's tongue. 'He will make you of the rank of a commander in his armies, and he will ennoble you.'

'I am noble now,' Murtogh made comment, 'as noble as the King of Spain himself. I am not a MacCarthy or an O'Driscoll, that I would be craving titles to my name.'

'Then he will send large rich ships here,' she began again, with weariness in her tone, 'to bring you costly presents. And the Pope, he will grant you ten years' indulgence,—or it may be twenty.'

'Ask him,' broke in Murtogh, sitting up with a brightened face, his hand outstretched to secure silence for the thought that stirred within him,—'ask if the Holy Father would be granting just the one spiritual favour I would beg. Will this gentleman bind the King of Spain to that?'

'And may I wholly trust,' she asked the Spaniard, with half-closed eyes, through which shone the invitation of her mood, 'may I trust in your knightly proffer of help? Do not answer till I have finished. You are the first who has come to me—here in this awful dungeon—and I have opened my heart to you as perhaps I should not. But you have the blood of youth in your veins, like me; you are gallant and of high lineage; you are from the land where chivalry is the law of gentle life,—is it true that you will be my champion?'

The Spaniard rose with solemn dignity, though his great eyes flashed devouringly upon her, and his breast heaved under its cuirass. He half lifted his sword from the sheath, and kissed the cross of its hilt. 'Oh, my beloved, I swear!' he said, in sombre earnestness.

She translated the action and utterance to Murtogh. 'Whatever of a spiritual nature you would crave of his Holiness he would grant.'

'But it would be a cruel time of waiting, to send all the long way to Rome and back,' he objected, 'and this matter lies like lead upon my soul.'

She looked up into the Spaniard's eyes, and let her own lashes tremble, and fed the ravening conflagration of his gaze with a little sigh. 'It would be very sweet to believe,' she murmured, 'too sweet for sense, I fear me. Nay, Don Tello, I need not such a world of persuasion—only—only—lift your right hand, with thumb and two fingers out, and swear again. And say, "Bera, I swear!"'

'It is your name?' he asked, and as she closed her eyes in assent, and slowly opened them to behold his oath, he lifted the fingers and waved them toward her, and passionately whispered, 'Bera, queen of my Heaven, star of my soul, I swear!'

'That is the sign of the Pope himself,' she explained, with indifference, to Murtogh. 'Whatever wish you offered up you have it already granted. It is Don Tello who bears the holy authority from the Pope.'

The lord of Dunlogher hurled himself to his feet with a boisterous energy before which the lady, wondering, drew herself away. He stretched his bared arms towards her, then flung them upward as in invocation to the skies. The beatitude of some vast triumph illumined his glance.

'Oh, then, indeed, I am Murty Mordha!' he cried. 'It is I who am prouder than all the Kings on earth! It is I who have won my love! Oh, glory to the Heavens that send me this joy! Glory and the praise of the saints! Glory! Glory!'

The rhapsody was without meaning to the Spaniard. He stared in astonishment at the big chieftain with the shining countenance who shouted with such vehemence up at the oaken roof. Turning a glance of inquiry at the lady, he saw that she had grown white-faced, and was cowering backward in her chair.

'Our Lady save us!' she gasped at him in Spanish. 'He has asked the Pope to absolve me from my vow.'

Don Tello, no wiser, put his hand to his sword. 'Tell me quickly, what it is? What am I to do?' he demanded of her.

Murtogh, with a smile from the heart moistening his eyes and transfiguring all his face, strode to the Spaniard, and grasped his reluctant hand between his own broad palms, and gripped it with the fervour of a giant.

'I would have you tell him,' he called out to the Lady Bera. 'Tell him that he has no other friend in any land who will do for him what Murty Mordha will be doing. I will ride with him into the battle, and take all his blows on my own back. I will call him my son and my brother. Whatever he will wish, I will give it to him. And all his enemies I will slay and put down for him to walk upon. Oh, Bera, the jewel restored to me, the beautiful gem I saved from the waters, tell him these things for me! Why will your lips be so silent? Would they be waiting for my kisses to waken them? And Donogh, son of mine, come hither and take my other son's hand. I will hear you swear to keep my loyalty to him the same as myself. And, Owny Hea,—hither, man! You cannot see my benefactor, the man I will be giving my life for, but you have heard his voice. You will not forget it.'

The absence of all other sound of a sudden caught Murtogh's ear, and checked his flow of joyous words. He looked with bewilderment at the figure of his wife in the chair, motionless with clenched hands on her knees, and eyes fixed in a dazed stare upon vacancy. He turned again, and noted that Owny Hea had come up to the Spaniard, and was standing before him so close that their faces were near touching.

The old blind man had the smile of an infant on his withered face. He lifted his left hand to the Spaniard's breast and passed it curiously over the corselet and its throat-plate and arm-holes, muttering in Irish to himself, 'I will not forget. I will not at all forget.'

A zigzag flash of light darted briefly somewhere across Murtogh's vision. Looking with more intentness he saw that both the blind man's hands were at the arm-pit of the Spaniard, and pulled upon something not visible. Don Tello's big eyes seemed bursting from their black-fringed sockets. His face was distorted, and he curled the fingers of his hand like stiffened talons, and clawed once into the air with them. Then Owny Hea pushed him, and he pitched sprawling against Murtogh's legs, and rolled inert to the floor. His hot blood washed over Murtogh's sandalled feet.

A woman's shriek of horror burst into the air, and the hounds moaned and glided forward. Murtogh did not know why he stood so still. He could not rightly think upon what was happening, or put his mind to it. The bones in his arms were chilled, and would not move for him. He gazed with round eyes at Owny, and at the red dripping knife which the bard stretched out to him. He felt the rough tongue of a dog on his ankle. The dark corners of the chamber seemed to be moving from him a long distance away. There was a spell upon him, and he could not tremble.

The voice of Owny Hea came to him, and though it was soundless, like the speech of Dreamland, he heard all its words; 'Murtogh son of Teige, I have slain your guest for the reason that I have the Spanish, and I knew the meaning of his words to this woman, and he could not live any longer. The liathan priest, when he would be going, told this stranger that she you called your wife was your enemy, and made a mockery of you, and would give ear gladly to any means of dishonouring you. And the liathan priest spoke truly. While the woman repeated lies to you of the King of Spain and the Pope, she whispered foul scandal of you, and wicked love-words to that dog's-meat at your feet. It is I, Owen son of Aodh, who tell you these things. And now you know what you have to do!'

Murtogh turned slowly to the lady. She lay, without motion, in her chair, her head limp upon her shoulder, and the whiteness of sea foam on her cheek. Thoughts came again into his brain.

'I have the wisest mind of all in my family,' he said; 'I know what it is I will be doing.'

He drew the short sword from his girdle, and put his nail along its edge.

'Donogh baoth,' he said to his son, 'go below and seek out Conogher tuathal and Shane buidhe, and bid them seize the liathan priest between them, and bring him to me here where I am. And you will take some sleep for yourself then, for it is a late hour.'

The lad looked at the pale lady with the closed eyes, and at the sword in his father's hand. He set his teeth together, and lifted his head.

'I am of years enough to see it all,' he said. 'I have no sleep on my eyes.'

Murtogh bent over the corpse at his feet, and caressed the boy's head with his hand. 'I will not call you baoth (simple) any more,' he said, fondly. 'You are my true son, and here is my ring for your finger, and you may return with them when they fetch me my liathan cousin.'

IV

Next morning young Donogh gave his word to the men of Dunlogher, and they obeyed him, for in the one night he had thrown aside his sluggish boyhood, and they saw his father's ring on his finger, and heard a good authority in his voice. They came out from the Western gate at his command, three-score and more, and stood from the brink of the cliff inward, with their weapons in their hands, and made a path between them. But the women and children Donogh bade remain within the bawn, and he shut the inner gate upon them. It was as if the smell of blood came to them there, for the old women put up a lamentation of death, and the others cried aloud, till the noise spread to the men on the cliff. These looked one to another and held their silence.

They did not clash their spears together when, after a long waiting, Murtogh came from the gate, and walked toward them. A fine rain was in the air, and the skies and sea were grey, and the troubled man would have no spirit for such greeting.

He bore upon his broad back a great shapeless bundle thrice his own bulk. The weight of it bent his body, and swayed his footsteps as he came. The cover of it was of skins of wild beasts, sewn rudely with thongs, and through the gaps in this cover some of the men saw stained foreign cloths and the plume of a hat, and some a shoe with a priest's buckle, and some the marble hand of a fair woman. But no word was spoken, and Murtogh, coming to the edge, heaved his huge shoulders upward, and the bundle leaped out of sight.

Then Murtogh turned and looked all his fighting-men in their faces, and smiled in gentleness upon them, and they saw that in that same night, while the 'little people' had changed Donogh into a man, they had made Murtogh a child again.

'She came up from the water,' he said to them, in a voice no man knew. 'It was I who brought her out of the water, and fought for her with the demons under the rocks, and beat all of them off. But one of them I did not make the sign of the Cross before, and that one is the King of Spain; and so he has wrought me this mischief, and made all my labour as nothing; and she is in the water again, and I must be going to fetch her out rightly this time.'

Murtogh sprang like a deer into the air, with a mighty bound which bore him far over the edge of the cliff. Some there were, in the throng that sprang forward, agile enough to be looking down the abyss before his descent was finished. These, to their amazement, beheld a miracle. For the great fall did not kill Murtogh Mordha, but the waters boiled and rose to meet him, and held him up on their tossing currents as he swam forward, and marked with a pallid breadth of foam his path out to sea, farther and farther out, till the mists hid him from human view.

The wailing song of Owny Hea rose through the wet air above the keening of the women in the bawn. But louder still was the voice of the lad who wore his father's ring, and drew now from beneath his mantle his father's sword.

'I am Donogh son of Murtogh Mordha!' he shouted, 'and I am Lord in Dunlogher, and when I am of my full strength I will kill the King of Spain, and give his castles and all his lands and herds and women to you for your own!'

The three towers of Dunlogher are broken, and the witch has fled from its grey lake, and no man knows where the bones of its forgotten sept are buried. But the evil currents will never tire of writhing, and the shadows which are no shadows are forever changing, in the Path of Murty the Proud.