CHAPTER XXXIII.

CAPTAIN CLAYTON'S LOVE-MAKING.

The household at Castle Morony was very sad for some time after the trial. They had hardly begun to feel the death of Florian while the excitement existed as they felt it afterwards. Mr. Jones, his father, seemed to regard the lost boy as though he had been his favourite child. It was not many months since he had refused to allow him to eat in his presence, and had been persuaded by such a stranger as was Captain Clayton, to treat him with some show of affection. When he had driven him into Ballyglunin, he had been stern and harsh to him to the very last. And now he was obliterated with sorrow because he had been robbed of his Florian. The two girls had sorrows of their own; though neither of them would permit her sorrow to create any quarrel between her and her sister. And Frank, who since his return from the North had toiled like a labourer on the property—only doing double a labourer's work—had sorrow, too, of his own. It was understood that he had altogether separated himself from Rachel O'Mahony. The cause of his separation was singular in its nature.

It was now November, and Rachel had already achieved a singularly rapid success at Covent Garden. She still lived in Cecil Street, but there was no lack of money. Indeed, her name had risen into such repute that some Irish people began to think that her father was the proper man for Cavan, simply because she was a great singer. It cannot be said, however, that this was the case among the men who were regarded as the leaders of the party, as they still doubted O'Mahony's obedience. But money at any rate poured into Rachel's lap, and with the money that which was quite as objectionable to poor Frank. He had begun by asserting that he did not wish to live idle on the earnings of a singer; and, therefore, as the singer had said, "he and she were obliged to be two." As she explained to her father, she was badly treated. She was very anxious to be true to her lover; but she did not like living without some lover to whom she might be true. "You see, as I am placed I am exposed to the Mosses. I do want to have a husband to protect me." Then a lover had come forward. Lord Castlewell had absolutely professed to make her the future Marchioness of Beaulieu. Of this there must be more hereafter; but Frank heard of it, and tore his hair in despair.

And there was another misery at Castle Morony. It reached Mr. Jones's ears that Peter was anxious to give warning. It certainly was the case that Peter was of great use to them, and that Mr. Jones had rebuked him more than once as having made a great favour of his services. The fact was that Peter, if discharged, would hardly know where to look for another place where he could be equally at home and equally comfortable. And he was treated by the family generally with all that confidence which his faithfulness seemed to deserve. But he was nervous and ill at ease under his master's rebukes; and at last there came an event which seemed to harrow up his own soul, and instigated him to run away from County Galway altogether.

"Miss Edith, Miss Edith," he said, "come in here, thin, and see what I have got to show you." Then, with an air of great mystery, he drew his young mistress into the pantry. "Look at that now! Was ever the like of that seen since the mortial world began?" Then he took out from a dirty envelope a dirty sheet of paper, and exposed it to her eyes. On the top of it was a rude coffin. "Don't it make yer hair stand on end, and yer very flesh creep, Miss Edith, to look at the likes o' that!" And below the coffin there was a ruder skull and two cross-bones. "Them's intended for what I'm to be. I understand their language well enough. Look here," and he turned the envelope round and showed that it was addressed to Peter McGrew, butler, Morony Castle. "They know me well enough all the country round." The letter was as follows:

Mr. Peter McGrew,

If you're not out of that before the end of the month, but stay there doing things for them infernal blackguards, your goose is cooked. So now you know all about it.

From yours,

Moonlight.

Edith attempted to laugh at this letter, but Peter made her understand that it was no laughing matter.

"I've a married darter in Dublin who won't see her father shot down that way if she knows it."

"You had better take it to papa, then, and give him warning," said Edith.

But this Peter declined to do on the spur of the moment, seeming to be equally afraid of his master and of Captain Moonlight.

"If I'd the Captain here, he'd tell me what I ought to do." The Captain was always Captain Clayton.

"He is coming here to-morrow, and I will show him the letter," said Edith. But she did not on that account scruple to tell her father at once.

"He can go if he likes it," said Mr. Jones, and that was all that Mr. Jones said on the subject.

This was the third visit that the Captain had paid to Morony Castle since the terrible events of the late trial. And it must be understood that he had not spoken a word to either of the two girls since the moment in which he had ventured to squeeze Edith's hand with a tighter grasp than he had given to her sister. They, between them, had discussed him and his character often; but had come to no understanding respecting him.

Ada had declared that Edith should be his, and had in some degree recovered from the paroxysm of sorrow which had first oppressed her. But Edith had refused altogether to look at the matter in that light. "It was quite out of the question," she said, "and so Captain Clayton would feel it. If you don't hold your tongue, Ada," she said, "I shall think you're a brute."

But Ada had not held her tongue, and had declared that if no one else were to know it—no one but Edith and the Captain himself—she would not be made miserable by it.

"What is it?" she said. "I thought him the best and he is the best. I thought that he thought that I was the best; and I wasn't. It shall be as I say."

After this manner were the discussions held between them; but of these Captain Clayton heard never a word.

When he came he would seem to be full of the flood gates, and of Lax the murderer. He had two men with him now, Hunter and another. But no further attempt was made to shoot him in the neighbourhood of Headford. "Lax finds it too hot," he said, "since that day in the court house, and has gone away for the present. I nearly know where he is; but there is no good catching him till I get some sort of evidence against him, and if I locked him up as a 'suspect,' he would become a martyr and a hero in the eyes of the whole party. The worst of it is that though twenty men swore that they had seen it, no Galway jury would convict him." But nevertheless he was indefatigable in following up the murderer of poor Florian. "As for the murder in the court house," he said, "I do believe that though it was done in the presence of an immense crowd no one actually saw it. I have the pistol, but what is that? The pistol was dropped on the floor of the court house."

On this occasion Edith brought him poor Peter's letter. As it happened they two were then alone together. But she had taught herself not to expect any allusion to his love. "He is a stupid fellow," said the Captain.

"But he has been faithful. And you can't expect him to look at these things as you do."

"Of course he finds it to be a great compliment. To have a special letter addressed to him by some special Captain Moonlight is to bring him into the history of his country."

"I suppose he will go."

"Then let him go. I would not on any account ask him to stay. If he comes to me I shall tell him simply that he is a fool. Pat Carroll's people want to bother your father, and he would be bothered if he were to lose his man-servant. There is no doubt of that. If Peter desires to bother him let him go. Then he has another idea that he wants to achieve a character for fidelity. He must choose between the two. But I wouldn't on any account ask him for a favour."

Then Edith having heard the Captain's advice was preparing to leave the room when Captain Clayton stopped her. "Edith," he said.

"Well, Captain Clayton."

"Some months ago,—before these sad things had occurred,—I told you what I thought of you, and I asked you for a favour."

"There was a mistake made between us all,—a mistake which does not admit of being put to rights. It was unfortunate, but those misfortunes will occur. There is no more to be said about it."

"Is the happiness of two people to be thus sacrificed, when nothing is done for the benefit of one?"

"What two?" she asked brusquely.

"You and I."

"My happiness will not be sacrificed, Captain Clayton," she said. What right had he to tell that her happiness was in question? The woman spoke,—the essence of feminine self, putting itself forward to defend feminine rights generally against male assumption. Could any man be justified in asserting that a woman loved him till she had told him so? It was evident no doubt,—so she told herself. It was true at least. As the word goes she worshipped the very ground he stood upon. He was her hero. She had been made to think and to feel that he was so by this mistake which had occurred between the three. She had known it before, but it was burned in upon her now. Yet he should not be allowed to assume it. And the one thing necessary for her peace of mind in life would be that she should do her duty by Ada. She had been the fool. She had instigated Ada to believe this thing in which there was no truth. The loss of all ecstasy of happiness must be the penalty which she would pay. And yet she thought of him. Must he pay a similar penalty for her blunder? Surely this would be hard! Surely this would be cruel! But then she did not believe that man ever paid such penalty as that of which she was thinking. He would have the work of his life. It would be the work of her life to remember what she might have been had she not been a fool.

"If so," he said after a pause, "then there is an end of it all," and he looked at her as though he absolutely believed her words,—as though he had not known that her assertion had been mere feminine pretext! She could not endure that he at any rate should not know the sacrifice which she would have to make. But he was very hard to her. He would not even allow her the usual right of defending her sex by falsehood. "If so there is an end of it all," he repeated, holding out his hand as though to bid her farewell.

She believed him, and gave him her hand. "Good-bye, Captain Clayton," she said.

"Never again," he said to her very gruffly, but still with such a look across his eyes as irradiated his whole face. "This hand shall never again be your own to do as you please with it."

"Who says so?" and she struggled as though to pull her hand away, but he held her as though in truth her hand had gone from her for ever.

"I say so, who am its legitimate owner. Now I bid you tell me the truth, or rather I defy you to go on with the lie. Do you not love me?"

"It is a question which I shall not answer."

"Then," said he, "from a woman to a man it is answered. You cannot make me over to another. I will not be transferred."

"I can do nothing with you, Captain Clayton, nor can you with me. I know you are very strong of course." Then he loosened her hand, and as he did so Ada came into the room.

"I have asked her to be my wife," said the Captain, putting his hand upon Edith's arm.

"Let it be so," said Ada. "I have nothing to say against it."

"But I have," said Edith. "I have much to say against it. We can all live without being married, I suppose. Captain Clayton has plenty to do without the trouble of a wife. And so have you and I. Could we leave our father? And have we forgotten so soon poor Florian? This is no time for marriages. Only think, papa would not have the means to get us decent clothes. As far as I am concerned, Captain Clayton, let there be an end of all this." Then she stalked out of the room.

"Ada, you are not angry with me," said Captain Clayton, coming up to her.

"Oh, no! How could I be angry?"

"I have not time to do as other men do. I do not know that I ever said a word to her; and yet, God knows, that I have loved her dearly enough. She is hot tempered now, and there are feelings in her heart which fight against me. You will say a word in my favour?"

"Indeed, indeed I will."

"There shall be nothing wrong between you and me. If she becomes my wife, you shall be my dearest sister. And I think she will at last. I know,—I do know that she loves me. Poor Florian is dead and gone. All his short troubles are over. We have still got our lives to lead. And why should we not lead them as may best suit us? She talks about your father's present want of money. I would be proud to marry your sister standing as she is now down in the kitchen. But if I did marry her I should have ample means to keep her as would become your father's daughter." Then he took his leave and went back to Galway.

CHAPTER XXXIV.

LORD CASTLEWELL'S LOVE-MAKING.

It was explained in the last chapter that Frank Jones was not in a happy condition because of the success of the lady whom he loved. Rachel, as Christmas drew nigh, was more and more talked about in London, and became more and more the darling of all musical people. She had been twelve months now on the London boards, and had fully justified the opinion expressed of her by Messrs. Moss and Le Gros. There were those who declared that she sang as no woman of her age had ever sung before. And there had got abroad about her certain stories, which were true enough in the main, but which were all the more curious because of their truth; and yet they were not true altogether. It was known that she was a daughter of a Landleaguing Member of Parliament, and that she had been engaged to marry the son of a boycotted landlord. Mr. Jones' sorrows, and the death of his poor son, and the murder of the sinner who was to have been the witness at the trial of his brother, were all known and commented on in the London press; and so also was the peculiar vigour of Mr. O'Mahony's politics. Nothing, it was said, could be severed more entirely than were Mr. Jones and Mr. O'Mahony. The enmity was so deep that all ideas of marriage were out of the question. It was, no doubt, true that the gentleman was penniless and the lady rolling in wealth; but this was a matter so grievous that so poor a thing as money could not be allowed to prevail. And then Mr. Moss was talked about as a dragon of iniquity,—which, indeed, was true enough,—and was represented as having caused contracts to be executed which would bind poor Rachel to himself, both as to voice and beauty. But Lord Castlewell had seen her, and had heard her; and Mr. Moss, with all his abominations, was sent down to the bottom of the nethermost pit. The fortune of "The Embankment" was made by the number of visitors who were sent there to see and to hear this wicked fiend; but it all redounded to the honour and glory of Rachel.

But Rachel was to be seen a fÊted guest at all semi-musical houses. Whispers about town were heard that that musical swell, Lord Castlewell, had been caught at last. And in the midst of all this, Mr. O'Mahony came in for his share of popularity. There was something so peculiar in the connection which bound a violent Landleaguing Member of Parliament with the prima donna of the day. They were father and daughter, but they looked more like husband and wife, and it always seemed that Rachel had her own way. Mr. O'Mahony had quite achieved a character for himself before the time had come in which he was enabled to open his mouth in the House of Commons. And some people went so far as to declare that he was about to be the new leader of the party.

It certainly was true that about this time Lord Castlewell did make an offer to Rachel O'Mahony.

"That I should have come to this!" she said to the lord when the lord had expressed his wishes.

"You deserve it all," said the gallant lord.

"I think I do. But that you should have seen it,—that you should have come to understand that if I would be your wife I would sing every note out of my body,—to do you good if it were possible. How have you been enlightened so far as to see that this is the way in which you may best make yourself happy?"

Lord Castlewell did not quite like this; but he knew that his wished-for bride was an unintelligible little person, to whom much must be yielded as to her own way. He had not given way to this idea before he had seen how well she had taken her place among the people with whom he lived. He was forty years old, and it was time that he should marry. His father was a very proud personage, to whom he never spoke much. He, however, would be of opinion that any bride whom his son might choose would be, by the very fact, raised to the top of the peerage. His mother was a religious woman, to whom any matrimony for her son would be an achievement. Now, of the proposed bride he had learned all manner of good things. She had come out of Mr. Moss's furnace absolutely unscorched; so much unscorched as to scorn the idea of having been touched by the flames. She was thankful to Lord Castlewell for what he had done, and expressed her thanks in a manner that was not grateful to him. She was not in the least put about or confused, or indeed surprised, because the heir of a marquis had made an offer to her—a singing girl; but she let him understand that she quite thought that she had done a good thing. "It would be so much better for him than going on as he has gone," she said to her father. And Lord Castlewell knew very well what were her sentiments.

It cannot be said that he repented of his offer. Indeed he pressed her for an answer more than once or twice. But her conduct to him was certainly very aggravating. This matter of her marriage with an earl was an affair of great moment. Indeed all London was alive with the subject. But she had not time to give him an answer because it was necessary that she should study a part for the theatre. This was hard upon an earl, and was made no better by the fact that the earl was forty. "No, my lord earl," she said laughing, "the time for that has not come yet. You must give me a few days to think of it." This she said when he expressed a not unnatural desire to give her a kiss.

But though she apparently made light of the matter to him, and astonished even her father by her treatment of him, yet she thought of it with a very anxious mind. She was quite alive to the glories of the position offered to her, and was not at all alive to its inconveniences. People would assert that she had caught the lover who had intended her for other purposes. "That was of course out of the question," she said to herself. And she felt sure that she could make as good a countess as the best of them. With her father a Member of Parliament, and her husband an earl, she would have done very well with herself. She would have escaped from that brute Moss, and would have been subjected to less that was disagreeable in the encounter than might have been expected. She must lose the public singing which was attractive to her, and must become the wife of an old man. It was thus in truth that she looked at the noble lord. "There would be an end," she said, "and for ever, of 'Love's young dream.'" The dream had been very pleasant to her. She had thoroughly liked her Frank. He was handsome, fresh, full of passion, and a little violent when his temper lay in that direction. But he had been generous, and she was sure of him that he had loved her thoroughly. After all, was not "Love's young dream" the best?

An answer was at any rate due to Lord Castlewell. But she made up her mind that before she could give the answer, she would write to Frank himself. "My lord," she said very gravely to her suitor, "it has become my lot in life to be engaged to marry the son of that Mr. Jones of whom you have heard in the west of Ireland."

"I am aware of it," said Lord Castlewell gravely.

"It has been necessary that I should tell you myself. Now, I cannot say whether, in all honour, that engagement has been dissolved."

"I thought there was no doubt about it," said the lord.

"It is as I tell you. I must write to Mr. Jones. Hearts cannot be wrenched asunder without some effort in the wrenching. For the great honour you have done me I am greatly thankful."

"Let all that pass," said the lord.

"Not so. It has to be spoken of. As I stand at present I have been repudiated by Mr. Jones."

"Do you mean to ask him to take you back again?"

"I do not know how the letter will be worded, because it has not been yet written. My object is to tell him of the honour which Lord Castlewell proposes to me. And I have not thought it quite honest to your lordship to do this without acquainting you."

Then that interview was over, and Lord Castlewell went away no doubt disgusted. He had not intended to be treated in this way by a singing girl, when he proposed to make her his countess. But with the disgust there was a strengthened feeling of admiration for her conduct. She looked much more like the countess than the singing girl when she spoke to him. And there certainly never came a time in which he could tell her to go back and sing and marry Mr. Moss. Therefore the few days necessary for an answer went by, and then she gave him her reply. "My lord," she said, "if you wish it still, it shall be so."

The time for "Love's young dream" had not gone by for Lord Castlewell. "I do wish it still," he said in a tone of renewed joy.

"Then you shall have all that you wish." Thereupon she put her little hands on his arm, and leant her face against his breast. Then there was a long embrace, but after the embrace she had a little speech to make. "You ought to know, Lord Castlewell, how much I think of you and your high position. A man, they say, trusts much of his honour into the hands of his wife. Whatever you trust to me shall be guarded as my very soul. You shall be to me the one man whom I am bound to worship. I will worship you with all my heart, with all my body, with all my soul, and with all my strength. Your wishes shall be my wishes. I only hope that an odd stray wish of mine may occasionally be yours." Then she smiled so sweetly that as she looked up into his face he was more enamoured of her than ever.

But now we must go back for a moment, and read the correspondence which took place between Rachel O'Mahony and Frank Jones. Rachel's letter ran as follows:

My dear Frank,

I am afraid I must trouble you once again with my affairs; though, indeed, after what last took place between us it ought not to be necessary. Lord Castlewell has proposed to make me his wife; and, to tell you the truth, looking forward into the world, I do not wish to throw over all its pleasures because your honour, whom I have loved, does not wish to accept the wages of a singing girl. But the place is open to you still,—the wages, and the singing girl, and all. Write me a line, and say how it is to be.

Yours as you would have me to be,

Rachel O'Mahony.

This letter Frank Jones showed to no one. Had he allowed it to be seen by his sister Edith, she would probably have told him that no man ever received a sweeter love-letter from the girl whom he loved. "The place is open to you still,—the wages, the singing girl, and all." The girl had made nothing of this new and noble lover, except to assure his rival that he, the rival, should be postponed to him, the lover, if he, the lover, would write but one word to say that it should be so. But Frank was bad at reading such words. He got it into his head that the girl had merely written to ask the permission of her former suitor to marry this new lordly lover, and, though he did love the girl, with a passion which the girl could never feel for the lord, he wrote back and refused the offer.

My dear Rachel,

It is, I suppose, best as it is. We are sinking lower and lower daily. My father is beginning to feel that we shall never see another rent day at Castle Morony. It is not fitting that I should think of joining my fallen fortunes to yours, which are soaring so high. And poor Florian is gone. We are at the present moment still struck to the ground because of Florian. As for you, and the lord who admires you, you have my permission to become his wife. I have long heard that he is your declared admirer. You have before you a glorious future, and I shall always hear with satisfaction of your career.

Yours, with many memories of the past,

Francis Jones.

It was not a letter which would have put such a girl as Rachel O'Mahony into good heart unless she had in truth wished to get his agreement to her lordly marriage. "This twice I have thrown myself at his head and he has rejected me." Then she abided Lord Castlewell's coming, and the scene between them took place as above described. The marriage was at once declared as a settled thing. "Now, my dear, you must name the day," said Lord Castlewell, as full of joy as though he were going to marry a duke's daughter.

"I have got to finish my engagement," said Rachel; "I am bound down to the end of May. When June comes you shan't find a girl who will be in a greater hurry. Do you think that I do not wish to become a countess?"

He told her that he would contrive to get her engagement broken. "Covent Garden is not going to quarrel with me about my wife, I'm sure," he said.

"Ah! but my own one," said Rachel, "we will do it all selon les rÈgles. I am in a hurry, but we won't let the world know it. I, the future Countess of Castlewell; I, the future Marchioness of Beaulieu, will keep my terms and my allotted times like any candle-snuffer. What do you think Moss will say?"

"What can it signify what Mr. Moss may say?"

"Ah! but my own man, it does signify. Mr. Moss shall know that through it all I have done my duty. Madame Socani will tell lies, but she shall feel in her heart that she has once in her life come across a woman who, when she has signed a bit of paper, intends to remain true to the paper signed. And, my lord, there is still £100 due to you from my father."

"Gammon!" said the lord.

"I could pay it by a cheque on the bank, to be sure, but let us go on to the end of May. I want to see how all the young women will behave when they hear of it." And so some early day in June was fixed for the wedding.

Among others who heard of it were, of course, Mr. Moss and Madame Socani. They heard of it, but of course did not believe it. It was too bright to be believed. When Madame Socani was assured that Rachel had taken the money,—she and her father between them,—she declared, with great apparent satisfaction, that Rachel must be given up as lost. "As to that wicked old man, her father—"

"He's not so very old," said Moss.

"She's no chicken, and he's old enough to be her father. That is, if he is her father. I have known that girl on the stage any day these ten years."

"No, you've not; not yet five. I don't quite know how it is." And Mr. Moss endeavoured to think of it all in such a manner as to make it yet possible that he might marry her. What might not they two do together in the musical world?

"You don't mean to say you'd take her yet?" said Madame Socani, with scorn.

"When I take her you'll be glad enough to join us; that is, if we will have you." Then Madame Socani ground her teeth together, and turned up her nose with redoubled scorn.

But it was soon borne in upon Mr. Moss that the marriage was to be a marriage, and he was in truth very angry. He had been able to endure M. Le Gros' success in carrying away Miss O'Mahony from "The Embankment." Miss O'Mahony might come back again under that or any other name. He—and she—had a musical future before them which might still be made to run in accordance with his wishes. Then he had learned with sincere sorrow that she was throwing herself into the lord's hands, borrowing money of him. But there might be a way out of this which would still allow him to carry out his project. But now he heard that a real marriage was intended, and he was very angry. Not even Madame Socani was more capable of spite than Mr. Moss, though he was better able to hide his rage. Even now, when Christmas-time had come, he would hardly believe the truth, and when the marriage was not instantly carried out, new hopes came to him—that Lord Castlewell would not at last make himself such a fool. He inquired here and there in the musical world and the theatrical world, and could not arrive at what he believed to be positive truth. Then Christmas passed by, and Miss O'Mahony recommenced her singing at Covent Garden. Three times a week the house was filled, and at last a fourth night was added, for which the salary paid to Rachel was very much increased.

"I don't see that the salary matters very much," said Lord Castlewell, when the matter was discussed.

"Oh, but, my lord, it does matter!" She always called him my lord now, with a little emphasis laid on the "my." "They have made father a Member of Parliament, but he does not earn anything. What I can earn up to the last fatal day he shall have, if you will let me give it to him."

They were very bright days for Rachel, because she had all the triumph of success,—success gained by her own efforts.

"I can never do as much as this when I am your countess," she said to her future lord. "I shall dwell in marble halls, as people say, but I shall never cram a house so full as to be able to see, when I look up from the stage, that there is not a place for another man's head; and when my throat gave way the other day I could read all the disappointment in the public papers. I shall become your wife, my lord."

"I hope so."

"And if you will love me I shall be very happy for long, long years."

"I will love you."

"But there will be no passion of ecstasy such as this. Father says that Home Rule won't be passed because the people will be thinking of my singing. Of course it is all vanity, but there is an enjoyment in it."

But all this was wormwood to Mr. Moss. He had put out his hand so as to clutch this girl now two years since, understanding all her singing qualities, and then in truth loving her. She had taken a positive hatred to him, and had rejected him at every turn of her life. But he had not at all regarded that. He had managed to connect her with his theatre, and had perceived that her voice had become more and more sweet in its tones, and more and more rich in its melody. He had still hoped that he would make her his wife. Madame Socani's abominable proposal had come from an assurance on her part that he could have all that he wished for without paying so dear for it. There had doubtless been some whispering between them over the matter, but the order for the proposal had not come from him. Madame Socani had judged of Rachel as she might have judged of herself. But all that had come to absolute failure. He felt now that he should be paying by no means too dear by marrying the girl. It would be a great triumph to marry her; but he was told that this absurd earl wished to triumph in the same manner.

He set afloat all manner of reports, which, in truth, wounded Lord Castlewell sorely. Lord Castlewell had given her money, and had then failed in his object. So said Mr. Moss. Lord Castlewell had promised marriage, never intending it. Lord Castlewell had postponed the marriage because as the moment drew nearer he would not sacrifice himself. If the lady had a friend, it would be the friend's duty to cudgel the lord, so villainous had been the noble lord's conduct. But yet, in truth, who could have expected that the noble lord would have married the singing girl? Was not his character known? Did anybody in his senses expect that the noble lord would marry Miss Rachel O'Mahony?

"If I have a friend, is my friend to cudgel you, my lord?" she said, clinging on to his arm in her usual manner. "My friend is papa, who thinks that you are a very decent fellow, considering your misfortune in being a lord at all. I know where all these words come from;—it is Mahomet M. Moss. There is nothing for it but to live them down with absolute silence."

"Nothing," he replied. "They are a nuisance, but we can do nothing."

But Lord Castlewell did in truth feel what was said about him. Was he not going to pay too dearly for his whistle? No doubt Rachel was all that she ought to be. She was honest, industrious, and high-spirited; and, according to his thinking, she sang more divinely than any woman of her time. And he so thought of her that he knew that she must be his countess or be nothing at all to him. To think of her in any other light would be an abomination to him. But yet, was it worth his while to make her Marchioness of Beaulieu? He could only get rid of his present engagement by some absolute change in his mode of life. For instance, he must shut himself up in a castle and devote himself entirely to a religious life. He must explain to her that circumstances would not admit his marrying, and must offer to pay her any sum of money that she or her father might think fit to name. If he wished to escape, this must be his way; but as he looked at her when she came off the stage, where he always attended her, he assured himself that he did not wish to escape.

CHAPTER XXXV.

MR. O'MAHONY'S APOLOGY.

Time went on and Parliament met. Mr. O'Mahony went before the Speaker's table and was sworn in. He was introduced by two brother Landleaguers, and really did take his place with some enthusiasm. He wanted to speak on the first day, but was judiciously kept silent by his colleagues. He expressed an idea that, until Ireland's wrongs had been redressed, there ought not to be a moment devoted to any other subject, and became very violent in his expressions of this opinion. But he was not long kept dumb. Great things were expected from his powers of speech, and, though he had to be brought to silence ignominiously on three or four occasions, still, at last some power of speech was permitted to him. There were those among his own special brethren who greatly admired him and praised him; but with others of the same class there was a shaking of the head and many doubts. With the House generally, I fear, laughter prevailed rather than true admiration. Mr. O'Mahony, no doubt, could speak well in a debating society or a music hall. Words came from his tongue sweeter than honey. But just at the beginning of the session, the Speaker was bound to put a limit even to Irish eloquence, and in this case was able to do so. As Mr. O'Mahony contrived to get upon his feet very frequently, either in asking a question or in endeavouring to animadvert on the answer given, there was something of a tussle between him and the authority in the chair. It did not take much above a week to make the Speaker thoroughly tired of this new member, and threats were used towards him of a nature which his joint Milesian and American nature could not stand. He was told of dreadful things which could be done to him. Though as yet he could not be turned out of the House, for the state of the young session had not as yet admitted of that new mode of torture, still, he could be named. "Let him name me. My name is Mr. O'Mahony." And Mr. O'Mahony was not a man who could be happy when he was quarrelling with all around him. He was soon worked into a violent passion, in which he made himself ridiculous, but when he had subsided, and the storm was past, he knew he had misbehaved, and was unhappy. And, as he was thoroughly honest, he could not be got to obey his leaders in everything. He wanted to abolish the Irish landlords, but he was desirous of abolishing them after some special plan of his own, and could hardly be got to work efficiently in harness together with others.

"Don't you think your father is making an ass of himself,—just a little, you know?"

This was said by Lord Castlewell to Rachel when the session was not yet a fortnight old, and made Rachel very unhappy. She did think that her father was making an ass of himself, but she did not like to be told of it. And much as she liked music herself, dear as was her own profession to her, still she felt that, to be a Member of Parliament, and to have achieved the power of making speeches there, was better than to run after opera singers. She loved the man who was going to marry her very well,—or rather, she intended to do so.

He was not to her "Love's young dream." But she intended that his lordship should become love's old reality. She felt that this would not become the case, if love's old reality were to tell her often that her father was an ass. Lord Castlewell's father was, she thought, making an ass of himself. She heard on different sides that he was a foolish, pompous old peer, who could hardly say bo to a goose; but it would not, she thought, become her to tell her future husband her own opinion on that matter. She saw no reason why he should be less reticent in his opinion as to her father. Of course he was older, and perhaps she did not think of that as much as she ought to have done. She ought also to have remembered that he was an earl, and she but a singing girl, and that something was due to him for the honour he was doing her. But of this she would take no account. She was to be his wife, and a wife ought to be equal to the husband. Such at least was her American view of the matter. In fact, her ideas on the matter ran as follows: My future husband is not entitled to call my father an ass because he is a lord, seeing that my father is a Member of Parliament. Nor is he entitled to call him so because he is an ass, because the same thing is true of his own father. And thus there came to be discord in her mind.

"I suppose all Parliament people make asses of themselves sometimes, Lords as well as Commons. I don't see how a man is to go on talking for ever about laws and landleagues, and those sort of things without doing so. It is all bosh to me. And so I should think it must be to you, as you don't do it. But I do not think that father is worse than anybody else; and I think that his words are sometimes very beautiful."

"Why, my dear, there is not a man about London who is not laughing at him."

"I saw in The Times the other day that he is considered a very true and a very honest man. Of course, they said that he talked nonsense sometimes; but if you put the honesty against the nonsense, he will be as good as anybody else."

"I don't think you understand, my dear. Honesty is not what they want."

"Oh!"

"But what they don't want especially is nonsense."

"Poor papa! But he doesn't mean to consult them as to what they want. His idea is that if everybody can be got to be honest this question may be settled among them. But it must be talked about, and he, at any rate, is eloquent. I have heard it said that there was not a more eloquent man in New York. I think he has got as many good gifts as anyone else."

In this way there rose some bad feeling. Lord Castlewell did think that there was something wanting in the manner in which he was treated by his bride. He was sure that he loved her, but he was sure also that when a lord marries a singing girl he ought to expect some special observance. And the fact that the singing girl's father was a Member of Parliament was much less to him than to her. He, indeed, would have been glad to have the father abolished altogether. But she had become very proud of her father since he had become a Member of Parliament. Her ideas of the British constitution were rather vague; but she thought that a Member of Parliament was at least as good as a lord who was not a peer. He had his wealth; but she was sure that he was too proud to think of that.

Just at this period, when the session was beginning, Rachel began to doubt the wisdom of what she was doing. The lord was, in truth, good enough for her. He was nearly double her age, but she had determined to disregard that. He was plain, but that was of no moment. He had run after twenty different women, but she could condone all that, because he had come at last to run after her. For his wealth she cared nothing,—or less than nothing, because by remaining single she could command wealth of her own;—wealth which she could control herself, and keep at her own banker's, which she suspected would not be the case with Lord Castlewell's money. But she had found the necessity of someone to lean upon when Frank Jones had told her that he would not marry her, and she had feared Mr. Moss so much that she had begun to think that he would, in truth, frighten her into doing some horrible thing. As Frank had deserted her, it would be better that she should marry somebody. Lord Castlewell had come, and she had felt that the fates were very good to her. She learned from the words of everybody around,—from her new friends at Covent Garden, and from her old enemies at "The Embankment," and from her father himself, that she was the luckiest singing girl at this moment known in Europe. "By G——, she'll get him!" such had been the exclamation made with horror by Mr. Moss, and the echo of it had found its way to her ears. The more Mr. Moss was annoyed, the greater ought to have been her delight. But,—but was she in truth delighted? As she came to think of the reality she asked herself what were the pleasures which were promised to her. Did she not feel that a week spent with Frank Jones in some little cottage would be worth a twelvemonth of golden splendour in the "Marble Halls" which Lord Castlewell was supposed to own? And why had Frank deserted her? Simply because he would not come with her and share her money. Frank, she told herself, was, in truth, a gallant fellow. She did love Frank. She acknowledged so much to herself again and again. And yet she was about to marry Lord Castlewell, simply because her doing so would be the severest possible blow to her old enemy, Mr. Moss.

Then she asked herself what would be best for her. She had made for herself a great reputation, and she did not scruple to tell herself that this had come from her singing. She thought very much of her singing, but very little of her beauty. A sort of prettiness did belong to her; a tiny prettiness which had sufficed to catch Frank Jones. She had laughed about her prettiness and her littleness a score of times with Ada and Edith, and also with Frank himself. There had been the three girls who had called themselves "Beauty and the Beast" and the "Small young woman." The reader will understand that it had not been Ada who had chosen those names; but then Ada was not given to be witty. Her prettiness, such as it was, had sufficed, and Frank had loved her dearly. Then had come her great triumph, and she knew not only that she could sing, but that the world had recognised her singing. "I am a great woman, as women go," she had said to herself. But her singing was to come to an end for ever and ever on the 1st of May next. She would be the Countess of Castlewell, and in process of time would be the Marchioness of Beaulieu. But she never again would be a great woman. She was selling all that for the marble halls.

Was she wise in what she was doing? She had lain awake one long morning striving to answer the question for herself. "If nobody else should come, of course I should be an ugly old maid," she said to herself; "but then Frank might perhaps come again,—Frank might come again,—if Mr. Moss did not intervene in the meantime." But at last she acknowledged to herself that she had given the lord a promise. She would keep her promise, but she could not bring herself to exult at the prospect. She must take care, however, that the lord should not triumph over her. The lord had called her father an ass. She certainly would say a rough word or two if he abused her father again.

This was the time of the "suspects." Mr. O'Mahony had already taken an opportunity of expressing an opinion in the House of Commons that every honest man, every patriotic man, every generous man, every man in fact who was worth his salt, was in Ireland locked up as a "suspect," and in saying so managed to utter very bitter words indeed respecting him who had the locking up of these gentlemen. Poor Mr. O'Mahony had no idea that he might have used with propriety as to this gentleman all the epithets of which he believed the "suspects" to be worthy; but instead of doing so he called him a "disreputable jailer." It is not pleasant to be called a disreputable jailer in the presence of all the best of one's fellow citizens, but the man so called in this instance only smiled. Mr. O'Mahony had certainly made himself ridiculous, and the whole House were loud in their clamours at the words used. But that did not suffice. The Speaker reprimanded Mr. O'Mahony and desired him to recall the language and apologise for it. Then there arose a loud debate, during which the member of the Government who had been assailed declared that Mr. O'Mahony had not as yet been quite long enough in the House to learn the little details of Parliamentary language; Mr. O'Mahony would no doubt soften down his eloquence in course of time. But the Speaker would not be content with this, and was about to order the sinner to be carried away by the Sergeant-at-Arms, when a friend on his right and a friend on his left, and a friend behind him, all whispered into his ear how easy it is to apologise in the House of Commons. "You needn't say he isn't a disreputable jailer, but only call him a distasteful warder;—anything will do." This came from the gentleman at Mr. O'Mahony's back, and the order for his immediate expulsion was ringing in his ears. He had been told that he was ridiculous, and could feel that it would be absurd to be carried somewhere into the dungeons. And the man whom he certainly detested at the present moment worse than any other scoundrel on the earth, had made a good-natured apology on his behalf. If he were carried away now, he could never come back again without a more serious apology. Then, farewell to all power of attacking the jailer. He did as the man whispered into his ear, and begged to substitute "distasteful warder" for the words which had wounded so cruelly the feelings of the right honourable gentleman. Then he looked round the House, showing that he thought that he had misbehaved himself. After that, during Mr. O'Mahony's career as a Member of Parliament, which lasted only for the session, he lost his self-respect altogether. He had been driven to withdraw the true wrath of his eloquence from him "at whose brow," as he told Rachel the next morning, "he had hurled his words with a force that had been found to be intolerable."

Mr. O'Mahony had undoubtedly made himself an ass again on this second, third, and perhaps tenth occasion. This was not the ass he had made himself on the occasion to which Lord Castlewell had referred. But yet he was a thoroughly honest, patriotic man, desirous only of the good of his country, and wishing for nothing for himself. Is it not possible that as much may be said for others, who from day to day so violently excite our spleen, as to make us feel that special Irishmen selected for special constituencies are not worthy to be ranked with men? You shall take the whole House of Commons, indifferent as to the side on which they sit,—some six hundred and thirty out of the number,—and will find in conversation that the nature of the animal, the absurdity, the selfishness, the absence of all good qualifies, are taken for granted as matters admitting of no dispute. But here was Mr. O'Mahony, as hot a Home-Ruler and Landleaguer as any of them, who was undoubtedly a gentleman,—though an American gentleman. Can it be possible that we are wrong in our opinions respecting the others of the set?

Rachel heard it all the next day, and, living as she did among Italians and French, and theatrical Americans, and English swells, could not endeavour to make the apology which I have just made for the Irish Brigade generally. She knew that her father had made an ass of himself. All the asinine proportions of the affair had been so explained to her as to leave no doubt on her mind as to the matter. But the more she was sure of it, the more resolved she became that Lord Castlewell should not call her father an ass. She might do so,—and undoubtedly would after her own fashion,—but no such privilege should be allowed to him.

"Oh! father, father," she said to him the next morning, "don't you think you've made a goose of yourself?"

"Yes, I do."

"Then, don't do it any more."

"Yes, I shall. It isn't so very easy for a man not to make a goose of himself in that place. You've got to sit by and do nothing for a year or two. It is very difficult. A man cannot afford to waste his time in that manner. There is all Ireland to be regenerated, and I have to learn the exact words which the prudery of the House of Commons will admit. Of course I have made a goose of myself; but the question is whether I did not make a knave of myself in apologising for language which was undoubtedly true. Only think that a man so brutal, so entirely without feelings, without generosity, without any touch of sentiment, should be empowered by the Queen of England to lock up, not only every Irishman, but every American also, and to keep them there just as long as he pleases! And he revels in it. I do believe that he never eats a good breakfast unless half-a-dozen new 'suspects' are reported by the early police in the morning; and I am not to call such a man a 'disreputable jailer.' I may call him a 'distasteful warder.' It's a disgrace to a man to sit in such a House and in such company. Of course I was a goose, but I was only a goose according to the practices of that special duck-pond." Mr. O'Mahony, as he said this, walked about angrily, with his hands in his breeches' pockets, and told himself that no honest man could draw the breath of life comfortably except in New York.

"I don't know much about it, father," said Rachel, "but I think you'd better cut and run. Your twenty men will never do any good here. Everybody hates them who has got any money, and their only friends are just men as Mr. Pat Carroll, of Ballintubber."

Then, later in the day, Lord Castlewell called to drive his bride in the Park. He had so far overcome family objections as to have induced his sister, Lady Augusta Montmorency, to accompany him. Lady Augusta had been already introduced to Rachel, but had not been much prepossessed. Lady Augusta was very proud of her family, was a religious woman, and was anything but contented with her brother's manner of life. But it was no doubt better that he should marry Rachel than not be married at all; and therefore Lady Augusta had allowed herself to be brought to accompany the singing girl upon this occasion. She was, in truth, an uncommonly good young woman; not beautiful, not clever, but most truly anxious for the welfare of her brother. It had been represented to her that her brother was over head and ears in love with the young lady, and looking at the matter all round, she had thought it best to move a little from her dignity so as to take her sister-in-law coldly by the hand. It need hardly be said that Rachel did not like being taken coldly by the hand, and, with her general hot mode of expression, would have declared that she hated Augusta Montmorency. Now, the two entered the room together, and Rachel kissed Lady Augusta, while she gave only her hand to Lord Castlewell. But there was something in her manner on such occasions which was intended to show affection,—and did show it very plainly. In old days she could decline to kiss Frank in a manner that would set Frank all on fire. It was as much as to say—of course you've a right to it, but on this occasion I don't mean to give it to you. But Lord Castlewell was not imaginative, and did not think of all this. Rachel had intended him to think of it.

"Oh, my goodness!" began the lord, "what a mess your father did make of it last night." And he frowned as he spoke.

Rachel, as an intended bride—about to be a bride in two or three months—did not like to be frowned at by the man who was to marry her. "That's as people may think, my lord," she said.

"You don't mean to say that you don't think he did make a mess of it?"

"Of course he abused that horrid man. Everybody is abusing him."

"As for that, I'm not going to defend the man." For Lord Castlewell, though by no means a strong politician, was a Tory, and unfortunately found himself agreeing with Rachel in abusing the members of the Government.

"Then why do you say that father made a mess of it?"

"Everybody is talking about it. He has made himself ridiculous before the whole town."

"What! Lord Castlewell," exclaimed Rachel.

"I do believe your father is the best fellow going; but he ought not to touch politics. He made a great mistake in getting into the House. It is a source of misery to everyone connected with him."

"Or about to be connected with him," said Lady Augusta, who had not been appeased by the flavour of Rachel's kiss.

"There's time enough to think about it yet," said Rachel.

"No, there's not," said Lord Castlewell, who intended to express in rather a gallant manner his intention of going on with the marriage.

"But I can assure you there is," said Rachel, "ample time. There shall be no time for going on with it, if my father is to be abused. As it happens, you don't agree with my father in politics. I, as a woman, should have to call myself as belonging to your party, if we be ever married. I do not know what that party is, and care very little, as I am not a politician myself. And I suppose if we were married, you would take upon yourself to abuse my father for his politics, as he might abuse you. But while he is my father, and you are not my husband, I will not bear it. No, thank you, Lady Augusta, I will not drive out to-day. 'Them's my sentiments,' as people say; and perhaps your brother had better think them over while there's time enough." So saying, she did pertinaciously refuse to be driven by the noble lord on that occasion.

CHAPTER XXXVI.

RACHEL WRITES ABOUT HER LOVERS.

What a dear fellow is Frank Jones. That was Rachel's first idea when Lord Castlewell left her. It was an idea she had driven from out of her mind with all the strength of which she was capable from the moment in which his lordship had been accepted. "He never shall be dear to me again," she had said, thinking of what would be due to her husband; and she had disturbed herself, not without some success, in expelling Frank Jones from her heart. It was not right that the future Lady Castlewell should be in love with Frank Jones. But now she could think about Frank Jones as she pleased. What a dear fellow is Frank Jones! Now, it certainly was the case that Lord Castlewell was not a dear fellow at all. He was many degrees better than Mr. Moss, but for a dear fellow!—She only knew one. And she did tell herself now that the world could hardly be a happy world to her without one dear fellow,—at any rate, to think of.

But he had positively refused to marry her! But yet she did not in the least doubt his love. "I'm a little bit of a thing," she said to herself; "but then he likes little bits of things. At any rate, he likes one."

And then she had thought ever so often over the cause which had induced Frank to leave her. "Why shouldn't he take my money, since it is here to be taken? It is all a man's beastly pride!" But then again she contradicted the assertion to herself. It was a man's pride, but by no means beastly. "If I were a man," she went on saying, "I don't think I should like to pay for my coat and waistcoat with money which a woman had earned; and I should like it the less, because things at home, in my own house, were out of order." And then again she thought of it all. "I should be an idiot to do that. Everybody would say so. What! to give up my whole career for a young man's love,—merely that I might have his arm round my waist? I to do it, who am the greatest singer of my day, and who can, if I please, be Countess of Castlewell to-morrow! That were losing the world for love, indeed! Can any man's love be worth it? And I am going on to become such a singer as the world does not possess another like me. I know it. I feel it daily in the increasing sweetness of the music made. I see it in the wakeful eagerness of men's ears, waiting for some charm of sound,—some wonderful charm,—which they hardly dare to expect, but which always comes at last. I see it in the eyes of the women, who are hardly satisfied that another should be so great. It comes in the worship of the people about the theatre, who have to tell me that I am their god, and keep the strings of the sack from which money shall be poured forth upon them. I know it is coming, and yet I am to marry the stupid earl because I have promised him. And he thinks, too, that his reflected honours will be more to me than all the fame that I can earn for myself. To go down to his castle, and to be dumb for ever, and perhaps to be mother of some hideous little imp who shall be the coming marquis. Everything to be abandoned for that,—even Frank Jones. But Frank Jones is not to be had! Oh, Frank Jones, Frank Jones! If you could come and live in such a marble hall as I could provide for you! It should have all that we want, but nothing more. But it could not have that self-respect which it is a man's first duty in life to achieve." But the thought that she had arrived at was this,—that with all her best courtesy she would tell the Earl of Castlewell to look for a bride elsewhere.

But she would do nothing in a hurry. The lord had been very civil to her, and she, on her part, would be as civil to the lord as circumstances admitted. And she had an idea in her mind that she could not at a moment's notice dismiss this lord and be as she was before. Her engagement with the lord was known to all the musical world. The Mosses and Socanis spent their mornings, noons, and nights in talking about it,—as she well knew. And she was not quite sure that the lord had given her such a palpable cause for quarrelling as to justify her in throwing him over. And when she had as it were thrown him over in her mind, she began to think of other causes for regret. After all, it was something to be Countess of Castlewell. She felt that she could play the part well, in spite of all Lady Augusta's coldness. She would soon live the Lady Augusta down into a terrible mediocrity. And then again, there would be dreams of Frank Jones. Frank Jones had been utterly banished. But if an elderly gentleman is desirous that his future wife shall think of no Frank Jones, he had better not begin by calling the father of that young lady a ridiculous ass.

She was much disturbed in mind, and resolved that she would seek counsel from her old correspondent, Frank's sister.

"Dearest Edith," she began,

I know you will let me write to you in my troubles. I am in such a twitter of mind in consequence of my various lovers that I do not know where to turn; nor do I quite know whom I am to call lover number one. Therefore, I write to you to ask advice. Dear old Frank used to be lover number one. Of course I ought to call him now Mr. Francis Jones, because another lover is really lover number one. I am engaged to marry, as you are well aware, no less a person than the Earl of Castlewell; and, if all things were to go prosperously with me, I should in a short time be the Marchioness of Beaulieu. Did you ever think of the glory of being an absolutely live marchioness? It is so overwhelming as to be almost too much for me. I think that I should not cower before my position, but that I should, on the other hand, endeavour to soar so high that I should be consumed by my own flames. Then there is lover number three—Mr. Moss—who, I do believe, loves me with the truest affection of them all. I have found him out at last. He wishes to be the legal owner of all the salaries which the singer of La Beata may possibly earn; and he feels that, in spite of all that has come and gone, it is yet possible. Of all the men who ever forgave, Mr. Moss is the most forgiving.

Now, which am I to take of these three? Of course, if you are the honest girl I take you to be, you will write back word that one, at any rate, is not in the running. Mr. Francis Jones has no longer the honour. But what if I am sure that he loves me; and what, again, if I am sure that he is the only one I love? Let this be quite—quite—between ourselves. I am beginning to think that because of Frank Jones I cannot marry that gorgeous earl. What if Frank Jones has spoiled me altogether? Would you wish to see me on this account delivered over to Mr. Mahomet Moss as a donkey between two bundles of hay?

Tell me what you think of it. He won't take my money. But suppose I earn my money for another season or two? Would not your Irish brutalities be then over; and my father's eloquence, and the eccentricities of the other gentlemen? And would not your brother and your father have in some way settled their affairs? Surely a little money won't then be amiss, though it may have come from the industry of a hard-worked young woman.

Of course I am asking for mercy, because I am absolutely devoted to a certain young man. You need not tell him that in so many words; but I do not see why I am to be ashamed of my devotion,—seeing that I was not ashamed of my engagement, and boasted of it to all the world. And I have done nothing since to be ashamed of.

You have never told me a word of your young man; but the birds of the air are more communicative than some friends. A bird of the air has told me of you, and of Ada also, and had made me understand that from Ada has come all that sweetness which was to be expected from her. But from you has not come that compliance with your fate in life which circumstances have demanded.

Your affectionate friend,

Rachel O'mahony.

It could not but be the case that Edith should be gratified by the receipt of such a letter as this. Frank was now at home, and was terribly down in the mouth. Boycotting had lost all its novelty at Morony Castle. His sisters had begun to feel that it was a pleasant thing to have their butter made for them, and pleasant also not to be introduced to a leg of mutton till it appeared upon the table. Frank, too, had become very tired of the work which fell to his lot, though he had been relieved in the heaviest labours of the farm by "Emergency" men, who had been sent to him from various parts of Ireland. But he was thoroughly depressed in heart, as also was his father. Months had passed by since Pat Carroll had stood in the dock at Galway ready for his trial. He was now, in March, still kept in Galway jail under remand from the magistrates. A great clamour was made in the county upon the subject. Florian's murder had stirred all those who were against the League to feel that the Government should be supported. But there had been a mystery attached to that other murder, perpetrated in the court, which had acted strongly on the other side,—on behalf of the League. The murder of Terry Carroll at the moment in which he was about to give evidence,—false evidence, as the Leaguers said,—against his brother was a great triumph to them. It was used as an argument why Pat Carroll should be no longer confined, while Florian's death had been a reason why he never should be released at all. All this kept the memory of Florian's death, and the constant thought of it, still fresh in the minds of them all at Morony Castle, together with the poverty which had fallen upon them, had made the two men weary of their misfortunes. Under such misfortunes, when continued, men do become more weary than women. But Edith thought there would be something in the constancy of Rachel's love to cheer her brother, and therefore the letter made her contented if not happy.

For herself, she said to herself no love could cheer her. Captain Clayton still hung about Tuam and Headford, but his presence in the neighbourhood was always to be attributed to the evidence of which he was in search as to Florian's death. It seemed now with him that the one great object of his heart was the unravelling of that murder. "It was no mystery," as he said over and over again in Edith's hearing. He knew very well who had fired the rifle. He could see, in his mind's eye, the slight form of the crouching wretch as he too surely took his aim from the temporary barricade. The passion had become so strong with him of bringing the man to justice that he almost felt, that between him and his God he could swear to having seen it. And yet he knew that it was not so. To have the hanging of that man would be to him a privilege only next to that of possessing Edith Jones. And he was a sanguine man, and did believe that in process of time both privileges would be vouchsafed to him.

But Edith was less sanguine. She could not admit to herself the possibility that there should be successful love between her and her hero. His presence there in the neighbourhood of her home was stained by constant references to her brother's blood. And then, though there was no chance for Ada, Ada's former hopes militated altogether against Edith. "He had better go away and just leave us to ourselves," she said to herself. But yet neither was she nor was Ada sunk so low in heart as her father and her brother.

"Frank," she said to her brother, "whom do you think this letter is from?" and she held up in her hand Rachel's epistle.

"I care not at all, unless it be from that most improbable of all creatures, a tenant coming to pay his rent."

"Nothing quite so beautiful as that."

"Or from someone who has evidence to give about some of these murders that are going on?"—A Mr. Morris from the other side of the lake, in County Mayo, had just been killed, and the minds of men were now disturbed with this new horror.—"Anybody can kill anybody who has a taste in that direction. What a country for a man with his family to pitch upon and live in! And that all this should have been kept under so long by policemen and right-thinking individuals, and then burst out like a subterranean fire all over the country, because the hope has been given them of getting their land for nothing! In order to indulge in wholesale robbery they are willing at a moment's notice to undertake wholesale murder."

After listening to words such as these, Edith found it impossible to introduce Rachel's letter on the spur of the moment.

Rachel, before the end of March, received the following letter from her friend, but she received it in bed. The whole world of Covent Garden Theatre had been thrown into panic-stricken dismay by the fact that Miss O'Mahony had something the matter with her throat. This was the second attack, the first having been so short as to have caused no trepidations in the world of music; but this was supposed to be sterner in its nature, and to have caused already great alarm. Before March was over it was published to the world at large that Miss O'Mahony would not be able to sing during the forthcoming week.

In this catastrophe her lordly lover was of course the most sedulous of attendants. In truth he was so, though when we last met him and his bride together he had made himself very disagreeable. Rachel had then answered him in such language as to make her think it impossible that he should not quarrel with her; but still here he was, constant at her chamber door. Whether his constancy was due to his position about the theatre or to his ardour as a lover, she did not know; but in either case it troubled her somewhat, and interfered with her renewed dreams about Frank. Then came the following letter from Frank's sister:

Dear Rachel,

I am not very much surprised, though I was a little, that you should have accepted Lord Castlewell; but I had not quite known the ins and outs of it, not having been there to see. Frank says that the separation had certainly come from him, because he could not bring himself to burden your prosperity with the heavy load of his misfortunes. Poor fellow! They are very heavy. They would have made you both miserable for awhile, unless you could have agreed to postpone your marriage. Why should it not have been postponed?

But Lord Castlewell came in the way, and I supposed him naturally to be as beautiful and gracious as he is gorgeous and rich. But though you say nothing about him there does creep out from your letter some kind of idea that he is not quite so beautiful in your eyes as was poor Frank. Remember that poor Frank has to wear two blue shirts a week and no more, in order to save the washing! How many does Lord Castlewell wear? How many will he wear when he is a marquis?

But at any rate it does seem to be the case that you and the earl are not as happy together as your best friends could wish. We had understood that the earl was ready to expire for love at the sound of every note. Has he slackened in his admiration so as to postpone his expiring to the close of every song? Or why is it that Frank should be allowed again to come up and trouble your dreams?

You are so fond of joking that it is almost impossible for a poor steady-going, boycotted young woman to follow you to the end. Of course I understand that what you say about Mr. Moss is altogether a joke. But then what you say about Frank is, I am sure, not a joke. If you love him the best, as I am sure you do—so very much the best as to disregard the marble halls—I advise you, in the gentlest manner possible, to tell the marble halls that they are not wanted. It cannot be right to marry one man when you say that you love another as you do Frank. Of course he will wait if you like to wait. All I can say is, that no man loves a girl better than he loves you.

We are very much down in the world at the present. We have literally no money. Papa's relatives have given their money to him to invest, and he has laid it out on the property here. Nobody was thought to have done so well as he till lately; but now they cannot get their interest, and, of course, they are impatient. Commissioners have sat in the neighbourhood, and have reduced the rents all round. But they can't reduce what doesn't exist. There are tenants who I suppose will pay. Pat Carroll could certainly have done so. But then papa's share in the property will be reduced almost to nothing. He will not get above five shillings out of every twenty shillings of rent, such as it was supposed to be when he bought it. I don't understand all this, and I am sure I cannot make you do so.

I have nothing to tell about my young man, as you call him, except that he cannot be mine. I fancy that girls are not fond of writing about their young men when they don't belong to them. Frank, at any rate, is yours, if you will take him; and you can write about him with an open heart. I cannot do so. Think of poor Florian and his horrid death. Is this a time for marriage,—if it were otherwise possible,—which it is not?

God bless you, dear Rachel. Let me hear from you again soon. I have said nothing to Frank as yet. I attempted it this morning, but was stopped. You can imagine that he, poor fellow, is not very happy.—Yours very affectionately,

Edith Jones.

Rachel read the letter on her sick bed, and as soon as it was read Lord Castlewell came to her. There was always a nurse there, but Lord Castlewell was supposed to be able to see the patient, and on one occasion had been accompanied by his sister. It was all done in the most proper form imaginable, much to Rachel's disgust. Incapable as she was in her present state of carrying on any argument, she was desirous of explaining to Lord Castlewell that he was not to hold himself as bound to marry her. "If you think that father is an ass, you had better say so outright, and let there be an end of it." She wished to speak to him after this fashion. But she could not say it in the presence of the nurse and of Lady Augusta. But Lord Castlewell's conduct to herself made her more anxious than ever to say something of the kind. He was very civil, even tender, in his inquiries, but he was awfully frigid. She could tell from his manner that that last speech of hers was rankling in his bosom as the frigid words fell from his lips. He was waiting for some recovery,—a partial recovery would be better than a whole one,—and then he would speak his mind. She wanted to speak her mind first, but she could hardly do so with her throat in its present condition.

She had no other friend than her father, no other friend to take her part with her lovers. And she had, too, fallen into such a state that she could not say much to him. According to the orders of the physician, she was not to interest herself at all about anything.

"I wonder whether the man was ever engaged to two or three lovers at once," she said to herself, alluding to the doctor. "He knows at any rate of Lord Castlewell, and does he think that I am not to trouble myself about him?"

She had a tablet under her pillow, which she took out and wrote on it certain instructions. "Dear father, C. and I quarrelled before I was ill at all, and now he comes here just as though nothing had happened. He said you made an ass of yourself in the House of Commons. I won't have it, and mean to tell him so; but I can't talk. Won't you tell him from me that I shall expect him to beg my pardon, and that I shall never hear anything of the kind again. It must come to this. Your own R." This was handed to Mr. O'Mahony by Rachel that very day before he went down to the House of Commons.

"But, my dear!" he said. Rachel only shook her head. "I can hardly say all this about myself. I don't care twopence whether he thinks me an ass or not."

"But I do," said Rachel on the tablet.

"He is an earl, and has wonderful privileges, as well as a great deal of money."

"Marble halls and impudence," said Rachel on the tablet. Then Mr. O'Mahony, feeling that he ought to leave her in peace, made her a promise, and went his way. At Covent Garden that evening he met the noble lord, having searched for him in vain at Westminster. He was much more likely to find Lord Castlewell among the singers of the day, than with the peers; but of these things Mr. O'Mahony hardly understood all the particulars.

"Well, O'Mahony, how is your charming daughter?"

"My daughter is not inclined to be charming at all. I do hope she may be getting better, but at present she is bothering her head about you."

"It is natural that she should think of me a little sometimes," said the flattered lord.

"She has written me a message which she says that I am to deliver. Now mind, I don't care about it the least in the world." Here the lord looked very grave. "She says that you called me an ass. Well, I am to you, and you're an ass to me. I am sure you won't take it as any insult, neither do I. She wants you to promise that you won't call me an ass any more. Of course it would follow that I shouldn't be able to call you one. We should both be hampered, and the truth would suffer. But as she is ill, perhaps it would be better that you should say that you didn't mean it."

But this was not at all Lord Castlewell's view of the matter. Though he had been very glib with his tongue in calling O'Mahony an ass, he did not at all like the compliment as paid back to him by his father-in-law. And there was something which he did not quite understand in the assertion that the truth would suffer. All the world was certain that Mr. O'Mahony was an ass. He had been turned out of the House of Commons only yesterday for saying that the Speaker was quite wrong, and sticking to it. There was not the slightest doubt in the world about it. But his lordship knew his gamut, which was all that he pretended to know, and never interfered with matters of which he was ignorant. He was treated with the greatest respect at Covent Garden, and nobody ever suspected him of being an ass. And then he had it in his mind to speak very seriously to Rachel as soon as she might be well enough to hear him. "You have spoken to me in a manner, my dear, which I am sure you did not intend." He had all the words ready prepared on a bit of paper in his pocket-book. And he was by no means sure but that the little quarrel might even yet become permanent. He had discussed it frequently with Lady Augusta, and Lady Augusta rather wished that it might become permanent. And Lord Castlewell was not quite sure that he did not wish it also. The young lady had a way of speaking about her own people which was not to be borne. And now she had been guilty of the gross indecency of sending a message to him by her own father,—the very man whom he called an ass. And the man in return only laughed and called him an ass.

But Lord Castlewell knew the proprieties of life. Here was this—girl whom he had proposed to marry, a sad invalid at the moment. The doctor had, in fact, given him but a sad account of the case. "She has strained her voice continually till it threatens to leave her," said the doctor; "I do not say that it will be so, but it may. Her best chance will be to abandon all professional exertions till next year." Then the doctor told him that he had not as yet taken upon himself to hint anything of all this to Miss O'Mahony.

Lord Castlewell was puzzled in the extreme. If the lady lost her voice and so became penniless and without a profession; and if he in such case were to throw her over, and leave her unmarried, what would the world say of him? Would it be possible then to make the world understand that he had deserted her, not on account of her illness, but because she had not liked to hear her father called an ass. And had not Rachel already begun the battle in a manner intended to show that she meant to be the victor? Could it be possible that she herself was desirous of backing out. There was no knowing the extent of the impudence to which these Americans would not go! No doubt she had, by the use of intemperate language on the occasion when she would not be driven out in the carriage, given him ample cause for a breach. To tell the truth, he had thought then that a breach would be expedient. But she had fallen ill, and it was incumbent on him to be tender and gentle. Then, from her very sick bed, she had sent him this impudent message.

And it had been delivered so impudently! "The truth would suffer!" He was sure that there was a meaning in the words intended to signify that he, Lord Castlewell, was and must be an ass at all times. Then he asked himself whether he was an ass because he did not quite understand O'Mahony's argument. Why did the truth suffer? As to his being an ass,—O'Mahony being an ass,—he was sure that there was no doubt about that. All the world said so. The House of Commons knew it,—and the newspapers. He had been turned out of the House for saying the Speaker was wrong, and not apologising for having uttered such words. And he, Lord Castlewell, had so expressed himself only to the woman who was about to be his wife. Then she had had the incredible folly to tell her father, and the father had told him that under certain circumstances the "truth must suffer." He did not quite understand it, but was sure that Mr. O'Mahony had meant to say that they were two fools together.

He was not at all ashamed of marrying a singing girl. It was the thing he would be sure to do. And he thought of some singing girls before his time, and of his time also, whom it would be an honour for such as him to marry. But he would degrade himself—so he felt—by the connection with an advanced Landleaguing Member of Parliament. He looked round the lot of them, and he assured himself that there was not one from whose loins an English nobleman could choose a wife without disgrace. It was most unfortunate,—so he told himself. The man had not become Member of Parliament till quite the other day. He had not even opened his mouth in Parliament till the engagement had been made. And now, among them all, this O'Mahony was the biggest ass. And yet Lord Castlewell found himself quite unable to hold his own with the Irish member when the Irish member was brought to attack him. He certainly would have made Rachel's conduct a fair excuse for breaking with her,—only that she was ill.

If he could have known the state of Rachel's mind there might have been an end to his troubles. She had now, at length, been made thoroughly wretched by hearing the truth from the doctor,—or what the doctor believed to be the truth. "Miss O'Mahony, I had better tell you, your voice has gone, at any rate for a year."

"For a year!" The hoarse, angry, rusty whisper came forth from her, and in spite of its hoarseness and rustiness was audible enough.

"I fear so. For heaven's sake don't talk; use your tablet." Rachel drew the tablet from under her pillow and dashed it across the room. The doctor picked it up, and, with a kind smile and a little caressing motion of his hand, put it again back under the pillow. Rachel buried her head amidst the bedclothes and sobbed bitterly. "Try to make yourself happy in remembering how you have succeeded," said the doctor.

"It won't be back just the same," she wrote on her tablet.

"It is in God's hands," said the doctor. There came not another word from Rachel, either by her tablet or by any struggle at speech. The doctor, having made what attempts at comfort he could, went his way. Then her father, who had been in and out constantly, came to his daughter. He had not been present when she threw the tablet away, but he knew what the doctor had said to her.

"My pet," he said. But she made no attempt to answer him. A year! At her time of life a year is an eternity. And then this doctor had only told her that her voice was in God's hands. She could talk to herself without any effort. "When they say that they always condemn you. When the doctor tells you that you are in God's hands he means the Devil's."

She had been so near the gods and goddesses, and now she was no more than any other poor woman. She might be less, as her face had begun to wither with her voice. She had all but succeeded; as for her face, as for the mere look of her, let it go. She told herself that she cared nothing for her appearance. What was Lord Castlewell to her,—what even was Frank's love? To stand on the boards of the theatre and become conscious of the intense silence of the crowd before her,—so intense because the tone of her voice was the one thing desired by all the world. And then to open her mouth and to let the music go forth and to see the ears all erect, as she fancied she could, so that not a sound should be lost,—should not be harvested by the hungry hearers! That was to be a very god! As she told herself of all her regrets, there was not a passing sorrow given to Lord Castlewell. And what of the other man? "Oh, Frank, dear Frank, you will know it all now. There need be no more taking money." But she did take some comfort at last in that promise of God's hands. When she had come, as it were, to the bitterest moment of her grief, she told herself that, though it might be even at the end of a whole year, there was something to be hoped.

CHAPTER XXXVIII.

LORD CASTLEWELL IS MUCH TROUBLED.

When her father had been with her half-an-hour, and was beginning to think that he could escape and go down to the House,—and he had a rod in pickle for the Speaker's back, such a rod that the Speaker's back should be sore for the rest of the session—Rachel began her lengthened conversation with him. In the last half-hour she had made up her mind as to what she would say. But the conversation was so long and intricate, being necessarily carried on by means of her tablet, that poor O'Mahony's rod was losing all its pickle. "Father, you must go and see Lord Castlewell at once."

"I think, my dear, he understood me altogether when I saw him before, and he seemed to agree with me. I told him I didn't mind being called an ass, but that you were so absurd as to dislike it. In fact, I gave him to understand that we were three asses; but I don't think he'll say it again."

"It isn't about that at all," said the tablet.

"What else do you want?"

Then Rachel went to work and wrote her demand with what deliberation she could assume.

"You must go and tell him that I don't want to marry him at all. He has been very kind, and you mustn't tell him that he's an ass any more. But it won't do. He has proposed to marry me because he has wanted a singing girl; and I think I should have done for him,—only I can't sing."

Then the father replied, having put himself into such a position on the bed as to read the tablet while Rachel was filling it: "But that'll all come right in a very short time."

"It can't, and it won't. The doctor says a year; but he knows nothing about it, and says it's in God's hands. He means by that it's as bad as it can be."

"But, my dear—"

"I tell you it must be so."

"But you are engaged. He would never be so base a man as to take your word at such a moment as this. Of course he couldn't do it. If you had had small-pox, or anything horrible like that, he would not have been justified."

"I'm as ugly as ever I can be," said the tablet, "and as poor a creature." Then she stopped her pencil for a moment.

"Of course he's engaged to you. Why, my dear, I'd have to cowhide him if he said a word of the kind."

"Oh, no!" said the tablet with frantic energy.

"But you see if I wouldn't! You see if I don't! I suppose they think a lord isn't to be cowhided in this country. I guess I'll let 'em know the difference."

"But I don't love him," said the tablet.

"Goodness gracious me!"

"I don't. When he spoke of you in that way I began to think of it, and I found I hated him. I do hate him like poison, and I want you to tell him so."

"That will be very disagreeable," said the father.

"Never mind the disagreeables. You tell him so. I tell you he won't be the worst pleased of the lot of us. He wanted a singer, and not a Landleaguer's daughter; now he hasn't got the singer, but has got the Landleaguer's daughter. And I'll tell you something else I want—"

"What do you want?" asked the father, when her hand for a moment ceased to scrawl.

"I want," she said, "Frank Jones. Now you know all about it."

Then she hid her face beneath the bedclothes, and refused to write another word.

He went on talking to her till he had forgotten the Speaker and the rod in pickle. He besought her to think better of it; and if not that, just at present to postpone any action in the matter. He explained to her how very disagreeable it would be to him to have to go to the lord with such a message as she now proposed. But she only enhanced the vehemence of her order by shaking her head as her face lay buried in the pillow.

"Let it wait for one fortnight," said the father.

"No!" said the girl, using her own voice for the effort.

Then the father slowly took himself off, and making his way to the House of Commons, renewed his passion as he went, and had himself again turned out before he had been half-an-hour in the House.

The earl was sitting alone after breakfast two or three days subsequently, thinking in truth of his difficulty with Rachel. It had come to be manifest to him that he must marry the girl unless something terrible should occur to her. "She might die," he said to himself very sadly, trying to think of cases in which singers had died from neglected throats. And it did make him very sad. He could not think of the perishing of that magnificent treble without great grief; and, after his fashion, he did love her personally. He did not know that he could ever love anyone very much better. He had certainly thought that it would be a good thing that his father and mother and sister should go and live in foreign lands,—in order, in short, that they might never more be heard of to trouble him,—but he did not even contemplate their deaths, so sweet-minded was he. But in the first fury of his love he had thought how nice it would be to be left with his singing girl, and no one to trouble him. Now there came across him an idea that something was due to the Marquis of Beaulieu,—something, that is, to his own future position; and what could he do with a singing girl for his wife who could not sing?

He was unhappy as he thought of it all, and would ever and again, as he meditated, be stirred up to mild anger when he remembered that he had been told that "the truth would suffer." He had intended, at any rate, that his singing girl should be submissive and obedient while in his hands. But here had been an outbreak of passion! And here was this confounded O'Mahony ready to make a fool of himself at a moment's notice before all the world. At that moment the door was opened and Mr. O'Mahony was shown into the room.

"Oh! dear," exclaimed the lord, "how do you do, Mr. O'Mahony? I hope I see you well."

"Pretty well. But upon my word, I don't know how to tell you what I've got to say."

"Has anything gone wrong with Rachel?"

"Not with her illness,—which, however, does not seem to improve. The poor girl! But you'll say she's gone mad."

"What do you mean by that?"

"I really hardly know how I ought to break it. You must have learned by this time that Rachel is a girl determined to have her own way."

"Well; well; well!"

"And, upon my word, when I think of myself, I feel that I have nothing to do but what she bids me."

"It's more than you do for the Speaker, Mr. O'Mahony."

"Yes, it is; I admit that. But Rachel, though she is inclined to be tyrannical, is not such a downright positive old blue-bottle nincompoop as that white-wigged king of kings. Rachel is bad; but even you can't say that she is bad enough to be Speaker of the House of Commons. My belief is, that he'll come to be locked up yet."

"We have all the highest opinion of him."

"It's because you like to be sat upon. You don't want to be allowed to say bo to a goose. I have often heard in my own country—"

"But you call yourself an Irishman, Mr. O'Mahony."

"Never did so in my life. They called me so over there when they wanted to return me to hold my tongue in that House of Torment; but I guess it will puzzle the best Englishman going to find out whether I'm an American or an Irishman. They did something over there to make me an American; but they did nothing to unmake me as an Irishman. And there I am, member for Cavan; and it will go hard with me if I don't break that Speaker's heart before I've done with him. What! I ain't to say that he goes wrong when he never goes right by any chance?"

"Have you come here this morning, Mr. O'Mahony, to abuse the Speaker?"

"By no means. It was you who threw the Speaker in my teeth."

Lord Castlewell did acknowledge to himself his own imprudence.

"I came here to tell you about my daughter, and upon my word I shall find it more difficult than anything I may have to say to the Speaker. I have the most profound contempt for the Speaker."

"Perhaps he returns it."

"I don't believe he does, or he wouldn't make so much of me as to turn me out of the House. When a man finds it necessary to remove an enemy, let the cause be what it may, he cannot be said to despise that enemy. Now, I wouldn't give a puff of breath to turn him out of the House. In truth, I despise him too much."

"He is to be pitied," said the lord, with a gentle touch of irony.

"I'll tell you what, Lord Castlewell—"

"Don't go on about the Speaker, Mr. O'Mahony,—pray don't."

"You always begin,—but I won't. I didn't come here to speak about him at all. And the Chairman of Committees is positively worse. You know there's a creature called Chairman of Committees?"

"Now, Mr. O'Mahony, I really must beg that you will fight your political battles anywhere but here. I'm not a politician. How is your charming daughter this morning?"

"She is anything but charming. I hardly know what to make of her, but I find that I am always obliged to do what she tells me." There was another allusion to the Speaker on the lord's tongue, but he restrained himself. "She has sent me here to say that she wants the marriage to be broken off."

"Good Heavens!"

"She does. She says that you intend to marry her because she's a singing girl;—and now she can't sing."

"Not exactly that," said the lord.

"And she thinks she oughtn't to have accepted you at all,—that's the truth." The lord's face became very long. "I think myself that it was a little too hurried. I don't suppose you quite knew your own minds."

"If Miss O'Mahony repents—"

"Well, Miss O'Mahony does repent. She has got something into her head that I can't quite explain. She thought that she'd do for a countess very well as long as she was on the boards of a theatre. But now that she's to be relegated to private life she begins to feel that she ought to look after someone about her own age."

"Oh, indeed! Is this her message?"

"Well; yes. It is her message. I shouldn't in such a matter invent it all if she hadn't sent me. I don't know, now I think of it, that she did say anything about her own age. But yet she did," remarked Mr. O'Mahony, calling to mind the assertion made by Rachel that she wanted Frank Jones. Frank Jones was about her own age, whereas the lord was as old as her father.

"Upon my word, I am much obliged to Miss O'Mahony."

"She certainly has meant to be as courteous as she knows how," said Mr. O'Mahony.

"Perhaps on your side of the water they have different ideas of courtesy. The young lady sends me word that now she means to retire from the stage she finds I am too old for her."

"Not that at all," said Mr. O'Mahony. But he said it in an apologetic tone, as though admitting the truth.

Lord Castlewell, as he sat there for a few moments, acknowledged to himself that Rachel possessed certain traits of character which had something fine about them, from whatever side of the water she had come. He was a reasonable man, and he considered that there was a way made for him to escape from this trouble which was not to have been expected. Had Rachel been an English girl, or an Italian, or a Norwegian, he would hardly have been let off so easily. As he was an earl, and about to be a marquis, and as he was a rich man, such suitors are not generally given up in a hurry. This young lady had sent word to him that she had lost her voice permanently and was therefore obliged to surrender that high title, that noble name, and those golden hopes which had glistened before her eyes. No doubt he had offered to marry her because of her singing;—that is, he would not have so offered had she not have been a singer. But he could not have departed from his engagement simply because she had become dumb. He quite understood that Mr. O'Mahony would have been there with his cowhide, and though he was by no means a coward be did not wish to encounter the American Member of the House of Commons in all his rage. In fact, he had been governed in his previous ideas by a feeling of propriety; but propriety certainly did not demand him to marry a young lady who had sent to tell him that he was too old. And this irate member of the House of Commons had come to bring him the message!

"What am I expected to suggest now?" said Lord Castlewell, after awhile.

"Just your affectionate blessing, and you're very sorry," said Mr. O'Mahony, with a shrug. "That's the kind of thing, I should say."

He couldn't send her his affectionate blessing, and he couldn't say he was very sorry. Had the young lady been about to marry his son,—had there been such a son,—he could have blessed her; and he felt that his own personal dignity did not admit of an expression of sorrow.

Was he to let the young lady off altogether? There was something nearly akin,—very nearly akin,—to true love in his bosom as he thought of this. The girl was ill, and no doubt weak, and had been made miserable by the loss of her voice. The doctor had told him that her voice, for all singing purposes, had probably gone for ever. But her beauty remained;—had not so faded, at least, as to have given any token of permanent decay. And that peculiarly bright eye was there; and the wit of the words which had captivated him. The very smallness of her stature, with its perfect symmetry, had also gone far to enrapture him.

No doubt, he was forty. He did not openly pretend even to be less. And where was the young lady, singer or no singer, who if disengaged, would reject the heir to a marquisate because he was forty? And he did not believe that Rachel had sent him any message in which allusion was made to his age. That had been added by the stupid father, who was, without doubt, the biggest fool that either America or Ireland had ever produced. Now that the matter had been brought before him in such bald terms, he was by no means sure that he was desirous of accepting the girl's offer to release him. And the father evidently had no desire to catch him. He must acknowledge that Mr. O'Mahony was an honest fool.

"It's very hard to know what I'm to say." Here Mr. O'Mahony shook his head. "I think that, perhaps, I had better come and call upon her."

"You mustn't speak a word! And, if you're to be considered as no longer engaged, perhaps there might be—you know—something—well, something of delicacy in the matter!"

Mr. O'Mahony felt at the moment that he ought to protect the interests of Frank Jones.

"I understand. At any rate I am not disposed to send her my blessing at present as a final step. An engagement to be married is a very serious step in life."

But her father remembered that she had told him that she wanted Frank Jones. Should he tell the lord the exact truth, and explain all about Frank Jones? It would be the honest thing to do. And yet he felt that his girl should have another chance. This lord was not much to his taste; but still, for a lord, he had his good points.

"I think we had better leave it for the present," said the lord. "I feel that in the midst of all your eloquence I do not quite catch Miss O'Mahony's meaning."

O'Mahony felt that this lord was as bad a lord as any of them. He would like to force the lord to meet him at some debating club where there was no wretched Speaker and there force him to give an answer on any of the burning questions which now excited the two countries.

"Very well. I will explain to Rachel as soon as I can that the matter is still left in abeyance. Of course we feel the honour done us by your lordship in not desiring to accept at once her decision. Her condition is no doubt sad. But I suppose she may expect to hear once more from yourself in a short time."

So Mr. O'Mahony took his leave, and as he went to Cecil Street endeavoured in his own mind to investigate the character of Lord Castlewell. That he was a fool there could be no doubt, a fool with whom he would not be forced to live in the constant intercourse of married life for any money that could be offered to him. He was a man who, without singing himself, cared for nothing but the second-hand life of a theatre. But then he, Mr. O'Mahony, was not a young woman, and was not expected to marry Lord Castlewell. But he had told himself over and over again that Lord Castlewell had been "caught." He was a great lord rolling in money, and Rachel had "caught" him. He had not quite approved of Rachel's conduct, but the lord had been fair game for a woman. What the deuce was he to think now of the lord who would not be let off?

"I wonder whether it can be love for her," said he to himself; "such love as I used to feel."

Then he sighed heavily as he went home.

CHAPTER XXXIX.

CAPTAIN CLAYTON'S FIRST TRIUMPH.

It was now April, and this April was a sad month in Ireland. I do not know why the deaths of two such men as were then murdered should touch the heart with a deeper sorrow than is felt for the fate of others whose lot is lower in life; why the poor widow, who has lost her husband while doing his duty amidst outrages and unmanly revenges, is not to be so much thought of as the sweet lady who has been robbed of her all in the same fashion. But so it is with human nature. We know how a people will weep for their Sovereign, and it was with such tears as that, with tears as sincere as those shed for the best of kings, that Lord Frederick Cavendish and Mr. Burke were lamented. In April these two men had fallen, hacked to death in front of the Viceregal Lodge. By whom they were killed, as I write now, no one knows, and as regards Lord Frederick one can hardly guess the reason. He had come over to Ireland on that very day, to take the place which his luckier predecessor had just vacated, and had as yet done no service, and excited no vengeance in Ireland. He had only attended an opening pageant;—because with him had come a new Lord Lieutenant,—not new indeed to the office, but new in his return. An accident had brought the two together on the day, but Lord Frederick was altogether a stranger, and yet he had been selected. Such had been his fate, and such also the fate of Mr. Burke, who, next to him in official rank, may possibly have been in truth the doomed one. They were both dealt with horribly on that April morning,—and all Ireland was grieving. All Ireland was repudiating the crime, and saying that this horror had surely been done by American hands. Even the murderers native to Ireland seemed to be thoroughly ashamed of this deed.

It would be needless here to tell,—or to attempt to tell,—how one Lord-Lieutenant had made way for another, and one Chief Secretary for another Chief Secretary. It would be trying to do too much. In the pages of a novel the novelist can hardly do more than indicate the sources of the troubles which have fallen upon the country, and can hardly venture to deal with the names and characters of those who have been concerned. For myself, I do most cordially agree with the policy of him in whose place Lord Frederick had this day suffered,—as far as his conduct in Ireland can be read from that which he did and from that which he spoke. As far as he had agreed with the Government in their measure for interfering with the price paid for land in the country,—for putting up a new law devised by themselves in lieu of that time-honoured law by which property has ever been protected in England,—I disagree. Of my disagreement no one will take notice;—but my story cannot be written without expressing it.

But down at Morony Castle, mingled with their sorrows, there was a joy and a triumph; not loud indeed, not sounded with trumpets, not as yet perfect, not quite assured even in the mind of one man; but yet assuring in the mind of that man,—and indeed of one other,—almost to conviction. That man was Captain Yorke Clayton, and that other man was only poor Hunter, the wounded policeman. For such triumph as was theirs a victim is needed; and in this case the victim, the hoped-for victim, was Mr. Lax.

Nothing had ever been made out in regard to the murder of Terry Carroll in the Court House at Galway. Irish mysteries are coming to be unriddled now, but there will be no unriddling of that. Yorke Clayton, together with Hunter and all the police of County Galway, could do nothing in regard to that mystery. They had struggled their very best, and, from the nature of the crime, had found themselves almost obliged to discover the perpetrator. The press of the two countries, the newspapers in other respects so hostile to each other, had united in declaring that the police were bound to know all about it. The police had determined to know nothing about it, because the Government did not dare to bring forward such evidence. This was the Irish Landleague view; and though it contained an accusation against the Government for having contrived the murder itself, it was all the better on that account. The English papers simply said that the Galway police must be fast asleep. This man had been murdered when in the very hands of the officers of justice. The judge had seen the shots fired. The victim fell into the hands of four policemen. The pistol was found at his feet. It was done in daylight, and all Galway was looking on. The kind of things that were said by one set of newspapers and another drove Yorke Clayton almost out of his wits. He had to maintain a show of good humour, and he did maintain it gallantly. "My hero is a hero still," whispered Edith to her own pillow. But, in truth, nothing could be done as to that Galway case. Mr. Lax was still in custody, and was advised by counsel not to give any account of himself at that time. It was indecent on the part of the prosecution that he should be asked to do so. So said the lawyers on his side, but it was clear that nobody in the court and nobody in Galway could be got to say that he or she had seen him do it. And yet Yorke Clayton had himself seen the hip of the stooping man. "I suppose I couldn't swear to it," he said to himself; and it would be hard to see how he could swear to the man without forswearing himself.

But while this lamentable failure was going on, success reached him from another side. He didn't care a straw what the newspapers said of him, so long as he could hang Mr. Lax. His triumph in that respect would drown all other failures. Mr. Lax was still in custody, and many insolent petitions had been made on his behalf in order that he might be set free. "Did the Crown intend to pretend that they had any shadow of evidence against him as to the shooting of Terry Carroll?"

"No;—but there was another murder committed a day or two before. Poor young Florian Jones had been murdered. Even presuming that Lax's hand cannot be seen visible in the matter of Terry Carroll, there is, we think, something to connect him with the other murder. The two, no doubt, were committed in the same interest. The Crown is not prepared to allow Lax to escape from its hands quite yet." Then there were many words on the subject going on just at the time at which Lax especially wanted his freedom, and at which, to tell the truth, Yorke Clayton was near the end of his tether in regard to poor Florian.

In the beginning of his inquiry as to the Ballyglunin murder, he entertained an idea that Lax, after firing the shot, had been seen by that wicked car-driver, who had boycotted Mr. Jones in his great need. The reader will probably have forgotten that Mr. Jones had required to be driven home to Morony Castle from Ballyglunin station, and had been refused the accommodation by a wicked old Landleaguer, who had joined the conspiracy formed in the neighbourhood against Mr. Jones. He had done so, either in fear of his neighbours, or else in a true patriot spirit—because he had gone without any supper, as had also his horses, on the occasion. The man's name was Teddy Mooney, the father of Kit Mooney who stopped the hunting at Moytubber. And he certainly was patriotic. From day to day he went on refusing fares,—for the boycotted personages were after all more capable of paying fares than the boycotting hero of doing without them,—suffering much himself from want of victuals, and more on behalf of his poor animal. He saw his son Kit more than once or twice in those days, and Kit appeared to be the stancher patriot of the two. Kit was a baker, and did earn wages; but he utterly refused to subsidise the patriotism of his father. "If ye can't do that for the ould counthry," said Kit, "ye ain't half the man I took ye for." But he refused him a gallon of oats for his horse.

It was not at once that the old man gave way. He went on boycotting individuals till he hadn't a pair of breeches left to sit upon, and the non-boycotted tradesmen of the little towns around declined to sit upon his car, because the poor horse, fed upon roadside grasses, refused to be urged into a trot. "Tare and ages, man, what's the good of it? Ain't we a-cutting the noses off our own faces, and that with the money so scarce that I haven't seen the sight of a half-crown this two weeks." It was thus that he declared his purpose of going back to the common unpatriotic ways of mankind, to an old pal, whom he had known all his days. He did do so, but found, alas! that his trade had perished in the meanwhile or forced itself into other channels.

The result was that Teddy Mooney became very bitter in spirit, and was for a while an Orangeman, and almost a Protestant. The evil things that had been done to him were terrible to his spirit. He had been threatened with eviction from ten acres of ground because he couldn't pay his rent; or, as he said, because he had declined to drive a maid-servant to the house of another gentleman who was also boycotted. This had not been true, but it had served to embitter Teddy Mooney. And now, at last, he had determined to belong to the other side.

When an Irishman does make up his mind to serve the other side he is very much determined. There is but the meditation of two minutes between Landleaguing and Orangeism, between boycotting landlords and thorough devotion to the dear old landlord. When Kit Mooney had first laid down the law to his father, how he ought to assist in boycotting all the enemies of the Landleague, no one saw his way clearer than did Teddy Mooney. "I wouldn't mind doing without a bit or a sup," he said, when his son explained to him that he might have to suffer a little for the cause. "Not a bit or a sup when the ould counthry wants it." He had since had a few words with his son Kit, and was now quite on the other side of the question. He was told that somebody had threatened to cut off his old mare's tail because he had driven Phil D'Arcy. Since that he had become a martyr as well as an Orangeman, and was disposed to go any length "for the gintl'men." This had come all about by degrees—had been coming about since poor Florian's murder; and at last he wrote a letter to Yorke Clayton, or got someone else to write it:

"Yer Honour,—It was Lax as dropped Master Flory. Divil a doubt about it. There's one as can tell more about it as is on the road from Ballyglunin all round. This comes from a well-wisher to the ould cause. For Muster Clayton."

When Captain Clayton received this he at once knew from whom it had come. The Landleaguing car-driver, who had turned gentlemen's friend, was sufficiently well known to history to have been talked about. Clayton, therefore, did not lose much time in going down to Ballyglunin station and requiring to be driven yet once again from thence to Carnlough. "And now, Mr. Teddy Mooney," he said, after they had travelled together a mile or two from Ballyglunin, and had come almost to the spot at which the poor boy had been shot, "tell me what you know about Mr. Lax's movements in this part of the world." He had never come there before since the fatal day without having three policemen with him, but now he was alone. Such a man as Teddy Mooney would be most unwilling to open his mouth in the presence of two or more persons.

"O Lord, Captain, how you come on a poor fellow all unawares!"

"Stop a moment, Mr. Mooney," and the car stopped. "Whereabouts was it the young gentleman perished?"

"Them's the very shot-holes," said Teddy, pointing up to the temporary embrasure, which had indeed been knocked down half a score of times since the murder, and had been as often replaced by the diligent care of Mr. Blake and Captain Clayton.

"Just so. They are the shot-holes. And which way did the murderer run?" Teddy pointed with his whip away to the east, over the ground on which the man had made his escape. "And where did you first see him?"

"See him!" ejaculated Teddy. It became horrible to his imagination as he thought that he was about to tell of such a deed.

"Of course, we know you did see him; but I want to know the exact spot."

"It was over there, nigh to widow Dolan's cottage."

"It wasn't the widow who saw him, I think?"

"Faix, it was the widow thin, with her own eyes. I hardly know'd him. And yet I did know him, for I'd seen him once travelling from Ballinasloe with Pat Carroll. And Lax is a man as when you've once seen him you've seen him for allays. But she knowed him well. Her husband was one of the boys when the Fenians were up. If he didn't go into the widow Dolan's cabin my name's not Teddy Mooney."

"And who else was there?"

"There was no one else; but only her darter, a slip of a girl o' fifteen, come up while Lax was there. I know she come up, because I saw her coming jist as I passed the door."

Captain Clayton entered into very friendly relations with Teddy Mooney on that occasion, trying to make him understand, without any absolute promises, that all the luck and all the rewards,—in fact, all the bacon and oats,—lay on the dish to which Mr. Lax did not belong. Under these influences Teddy did become communicative—though he lied most awfully. That did not in the least shock Captain Clayton, who certainly would have believed nothing had the truth been told him without hesitation. At last it came out that the car-driver was sure as to the personality of Lax,—had seen him again and again since he had first made his acquaintance in Carroll's company, and could swear to having seen him in the widow's cabin. He knew also that the widow and her daughter were intimate with Lax. He had not seen the shot fired. This he said in an assured tone, but Captain Clayton had known that before. He did not expect to find anyone who had seen the shot fired, except Mr. Jones and Peter. As to Peter he had his suspicions. Mr. Jones was certain that Peter had told the truth in declaring that he had seen no one; but the Captain had argued the matter out with him. "A fellow of that kind is in a very hard position. You must remember that for the truth itself he cares nothing. He finds a charm rather in the romantic beauty of a lie. Lax is to him a lovely object, even though he be aware that he and Lax be on different sides. And then he thoroughly believes in Lax; thinks that Lax possesses some mysterious power of knowing what is in his mind, and of punishing him for his enmity. All the want of evidence in this country comes from belief in the marvellous. The people think that their very thoughts are known to men who make their name conspicuous, and dare not say a word which they suppose that it is desired they shall withhold. In this case Peter no doubt is on our side, and would gladly hang Lax with his own hand if he were sure he would be safe. But Lax is a mysterious tyrant, who in his imagination can slaughter him any day; whereas he knows that he shall encounter no harm from you. He and poor Florian were sitting on the car with their backs turned to the embrasure; and Peter's attention was given to the driving of the car,—so that there was no ground for thinking that he had seen the murderer. All the circumstances of the moment ran the other way. But still it was possible."

And Captain Clayton was of opinion that Peter was beginning to be moved from the determined know-nothingness of his primary evidence. He had seen the flash. And then, as his master had run up the bank, he didn't know whether he hadn't caught the flying figure of a man.

"I had the poor boy's head on my knees, Captain Clayton; and how is a poor man to look much about him then?"

In this condition stood Captain Clayton's mind in regard to Peter, when he heard, for the first time, a word about the widow Dolan and the widow Dolan's daughter.

The woman swore by all her gods that she knew nothing of Lax. But then she had already fallen into the difficulty of having been selected as capable of giving evidence. It generally happens that no one first person will be found even to indicate others, so that there is no finding a beginning to the case. But when a witness has been indicated, the witness must speak.

"The big blackguard!" exclaimed Mrs. Dolan, when she heard of the evil that had been brought her; "to have the imperence to mention my name!"

It was felt, all the country through, to be an impertinence,—for anybody to drag anybody else into the mess of troubles which was sure to arise from an enforced connection with a law court. Most unwillingly the circumstances were drawn from Mrs. Dolan, and with extreme difficulty also from that ingenious young lady her daughter. But, still, it was made to appear that Lax had taken refuge in their cottage, and had gone down from thence to a little brook, where he effected the cleansing of his pistol. The young lady had done all in her power to keep her mother silent, but the mother had at last been tempted to speak of the weapon which Lax had used.

Now there was no further question of letting Lax go loose from prison! That very irate barrister, Mr. O'Donnell, who was accustomed to speak of all the Landleague criminals as patriotic lambs,—whose lamb-like qualities were exceeded only by their patriotism,—did not dare to intimate such a wish any further. But he did urge, with all that benevolence for which he was conspicuous, that the trial should come on at that immediate spring assizes. A rumour had, however, already reached the ears of Captain Clayton, and others in his position, that a great alteration was to be effected in the law. This, together with Mrs. Dolan's evidence, might enable him to hang Mr. Lax. Therefore the trial was postponed;—not, indeed, with outspoken reference as to the new measure, but with much confidence in its resources.

It would be useless here to refer to that Bill which was to have been passed for trying certain prisoners in Ireland without the intervention of a jury, and of the alteration which took place in it empowering the Government to alter the venue, and to submit such cases to a selected judge, to selected juries, to selected counties. The Irish judges had remonstrated against the first measure, and the second was to be first tried, so that should it fail the judges might yet be called upon to act.

Such was the law under which criminals were tried in 1882, and the first capital convictions were made under which the country began to breathe freely. But the tidings of the law had got abroad beforehand, and gave a hope of triumph to such men as Captain Clayton. Let a man undertake what duty he will in life, if he be a good man he will desire success; and if he be a brave man he will long for victory. The presence of such a man as Lax in the country was an eyesore to Captain Clayton, which it was his primary duty to remove. And it was a triumph to him now that the time had come in which he might remove him. Three times had Mr. Lax fired at the Captain's head, and three times had the Captain escaped. "I think he has done with his guns and his pistols now," said Captain Clayton, in his triumph.

CHAPTER XL.

YORKE CLAYTON AGAIN MAKES LOVE.

"I am not quite sure about Peter yet," said Clayton to Mr. Jones. "But if we could look into his very soul I am afraid he could not do much for us."

"I never believed in Peter as a witness," replied Mr. Jones.

"I should like to know exactly what he did see;—whether it was a limb or a bit of his coat. But I think that young lady crept out and saw him cleaning his pistol. And I think that the old lady had a glimpse of the mask. I think that they can be made to say so."

"I saw the mask myself, and the muzzle of the rifle;—and I saw the man running as plainly as I see you."

"That will all be wanted, Mr. Jones. But I trust that we may have to summon you to Dublin. As things are at present, if Lax had been seen in broad daylight firing at the poor boy by a dozen farmers it would do no good in County Galway. There is Miss Edith out there. She is awfully anxious about this wretch who destroyed her brother. I will go and tell her." So Captain Clayton rushed out, anxious for another cause for triumph.

Mr. Jones had heard of his suit, and had heard also that the suit was made to Edith and not to Ada. "There is not one in a dozen who would have taken Edith," said he to himself,—"unless it be one who saw her with my eyes." But yet he did not approve of the marriage. "They were poverty stricken," he said, and Clayton went about from day to day with his life in his hand. "A brave man," he said to himself; "but singularly foolhardy,—unless it be that he wants to die." He had not been called upon for his consent, for Edith had never yielded. She, too, had said that it was impossible. "If Ada would have suited, it might have been possible, but not between Yorke and me." They had both come now to call him by his Christian name; and they to him were Ada and Edith; but with their father he had never quite reached the familiarity of a Christian name.

Mr. Jones had, in truth, been so saddened by the circumstances of the last two years that he could not endure the idea of marriages in his family. "Of course, if you choose, my dear, you can do as you like," he used to say to Edith.

"But I don't choose."

"What there are left of us should, I think, remain together. I suppose they cannot turn me out of this house. The Prime Minister will hardly bring in a Bill that the estates bought this last hundred years shall belong to the owners of the next century. He can do so, of course, as things go now. There are no longer any lords to stop him, and the House of Commons, who want their seats, will do anything he bids them. It's the First Lieutenant who looks after Ireland, who has ideas of justice with which the angels of light have certainly not filled his mind. That we should get nothing from our purchased property this century, and give it up in the course of the next, is in strict accordance with his thinking. We can depend upon nothing. My brother-in-law can, of course, sell me out any day, and would not stop for a moment. Everybody has to get his own, except an Irish landlord. But I think we should fare ill all together. Your brother is behaving nobly, and I don't think we ought to desert him. Of course you can do as you please."

Then the squire pottered on, wretched in heart; or, rather, down in the mouth, as we say, and gave his advice to his younger daughter, not, in truth, knowing how her heart stood. But a man, when he undertakes to advise another, should not be down in the mouth himself. Equam memento rebus in arduis servare mentem, non secus ac bonis. If not, your thoughts will be too strongly coloured by your own misfortunes to allow of your advising others.

All this Edith knew,—except the Latin. The meaning of it had been brought home to her by her own light. "Poor papa is so hipped," she said to herself, "that he thinks that nobody will ever be happy again." But still she resolved that she would not marry Yorke Clayton. There had been a mistake, and she had made it,—a miserable blunder for which she was responsible. She did not quite analyse the matter in her own mind, or look into the thoughts of Ada, or of Yorke himself,—the hero of her pillow; but she continued to tell herself that the proper order of things would not admit it. Ada, she knew, wished it. Yorke longed for her, more strongly even than for Lax, the murderer. For herself, when she would allow her thoughts to stray for a moment in that direction, all the bright azure tints of heaven were open to her. But she had made a mistake, and she did not deserve it. She had been a blind fool, and blind fools deserved no azure tints of heaven.

If she could have had her own way she would still have married Ada to Yorke Clayton. When Ada told her that she had got over her foolish love, it was the mere babble of unselfishness. Feel a passion for such a man as Yorke Clayton, look into the depth of his blue eyes, and fancy for herself a partnership with the spirit hidden away within, and then get over it! Edith was guilty here of the folly of judging of her sister as herself. And as for Yorke himself;—a man, she said, always satisfies himself with that which is lovely and beautiful. And with Ada he would have such other gifts as so strong a man as Yorke always desires in his wife. In temper she was perfect; in unselfishness she was excellent. In all those ways of giving aid, which some women possess and some not at all,—but which, when possessed, go so far to make the comfort of a house,—she was supreme. If a bedroom were untidy, her eye saw it at once. If a thing had to be done at the stroke of noon, she would remember that other things could not be done at the same time. If a man liked his egg half-boiled, she would bear it in her mind for ever. She would know the proper day for making this marmalade and that preserve; and she would never lose her good looks for a moment when she was doing these things. With her little dusting-brush at her girdle, no eyes that knew anything would ever take her for aught but a lady. She was just the wife for Yorke Clayton.

So Edith argued it in her own bosom, adding other wondrous mistakes to that first mistake she had made. In thinking of it all she counted herself for nothing, and made believe that she was ugly in all eyes. She would not allow the man to see as his fancy led him; and could not bring herself to think that if now the man should change his mind and offer his hand to Ada, it would be impossible that Ada should accept it. Nor did she perceive that Ada had not suffered as she had suffered.

"I wanted to catch you just for one moment," said Yorke Clayton, running out so as to catch his prey. She had half wished to fly from him, and had half told herself that any such flight was foolish.

"What is it, Yorke?" she said.

"I think,—I do think that I have at last got Lax upon the hip."

"You are so bloody-minded about Lax."

"What! Are you going to turn round and be merciful?" He was her hero, and she certainly felt no mercy towards the murderer of her brother; no mercy towards him who she now thought had planned all the injury done to her father; no mercy towards him who had thrice fired at her beloved. This wretched man had struggled to get the blood of him who was all the world to her; and had been urged on to his black deeds by no thought, by no feeling, that was not in itself as vile as hell! Lax was to her a viper so noxious as to be beyond the pale of all mercy. To crush him beneath the heel of her boot, so as to make an end of him, as of any other poisonous animal, was the best mercy to all other human beings. But she had said the word at the spur of the moment, because she had been instigated by her feelings to gainsay her hero, and to contradict him, so that he might think that he was no hero of hers. She looked at him for the moment, and said nothing, though he held her by the arm. "If you say I am to spare him, I will spare him."

"No," she answered, "because of your duty."

"Have I followed this man simply as a duty? Have I lain awake thinking of it till I have given to the pursuit such an amount of energy as no duty can require? Thrice he has endeavoured to kill me, firing at me in the dark, getting at me from behind hedges, as no one who has anything of the spirit of man in his bosom will do when he strives to destroy his enemy. All that has been nothing. I am a policeman in search of him, and am the natural enemy of a murderer. Of course in the ordinary way I would not have spared him; but the ordinary way would have sufficed. Had he escaped me I could have laughed at all that. But he took that poor lad's life!" Here he looked sadly into her face, and she could see that there was a tear within his eye. "That was much, but that was not all. That lad was your brother, him whom you so dearly loved. He shot down the poor child before his father's face, simply because he had said that he would tell the truth. When you wept, when you tore your hair, when you flung yourself in sorrow upon the body, I told myself that either he or I must die. And now you bid me be merciful." Then the big tears dropped down his cheeks, and he began to wail himself,—hardly like a man.

And what did Edith do? She stood and looked at him for a few moments; then extricated herself from the hold he still had of her, and flung herself into his arms. He put down his face and kissed her forehead and her cheeks; but she put up her mouth and kissed his lips. Not once or twice was that kiss given; but there they stood closely pressed to each other in a long embrace. "My hero," she said; "my hero." It had all come at last,—the double triumph; and there was, he felt, no happier man in all Ireland than he. He thought, at least, that the double battle had been now won. But even yet it was not so. "Captain Clayton," she began.

"Why Captain? Why Clayton?"

"My brother Yorke," and she pressed both his hands in hers. "You can understand that I have been carried away by my feelings, to thank you as a sister may thank a brother."

"I will not have it," he exclaimed fiercely. "You are no sister, nor can I ever be your brother. You are my very own now, and for ever." And he rushed at her again as though to envelop her in his arms, and to crush her against his bosom.

"No!" she exclaimed, avoiding him with the activity of a young fawn; "not again. I had to beg your pardon, and it was so I did it."

"Twenty times you have offended me, and twenty times you must repeat your forgiveness."

"No, no, it must not be so. I was wrong to say that you were bloody-minded. I cannot tell why I said so. I would not for worlds have you altered in anything;—except," she said, "in your love for me."

"But have you told me nothing?"

"I have called you my hero,—and so you are."

"Nay, Edith, it is more than that. It is not for me to remind you, but it is more than that."

She stood there blushing before him, over her cheeks and up to her forehead; but yet did not turn away her face.

"How am I to tell you why it is more than that? You cannot tell me," she replied.

"But, Edith—"

"You cannot tell me. There are moments for some of us the feelings of which can never be whispered. You shall be my hero and my brother if you will; or my hero and my friend; or, if not that, my hero and my enemy."

"Never!"

"No, my enemy you cannot be; for him who is about to revenge my brother's death no name less sweet than dearest friend will suffice. My hero and my dearest friend!"

Then she took him by the hand, and turned away from the walk, and, escaping by a narrow path, was seen no more till she met him at dinner with her father and her brother and her sister.

"By God! she shall be mine!" said Clayton. "She must be mine!"

And then he went within, and, finding Hunter, read the details of the evidence for the trial of Mr. Lax in Dublin, as prepared by the proper officers in Galway city.

CHAPTER XLI.

THE STATE OF IRELAND.

It will be well that they who are interested only in the sensational incidents of our story to skip this chapter and go on to other parts of our tale which may be more in accordance with their taste. It is necessary that this one chapter shall be written in which the accidents that occurred in the lives of our three heroines shall be made subordinate to the political circumstances of the day. This chapter should have been introductory and initiative; but the facts as stated will suit better to the telling of my story if they be told here. There can be no doubt that Ireland has been and still is in a most precarious condition, that life has been altogether unsafe there, and that property has been jeopardised in a degree unknown for many years in the British Islands. It is, I think, the general opinion that these evils have been occasioned by the influx into Ireland of a feeling which I will not call American, but which has been engendered in America by Irish jealousy, and warmed into hatred by distance from English rule. As far as politics are regarded, Ireland has been the vassal of England as Poland has been of those masters under which she has been made to serve. She was subjected to much ill-usage, and though she has readily accepted the language, the civilisation, and the customs of England, and has in fact grown rich by adopting them, the memories of former hardships have clung to her, and have made her ready to receive willingly the teachings of those whose only object it has been to undermine the prestige of the British Empire. In no respect has she more readily taken to her bosom English practices than in that of the letting and the hiring of land. In various countries, such as Italy, Russia, France, and the United States, systems have grown up different from that which has prevailed in England. Whether the English system or any other may be the best is not now the question. But in answering that question it is material to know that Ireland has accepted and, at any rate for two centuries, has followed that system. The landlord has been to his tenants a beneficent or, occasionally, a hard master, and the tenants have acknowledged themselves as dependent, generally with much affection, though not unfrequently with loud complaint. It has been the same in England. Questions of tenant-right, of leases, and of the cruelty of evictions have from time to time cropped up in Ireland. But rents were readily paid up to 1878 and 1879; though abatements were asked for,—as was the case also in England; and there were men ready to tell the Irish from time to time, since the days of O'Connell downwards, that they were ill-treated in being kept out of their "ould" properties by the rightful owners.

Then the American revolt, growing out of Smith O'Brien's logic and physical force, gave birth to Fenianism. The true Fenian I take to be one desirous of opposing British power, by using a fulcrum placed on American soil. Smith O'Brien's logic consisted in his assertion that if his country wished to hammer the British Crown, they could only do it by using hammers. Smith O'Brien achieved little beyond his own exile;—but his words, acting upon his followers, produced Fenianism. That died away, but the spirit remained in America; and when English tenants began to clamour for temporary abatements in their rent, the clamours were heard on the other side of the water, and assisted the views of those American-Irish who had revivified Ribandism and had given birth to the cry of Home Rule.

During the time that this was going on, a long unflagging series of beneficial Acts of Parliament, and of consequently ameliorated circumstances, had befallen the country. I was told the other day by an Irish Judge, whose name stands conspicuous among those who are known for their wisdom and their patriotism, by a Roman Catholic Judge too, that in studying the latter laws of the two countries, the laws affecting England and Ireland in reference to each other, he knew no law by which England was specially favoured, though he knew various laws redounding to the benefit of Ireland. When the cry for some relief to suffering Ireland came up, at the time of the Duchess of Marlborough's Fund, it was alleged in proof of Ireland's poor condition that there was not work by which the labourers could earn wages. I have known Ireland for more than forty years,—say from 1842 to 1882. In 1842 we paid five shillings a week for the entire work of a man. As far as I can learn, we now pay, on an average, nine shillings for the same. The question is not whether five shillings was sufficient, or whether nine be insufficient, but that the normal increase through the country has been and can be proved to be such as is here declared.

I will refer to the banks, which can now be found established in any little town, almost in any village, through the country. Fifty years ago they were very much rarer. Banks do not spring up without money to support them. The increase of wages,—and the banks also in an indirect manner,—have come from that decrease in the population which followed the potato famine of 1846. The famine and its results were terrible while they lasted; but they left behind them an amended state of things. When man has failed to rule the world rightly, God will step in, and will cause famines, and plagues, and pestilence—even poverty itself—with His own Right Arm. But the cure was effected, and the country was on its road to a fair amount of prosperity, when the tocsin was sounded in America, and Home Rule became the cry.

Ireland has lain as it were between two rich countries. England, her near neighbour, abounds in coal and iron, and has by means of these possessions become rich among the nations. America, very much the more distant, has by her unexampled agricultural resources put herself in the way to equal England. It is necessary,—necessary at any rate for England's safety,—that Ireland should belong to her. This is here stated as a fact, and I add my own opinion that it is equally necessary for Ireland's welfare. But on this subject there has arisen a feud which is now being fought out by all the weapons of rebellion on one side, and on the other by the force of a dominating Government, restrained, as it is found to be, by the self-imposed bonds of a democratic legislature. But there is the feud, and the battle, and the roaring of the cannons is heard afar off.

I now purpose to describe in a very few words the nature of the warfare. It may be said that the existence of Ireland as a province of England depends on the tenure of the land. If the land were to be taken altogether from the present owners, and divided in perpetuity among any possible number of tenants, so as to be the property of each tenant, without payment of any rent, all England's sense of justice would be outraged, the English power of governing would be destroyed, and all that could then be done by England would be to give a refuge to the present owners till the time should come for righting themselves, and they should be enabled to make some further attempt for the recovery of their possessions. This would probably arrive, if not sooner, from the annihilation of the new proprietors under the hands of their fellow-countrymen to whom none of the spoil had been awarded. But English statesmen,—a small portion, that is, of English statesmen,—have wished in their philanthropy to devise some measure which might satisfy the present tenants of the land, giving them a portion of the spoil; and might leave the landlords contented,—not indeed with their lot, which they would feel to be one of cruel deprivation, but with the feeling that something had at any rate been left to them. A compromise would be thus effected between the two classes whose interests have always been opposed to each other since the world began,—between the owners of property and those who have owned none.

The statesmen in question have now come into power by means of their philanthropy, their undoubted genius, and great gifts of eloquence. They have almost talked the world out of its power of sober judgment. I hold that they have so succeeded in talking to the present House of Commons. And when the House of Commons has been so talked into any wise or foolish decision, the House of Lords and the whole legislating machinery of the country is bound to follow.

But how should their compromises be effected? It does not suit the present writer to name any individual statesman. He neither wishes to assist in raising a friend to the gods, or to lend his little aid in crushing an enemy. But to the Liberal statesmen of the day, men in speaking well of whom—at a great distance—he has spent a long life, he is now bound to express himself as opposed. We all remember the manner after which the Coercion Bill of 1881 was passed. The hoarse shrieks with which a score of Irish members ran out of the House crying "Privilege," when their voices had been stopped by the salutary but certainly unconstitutional word of the Speaker, is still ringing in our ears. Then the Government and the Irish score were at daggers-drawn with each other. To sit for thirty-six hours endeavouring to pass a clause was then held by all men to be an odious bondage. But when these clauses had thus roughly been made to be the law, the sugar-plum was to follow by which all Ireland was to be appeased. The second Bill of 1881 was passed, which, with various additions, has given rise to Judge O'Hagan's Land Court. That, with its various sub-commissioners, is now engaged in settling at what rate land shall be let in Ireland.

That Judge O'Hagan and his fellow commissioners are well qualified to perform their task,—as well qualified, that is, by kindness, by legal knowledge and general sagacity as any men can be,—I have heard no one deny. In the performance of most difficult duties they have hitherto encountered no censure. But they have, I think, been taxed to perform duties beyond the reach of any mortal wisdom. They are expected to do that which all the world has hitherto failed in doing,—to do that against which the commonest proverbs of ancient and modern wisdom have raised their voice. There is no proverb more common than that of "caveat emptor." It is Judge O'Hagan's business to do for the poorer party in each bargain made between a landlord and a tenant that against which the above proverb warns him. The landlord has declared that the tenant shall not have the land unless he will pay £10 a year for it. The tenant agrees. Then comes Judge O'Hagan and tells the two contracting parties to take up their pens quickly and write down £8 as the fair rent payable for the land. And it was with the object of doing this, of reducing every £10 by some percentage, twenty per cent. or otherwise, that this commission was appointed. The Government had taken upon itself to say that the greed of Irish landlords had been too greedy, and the softness of Irish tenants too soft, and that therefore Parliament must interfere. Parliament has interfered, and £8 is to be written down for a term of years in lieu of £10, and the land is to become the possession of the tenant instead of the landlord as long as he may pay this reduced rent. In fact all the bonds which have bound the landlord to his land are to be annihilated. So also are the bonds which bind the tenant, who will sell the property so acquired when he shall have found that that for which he pays £8 per annum shall have become worth £10 in the market.

It is useless to argue with the commissioners, or with the Government, as to the inexpediency of such an attempt to alter the laws for governing the world, which have forced themselves on the world's acceptance. Many such attempts have been made to alter these laws. The Romans said that twelve per cent. should be the interest for money. A feeling long prevailed in England that legitimate interest should not exceed five per cent. It is now acknowledged that money is worth what it will fetch; and the interests of the young, the foolish, and the reckless, who are tempted to pay too much for it, are protected only by public opinion. The usurer is hated, and the hands of the honest men are against him. That suffices to give the borrower such protection as is needed. So it is with landlords and tenants. Injury is no doubt done, and injustice is enabled to prevail here and there. But it is the lesser injury, the lesser injustice, which cannot be prevented in the long run by any attempt to escape the law of "caveat emptor."

It is, however, vain to talk to benevolent commissioners, or to a Government working by eloquence and guided by philanthropy, regardless of political economy. "Would you have the heart," asks the benevolent commissioner, "to evict the poor man from his small holding on which he has lived all his life, where his only sympathies lie, and send him abroad to a distant land, where his solitary tie will be that of labour?" The benevolent commissioner thus expresses with great talk and with something also of the eloquence of his employers the feeling which prevails on that side of the question. But that which he deprecates is just what I could do; and having seen many Irishmen both in America and in Ireland, I know that the American Irishman is the happiest man of the two. He eats more; and in much eating the happiness of mankind depends greatly. He is better clothed, better sheltered, and better instructed. Though his women wail when he departs, he sends home money to fetch them. This may be for the profit of America. There are many who think that it must therefore be to the injury of England. The question now is whether the pathetic remonstrance of the tear-laden commissioner should be allowed to prevail. I say that the tenant who undertakes to pay for land that which the land will not enable him to pay had better go,—under whatever pressure.

Let us see how many details, how many improbabilities, will have to be met before the benevolence of the commissioner can be made to prevail. The reductions made on the rent average something between twenty and twenty-five per cent. Let us take them at twenty. If a tenant has to be evicted for a demand of £10, will he be able to live in comfort if he pay only £8? Shall one tenant live in comfort on a farm, the rent of which has been reduced him from £100 to £80, and another, the reduction having been from £20 to £16? In either case, if a tenant shall do well with two children, how shall he do with six or eight? A true teetotaller can certainly pay double the rent which may be extracted from a man who drinks. Shall the normal tenant earn wages beyond what he gets from the land under his own tillage? Shall the idle man be made equal to the industrious,—or can this be done, or should it be done, by any philanthropy? Statesmen sitting together in a cabinet may resolve that they will set the world right by eloquence and benevolence combined; but the practices to which the world have been brought by long experience will avail more than eloquence and benevolence. Statesmen may decree that land shall be let at a certain rate, and the decree will prevail for a time. It may prevail long enough to put out of gear the present affairs of the Irish world with which these statesmen will have tampered. But the long experience will come back, and bargains will again be made between man and man, though the intervening injuries will be heartbreaking.

But the benevolence of the Government and its commissioners will not have gone far. The Land Law of 1881 has, as I now write, been at work for twelve months, and the results hitherto accomplished have been very small. It may be doubted whether a single reluctant tenant,—a single tenant who would have been unwilling to leave his holding,—has been preserved from American exile by having his £10 or £20 or £30 of rent reduced to £8 or £16 or £24. The commissioners work slowly, having all the skill of the lawyers, on one side or the other, against them. It is piteous to see the hopelessness of three sub-commissioners in the midst of a crowd of Irish attorneys. And the law, as it exists at present, can be made to act only on holdings possessed by tenants for one year. And the skill of the lawyers is used in proving on the part of the landlords that the land is held by firm leases, and cannot, therefore, be subjected to the law; and then by proving, on behalf of the tenants, that the existing leases are illegal, and should be broken. The possession of a lease, which used to be regarded as a safeguard and permanent blessing to the tenant, is now held to be cruelly detrimental to him, as preventing the lowering of his rent, and the immediate creation for him of a tenancy for ever. It is not to be supposed that the sub-commissioners can walk over the land and straightway reduce the rents, though the lands would certainly be subject to such reduction did not the law interfere. In a majority of cases,—a majority as far as all Ireland is concerned,—a feeling of honesty does prevail between landlord and tenant, which makes them both willing to subject themselves to the new law without the interference of attorneys, and many are preparing themselves for such an arrangement. The landlord is willing to lose twenty per cent. in fear of something worse, and the tenant is willing to take it, hardly daring to hope for anything better. Such is the best condition which the law has ventured to anticipate. But in either case this is to be done as tempering the wind to the shorn lamb. The landlord is anxious if possible to save for himself and those who may come after him something of the reality of his property, and the tenant feels that, though something of the nobility of property has been promised to him by the Landleaguers, he may after all make the best bargain by so far submitting himself to his shorn landlord.

But on estates where the commissioners are allowed their full swing, the whole nature of the property in the land will be altered. The present tenant, paying a tax of £8 per annum which will be subjected to no reduction and on which no abatement can be made, in lieu of a £10 rent, will be the owner. The small man will be infinitely more subject to disturbance than at present, because the tax must be paid. The landlord will feel no mercy for him, seeing that the bonds between them which demanded mercy have been abrogated. The extra £2 or £4 or £6 will not enable the tenant to live the life of ease which he will have promised himself. If his interest has been made to be worth anything,—and it will be worth something, seeing that it has been worth something, and is saleable under its present condition,—it will be sold, and the emigration will continue. There are cruel cases at present. There will be cases not less cruel under the rÉgime which the new law is expected to produce. But the new law will be felt to have been unjust as having tampered with the rights of property, and having demanded from the owners of property its sale or other terms than those of mutual contract.

But the time selected for the measure was most inappropriate. If good in itself, it was bad at the time it was passed. Home Rule coming across to us from America had taken the guise of rebellion. I have met gentlemen who, as Home-Rulers, have simply desired to obtain for their country an increase of power in the management of their own affairs. These men have been loyal and patriotic, and it might perhaps be well to meet their views. The Channel no doubt does make a difference between Liverpool and Dublin. But the latter-day Home-Rulers, of whom I speak, brought their politics, their aspirations, and their money from New York, and boldly made use of the means which the British Constitution afforded them to upset the British Constitution as established in Ireland. That they should not succeed in doing this is the determination of all, at any rate on this side of the Channel. It is still, I believe, the desire of most thinking men on the Irish side. But parliamentary votes are not given only to thinking men; and consequently a body of members has appeared in the House, energetic and now well trained, who have resolved by the clamour of their voices to put an end to the British power of governing the country. These members are but a minority among those whom Ireland sends to Parliament; but they have learned what a minority can effect by unbridled audacity. England is still writhing in her attempt to invent some mode of controlling them. But long before any such mode had been adopted,—had been adopted or even planned,—the Government in 1881 brought out their plan for securing to the tenants fair rents, fixity of tenure, and freedom of sale.

As to the first, it will, of course, be admitted by all men that rents should be fair, as also should be the price at which a horse is sold. It is, however, beyond the power of Parliament to settle the terms which shall be fair. "Caveat emptor" is the only rule by which fair rents may be reached. By fixity of tenure is meant such a holding of the land as shall enable the tenant to obtain an adequate return for his labour and his capital, and to this is added a romantic and consequently a most unjust idea that it may be well to settle this question on behalf of the tenant by granting him such a term as shall leave no doubt. Let him have the land for ever as long as he will pay a stipulated sum, which shall be considerably less than the landlord's demand. That idea I call romantic, and therefore unjust. But, even though the beauty of the romance be held sufficient to atone for the injustice, this was not the poetical re-arrangement of all the circumstances of land tenure in Ireland. Freedom of sale is necessarily annexed to fixity of tenure. If a man is to have the possession of land in perpetuity, surely he should be allowed to sell it. Whether he be allowed or not, he will contrive to do so. Freedom of sale means, I take it, that the so-called landlord shall have no power of putting a veto on the transaction. We cannot here go into the whole question as it existed in Ulster before 1870; but the freedom of sale intended is such, I think, as I have defined it.

Whether these concessions be good or bad, this was, at any rate, no time for granting them. They seem to me to amount to wholesale confiscation. But supposing me to be wrong in that, can I be wrong in thinking that a period of declared rebellion is not a time for concessions? When the Land Bill was passed the Landleague was in full power; boycotting had become the recognised weapon of an illegal association; and the Home-Rulers of the day,—the party, that is, who represented the Landleague,—were already in such possession of large portions of the country as to prevent the possibility of carrying out the laws.

At this moment the Government brought forward its romantic theory as to the manipulation of land, and, before that theory was at work, commenced its benevolent intentions by locking up all those who were supposed to be guilty of an intention to carry out the Government project further than the Government would carry it out itself. It is held, as a rule, in politics that coercion and concession cannot be applied together. Ireland was in mutiny under the guidance of a mutinous party in the House of Commons, and at that moment a commission was put in operation, under which it was the intention of the Government to transfer the soil of the country at a reduced price to the very men among whom the mutineers are to be found. How do the tidings of such a commission operate upon the ears of Irishmen at large? He is told that under the fear of the Landleague his rent is to be reduced to an extent which is left to his imagination; and then, that he is to be freed altogether from the incubus of a landlord! He is, in fact, made to understand that his cherished Landleague has become all-powerful. And yet he hears that odious men, whom he recognises only as tyrants, are filling the jails through the country with all his dearest friends. Demanding concessions, and the continued increase of them, and having learned the way to seize upon them when they are not given, he will not stand coercion. Abated rent soon becomes no rent. When it is left to the payer of the rent to decide on which system he will act, it is probable that the no-rent theory will prevail.

So it was in 1882. Tenants were harassed by needy landlords, and when they were served with forms of ejectment the landlords were simply murdered, either in their own persons or in that of their servants. Men finding their power, and beginning to learn how much might be exacted from a yielding Government, hardly knew how to moderate their aspirations. When they found that the expected results did not come at once, they resorted to revenge. Why should these tyrants keep them out from the good things which their American friends had promised them, and which were so close within their grasp? And their anger turned not only against their landlords, but against those who might seem in any way to be fighting on the landlords' side. Did a neighbour occupy a field from which a Landleaguing tenant had been evicted, let the tails of that neighbour's cattle be cut off, or the legs broken of his beasts of burden, or his sheep have their throats cut. Or if the injured one have some scruples of conscience, let the oppressor simply be boycotted, and put out of all intercourse with his brother men. Let no well-intentioned Landleaguing neighbour buy from him a ton of hay, or sell to him a loaf of bread.

But as a last resource, if all others fail, let the sinner be murdered. We all know, alas! in how many cases the sentence has been pronounced and the judgment given, and the punishment executed.

Such have been the results of the Land Law passed in 1881. And under the curse so engendered the country is now labouring. It cannot be denied that the promoters of the Land Laws are weak, and that the disciples of the Landleague are strong. In order that the truth of this may be seen and made apparent, the present story is told.

CHAPTER XLII.

LORD CASTLEWELL'S FAREWELL.

Poor Mr. O'Mahony had enemies on every side. There had come up lately a state of things which must be very common in political life. The hatreds which sound so real when you read the mere words, which look so true when you see their scornful attitudes, on which for the time you are inclined to pin your faith so implicitly, amount to nothing. The Right Honourable A. has to do business with the Honourable B., and can best carry it on by loud expressions and strong arguments such as will be palatable to readers of newspapers; but they do not hate each other as the readers of the papers hate them, and are ready enough to come to terms, if coming to terms is required. Each of them respects the other, though each of them is very careful to hide his respect. We can fancy that the Right Honourable A. and the Honourable B. in their moments of confidential intercourse laugh in their joint sleeves at the antipathies of the public. In the present instance it was alleged that the Right Honourable A. and the Honourable B. had come to some truce together, and had ceased for a while to hit each other hard knocks. Such a truce was supposed to be a feather in the cap of the Honourable B., as he was leader of a poor party of no more than twenty; and the Right Honourable A. had in this matter the whole House at his back. But for the nonce each had come off his high horse, and for the moment there was peace between them.

But Mr. O'Mahony would have no peace. He understood nothing of compromises. He really believed that the Right Honourable gentleman was the fiend which the others had only called him. To him it was a compact with the very devil. Now the leader of his party, knowing better what he was about, and understanding somewhat of the manner in which politics are at present carried on, felt himself embarrassed by the honesty of such a follower as Mr. O'Mahony. Mr. O'Mahony, when he was asked whether he wished to lead or was willing to serve, declared that he would neither lead nor serve. What he wanted was the "good of Ireland." And he was sure that that was not to be obtained by friendship with Her Majesty's Government. This was in itself very well, but he was soon informed that it was not as a free-lance that he had been elected member for Cavan. "That is between me and my constituency," said Mr. O'Mahony, standing up with his head thrown back, and his right hand on his heart. But the constituency soon gave him to understand that he was not the man they had taken him to be.

He, too, had begun to find that to spend his daughter's money in acting patriotism in the House of Commons was not a fine rÔle in life. He earned nothing and he did nothing. Unless he could bind himself hand and foot to his party he had not even a spark of delegated power. He was not allowed to speak when he desired, and was called upon to sit upon those weary benches hour after hour, and night after night, only pretending to effect those things which he and his brother members knew could not be done. He was not allowed to be wrathful with true indignation, not for a moment; but he was expected to be there from question time through the long watches of the night—taking, indeed, his turn for rest and food—always ready with some mock indignation by which his very soul was fretted; and no one paid him the slightest respect, though he was, indeed, by no means the least respectable of his party. He would have done true work had it been given him to do. But at the present moment his own party did not believe in him. There was no need at present for independent wrathful eloquence. There seldom is need in the House of Commons for independent eloquence. The few men who have acquired for themselves at last the power of expressing it, not to empty benches, not amidst coughings and hootings, and loud conversation, have had to make their way to that point either by long efficient service or by great gifts of pachydermatousness. Mr. O'Mahony had never served anyone for an hour, and was as thin-skinned as a young girl; and, though his daughter had handed him all her money, so that he might draw upon it as he pleased, he told himself, and told her also, that his doing so was mean. "You're welcome to every dollar, father, only it doesn't seem to make you happy."

"I should be happy to starve for the country, if starving would do anything."

"I don't see that one ever does any good by starving as long as there is bread to eat. This isn't a romantic sort of thing, this payment of rents; but we ought to try and find out what a man really owes."

"No man owes a cent to any landlord on behalf of rent."

"But how is a man to get the land?" she said. "Over in our country a rough pioneering fellow goes and buys it, and then he sells it, and of course the man who buys it hasn't to pay rent. But I cannot see how any fellow here can have a right to the land for nothing." Then Mr. O'Mahony reminded his daughter that she was ill and should not exert herself.

It was now far advanced in May, and Mr. O'Mahony had resolved to make one crushing eloquent speech in the House of Commons and then to retire to the United States. But he had already learned that even this could not be effected without the overcoming of many difficulties. In himself, in his eloquence, in the supply of words, he trusted altogether; but there was the opportunity to be bought, and the Speaker's eye to be found,—he regarded this Speaker's eye as the most false of all luminaries,—and the empty benches to be encountered, and then drowsy reporters to be stirred up; and then on the next morning,—if any next morning should come for such a report,—there would not be a tithe of what he had spoken to be read by any man, and, in truth, very little of what he could speak would be worthy of reading. His words would be honest and indignant and fine-sounding, but the hearer would be sure to say, "What a fool is that Mr. O'Mahony!" At any rate, he understood so much of all this that he was determined to accept the Chiltern Hundreds and flee away as soon as his speech should be made.

It was far advanced in May, and poor Rachel was still very ill. She was so ill that all hope had abandoned her either as to her profession or as to either of her lovers. But there was some spirit in her still, as when she would discuss with her father her future projects. "Let me go back," she said, "and sing little songs for children in that milder climate. The climate is mild down in the South, and there I may, perhaps, find some fragment of my voice." But he who was becoming so despondent both for himself and for his country, still had hopes as to his daughter. Her engagement with Lord Castlewell was not even yet broken. Lord Castlewell had gone out of town at a most unusual period,—at a time when the theatres always knew him, and had been away on the exact day which had been fixed for their marriage. Rachel had done all that lay in herself to disturb the marriage, but Lord Castlewell had held to it, urged by feelings which he had found it difficult to analyse. Rachel had in her sickness determined to have done with him altogether, but latterly she had had no communication with him. She had spoken of him to her father as though he were a being simply to be forgotten. "He has gone away, and, as far as he is concerned, there is an end of me. It could not have finished better." But her mind still referred to Frank Jones, and from him she had received hardly a word of love. Further words of love she could not send him. During her illness many letters, or little notes rather, had been written to Castle Morony on her behalf by her father, and to these there had come replies. Frank was so anxious to hear of her well-doing. Frank had not cared so much for her voice as for her general health. Frank was so sorry to hear of her weakness. It had all been read to her, but as it had been read she had only shaken her head; and her father had not carried the dream on any further. To his thinking she was still engaged to the lord, and it would be better for her that she should marry the lord. The lord no doubt was a fool, and filled the most foolish place in the world,—that of a silly fainÉant earl. But he would do no harm to his daughter, and the girl would learn to like the kind of life which would be hers. At present she was very, very ill, but still there was hope for recovery.

By the treasury of the theatre she had been treated munificently. Her engagement had been almost up to the day fixed for her marriage, and the money which would have become due to her under it had been paid in full. She had sent back the latter payments, but they had been returned to her with the affectionate respects of the managers. Since she had put her foot upon these boards she had found herself to be popular with all around her. That, she had told herself, had been due to the lord who was to become her husband. But Rachel had become, and was likely to become, the means of earning money for them, and they were grateful. To tell the truth, Lord Castlewell had had nothing to do with it.

But gradually there came upon them the conviction that her voice was gone, and then the payment of the money ceased. She, and the doctor, and her father, had discussed it together, and they had agreed to settle that it must be so.

"Yes," said the girl, smiling, "it is bitter. All my hopes! And such hopes! It is as though I were dead, and yet were left alive. If it had been small-pox, or anything in that way, I could have borne it. But this thing, this terrible misfortune!"

Then she laughed, and then burst out sobbing with loud tears, and hid her face.

"You will be married, and still be happy," said the doctor.

"Married! Rubbish! So much you know about it. Am I ever to get strong in my limbs again, so as to be able to cross the water and go back to my own country?"

Here the doctor assured her that she would be able to go back to her own country, if it were needed.

"Father," she said, as soon as the doctor had left her, "let there be an end to all this about Lord Castlewell. I will not marry him."

"But, my dear!"

"I will not marry him. There are two reasons why I should not. I do not love him, and he does not love me. There are two other reasons. I do not want to marry him, and he does not want to marry me."

"But he says he does."

"That is his goodness. He is very good. I do not know why a man should be so good who has had so bad a bringing up. Think of me,—how good I ought to be, as compared with him. I haven't done anything naughty in all my life worse than tear my frock, or scold poor Frank; and yet I find it harder to give him up, merely because of the grandeur, than he does to marry me, the poor singing girl, who can never sing again. No! My good looks are gone, such as they were. I can feel it, even with my fingers. You had better take me back to the States at once."

"Good-bye, Rachel," said the lord, coming into her room the day but one after this. Her father was not with her, as she had elected to be alone when she would bid her adieu to her intended husband.

"This is very good of you to come to me."

"Of course I came."

"Because you were good. You need not have come unless you had wished it. I had so spoken to you as to justify you in staying away. My voice is gone, and I can only squeak at you in this broken treble."

"Your voice would not have mattered at all."

"Ah, but it has mattered to me. What made you want to marry me?"

"Your beauty quite as much as your voice," said the lord.

"And that has gone too. Everything I had has gone. It is melancholy! No, my lord," she said, interrupting him when he attempted to contradict her, "there is not a word more to be said about it. Voice and beauty, such as it was, and the little wit, are all gone. I did believe in my voice myself, and therefore I felt myself fitting to marry you. I could have left a name behind me if my voice had remained. But, in truth, my lord, it was not fitting. I did not love you."

"That, indeed!"

"As far as I know myself, I did not love you. You have heard me speak of Frank Jones,—a man who can only wear two clean shirts a week because he has been so boycotted by those wretched Irish as to be able to afford no more. I would take him with one shirt to-morrow, if I could get him. One does not know why one loves a person. Of course he's handsome, and strong, and brave. I don't think that has done it, but I just got the fancy into my head, and there it is still. And he with his two shirts, working every day himself with his own hands to earn something for his father, would not marry me because I was a singing girl and took wages. He would not have another shirt to be washed with my money. Oh, that the chance were given to me to go and wash it for him with my own hands!"

Lord Castlewell sat through the interview somewhat distraught, as well he might be; but when it was over, and he had taken his leave and kissed her forehead, as he went home in his cab, he told himself that he had got through that little adventure very well.

CHAPTER XLIII.

MR. MOSS IS FINALLY ANSWERED.

Some days after the scene last recorded Rachel was sitting in her bedroom, partly dressed, but she was, as she was wont to declare to her father, as weak as a cat with only one life. She had in the morning gone through a good deal of work. She had in the first place counted her money. She had something over £600 at the bank, and she had always supplied her father with what he had wanted. She had told her future husband that she must sing one month in the year so as to earn what would be necessary for the support of the Member of Parliament, and singularly enough her father had yielded. But now the six hundred and odd pounds was all that was left to take them both back to the United States. "I think I shall be able to lecture there," Mr. O'Mahony had said. "Wait till I express my opinion about queens, and lords, and the Speaker! I think I shall be able to say a word or two about the Speaker!—and the Chairman of Committees. A poor little creature who can hardly say bo to a goose unless he had got all the men to back him. I don't want to abuse the Queen, because I believe she does her work like a lady; but if I don't lay it on hot on the Speaker of the British House of Commons, my name is not Gerald O'Mahony."

"You forget your old enemy, the Secretary."

"Him we used to call Buckshot? I'm not so sure about him. At any rate he has had a downfall. When a man's had a downfall I don't care about lecturing against him. But I don't think it probable that the Speaker will have a downfall, and then I can have my fling."

Rachel had dismissed her brougham, and she had written to Edith Jones. That, no doubt, had been the greatest effort of the morning. We need not give here the body of her letter, but it may be understood that she simply declared at length the nature of the prospect before her. There was not a word of Frank Jones in it. She had done that before, and Frank Jones had not responded. She intended to go with her father direct from Liverpool to New York, and her letter was full chiefly of affectionate farewells. To Edith and to Ada and to their father there were a thousand written kisses sent. But there was not a kiss for Frank. There was not a word for Frank, so that any reader of the letter, knowing there was a Frank in the family, would have missed the mention of him, and asked why it was so. It was very, very bitter to poor Rachel this writing to Morony Castle without an allusion to the man; but, as she had said, he had been right not to come and live on her wages, and he certainly was right not to say a word as to their loss, when neither of them had wages on which to live. It would have suited in the United States, but she knew that it would not suit here in the old country, and therefore when the letter was written she was sitting worn-out, jaded and unhappy in her own bed-room.

The lodging was still in Cecil Street, from which spot she and her father had determined not to move themselves till after the marriage, and had now resolved to remain there till Rachel should be well enough for her journey to New York. As she sat there the servant, whom in her later richer days she had taken to herself, came to her and announced a visitor. Mr. Moss was in the sitting-room. "Mr. Moss here!" The girl declared that he was in the sitting-room, and in answer to further inquiries alleged that he was alone. How he had got there the girl could not say. Probably somebody had received a small bribe. Mr. O'Mahony was not in,—nor was anybody in. Rachel told the girl to be ready when she was ready to accompany her into the parlour, and thus resolving that she would see Mr. Moss she sent him a message to this effect. Then she went to work and perfected her dressing very slowly.

When she had completed the work she altered her purpose, and determined that she would see Mr. Moss alone. "You be in the little room close at hand," she said, "and have the door ajar, so that you can come to me if I call. I have no reason to suspect this man, and yet I do suspect him." So saying, she put on her best manners, as it might be those she had learned from the earl when he was to be her husband, and walked into the room. She had often told herself, since the old days, as she had now told the maid, that no real ground for suspicion existed; and yet she knew that she did suspect the man.

Rachel was pale and wan, and moved very slowly as though with haughty gesture. Mr. Moss, no doubt, had reason for knowing that the marriage with Lord Castlewell was at an end. The story had been told about among the theatres. Lord Castlewell did not mean to marry Miss O'Mahony; or else the other and stranger story, Miss O'Mahony did not mean to marry Lord Castlewell. Though few believed that story, it was often told. Theatrical people generally told it to one another as a poetical tale. The young lady had lost her voice and her beauty. The young lady was looking very old and could never sing again. It was absolutely impossible that in such circumstances she should decline to marry the lord if he were willing. But it was more than probable that he should decline to marry her. The theatrical world had been much astonished by Lord Castlewell's folly, and now rejoiced generally over his escape. But that he should still want to marry the young lady, and that she should refuse,—that was quite impossible.

But Mr. Moss was somewhat different from the theatrical world in general. He kept himself to himself, and kept his opinion very much in the dark. Madame Socani spoke to him often about Rachel, and expressed her loud opinion that Lord Castlewell had never been in earnest. And she was of opinion that Rachel's voice had never had any staying property. Madame Socani had once belittled Rachel's voice, and now her triumph was very great. In answer to all this Mr. Moss almost said nothing. Once he did turn round and curse the woman violently, but that was all. Then, when the news had, he thought, been made certain, either in one direction or the other, he came and called on the young lady.

"Well, Mr. Moss," said the young lady, with a smile that was intended to be most contemptible and gracious.

"I have been so extremely sorry to hear of your illness, my dear young lady."

Her grandeur departed from her all at once. To be called this man's "dear young lady" was insufferable. And grandeur did not come easily to her, though wit and sarcasm did.

"Your dear young lady, as you please to call her, has had a bad time of it."

"In memory of the old days I called you so, Miss O'Mahony. You and I used to be thrown much together."

"You and I will never be thrown together again, as my singing is all over."

"It may be so and it may not."

"It is over, at any rate as far as the London theatres go,—as far as you and I go.

"I hope not."

"I tell you it is. I am going back to New York at once, and do not think I shall sing another note as long as I live. I'm going to learn to cook dishes for papa, and we mean to settle down together."

"I hope not," he repeated.

"Very well; but at any rate I must say good-bye to you. I am very weak, and cannot do much in the talking line."

Then she got up and stood before him, as though determined to wish him good-bye. She was in truth weak, but she was minded to stand there till he should have gone.

"My dear Miss O'Mahony, if you would sit down for a moment, I have a proposition to make to you. I think that it is one to which you may be induced to listen."

Then she did sit down, knowing that she would want the strength which rest would give her. The conversation with Mr. Moss might probably be prolonged. He also sat down at a little distance, and held his shining new hat dangling between his knees. It was part of her quarrel with him that he had always on a new hat.

"Your marriage with Lord Castlewell, I believe, is off."

"Just so."

"And also your marriage with Mr. Jones?"

"No doubt. All my marriages are off. I don't mean to be married at all. I tell you I'm going home to keep house for my father."

"Keep house for me," said Mr. Moss.

"I would rather keep house for the devil," said Rachel, rising from her chair in wrath.

"Vy?—vy?"—Mr. Moss was reduced by his eagerness and enthusiasm to his primitive mode of speaking—"Vat is it that you shall want of a man but that he shall love you truly? I come here ready to marry you, and to take my chance in all things. You say your voice is gone. I am here ready to take the risk. Lord Castlewell will not have you, but I will take you." Now he had risen from his chair, and was standing close to her; but she was so surprised at his manner and at his words that she did not answer him at all. "That lord cared for you not at all, but I care. That Mr. Jones, who was to have been your husband, he is gone; but I am not gone. Mr. Jones!" then he threw into his voice a tone of insufferable contempt.

This Rachel could not stand.

"You shall not talk to me about Mr. Jones."

"I talk to you as a man who means vat he is saying. I will marry you to-morrow."

"I would sooner throw myself into that river," she said, pointing down to the Thames.

"You have nothing, if I understand right,—nothing! You have had a run for a few months, and have spent all your money. I have got £10,000! You have lost your voice,—I have got mine. You have no theatre,—I have one of my own. I am ready to take a house and furnish it just as you please. You are living here in these poor, wretched lodgings. Why do I do that?" And he put up both his hands.

"You never will do it," said Rachel.

"Because I love you." Then he threw away his new hat, and fell on his knees before her. "I will risk it all,—because I love you! If your voice comes back,—well! If it do not come back, you will be my wife, and I shall do my best to keep you like a lady."

Here Rachel leant back in her chair, and shut her eyes. In truth she was weak, and was hardly able to carry on the battle after her old fashion. And she had to bethink herself whether the man was making this offer in true faith. If so, there was something noble in it; and, though she still hated the man, as a woman may hate her lover, she would in such case be bound not to insult him more than she could help. A softer feeling than usual came upon her, and she felt that he would be sufficiently punished if she could turn him instantly out of the room. She did not now feel disposed "to stick a knife into him," as she had told her father when describing Mr. Moss. But he was at her knees and the whole thing was abominable.

"Rachel, say the word, and be mine at once."

"You do not understand how I hate you!" she exclaimed.

"Rachel, come to my arms!"

Then he got up, as though to clasp the girl in his embrace. She ran from him, and immediately called the girl whom she had desired to remain in the next room with the door open. But the door was not open, and the girl, though she was in the room, did not answer. Probably the bribe which Mr. Moss had given was to her feeling rather larger than ordinary.

"My darling, my charmer, my own one, come to my arms!"

And he did succeed in getting his hand round on to Rachel's waist, and getting his lips close to her head. She did save her face so that Mr. Moss could not kiss her, but she was knocked into a heap by his violence, and by her own weakness. He still had hold of her as she rose to her feet, and, though he had become acquainted with her weapon before, he certainly did not fear it now. A sick woman, who had just come from her bed, was not likely to have a dagger with her. When she got up she was still more in his power. She was astray, scrambling here and there, so as to be forced to guard against her own awkwardness. Whatever may be the position in which a woman may find herself, whatever battle she may have to carry on, she has first to protect herself from unseemly attitudes. Before she could do anything she had first to stand upon her legs, and gather her dress around her.

"My own one, my life, come to me!" he exclaimed, again attempting to get her into his embrace.

But he had the knife stuck into him. She had known that he would do it, and now he had done it.

"You fool, you," she said; "it has been your own doing."

He fell on the sofa, and clasped his side, where the weapon had struck him. She rang the bell violently, and, when the girl came, desired her to go at once for a surgeon. Then she fainted.

"I never was such a fool as to faint before," she told Frank afterwards. "I never counted on fainting. If a girl faints, of course she loses all her chance. It was because I was ill. But poor Mr. Moss had the worst of it."

Rachel, from the moment in which she fainted, never saw Mr. Moss any more. Madame Socani came to visit her, and told her father, when she failed to see her, that Mr. Moss had only three days to live. Rachel was again in bed, and could only lift up her hands in despair. But to her father, and to Frank Jones, she spoke with something like good humour.

"I knew it would come," she said to her father. "There was something about his eye which told me that an attempt would be made. He would not believe of a woman that she could have a will of her own. By treating her like an animal he thought he would have his own way. I don't imagine he will treat me in that way again." And then she spoke of him to Frank. "I suppose he does like me?"

"He likes your singing,—at so much a month."

"That's all done now. At any rate, he cannot but know that it is an extreme chance. He must fancy that he really likes me. A man has to be forgiven a good deal for that. But a man must be made to understand that if a woman won't have him, she won't! I think Mr. Moss understands it now."

CHAPTER XLIV.

FRANK JONES COMES BACK AGAIN.

These last words had been spoken after the coming of Frank Jones, but something has to be said of the manner of his coming, and of the reasons which brought him, and something also which occurred before he came. It could not be that Mr. Moss should be wounded after so desperate a fashion and that not a word should be said about it.

Of what happened at the time of the wounding Rachel knew nothing. She had been very brave and high in courage till the thing was done, but as soon as it was done she sent for the servant and fainted away. She knew nothing of what had occurred till she had been removed out of the room on one side, and he on the other. She did not hear, therefore, of the suggestion made by Mr. Moss that some vital part of him had been reached.

He did bleed profusely, but under the aid of the doctor and Mr. O'Mahony, who was soon on the scene, he recovered himself more quickly than poor Rachel, who was indeed somewhat neglected till the hero of the tragedy had been sent away. He behaved with sufficient courage at last, though he had begun by declaring that his days were numbered. At any rate he had said when he found the power of ordinary speech, "Don't let a word be whispered about it to Miss O'Mahony; she isn't like other people." Then he was taken back to his private lodging, and confided to the care of Madame Socani, where we will for the present leave him. Soon after the occurrence,—a day or two after it,—Frank Jones appeared suddenly on the scene. Of course it appeared that he had come to mourn the probable death of Mr. Moss. But he had in truth heard nothing of the fatal encounter till he had arrived in Cecil Street, and then could hardly make out what had occurred amidst the confused utterances.

"Frank Jones!" she exclaimed. "Father, what has brought him here?" and she blushed up over her face and head to the very roots of her hair. "Come up, of course he must come up. When a man has come all the way from Castle Morony he must be allowed to come up. Why should you wish to keep him down in the area?" Then Frank Jones soon made his appearance within the chamber.

It was midsummer, and Rachel occupied a room in the lowest house in the street, looking right away upon the river, and her easy-chair had been brought up to the window at which she sat, and looked out on the tide of river life as it flowed by. She was covered at present with a dressing gown, as sweet and fresh as the morning air. On her head she wore a small net of the finest golden filigree, and her tiny feet were thrust into a pair of bright blue slippers bordered with swans-down. "Am I to come back?" her obedient father had asked. But he had been told not to come back, not quite at present. "It is not that I want your absence," she had said, "but he may. He can tell me with less hesitation that he is going to set up a pig-killing establishment in South Australia than he could probably you and me together." So the father simply slapped him on the back, and bade him walk upstairs till he would find No. 15 on the second landing. "Of course you have heard," he said, as Frank was going, "of what she has been and done to Mahomet M. Moss?"

"Not a word," said Frank. "What has she done?"

"Plunged a dagger into him," said Mr. O'Mahony,—in a manner which showed to Frank that he was not much afraid of the consequences of the accident. "You go up and no doubt she will tell you all about it." Then Frank went up, and was soon admitted into Rachel's room.

"Oh, Frank!" she said, "how are you? What on earth has brought you here?" Then he at once began to ask questions about poor Moss, and Rachel of course to answer them. "Well, yes; how was I to help it? I told him from the time that I was a little girl, long before I knew you, that something of this kind would occur if he would not behave himself."

"And he didn't?" asked Frank, with some little pardonable curiosity.

"No, he did not. Whether he wanted me or my voice, thinking that it would come back again, I cannot tell, but he did want something. There was a woman who brought messages from him, and even she wanted something. Then his ideas ran higher."

"He meant to marry you," said Frank.

"I suppose he did,—at last. I am very much obliged to him, but it did not suit. Then,—to make a short story of it, Frank, I will tell you the whole truth. He took hold of me. I cannot bear to be taken hold of; you know that yourself."

He could only remember how often he had sat with her down among the willows at the lake side with his arm round her waist, and she had never seemed to be impatient under the operation.

"And though he has such a beautiful shiny hat he is horribly awkward. He nearly knocked me down and fell on me, by way of embracing me."

Frank thought that he had never been driven to such straits as that.

"To be knocked down and trampled on by a beast like that! There are circumstances in which a girl must protect herself, when other circumstances have brought her into danger. In those days—yesterday, that is, or a week ago—I was a poor singing girl. I was at every man's disposal, and had to look after myself. There are so many white bears about, ready to eat you, if you do not look after yourself. He tried to eat me, and he was wounded. You do not blame me, Frank."

"No, indeed; not for that."

"What do you blame me for?"

"I cannot think you right," he answered with almost majestic sternness, "to have accepted the offer of Lord Castlewell."

"You blame me for that."

He nodded his head at her.

"What would you have had me do?"

"Marry a man when you love him, but not when you don't."

"Oh, Frank! I couldn't. How was I to marry a man when I loved him,—I who had been so treated? But, sir," she said, remembering herself, "you have no right to say I did not love Lord Castlewell. You have no business to inquire into that matter. Nobody blames you, or can, or shall, in that affair,—not in my hearing. You behaved as gentlemen do behave; gentlemen who cannot act otherwise, because it is born in their bones and their flesh. I—I have not behaved quite so well. Open confession is good for the soul. Frank, I have not behaved quite so well. You may inquire about it. I did not love Lord Castlewell, and I told him so. He came to me when my singing was all gone, and generously renewed his offer. Had I not known that in his heart of hearts he did not wish it,—that the two things were gone for which he had wooed me,—my voice, which was grand, and my prettiness, which was but a little thing, I should have taken his second offer, because it would be well to let him have what he wanted. It was not so; and therefore I sent him away, well pleased."

"But why did you accept him?"

"Oh, Frank! do not be too hard. How am I to tell you—you, of all men, what my reasons were? I was alone in the world; alone with such dangers before me as that which Mr. Moss brought with him. And then my profession had become a reality, and this lord would assist me. Do all the girls refuse the lords who come and ask them?"

Then he stood close over her, and shook his head.

"But I should have done so," she continued after a pause. "I recognise it now; and let there be an end of it. There is a something which does make a woman unfit for matrimony." And the tears coursed themselves down her wan cheeks. "Now it has all been said that need be said, and let there be an end of it. I have talked too much about myself. What has brought you to London?"

"Just a young woman," he whispered slowly.

A pang shot through her heart; and yet not quite a pang, for with it there was a rush of joy, which was not, however, perfect joy, because she felt that it must be disappointed.

"Bother your young woman," she said; "who cares for your young woman! How are you going on in Galway?"

"Sadly enough, to tell the truth."

"No rents?"

He shook his head.

"Nothing but murders and floods?"

"The same damnable old story running on from day to day."

"And have the girls no servants yet?"

"Not a servant; except old Peter, who is not quite as faithful as he should be."

"And,—and what about that valiant gay young gentleman, Captain Clayton?"

"Everything goes amiss in love as well as war," said Frank. "Between the three of them, I hardly know what they want."

"I think I know."

"Very likely. Everything goes so astray with all of us, so that the wanting it is sufficient reason for not getting it."

"Is that all you have come to tell me?"

"I suppose it is."

"Then you might have stayed away."

"I may as well go, perhaps."

"Go? no! I am not so full of new friends that I can afford to throw away my old like that. Of course you may not go, as you call it! Do you suppose I do not care to hear about those girls whom I love,—pretty nearly with all my heart? Why don't you tell me about them, and your father? You come here, but you talk of nothing but going. You ain't half nice."

"Can I come in yet?" This belonged to a voice behind the door, which was the property of Mr. O'Mahony.

"Not quite yet, father. Mr. Jones is telling me about them all at Morony Castle."

"I should have thought I might have heard that," said Mr. O'Mahony.

"The girls have special messages to send," said Rachel.

"I'll come back in another ten minutes," said Mr. O'Mahony. "I shall not wait longer than that."

"Only their love," said Frank; upon which Rachel looked as though she thought that Frank Jones was certainly an ass.

"Of course I want to hear their love," said Rachel. "Dear Ada, and dear Edith! Why don't you tell me their love?"

"My poor sick girl," he said, laying his hand upon her shoulder, and looking into her eyes.

"Never mind my sickness. I know I am as thin and as wan as an ogre. Nevertheless, I care for their love."

"Rachel, do you care for mine?"

"I haven't got it! Oh, Frank, why don't you speak to me? You have spoken a word, just a word, and all the blood is coming back to my veins already."

"Dearest, dearest, dearest Rachel."

"Now you have spoken; now you have told me of your sisters and your father. Now I know it all! Now my father may come in."

"Do you love me, then?"

"Love you! That question you know to be unnecessary. Love you! Why I spend every day and every night in loving you! But, Frank, you wouldn't have me when I was going to be rich. I ought not to have you now that I am to be poor." But by this time she was in his arms and he was kissing her, till, as she had said, the blood was once again running in her veins. "Oh, Frank, what a tyrant you are! Did I not tell you to let poor father come into the room? You have said everything now. There cannot be another word to say. Frank, Frank, Frank! I have found it out at last. I cannot live without you."

"But how are you to live with me? There is no money."

"Bother money. Wealth is sordid. Washing stockings over a tub is the only life for me,—so long as I have you to come back to me."

"And your health?"

"I tell you it is done. I was merely sick of the Jones complaint. Oh, heavens! how I can hate people, and how I can love them!" Then she threw herself on the sofa, absolutely worn out by the violence of her emotions.

Mr. O'Mahony was commissioned, and sat down by his girl's side to comfort her. But she wanted no comforting. "So you and Frank have made it up, have you?" said Mr. O'Mahony.

"We have never quarrelled so far as I am concerned," said Frank. "The moment I heard Lord Castlewell was dismissed, I came back."

"Yes," said she, raising herself half up on the sofa. "Do you know his story, father? It is rather a nice story for a girl to hear of her own lover, and to feel that it is true. When I was about to make I don't know how many thousand dollars a year by my singing, he would not come and take his share of it. Then I have to think of my own disgrace. But it enhances his glory. Because he was gone, I brought myself to accept this lord."

"Now, Rachel, you shall not exert yourself," said Frank.

"I will, sir," she replied, holding him by the hand. "I will tell my story. He had retreated from the stain, and the lord had come in his place. But he was here always," and she pressed his hand to her side. "He could not be got rid of. Then I lost my voice, and was 'utterly dished,' as the theatrical people say. Then the lord went,—behaving better than I did however,—and I was alone. Oh, what bitter moments there came then,—long enough for the post to go to Ireland and to return! And now he is here. Once more at my feet again, old man, once more! And then he talks to me of money! What is money to me? I have got such a comforting portion that I care not at all for money." Then she all but fainted once again, and Frank and her father both knelt over her caressing her.

It was a long time before Frank left her, her father going in and out of the room as it pleased him the while. Then he declared that he must go down to the House, assuring Frank that one blackguard there was worse than another, but saying that he would see them to the end as long as his time lasted. Rachel insisted that Frank should go with him.

"I am just getting up from my death-bed," she said, laughing, "and you want me to go on like any other man's young woman. I can think about you without talking to you." And so saying she dismissed him.

On the next morning, when he came again, she discussed with him the future arrangement of his life and hers.

"Of course you must stay with your father," she said. "You do not want to marry me at once, I suppose. And of course it is impossible if you do. I shall go to the States with father as soon as this Parliament affair is over. He is turned out of the House so often that he will be off before long for good and all. But there is the mail still running, and remember that what I say is true. I shall be ready and willing to be made Mrs. Frank Jones as soon as you will come and fetch me, and will tell me that you are able to provide me just with a crust and a blanket in County Galway. Whatever little you will do with, I will do with less."

Then she sat upon his knee, and embraced him and kissed him, and swore to him that no other Lord Castlewell who came should interfere with his rights.

"And as for Mr. Moss," she added, "I do not think that he will ever appear again to trouble your little game."

CHAPTER XLV.

MR. ROBERT MORRIS.

One morning, a little later in the summer, about the beginning of August, all Galway were terrified by the tidings of another murder. Mr. Morris had been killed,—had been "dropped," as the language of the country now went, from behind a wall built by the roadside. It had been done at about five in the afternoon, in full daylight; and, as was surmised by the police, with the consciousness of many of the peasantry around. He had been walking along the road from Cong to his own house, and had been "dropped," and left for dead by the roadside. Dead, indeed, he was when found. Not a word more would have been said about it, but for the intervention of the police, who were on the spot within three hours of the occurrence. A little girl had been coming into Cong, and had told the news. The little girl was living at Cong, and was supposed to be in no way connected with the murder.

"It's some of them boys this side of Clonbur," said one of the men of Cong.

No one thought it necessary after that to give any further explanation of the circumstances.

Mr. Robert Morris was somewhat of an oddity in his way; but he was a man who only a few months since was most unlikely to have fallen a victim to popular anger. He was about forty years of age, and had lived altogether at Minas Cottage, five or six miles from Cong, as you pass up the head of Lough Corrib, on the road to Maum. He was unmarried, and lived quite alone in a small house, trusting to the attentions of two old domestics and their daughter. He kept a horse and a car and a couple of cows and a few cocks and hens; but otherwise he lived alone. He was a man of property, and had, indeed, come from a family very long established in the county. People said of him that he had £500 a year; but he would have been very glad to have seen the half of it paid to his agent; for Mr. Morris, of Minas Cottage, had his agent as well as any other gentleman. He was a magistrate for the two counties, Galway and Mayo, and attended sessions both at Cong and at Clonbur. But when there he did little but agree with some more active magistrate; and what else he did with himself no one could tell of him.

But it was said in respect to him that he was a benevolent gentleman; and but a year or two since very many in the neighbourhood would have declared him to be especially the poor man's friend. With £500 a year he could have done much; with half that income he could do something to assist them, and something he still did. He had his foibles, and fancies, but such as they were they did not tread on the corns of any of his poorer neighbours. He was proud of his birth, proud of his family, proud of having owned, either in his own hands or those of his forefathers, the same few acres,—and many more also, for his forefathers before him had terribly diminished the property. There was a story that his great great grandfather had lived in a palatial residence in County Kilkenny. All this he would tell freely, and would remark that to such an extent had the family been reduced by the extravagance of his forefathers. "But the name and the blood they can never touch," he would remark. They would not ask as to his successor, because they valued him too highly, and because Mr. Morris would never have admitted that the time had come when it was too late to bring a bride home to the western halls of his forefathers. But the rumour went that Minas Cottage would go in the female line to a second cousin, who had married a cloth merchant in Galway city, to whom nor to her husband did Mr. Morris ever speak. There might be something absurd in this, but there was nothing injurious to his neighbours, and nothing that would be likely to displease the poorer of them.

But Mr. Morris had been made the subject of various requests from his tenants. They had long since wanted and had received a considerable abatement in their rent. Hence had come the straitened limits of £250 a year. They had then offered the "Griffith's valuation." To explain the "Griffith's valuation" a chapter must be written, and as no one would read the explanation if given here it shall be withheld. Indeed, the whole circumstances of Mr. Morris's property were too intricate to require, or to admit, elucidation here. He was so driven that if he were to keep anything for himself he must do so by means of the sheriff's officer, and hence it had come to pass that he had been shot down like a mad dog by the roadside.

County Galway was tolerably well used to murders by this time, but yet seemed to be specially astonished by the assassination of Mr. Morris. The innocence of the man; for the dealings of the sheriff's officer were hardly known beyond the town land which was concerned! And then the taciturnity of the county side when the murder had been effected! It was not such a deed as was the slaughtering of poor Florian Jones, or the killing of Terry Carroll in the court house. They had been more startling, more alarming, more awful for the tradesmen, and such like, to talk of among themselves, but the feeling of mystery there had been connected with the secret capacity of one individual. Everyone, in fact, knew that those murders had been done by Lax. And all felt that for the doing of murders Lax was irrepressible. But over there in the neighbourhood of Clonbur, or in the village of Cong, Lax had never appeared. There was no one in the place to whom the police could attribute any Lax-like properties. In that respect, the slaughtering of Mr. Morris had something in it more terrible even than those other murders. It seemed as though murder were becoming the ordinary popular mode by which the people should redress themselves,—as though the idea of murder had recommended itself easily to their intellects. And then they had quietly submitted—all of them—to taciturnity. They who were not concerned in the special case, the adjustment that is of Mr. Morris's rent, accepted his murder with perfect quiescence, as did those who were aggrieved. Nobody had seen anything. Nobody had heard anything. Nobody had known anything. Such were the only replies that were given to the police. If Mr. Morris, then why not another—and another—till the whole country would be depopulated? In Mr. Morris's case a landlord had been chosen; but in other localities agents and sheriffs' officers,—and even those keepers on a property which a gentleman is supposed to employ,—were falling to the right and to the left. But of Mr. Morris and his death nothing was heard.

Yorke Clayton of course went down there, for this, too, was in his district, and Hunter went with him, anxious, if possible, to learn something. They saw every tenant on the property; and, indeed, they were not over numerous. There was not one as to whom they could obtain evidence that he was ever ferocious by character. "They've got to think that they have the right to it all. The poor creatures are not so bad as them that is teaching them. If I think as the farm is my own, of course I don't like to be made to pay rent for it." That was the explanation of the circumstances, as given by Mrs. Davies, of the hotel at Clonbur. And it was evident that she thought it to be sufficient. The meaning of it, according to Captain Clayton's reading, was this: "If you allow such doctrines to be preached abroad by Members of Parliament and Landleague leaders,—to be preached as a doctrine fit for the people,—then you cannot be surprised if the people do as they are taught and hold their tongues afterwards."

This Mr. Morris had been the first cousin of our poor old friend Black Tom Daly.

"Good God!" he exclaimed, as soon as he read the news, sitting in his parlour at Daly's Bridge; "there is Bob Morris gone now."

"Bob Morris, of Minas Cottage!" exclaimed Peter Bodkin, who had ridden over to give Tom Daly some comfort in his solitude, if it might be possible.

"By George! yes; Bob Morris! Did you know him?"

"I don't think he ever came out hunting."

"Hunting, indeed! How should he, when he hadn't a horse that he could ride upon? And Bob knew nothing of sport. The better for him, seeing the way that things are going now. No, he never was out hunting, poor fellow. But for downright innocence and kindness and gentleness of heart, there is no one left like him. And now they have murdered him! What is to be the end of it? There is Persse telling me to hold on by the hounds, when I couldn't keep a hound in the kennels at Ahaseragh if it were ever so."

"Times will mend," said Peter.

"And Raheney Gorse fired so as to drive every fox out of the country! Persse is wrong, and I am wrong to stay at his bidding. The very nature of mankind has altered in the old country. There are not the same hearts within their bosoms. To burn a gorse over a fox's head! There is a damnable cruelty in it of which men were not guilty,—by G——! they were not capable,—a year or two ago. These ruffians from America have come and told them that they shall pay no rent, and their minds have been so filled with the picture that its magnificence has overcome them. They used to tell us that money is the root of all evil; it proves to be true now. The idea that they should pay no rent has been too much for them; and they have become fiends under the feelings which have been roused. Only last year they were mourning over a poor fox like a Christian,—a poor fox that had been caught in a trap,—and now they would not leave a fox in the country, because the gentlemen, they think, are fond of them. The gentlemen are their enemies, and therefore they will spite them. They will drive every gentleman out of the country, and where will they be then?" Here Tom Daly sat quiet for a while, looking silent through the open window, while Peter sat by him feeling the occasion to be too solemn for speech. After a while Tom continued his ejaculations. "Gladstone! Gladstone! There are those who think that man to be great and good; but how can he be great and good if he lets loose such spirits among us? They tell me that he's a very amiable man in his own family, and goes to church regular; but he must be the most ignorant human being that ever took upon himself to make laws for a people. He can understand nothing about money, nothing about property, nothing about rents! I suppose he thinks it fair to take away one man's means and give them to another, simply because one is a gentleman and the other not! A fair rent! There's nothing I hate so much in my very soul as the idea of a fair rent. A fair rent means half that a man pays now; but in a few years' time it will mean again whatever the new landlord may choose to ask. And fixity of tenure! Every man is to get what doesn't belong to him, and if a man has anything he's to be turned out; that is fixity of tenure. And freedom of sale! A man is to be allowed to sell what isn't his own. He thinks that when he has thrown half an eye over a country he can improve it by altering all the wisdom of ages. A man talks and talks, and others listen to him till they flatter him that another God Almighty has been sent upon earth." It was thus that Tom Daly expressed himself as to the Prime Minister of the day; but Tom was a benighted Tory, and had thought nothing of these subjects till they were driven into his mind by the strange mortality of the foxes around him.

Poor Mr. Morris was buried, and there was an end of him. The cloth merchant's wife in Galway got the property; and, as far as we can hear at present, is not likely to do as well with it as her husband is with his bales of goods. No man perhaps more insignificant than Mr. Robert Morris could have departed. He did nothing, and his figure, as he walked about between Cong and Clonbur, could be well spared. But his murder had given rise to feelings through the country which were full of mischief and full of awe. He had lived most inoffensively, and yet he had gone simply because it had occurred to some poor ignorant tenant, who had held perhaps ten or fifteen acres of land, out of which he had lived upon the potatoes grown from two or three of them, that things would go better with him if he had not a landlord to hurry him for rent! Then the tenant had turned in his mind the best means of putting his landlord out of the way, and had told himself that it was an easy thing to do. He had not, of his own, much capacity for the use of firearms; but he had four pound ten, which should have gone to the payment of his rent, and of this four pound ten, fifteen shillings secured the services of some handy man out of the next parish. He had heard the question of murder freely discussed among his neighbours, and by listening to others had learned the general opinion that there was no danger in it. So he came to a decision, and Mr. Morris was murdered.

So far the question was solved between this tenant and this landlord; but each one of the neighbours, as he thought of it, felt himself bound to secrecy pro bono publico. There was a certain comfort in this, and poor Bob Morris's death seemed likely to be passed over with an easy freedom from suspicion. Any man might be got rid of silently, and there need be no injurious results. But men among themselves began to talk somewhat too freely, and an awe grew among them as this man and that man were named as objectionable. And the men so named were not all landlords or even agents. This man was a sheriff's officer, and that a gamekeeper. The sheriffs' officers and gamekeepers were not all murdered, but they were named, and a feeling of terror crept cold round the hearts of those who heard the names. Who was to be the keeper of the list and decide finally as to the victims? Then suddenly a man went, and no one knew why he went. He was making a fence between two fields, and it was whispered that he had been cautioned not to make the fence. At any rate he had been stoned to death, and though there must have been three at least at the work, no one knew who had stoned him. Men began to whisper among each other, and women also, and at last it was whispered to them that they had better not whisper at all. Then they began to feel that not only was secrecy to be exacted from them, but they were not to be admitted to any participation in the secrecy.

And with such of the gentry as were left there had grown up precautions which could not but fill the minds of the peasantry with a vague sense of fear. They went about with rifle in their hands, and were always accompanied by police. They had thick shutters made to their windows, and barred themselves within their houses. Those who but a few months since had been the natural friends of the people, now appeared everywhere in arms against them. If it was necessary that there should be intercourse between them, that intercourse took place by means of a policeman. A further attempt at murder had been made in the neighbourhood, and was so talked of that it seemed that all kindly feeling had been severed. Men began to creep about and keep out of the way lest they should be suspected; and, indeed, it was the fact that there was hardly an able-bodied man in three parishes to whom some suspicion did not attach itself.

And thus the women would ask for fresh murders, and would feel disappointed when none were reported to them, craving, as it were, for blood. And all this had come to pass certainly within the space of two years! A sweeter-tempered people than had existed there had been found nowhere; nor a people more ignorant, and possessing less of the comforts of civilisation. But no evil was to be expected from them, no harm came from them—beyond a few simple lies, which were only harmful as acting upon their own character. As Tom Daly had said, these very men were not capable of it a few months ago. The tuition had come from America! That, no doubt, was true; but it had come by Irish hearts and Irish voices, by Irish longings and Irish ambition. Nothing could be more false than to attribute the evil to America, unless that becomes American which has once touched American soil. But there does grow up in New York, or thereabouts, a mixture of Irish poverty with American wealth, which calls itself "Democrat," and forms as bad a composition as any that I know from which either to replenish or to create a people.

A very little of it goes unfortunately a long way. It is like gin made of vitriol when mingled with water. A small modicum of gin, though it does not add much spirit to the water, will damnably defile a large quantity. And this gin has in it a something of flavour which will altogether deceive an uneducated palate. There is an alcoholic afflatus which mounts to the brain and surrounds the heart and permeates the veins, which for the moment is believed to be true gin. But it makes itself known in the morning, and after a few mornings tells its own tale too well. These "democrats" could never do us the mischief. They are not sufficient, either in intellect or in number; but there are men among us who have taught themselves to believe that the infuriated gin drinker is the true holder of a new gospel.

CHAPTER XLVI.

CONG.

In those days Captain Clayton spent much of his time at Cong, and Frank Jones was often with him. Frank, however, had returned from London a much altered man. Rachel had knocked under to him. It was thus that he spoke of it to himself. I do not think that she spoke of it to herself exactly in the same way. She knew her own constancy, and felt that she was to be rewarded.

"Nothing, I think, would ever have made me marry Lord Castlewell."

It was thus she talked to her father while he was awaiting the period of his dismissal.

"I dare say not," said he. "Of course he is a poor weak creature. But he would have been very good to you, and there would have been an end to all your discomforts."

Rachel turned up her nose. An end to all her discomforts!

Her father knew nothing of what would comfort her and what would discomfort.

She was utterly discomforted in that her voice was gone from her. She would lie and sob on her bed half the morning, and would feel herself to be inconsolable. Then she would think of Frank, and tell herself that there was some consolation in store even for her. Had her voice been left to her she would have found it to be very difficult to escape from the Castlewell difficulty. She would have escaped, she thought, though the heavens might have been brought down over her head. When the time had come for appearing at the altar, she would have got into the first train and disappeared, or have gone to bed and refused to leave it. She would have summoned Frank at the last moment, and would submit to be called the worst behaved young woman that had ever appeared on the London boards. Now she was saved from that; but,—but at what a cost!

"I might have been the greatest woman of the day, and now I must be content to make his tea and toast."

Then she began to consider whether it was good that any girl should be the greatest woman of the day.

"I don't suppose the Queen has so much the best of it with a pack of troubles on her hands."

But Frank in the meantime had gone back to Galway, and Mr. Robert Morris had been murdered. Soon after the death of Mr. Morris the man had been killed as he was mending the ditch, and Captain Clayton found that the tone of the people was varied in the answers which they made to his inquiries. They were astounded, and, as it were, struck dumb with surprise. Nobody knew anything, nobody had heard anything, nobody had seen anything. They were as much in the dark about poor Pat Gilligan as they had been as to Mr. Robert Morris. They spoke of Pat as though he had been slaughtered by a direct blow from heaven; but they trembled, and were evidently uncomfortable.

"That woman knows something about it," said Hunter to his master, shaking his head.

"No doubt she knows a good deal about it; but it is not because she knows that she is bewildered and bedevilled in her intellect. She is beginning to be afraid that the country is one in which even she herself cannot live in safety."

And the men looked to be dumbfoundered and sheepfaced. They kept out of Captain Clayton's way, and answered him as little as possible. "What's the good of axing when ye knows that I knows nothing?" This was the answer of one man, and was a fair sample of the answers of many; but they were given in such a tone that Clayton was beginning to think that the evil was about to work its own cure.

"Frank," he said one day when he was walking with his friend in the gloom of the evening, "this state of things is too horrible to endure." The faithful Hunter followed them, and another policeman, for the Captain was never allowed to stir two steps without the accompaniment of a brace of guards.

"Much too horrible to be endured," said Frank. "My idea is that a man, in order to make the best of himself, should run away from it. Life in the United States has no such horrors as these. Though we're apt to say that all this comes from America, I don't see American hands in it."

"You see American money."

"American money in the shape of dollar bills; but they have all been sent by Irish people. The United States is a large place, and there is room there, I think, for an honest man."

"I'll never be frightened out of my own country," said Clayton. "Nor do I think there is occasion. These abominable reprobates are not going to prevail in the end."

"They have prevailed with poor Tom Daly. He was a man who worked as hard as anyone to find amusement,—and employment too. He never wronged anyone. He was even so honest as to charge a fair price for his horses. And there he is, left high and dry, without a horse or a hound that he can venture to keep about his own place. And simply because the majority of the people have chosen that there shall be no more hunting; and they have proved themselves to be able to have their own way. It is impossible that poor Daly should hunt if they will not permit him, and they carry their orders so far that he cannot even keep a hound in his kennels because they do not choose to allow it."

"And this you think will be continued always?" asked Clayton.

"For all that I can see it may go on for ever. My father has had those water gates mended on the meadows though he could ill afford it. I have told him that they may go again to-morrow. There is no reason to judge that they should not do so. The only two men,—or the man, rather, and the boy,—who have been punished for the last attempt were those who endeavoured to tell of it. See what has come of that!"

"All that is true."

"Will it not be better to go to America, to go to Africa, to go to Asia, or to Russia even, than to live in a country like this, where the law can afford you no protection, and where the lawgivers only injure you?"

"I know nothing about the lawgivers," said Clayton, "but I have to say a word or two about the law. Do you think this kind of thing is going to remain?"

"It does remain, and every day becomes worse."

"An evil will always become worse till it begins to die away. I think I see the end of things approaching. Evil-doers are afraid of each other, and these poor fellows here live in mortal agony lest some Lax of the moment should be turned loose at their own throats. I don't think that Lax is an institution that will remain for ever in the country. This present Lax we have fast locked up. Law at present, at any rate, has so much of power that it is able to lock up a Lax,—when it can catch him. As for this present man, I do hope that the law will find itself powerful enough to fasten a rope round his neck. No Galway jury would find him guilty, and that is bad enough. But the lawgivers have done this for us, that we may try him before a Dublin jury, and there are hopes. When Lax has been well hung out of the world I can turn round and take a moment for my own happiness."

Yorke Clayton, as he said this, was alluding to his love affair with Edith Jones. He had now conquered all the family with one exception. Even the father had assented that it should be so, though tardily and with sundry misgivings. The one person was Edith herself, and it had come to be acknowledged by all around her that she loved Yorke Clayton. As she herself never now denied it, it was admitted on all sides at Morony Castle that the Captain was certainly the favoured lover. But Edith still held out, and had gone so far as to tell the Captain that he could not be allowed to come to the Castle unless he would desist.

"I never shall desist," he had replied. "As to that you may take my word." Then Edith had of course loved him so much the more.

"I don't think this kind of thing will go on," he continued, still addressing Frank Jones. "The people are so fickle that they cannot be constant even to anything evil. It is quite on the cards that Black Tom Daly should next year be the most popular master of hounds in all Ireland, and that Mr. Kit Mooney should not be allowed to show his face within reach of Moytubber Gorse on hunting mornings."

"They'd have burned the gorse before they have come round to that state of feeling. Look at Raheeny."

"It isn't so easy to destroy anything," said the philosophic Clayton. "If the foxes are frightened out of Raheeny or Moytubber, they will go somewhere else. And even if poor Tom Daly were to run away from County Galway, as you're talking of doing, the county would find another master."

"Not like Tom Daly," said Frank Jones, enthusiastically.

"There are as good fish in the sea as ever were caught. Tom Daly is a first-class man, I admit; and he had no more obedient slave than myself when I used to get out hunting two or three days in the session. But he is a desponding man, and cannot look forward to better times. For myself, I own that my hopes are fixed. Hang Lax, and then the millennium!"

"I will quite agree as to the hanging of Lax," said Frank; "but for any millennium, I want something more strong than Irish feeling. You'll excuse me, old fellow."

"Oh, certainly! Of course, I'm an Irishman myself, and might have been a Lax instead of a policeman, if chance had got hold of me in time. As it is, I've a sort of feeling that the policeman is going to have the best of it all through Ireland." Then there came a sudden sound as of a sharp thud, and Yorke Clayton fell as it were dead at Frank Jones's feet.

This occurred at a corner of the road, from which a little boreen or lane ran up the side of the mountain between walls about three feet high. But here some benevolent enterprising gentleman, wishing to bring water through Lower Lough Cong to Lough Corrib, had caused the beginnings of a canal to be built, which had, however, after the expenditure of large sums of money, come to nothing. But the ground, or rather rock, had so been moved and excavated as to make it practicable for some men engaged, as had been this man, to drop at once out of sight. Hunter was at once upon his track, with the other policeman, both of whom fired at him. But as they acknowledged afterwards, they had barely seen the skirt of his coat in the gloom of the evening. The whole spot up and behind the corner of the road was so honeycombed by the works of the intended canal as to afford hiding-places and retreats for a score of murderers. Here, as was afterwards ascertained, there was but one, and that one had apparently sufficed.

Frank Jones had remained on the road with his friend, and had raised him in his arms when he fell. "They have done for me this time," Clayton had said, but had said no more. He had in truth fainted, but Frank Jones, in his ignorance, had thought that he was dead. It turned out afterwards that the bullet had struck his ribs in the front of his body, and, having been turned by the bone, had passed round to his back, and had there buried itself in the flesh. It needs not that we dwell with any length on this part of our tale, but may say at once that the medical skill of Cong sufficed to extract the bullet on the next morning.

After a while one of the two policemen came back to the road, and assisted Frank Jones in carrying up poor Clayton to the inn. Hunter, though still maimed by his wound, stuck to the pursuit, assisted by two other policemen from Cong, who soon appeared upon the scene. But the man escaped, and his flight was soon covered by the darkness of night. It had been eight o'clock before the party had left the inn, and had wandered with great imprudence further than they had intended. At least, so it was said after the occurrence; though, had nothing happened, they would have reached their homes before night had in truth set in. But men said of Clayton that he had become so hardened by the practices of his life, and by the failure of all attempts hitherto made against him, that he had become incredulous of harm.

"They have got me at last," he said to Frank the next morning. "Thank God it was not you instead of me. I have been thinking of it as I lay here in the night, and have blamed myself greatly. It is my business and not yours." And then again further on in the day he sent a message to Edith. "Tell her from me that it is all over now, but that had I lived she would have had to be my wife."

But from that time forth he did in truth get better, though we in these pages can never again be allowed to see him as an active working man. It was his fault,—as the Galway doctor said his egregious sin,—to spend the most of his time in lying on a couch out in the garden at Morony Castle, and talking of the fate of Mr. Lax. The remainder of his hours he devoted to the acceptance of little sick-room favours from his hostess,—I would say from his two hostesses, were it not that he soon came to terms with Ada, under which Ada was not to attend to him with any particular care. "If I could catch that fellow," he said to Ada, alluding to the man who had intended to murder him, "I would have no harm done to him. He should be let free at once; for I could not possibly have got such an opportunity by any other means."

But poor Edith, the while, felt herself to be badly used. She and Ada had often talked of the terrible perils to which Yorke Clayton was subjected, and, as the reader may remember, had discussed the propriety of a man so situated allowing himself to become familiar with any girl. But now Captain Clayton was declared to be safe by everybody. The doctors united in saying that his constitution would carry him through a cannon-ball. But Edith felt that all the danger had fallen to her lot.

In the meantime the search for the double murderers,—unless indeed one murderer had been busy in both cases—was carried vainly along. The horror of poor Mr. Morris's fate had almost disappeared under the awe occasioned by the attack on Captain Clayton. It was astonishing to see how entirely Mr. Morris, with all his family and his old acres, and with Minas Cottage,—which, to the knowledge of the entire population of Cong, was his own peculiar property,—was lost to notice under the attack that had been made with so much audacity on Captain Yorke Clayton. He, as one of four, all armed to the teeth, was attacked by one individual, and attacked successfully. There were those who said at first that the bars of Galway jail must have been broken, and that Lax the omnipotent, Lax the omnipresent, had escaped. And it certainly was the case that many were in ignorance as to who the murderer had been. Probably all were ignorant,—all of those who were in truth well acquainted with the person of Mr. Morris' murderer. And in the minds of the people generally the awe became greater than ever. To them it was evident that anybody could murder anybody; and evident also that it was permitted to them to do so by this new law which had sprung up of late in the country, almost enjoining them to exercise this peculiar mode of retaliation. The bravest thought that they were about to have their revenge against their old masters, and determined that the revenge should be a bloody one. But the more cowardly, and very much the more numerous on that account, feared that, poor as they were, they might be the victims. No man among them could be much poorer than Pat Gilligan, and he had been chosen as one to be murdered, for some reason known only to the murderer.

A new and terrible aristocracy was growing up among them,—the aristocracy of hidden firearms. There was but little said among them, even by the husband to the wife, or by the father to the son; because the husband feared his wife, and the father his own child. There had been a feeling of old among them that they were being ground down by the old aristocracy. There must ever be such an idea on the part of those who do not have enough to eat in regard to their betters, who have more than plenty. It cannot be but that want should engender such feeling. But now the dread of the new aristocracy was becoming worse than that of the old. In the dull, dim minds of these poor people there arose, gradually indeed but quickly, a conviction that the new aristocracy might be worse even than the old; and that law, as administered by Government, might be less tyrannical than the law of those who had no law to govern them. So the people sat silent at their hearths, or crawled miserably about their potato patches, speaking not at all of the life around them.

When a week was over, tidings came to them that Captain Clayton, though he had been shot right through the body,—though the bullet had gone in at his breast and come out at his back, as the report went,—was still alive, and likely to live. "He's a-spending every hour of his blessed life a-making love to a young lady who is a-nursing him." This was the report brought up to Cong by the steward of the lake steamer, and was received as a new miracle by the Cong people. The fates had decreed that Captain Clayton should not fall by any bullet fired by Lax, the Landleaguer; for, though Lax, the Landleaguer, was himself fast in prison when the attempt was made, such became more than ever the creed of the people when it was understood that Captain Clayton, with his own flesh and blood, was at this moment making love to Mr. Jones's youngest daughter at Morony Castle.

CHAPTER XLVII.

KERRYCULLION.

Captain Clayton was thoroughly enjoying life, now perhaps, for the first time since he had had a bullet driven through his body. It had come to pass that everything, almost everything, was done for him by the hands of Edith. And yet Ada was willing to do everything that was required; but she declared always that what she did was of no avail. "Unless you take it to him, you know he won't eat it," she would still say. No doubt this was absurd, because the sick man's appetite was very good, considering that a hole had been made from his front to his back within the last month. It was still September, the weather was as warm as summer, and he insisted on lying out in the garden with his rugs around him, and enjoying the service of all his slaves. But among his slaves Edith was the one whom the other slaves found it most difficult to understand.

"I will go on," she said to her father, "and do everything for him while he is an invalid. But, when he is well enough to be moved, either he or I must go out of this."

Her father simply said that he did not understand it; but then he was one of the other slaves.

"Edith," said the Captain, one day, speaking from his rugs on the bank upon the lawn, "just say that one word, 'I yield.' It will have to be said sooner or later."

"I will not say it, Captain Clayton," said Edith with a firm voice.

"So you have gone back to the Captain," said he.

"I will go back further than that, if you continue to annoy me. It shall be nothing but plain 'sir,' as hard as you please. You might as well let go my hand; you know that I do not take it away violently, because of your wound."

"I know—I know—I know that a girl's hand is the sweetest thing in all creation if she likes you, and leaves it with you willingly." Then there was a little pull, but it was only very little.

"Of course, I don't want to hurt you," said Edith.

"And, therefore, it feels as though you loved me. Of course it does. Your hand says one thing and your voice another. Which way does your heart go?"

"Right against you," said Edith. But she could not help blushing at the lie as she told it. "My conscience is altogether against you, and I advise you to attend more to that than to anything else." But still he held her hand, and still she let him hold it.

At that moment Hunter appeared upon the scene, and Edith regained her hand. But had the Captain held the hand, Hunter would not have seen it. Hunter was full of his own news; and, as he told it, very dreadful the story was. "There has been a murder worse than any that have happened yet, just the other side of the lake," and he pointed away to the mountains, and to that part of Lough Corrib which is just above Cong.

"Another murder?" said Edith.

"Oh, miss, no other murder ever told of had any horror in it equal to this! I don't know how the governor will keep himself quiet there, with such an affair as this to be looked after. There are six of them down,—or at any rate five."

"When a doubt creeps in, one can always disbelieve as much as one pleases."

"You can hardly disbelieve this, sir, as I have just heard the story from Sergeant Malcolm. There were six in the house, and five have been carried out dead. One has been taken to Cong, and he is as good as dead. Their names are Kelly. An old man and an old woman, and another woman and three children. The old woman was very old, and the man appears to have been her son."

"Have they got nobody?" asked Clayton.

"It appears not, sir. But there is a rumour about the place that there were many of them in it."

"Looking after one another," said Clayton, "so that none should escape his share of the guilt."

"It may be so. But there were many in it, sir. I can't tell much of the circumstances, except the fact that there are the five bodies lying dead." And Hunter, with some touch of dramatic effect and true pathos, pointed again to the mountains which he had indicated as the spot where this last murder was committed.

It was soon settled among them that Hunter should go off to the scene of action, Cong, or wherever else his services might be required, and that he should take special care to keep his master acquainted with all details as they came to light. For us, we may give here the details as they did reach the Captain's ears in the course of the next few days.

Hunter's story had only been too true. The six persons had been murdered, barring one child, who had been taken into Cong in a state which was supposed hardly to admit of his prolonged life. The others, who now lay dead at a shebeen house in the neighbourhood, consisted of an old woman and her son, and his wife and a grown daughter, and a son. All these had been killed in various ways,—had been shot with rifles, and stoned with rocks, and made away with, after any fashion that might come most readily to the hands of brutes devoid of light, of mercy, of conscience, and apparently of fear. It must have been a terrible sight to see, for those who had first broken in upon the scene of desolation. In the course of the next morning it had become known to the police, and it was soon rumoured throughout England and Ireland that there had been ten murderers engaged in the bloody fray. It must have been as Captain Clayton had surmised; one with another intent upon destroying that wretched family,—or perhaps only one among its number,—had insisted that others should accompany him. A man who had been one of their number was less likely to tell if he had a hand in it himself. And so there were ten of them. It might be that one among the number of the murdered had seen the murder of Mr. Morris, or of Pat Gilligan, or the attempted murder of Captain Clayton. And that one was not sure not to tell,—had perhaps shown by some sign and indication that to tell the truth about the deed was in his breast,—or in hers! Some woman living there might have spoken such a word to a friend less cautious in that than were the neighbours in general. Then we can hear, or fancy that we can hear, the muttered reasons of those who sought to rule amidst that bloody community. They were a family of the Kellys,—these poor doomed creatures,—but amidst those who whispered together, amidst those who were forced to come into the whispering, there were many of the same family; or, at any rate, of the same name. For the Kellys were a tribe who had been strong in the land for many years. Though each of the ten feared to be of the bloody party, each did not like not to be of it, for so the power would have come out of their hands. They wished to be among the leading aristocrats, though still they feared. And thus they came together, dreading each other, hating each other at last; each aware that he was about to put his very life within the other's power, and each trying to think, as far as thoughts would come to his dim mind, that to him might come some possibility of escape by betraying his comrades.

But a miracle had occurred,—that which must have seemed to be a miracle when they first heard it, and to the wretches themselves, when its fatal truth was made known to them. While in the dead of night they were carrying out this most inhuman massacre there were other eyes watching them; six other eyes were looking at them, and seeing what they did perhaps more plainly than they would see themselves! Think of the scene! There were six persons doomed, and ten who had agreed to doom them; and three others looking on from behind a wall, so near as to enable them to see it all, under the fitful light of the stars! Nineteen of them engaged round one small cabin, of whom five were to die that night;—and as to ten others, it cannot but be hoped that the whole ten may pay the penalty due to the offended feelings of an entire nation!

It may be that it shall be proved that some among the ten had not struck a fatal blow. Or it may fail to be proved that some among the ten have done so. It will go hard with any man to adjudge ten men to death for one deed of murder; and it is very hard for that one to remember always that the doom he is to give is the only means in our power to stop the downward path of crime among us. It may be that some among the ten shall be spared, and it may be that he or they who spare them shall have done right.

But such was not the feeling of Captain Yorke Clayton as he discussed the matter, day after day, with Hunter, or with Frank Jones, upon the lawn at Castle Morony. "It would be the grandest sight to see,—ten of them hanging in a row."

"The saddest sight the world could show," said Frank.

"Sad enough, that the world should want it. But if you had been employed as I have for the last few years, you would not think it sad to have achieved it. If the judge and the jury will do their work as it should be done there will be an end to this kind of thing for many years to come. Think of the country we are living in now! Think of your father's condition, and of the injury which has been done to him and to your sisters, and to yourself. If that could be prevented and atoned for, and set right by the hanging in one row of ten such miscreants as those, would it not be a noble deed done? These ten are frightful to you because there are ten at once,—ten in the same village,—ten nearly of the same name! People would call it a bloody assize where so many are doomed. But they scruple to call the country bloody where so many are murdered day after day. It is the honest who are murdered; but would it not be well to rid the world of these ruffians? And, remember, that these ten would not have been ten, if some one or two had been dealt with for the first offence. And if the ten were now all spared, whose life would be safe in such a Golgotha? I say that, to those who desire to have their country once more human, once more fit for an honest man to live in, these ten men hanging in a row will be a goodly sight."

There must have been a feeling in the minds of these three men that some terrible step must be taken to put an end to the power of this aristocracy, before life in the country would be again possible. When they had come together to watch their friends and neighbours, and see what the ten were about to do, there must have been some determination in their hearts to tell the story of that which would be enacted. Why should these ten have all the power in their own hands? Why should these questions of life and death be remitted to them, to the exclusion of those other three? And if this family of Kellys were doomed, why should there not be other families of other Kellys,—why not their own families? And if Kerrycullion were made to swim in blood,—for that was the name of the townland in which these Kellys lived,—why not any other homestead round the place in which four or five victims may have hidden themselves? So the three, with mutual whisperings among themselves, with many fears and with much trembling, having obtained some tidings of what was to be done, agreed to follow and to see. It was whispered about that one of the family, the poor man's wife, probably, had seen the attack made upon poor Pat Gilligan, and may, or may not, have uttered some threat of vengeance; may have shown some sign that the murder ought to be made known to someone. Was not Pat Gilligan her sister's husband's brother's child? And he was not one of the other, the rich aristocracy, against whom all men's hands were justly raised. Some such word had probably passed the unfortunate woman's lips, and the ten men had risen against her. The ten men, each protecting each other, had sworn among themselves that so villainous a practice, so glaring an evil as this, of telling aught to the other aristocracy, must be brought to an end.

But then the three interfered, and it was likely that the other, the rich aristocracy, should now know all about it. It was not to save the lives of those unfortunate women and children that they went. There would be danger in that. And though the women and children were, at any rate, their near neighbours, why should they attempt to interfere and incur manifest dangers on their account? But they would creep along and see, and then they could tell; or should they be disturbed in their employment, they could escape amidst the darkness of the night. There could be no escape for those poor wretches, stripped in their bed; none for that aged woman, who could not take herself away from among the guns and rocks of her pursuers; none for those poor children; none, indeed, for the father of the family, upon whom the ten would come in his lair. If his wife had threatened to tell, he must pay for his wife's garrulity. Pat Gilligan had suffered for some such offence, and it was but just that she and he and they should suffer also. But the three might have to suffer, also, in their turns, if they consented to subject themselves to so bloody an aristocracy. And therefore they stalked forth at night and went up to Kerrycullion, at the heels of the other party, and saw it all. Now, one after another, the six were killed, or all but killed, and then the three went back to their homes, resolved that they would have recourse to the other aristocracy.

Between Galway and Cong and Kerrycullion, Hunter was kept going in these days, so as to obtain always the latest information for his master. For, though the neighbourhood of Morony Castle was now supposed to be quiet, and though the Captain was not at the moment on active service, Hunter was still allowed to remain with him. And, indeed, Captain Clayton's opinion was esteemed so highly, that, though he could do nothing, he was in truth on active service. "They are sticking to their story, all through?" he asked Hunter, or rather communicated the fact to Hunter for his benefit.

"Oh, yes! sir; they stick to their story. There is no doubt about them now. They can't go back."

"And that boy can talk now?"

"Yes, sir; he can talk a little."

"And what he says agrees with the three men? There will be no more murders in that county, Hunter, or in County Galway either. When they have once learned to think it possible that one man may tell of another, there will be an end to that little game. But they must hang them of course."

"Oh, yes! sir," said Hunter. "I'd hang them myself; the whole ten of them, rather than keep them waiting."

"The trial is to be in Dublin. Before that day comes we shall find what they do about Lax. I don't suppose they will want me; or if they did, for the matter of that, I could go myself as well as ever."

"You could do nothing of the kind, Captain Clayton," said Edith, who was sitting there. "It is absurd to hear you talk in such a way."

"I don't suppose he could just go up to Dublin, miss," said Hunter.

"Not for life and death?" roared the sick man.

"I suppose you could for life and death," said Hunter,—with a little caution.

"For his own death he could," said Edith. "But it's the death of other people that he is thinking of now."

"And you, what are you thinking of?"

"To tell the truth, just at this moment I was thinking of yours. You are here under our keeping, and as long as you remain so, we are bound to do what we can to keep you from killing yourself; you ought to be in your bed."

"Tucked up all round,—and you ought to be giving me gruel." Then Hunter simpered and went away. He generally did go away when the love-scenes began.

"You could give one something which would cure me instantly."

"No, I could not! There are no such instant cures known in the medical world for a man who has had a hole right through him."

"That bullet will certainly be immortal."

"But you will not if you talk of going up to Dublin."

"Edith, a kiss would cure me."

"Captain Clayton, you are in circumstances which should prevent you from alluding to any such thing. I am here to nurse you, and I should not be insulted."

"That is true," he said. "And if it be an insult to tell you what a kiss would do for me, I withdraw the word. But the feeling it would convey, that you had in truth given yourself to me, that you were really, really my own, would I think cure me, though a dozen bullets had gone through me."

Then when Ada had come down, Edith went to her bedroom, and kissed the pillow, instead of him. Oh, if it might be granted to her to go to him, and frankly to confess, that she was all, all his own! And she felt, as days went on, she would have to yield, though honour still told her that she should never do so.

CHAPTER XLVIII.

THE NEW ARISTOCRACY FAILS.

From this moment the mystery of the new aristocracy began to fade away, and get itself abolished. Men and women began to feel that there might be something worse in store for them than the old course of policemen, juries, and judges. It had seemed, at first, as though these evil things could be brought to an end, and silenced altogether as far as their blessed country was concerned. A time was coming in which everyone was to do as he pleased, without any fear that another should tell of him. Though a man should be seen in the broad daylight cutting the tails off half a score of oxen it would be recognised in the neighbourhood as no more than a fair act of vengeance, and nothing should be told of the deed, let the policemen busy themselves as they might. And the beauty of the system consisted in the fact that the fear of telling was brought home to the minds of all men, women, and children. Though it was certain that a woman had seen a cow's tail mangled, though it could be proved beyond all doubt that she was in the field when the deed was done, yet if she held her peace no punishment would await her. The policeman and the magistrate could do nothing to her. But Thady O'Leary, the man who had cut a cow's tail off, could certainly punish her. If nothing else were done she could be boycotted, or, in other words, not allowed to buy or sell the necessaries of life. Or she could herself be murdered, as had happened to Pat Gilligan. The whole thing had seemed to run so smoothly!

But now there had come, or would soon come, a change o'er the spirit of the dream. The murder of Pat Gilligan, though it had made one in the necessary sequence of events, one act in the course of the drama which, as a whole, had appeared to be so perfect, seemed to them all to have about it something terrible. No one knew what offence Pat Gilligan had given, or why he had been condemned. Each man began to tremble as he thought that he too might be a Pat Gilligan, and each woman that she might be a Mrs. Kelly. It was better to go back to the police and the magistrates than this!

I do not know that we need lean too heavily on the stupidity of the country's side in not having perceived that this would be so. The country's side is very slow in perceiving the course which things will take. These ten murderers had been brought together, each from fear of the others; and they must have felt that though they were ten,—a number so great when they considered the employment on which they were engaged as to cause horror to the minds of all of them,—the ten could not include all who should have been included. Had the other three been taken in, if that were possible, how much better it would have been! But the desire for murder had not gone so far,—its beauty had not been so perfectly acknowledged as to make it even yet possible to comprise a whole parish in destroying one family.

Then the three had seen that the whole scheme, the mystery of the thing, the very plan upon which it was founded, must be broken down and thrown to the winds. And we can imagine that, when the idea first came upon the minds of those three, that the entire family of the Kellys was to be sacrificed to stop the tongue of one talkative old woman, a horror must have fallen upon them as they recognised the duty which was incumbent on them. The duty of saving those six unfortunates they did not recognise. They could not screw themselves up to the necessary pitch of courage to enable them to enter in among loaded pistols and black-visaged murderers. The two women and the children had to die, though the three men were so close to them; so close as to have been certainly able to save them, or some of them, had they rushed into the cabin and created the confusion of another advent. To this they could not bring themselves, for are not the murderers armed? But an awful horror must have crept round their minds as they thought of the self-imposed task they had undertaken. They waited until the murders had been completed, and then they went back home and told the police.

From this moment the mystery by which murders in County Galway and elsewhere were for a short period protected was over in Ireland. Men have not seen, as yet, how much more lovely it is to tell frankly all that has been done, to give openly such evidence as a man may have to police magistrates and justices of the peace, than to keep anything wrapped within his own bosom. The charm of such outspoken truth does not reconcile itself at once to the untrained mind; but the fact of the loveliness does gradually creep in, and the hideous ugliness of the other venture. On the minds of those men of Kerrycullion something of the ugliness and something of the loveliness must have made itself apparent. And when this had been done it was not probable that a return to the utter ugliness of the lie should be possible. Whether the ten be hanged,—to the intense satisfaction of Hunter and his master,—or some fewer number, such as may suffice the mitigated desire for revenge which at present is burning in the breasts of men, the thing will have been done, and the mystery with all its beauty will have passed away.

At Castle Morony the beginning of the passing away of the mystery was hailed with great delight. It took place in this wise. A little girl who had been brought up there in the kitchen, and had reached the age of fifteen under the eyes of Ada and Edith,—a slip of a girl, whose feet our two girls had begun to trammel with shoes and stockings, and who was old enough to be proud of the finery though she could not bear the confinement,—had gone under the system of boycotting, when all the other servants had gone also. Peter, who was very stern in his discipline to the younger people, had caught hold of her before she went, and had brought her to Mr. Jones, recommending that at any rate her dress should be stripped from her back, and her shoes and stockings from her feet. "If you war to wallop her, sir, into the bargain, it would be a good deed done," Peter had said to his master.

"Why should I wallop her for leaving my service?"

"She ain't guv' no notice," said the indignant Peter.

"And if I were to wallop you because you had taken it into your stupid head to leave me at a moment's notice, should I be justified in doing so?"

"There is differences," said Peter, drawing himself up.

"You are stronger, you mean, and Feemy Carroll is weak. Let her go her own gait as she pleases. How am I to take upon myself to say that she is not right to go? And for the shoes and stockings, let them go with her, and the dress also, if I am supposed to have any property in it. Fancy a Landleaguer in Parliament asking an indignant question as to my detaining forcibly an unwilling female servant. Let them all go; the sooner we learn to serve ourselves the better for us. I suppose you will go too before long."

This had been unkind, and Peter had made a speech in which he had said so. But the little affair had taken place in the beginning of the boycotting disarrangements, and Mr. Jones had been bitter in spirit. Now the girls had shown how deftly they could do the work, and had begun to talk pleasantly how well they could manage to save the wages and the food. "It's my food you'll have to save, and my wages," said Captain Clayton. But this had been before he had a hole driven through him, and he was only awed by a frown.

But now news was brought in that Feemy had crept in at the back door. "Drat her imperence," said Peter, who brought in the news. "It's like her ways to come when she can't get a morsel of wholesome food elsewhere."

Then Ada and Edith had rushed off to lay hold of the delinquent, who had indeed left a feeling in the hearts of her mistresses of some love for her little foibles. "Oh! Feemy, so you've come back again," said Ada, "and you've grown so big!" But Feemy cowered and said not a word. "What have you been doing all the time?" said Edith. "Miss Ada and I have had to clean out all the pots and all the pans, and all the gridirons, though for the matter of that there has been very little to cook on them." Then Ada asked the girl whether she intended to come back to her old place.

"If I'm let," said the girl, bursting into tears.

"Where are the shoes and stockings?" said Ada.

But the girl only wept.

"Of course you shall come back, shoes or no shoes. I suppose times have been too hard with you at home to think much of shoes or stockings. Since your poor cousin was shot in Galway court-house,"—for Feemy was a cousin of the tribe of Carrolls,—"I fear it hasn't gone very well with you all." But to this Feemy had only answered by renewed sobs. She had, however, from that moment taken up her residence as of yore in the old house, and had gone about her business just as though no boycotting edict had been pronounced against Castle Morony.

And gradually the other servants had returned, falling back into their places almost without a word spoken. One boy, who had in former days looked after the cows, absolutely did come and drive them in to be milked one morning without saying a word.

"And who are you, you young deevil?" said Peter to him.

"I'm just Larry O'Brien."

"And what business have you here?" said Peter. "How many months ago is it since last year you took yourself off without even a word said to man or woman? Who wants you back again now, I wonder?"

The boy, who had grown half-way to a man since he had taken his departure, made no further answer, but went on with the milking of his cows.

And the old cook came back again from Galway, though she came after the writing of a letter which must have taken her long to compose, and the saying of many words.

"Honoured Miss," the letter went, "I've been at Peter Corcoran's doing work any time these twelve months. And glad I've been to find a hole to creep into. But Peter Corcoran's house isn't like Castle Morony, and so I've told him scores of times. But Peter is one of them Landleaguers, and is like to be bruk', horse, foot, and dragoons, bekaise he wouldn't serve the gentry. May the deevil go along with him, and with his pollytiks. Sure you know, miss, they wouldn't let me stay at Castle Morony. Wasn't one side in pollitiks the same as another to an old woman like me, who only wants to 'arn her bit and her sup? I don't care the vally of a tobacco-pipe for none of them now. So if the squire would take me back again, may God bless him for iver and iver, say I." Then this letter was signed Judy Corcoran,—for she too was of the family of the Corcorans,—and became the matter for many arrangements, in the course of which she once more was put into office as cook at Castle Morony.

Then Edith wrote the following letter to her friend Rachel, who still remained in London, partly because of her health and partly because her father had not yet quite settled his political affairs. But that shall be explained in another chapter.

Dearest Rachel,

Here we are beginning to see daylight, after having been buried in Cimmerian darkness for the best part of two years. I never thought how possible it would be to get along without servants to look after us, and how much of the pleasures of life might come without any of its comforts. Ada and I for many months have made every bed that has been slept in in the house, till we have come to think that the making of beds is the proper employment for ladies. And every bit of food has been cooked by us, till that too has become ladylike in our eyes. And it has been done for papa, who has, I think, liked his bed and his dinner all the better, because they have passed through his daughters' hands. But, dear papa! I'm afraid he has not borne the Cimmerian darkness as well as have we, who have been young enough to look forward to the return of something better.

What am I to say to you about Frank, who will not talk much of your perfections, though he is always thinking of them? I believe he writes to you constantly, though what he says, or of what nature it is, I can only guess. I presume he does not send many messages to Lord Castlewell, who, however, as far as I can see, has behaved beautifully. What more can a girl want than to have a lord to fall in love with her, and to give her up just as her inclination may declare itself?

What I write for now, specially, is to add a word to what I presume Frank may have said in one of his letters. Papa says that neither you nor Mr. O'Mahony are to think of leaving this side of the water without coming down to Castle Morony. We have got a cook now, and a cow-boy. What more can you want? And old Peter is here still, always talking about the infinite things which he has done for the Jones family. Joking apart, you must of course come and see us again once before you start for New York. Is Frank to go with you? That is a question to which we can get no answer at all from Frank himself.

In your last you asked me about my affairs. Dear girl, I have no affairs. I am in such a position that it is impossible for me to have what you would call affairs. Between you and Frank everything is settled. Between me and the man to whom you allude there is nothing settled,—except that there is no ground for settlement. He must go one way and I another. It is very sad, you will say. I, however, have done it for myself and I must bear the burden.

Yours always lovingly,

Edith.

CHAPTER XLIX.

It is not to be supposed that Mr. Jones succumbed altogether to the difficulties which circumstances had placed in his way. His feelings had been much hurt both by those who had chosen to call themselves his enemies and by his friends, and under such usage he became somewhat sullen. Having suffered a grievous misfortune he had become violent with his children, and had been more severely hurt by the death of the poor boy who had been murdered than he had confessed. But he had still struggled on, saying but little to anybody till at last he had taken Frank into his confidence, when Frank had returned from London with his marriage engagement dissolved. And the re-engagement had not at all interfered with the renewed intimacy between Frank and his father, because the girl was absolved from her singing. The father had feared that the son would go away from him, and lead an idle life, enjoying the luxuries which her rich salary would purchase. Frank had shared his father's feelings in this respect, but still the squire had had his misgivings. All that was now set to rights by the absolute destruction of poor Rachel's voice.

Poor Mr. Jones had indeed received comfort from other sources more material than this. His relatives had put their heads together, and had agreed to bear some part of the loss which had fallen upon the estate; not the loss, that is, from the submerged meadows, which was indeed Mr. Jones's own private concern, but from the injury done to him by the commissioners. Indeed, as things went on, that injury appeared to be less extensive than had been imagined, though the injustice, as it struck Mr. Jones's mind, was not less egregious. Where there was a shred of a lease the sub-commissioners were powerless, and though attempts had been made to break the leases they had failed; and men were beginning to say that the new law would be comparatively powerless because it would do so little. The advocates for the law pointed out that, taking the land of Ireland all through, not five per cent.,—and again others not two per cent.,—would be affected by it. Whether it had been worth while to disturb the sanctity of contracts for so small a result is another question; but our Mr. Jones certainly did feel the comfort that came to him from the fact. Certain fragments of land had been reduced by the sub-commissioners after ponderous sittings, very beneficial to the lawyers, but which Mr. Jones had found to be grievously costly to him. He had thus agreed to other reductions without the lawyers, and felt those also to be very grievous, seeing that since he had purchased the property with a Parliamentary title he had raised nothing. There was no satisfaction to him when he was told that a Parliamentary title meant nothing, because a following Parliament could undo what a preceding Parliament had done. But as the arrangements went on he came to find that no large proportion of the estates would be affected, and that gradually the rents would be paid. They had not been paid as yet, but such he was told was the coming prospect. Pat Carroll had risen up as a great authority at Ballintubber, and had refused to pay a shilling. He had also destroyed those eighty acres of meadow-land which had sat so near Mr. Jones's heart. It had been found impossible to punish him, but the impossibility was to be traced to that poor boy's delinquency. As the owner of the property turned it all over within his own bosom, he told himself that it was so. It was that that had grieved him most, that which still sat heavy on his heart. But the boy was gone, and Pat Carroll was in prison, and Pat Carroll's brother had been murdered in Galway court-house. Lax, too, was in prison, and Yorke Clayton swore by all his gods that he should be hanged. It was likely that he would be hanged, and Yorke Clayton might find his comfort in that. And now had come up this terrible affair at Kerrycullion, from which it was probable that the whole mystery of the new aristocracy would be abandoned. Mr. Jones, as he thought of it all, whispered to himself that if he would still hold up his head, life might yet be possible at Castle Morony. "It will only be for myself,—only for myself and Ada," he said, still mourning greatly over his fate. "And Ada will go, too. The beauty of the flock will never be left to remain here with her father." But in truth his regrets were chiefly for Edith. If that bloodthirsty Captain would have made himself satisfied with Ada, he might still have been happy.

In these days he would walk down frequently to the meadows and see the work which the men were doing. He had greatly enlarged them, having borrowed money for the purpose from the Government Land Commissioners, and was once again allowing new hopes to spring in his heart. Though he was a man so silent, and appearing to be so apathetic, he was intent enough on his own purposes when they became clear before his eyes. From his first coming into this country his purport had been to do good, as far as the radius of his circle went, to all whom it included. The necessity of living was no doubt the same with him as with others,—and of living well. He must do something for himself and his children. But together with this was the desire, nearly equally strong, of being a benefactor to those around him. He had declared to himself when he bought the property that with this object would he settle himself down upon it, and he had not departed from it. He had brought up his children with this purpose; and they had learned to feel, one and all, that it was among the pleasures and the duties of their life. Then had come Pat Carroll, and everything had been embittered for him. All Ballintubber and all Morony had seemed to turn against him. When he found that Pat Carroll was disposed to be hostile to him, he made the man a liberal offer to take himself off to America. But Mr. Jones, in those days, had heard nothing of Lax, and was unaware that Lax was a dominant spirit under whom he was doomed to suffer.

"I did not know you so well then," said Captain Clayton to Mr. Jones, now some weeks hence, "or I could have told you that Pat Carroll is nobody. Pat Carroll is considered nobody, because he has not been to New York. Mr. Lax has travelled, and Mr. Lax is somebody. Mr. Lax settled himself in County Mayo, and thus he allowed his influence to spread itself among us over here in County Galway. Mr. Lax is a great man, but I rather think that he will have to be hanged in Galway jail before a month has passed over his head."

Mr. Jones usually took his son with him when he walked about among the meadows, and he again expressed his wishes to him as though Frank hereafter were to have the management of everything. But on one occasion, towards the latter half of the afternoon, he went alone. There were different wooden barriers, having sluice gates passing between them, over which he would walk, and at present there were sheep on the upper meadows, on which the luxuriant grass had begun to grow in the early summer. He was looking at his sheep now, and thinking to himself that he could find a market for them in spite of all that the boycotters could do to prevent him. But in one corner, where the meadows ceased, and Pat Carroll's land began, he met an old man whom he had known well in former years, named Con Heffernan. It was absolutely the case that he, the landlord, did not at the present moment know who occupied Pat Carroll's land, though he did know that he had received no rent for the last three years. And he knew also that Con Heffernan was a friend of Carroll's, or, as he believed, a distant cousin. And he knew also that Con was supposed to have been one of those who had assisted at the destruction of the sluice gates.

"Well, Con; how are you?" he said.

"Why thin, yer honour, I'm only puirly. It's bad times as is on us now, indeed and indeed."

"Whose fault is that?" said the squire.

"Not yer honour's. I will allys say that for your honour. You never did nothing to none of us."

"You had land on the estate till some twelve months since, and then you were evicted for five gales of rent."

"That's thrue, too, yer honour."

"You ought to be a rich man now, seeing that you have got two-and-a-half years' rent in your pocket, and I ought to be poor, seeing that I've got none of it."

"Is it puir for yer honour, and is it rich for the like of me?"

"What have you done with the money, Con,—the five gales of rent?"

"'Deed, yer honour, and I don't be just knowing anything about it."

"I suppose the Landleaguers have had some of it."

"I suppose they have, thin; the black divil run away with them for Laaguers!"

"Have you quarrelled with the League, Con?"

"I have quarrelled with a'most of the things which is a-going at the present moment."

"I'm sorry for that, as quarrels with old friends are always bad."

"The Laague, then, isn't any such old friend of mine. I niver heerd of the Laague, not till nigh three years ago. What with Faynians, and moonlighters, and Home-Rulers, and now with thim Laaguers, they don't lave a por boy any pace."

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