Stories by English Authors: Ireland Part 5

"I havnen't a doubt of it," replied the old gentlemen shortly. "Thank goodness, her evidence will hang the villain, whoever he may be."

"Ah, the poor thing, the poor thing!" murmured the servant, and then the sad procession entered the house.

The body was laid on a table. It would have been useless to send for a surgeon. There was not one to be found within several miles, and it was but too evident that life was extinct. The top of the man's head was beaten to a pulp. He had been clubbed to death.

"If it costs me every s.h.i.+lling I have in the world, and my life to the boot of it," said Mr. Connolly, "I'll see the ruffians that did the deed swing for their night's work."

"Amin," a.s.sented Peter, solemnly; and Jack's handsome face darkened as he mentally recorded an oath of vengeance.

"There'll be little sleep for this house to-night," resumed the old gentleman after a pause. "I'm goin' to look round and see if the doors are locked, an' then take a look at Polly. An', Peter."

"Sir!"

"The first light in the mornin'--it's only a few hours off," he added, with a glance at his watch --"you run over to the police station, and give notice of what's happened."

"I will, yer honour."

"Come upstairs with me, boys. I want to talk with you. Good-night, Mr. Hayes. This has been a blackguard business, but there's no reason you should lose your rest for it."

Mr. Connolly left the room, resting his arms on the shoulders of his two sons. Harold glanced at the motionless figure of the murdered man, and followed. He did not seek his bedroom, however; he knew it would be idle to think of sleep. He entered the smoking-room, lit a cigar, and threw himself into a chair to wait for morning.

All his ideas as to the Irish question had been changing insensibly during his visit to Lisnahoe. This night's work had revolutionised them. He saw the agrarian feud--not as he had been wont to read of it, glozed over by the New York papers. He saw it as it was--in all its naked, brutal horror.

He had observed that there had been no attempt on the Connollys to appeal to neighbours for sympathy in this time of trouble, and he had asked Jack the reason. Jack's answer had been brief and pregnant.

"Where's the good? We're boycotted."

And that dead man lying on the table outside was only an example of boycotting carried to its logical conclusion.

The sound of a door closing softly aroused Harold from his reverie.

A little postern leading from the servants' quarters opened close to the smoking-room window. Harold looked out, and, as the night had grown clearer, he distinctly saw old Pete Dwyer making his way with elaborate caution down the shrubery path.

"Going to the police station, I suppose," mused Hayes. "Well, he has started betimes."

Then he resumed his seat and thought of Polly.

What a shock for her, poor girl, to leave a happy home with her heart full of innocent mirth, only to encounter murder lurking red-handed at the very threshold!

"I wish I had spoken to her to-day," he muttered. "Goodness alone knows when I shall find a chance now. I wonder how she is?"

He realised that he could see nothing of her till breakfast time at any rate--if, indeed, she would be strong enough to appear at that meal. He had been sitting in the dark; he now threw aside his cigar, and, drawing his chair closer to the window, set himself resolutely to watch for the dawn and solace his vigil with dreams of Polly.

A raw, chill air blew into the room. He noticed that a pane of gla.s.s was broken. One of the children had thrown a ball through it a few days before, and in the present situation of the Connolly household a glazier was an unattainable luxury.

Harold rose with the intention of moving his chair out of the draught, but as he did so the sound of whispered words, seemingly at his very ear, made him pause. The voices came from the shrubbery below the window, and in one of them he recognised the unmistakable brogue of old Peter Dwyer.

Had the man been to the police station and returned with the constables so quickly? This was Harold's first thought, but he dismissed it as soon as formed. Peter had been barely half an hour absent, and the station was several miles off. Where had he been, then, and with whom was he conversing? Harold bent his head close to the broken pane and listened.

"Are ye sure sartin that the young woman seen us?" inquired a rough voice--not Peter's--"because this is goin' to be an ugly job, an'

there's no call for us to tackle it widout needcessity?"

"Sartin as stalks," whispered the old servant. "She was all of a thrimble, as if she'd met a sperrit an' all the words she had was 'I seen it--I seen it all,' an' she yowlin' like a banshee."

"It's quare we didn't take notice to her, for she must ha' been powerful close to see us such a night. I thought I heerd the horn, too, an' I lavin' the yard."

She wint out to blow it," whispered Peter. "Most like it was stuck in the shrubbery she was."

"Come on thin," growled the other; "it's got to be done, an' the byes is all here. Ye left the little dure beyant on the latch?"

"I did that," responded old Peter; and then a low, soft whistle sounded in the darkness. It was a signal.

Rapidly but cautiously Harold Hayes left the window and stole across the room. He understood it all. Polly had seen the murder and had recognised the a.s.sa.s.sins. Old Dwyer was a traitor. He had slipped out and warned the ruffians of the peril in which they stood, and now they were here to seal their own safety by another crime --by the sacrifice of a life far dearer to Harold than his own.

Swiftly, silently, he sped down the gloomy pa.s.sage. The lives of all beneath that roof were hanging on his speed. Breathless he reached the little door, and flung himself against it with all his weight while his trembling fingers groped in the darkness for bolt or bar.

A heavy hand was laid on the latch, and the door was tried from without.

"How's this, Peter?" inquired the rough voice. "I thought ye said it wasn't locked."

"No more it is; it's only stiff it is, bad cess to it. Push hard, yer sowl ye."

But at this moment Harold's hand encountered the bolt. With a sigh of relief he shot it into the socket, and then, searching farther, he supplemented the defences with a ma.s.sive bar, which, he knew, ought always to be in place at night.

Then he sped back along the pa.s.sage, while muttered curses reached his ears from without, and the door was shaken furiously.

"Jack, Jack," he panted, as he flung open the door of the room in which the young men slept--"Jack, come down and--"

He stopped abruptly. Mr. Connolly was kneeling at the bedside, and his two sons knelt to the right and left of him.

There were no family prayers at Lisnahoe; only the ladies were regular church-goers; but that it was a religious household no one could have doubted who knew the events of the night and saw the old man on his knees between his boys.

They rose at the noise of Harold's entrance, and the American, who felt that there were no moments to be wasted on apologies, announced his errand.

"Old Peter Dwyer is a traitor! He has gone out and brought the murderers to finish the work they have commenced."

And then, in eager, breathless words, he told them how he had heard the conversation in the shrubbery, and how the men, apprehensive that Miss Connolly could identify them, had returned to stifle her testimony.

"They were right there," said the old man. "She saw the first blow, and it was struck by Red Mike Driscoll."

"Then she is better?" asked Harold, eagerly.

The boys were at the other end of the room, slipping cartridges loaded with small shot into the fowling-pieces they had s.n.a.t.c.hed from the walls.

"Oh yes," replied Mr. Connolly; "she is all right now."

A sound of heavy blows echoed through the house. The men below had convinced themselves that the door was firmly fastened, and, desperate from the conviction that they were identified, and relying on the loneliness of the place, they were attacking the barrier with a pickaxe.

"I'll soon put a stop to that," cried Jack; and c.o.c.king his gun, he left the room.

d.i.c.k was about to follow, but his father stopped him.