The Black Prophet Part 52

While in prison, he vowed deadly vengeance against her brother, Magennis, and swore, that if ever she spoke to him, acknowledged him, or received him into her house during his life, she should never live another day under his roof.

In this state matters were, when her brother, having heard that her husband was in a distant part of the barony, surveying, or subdividing a farm, came to ask her to her sister's wedding, and while in the house, the Prophet, most unexpectedly, was discovered, within a few perches of the door, on his return. Terror, on her part, from a dread of his violence, and also an apprehension lest he and her brother should meet, and, perhaps, seriously injure each other, even to bloodshed, caused her to hurry the latter into another room, with instructions to get out of the window as quietly as possible, and to go home. Unfortunately he did so, but had scarcely escaped, when a poor mendicant woman, coming in to ask alms, exclaimed--"Take care, good people, that you have not been robbed--I saw a man comin' out of the windy, and runnin' over toward Jemmy Campel's house"--Campel being the name of the young man of whom her husband was jealous.

M'Ivor, now furious, ran towards Campel's, and meeting that person's servant-maid at the door, asked "if her master was at home."

She replied, "Yes, he just came in this minute."

"What direction did he come from?"

"From the direction of your own house," she answered.

It should be stated, however, that his wife, at once recollecting his jealousy, told him immediately that the person who had left the house was her brother; but he rushed on, and paid no attention whatsoever to her words.

From this period forward he never lived with her, but she has heard recently--no longer ago than last night--that he had a.s.sociated himself with a woman named Eleanor M'Guirk, about thirty miles farther west from their original neighborhood, near a place called Glendhu, and it was at that place her brother was murdered.

Neither her anxieties nor her troubles, however, ended here. When her husband left her, he took a daughter, their only child, then almost an infant, away with him, and contrived to circulate a report that he and she had gone to America. After her return home, she followed her nephew to this neighborhood, and that accounted for her presence there. So well, indeed, did he manage this matter, that she received a very contrite and affectionate letter, that had been sent, she thought, from Boston, desiring her to follow himself and the child there. The deceit was successful. Gratified at the prospect of joining them, she made the due preparations, and set sail. It is unnecessary to say, that on arriving at Boston she could get no tidings whatsoever of either the one or the other; but as she had some relations in the place, she found them out, and resided there until within a few months ago, when she set sail for Ireland, where she arrived only a short time previous to the period of the trial. She has often heard M'Ivor say that he would settle accounts with her brother some fine night, but he usually added, "I will take my time and kill two birds with one stone when I go about it," by which she thought he meant robbing him, as well as murdering him, as her brother was known mostly to have a good deal of money about him.

We now add here, although the fact was not brought out until a later stage of the trial, that she proved the ident.i.ty of the body found in Glendhu, as being that of her brother, very clearly. His right leg had been broken, and having been mismanaged, was a little crooked, which occasioned him to have a slight halt in his walk. The top joint also of the second toe, on the same foot had been snapped off by the tramp of a horse, while her brother was a schoolboy--two circ.u.mstances which were corroborated by the Coroner, and one or two of those who had examined the body at the previous inquest, and which they could then attribute only to injuries received during his rude interment, but which were now perfectly intelligible and significant.

The next witness called was Bartholemew Sullivan, who deposed--

That about a month before his disappearance from the country, he was one night coming home from a wake, and within half a mile of the Grey Stone he met a person, evidently a carman, accompanying a horse and cart, who bade him the time of night as he pa.s.sed. He noticed that the man had a slight halt as he walked, but could not remember his face, although the night was by no means dark. On pa.s.sing onwards, towards home, he met another person walking after the carman, who, on seeing him (Sullivan) hastily threw some weapon or other into the ditch. The hour was about three o'clock in the night (morning,) and on looking close at the man, for he seemed to follow the other in a stealthy way, he could only observe that he had a very pale face, and heavy black eyebrows; indeed he has little doubt but that the prisoner is the man, although he will not actually swear it after such a length of time.

This was the evidence given by Bartholomew Sullivan.

The third witness produced was Theodosius M'Mahon, or, as he was better known, Toddy Mack, the Pedlar, who deposed to the fact of having, previously to his departure for Boston, given to Peter Magennis a present of a steel tobacco-box as a keep-sake, and as the man did not use tobacco, he said, on putting it into his pocket--

"This will do nicely to hould my money in, on my way home from Dublin."

Upon which Toddy Mack observed, laughingly--

"That if he put either silver or bra.s.s in it, half the country would know it by the jingle."

"I'll take care of that, never fear," replied Magennis, "for I'll put nothing in this, but the soft, comfortable notes."

He was asked if the box had any particular mark by which it might be known?

"Yes, he had himself punched upon the lid of it the initials of the person to whom he gave it--P. M., for Peter Magennis."

"Would you know the box if you saw it?"

"Certainly!"

"Is that it?" asked the prosecuting attorney, placing the box in his hands.

"That is the same box I gave him, upon my oath. It's a good deal rusted now, but there's the holes as I punched them; and by the same token, there is the letter P., the very place yet where the two holes broke into one, as I was punchin' it."

"Pray, how did the box come to turn up?" asked the judge:--"In whose possession has it been ever since?"

"My lord, we have just come to that. Crier, call Eleanor M'Guirk."

The woman hitherto known as Nelly M'Gowan, and supposed to be the Prophet's wife now made her appearance.

"Will you state to the gentlemen of the jury what you know about this box?"

Our readers are partially aware of her evidence with respect to it. We shall, however, briefly recapitulate her account of the circ.u.mstance.

"The first time she ever saw it," she said, "was the night the carman was murdered, or that he disappeared, at any rate. She resided by herself, in a little house at the mouth of the Glendhu--the same she and the Prophet had lived in ever since. They had not long been acquainted at that time--but still longer than was right or proper. She had been very little in the country then, and any time he did come was princ.i.p.ally at night, when he stopped with her, and went away again, generally before day in the morning. He pa.s.sed himself on her as an unmarried man, and said his name was M'Gowan. On that evening he came about dusk, but went out again, and she did not see him till far in the night, when he returned, and appeared to be fatigued and agitated--his clothes, too, were soiled and crumpled, especially the collar of his s.h.i.+rt, which was nearly torn off, as in a struggle of some kind. She asked him what was the matter with him, and said he looked as if he had been fighting." He replied--

"No, Nelly; but I've killed two birds with one stone this night."

She asked him what he meant by those words, but he would give her no further information.

"I'll give no explanation," said he, "but this;" and turning his back to her, he opened a tobacco-box, which, by stretching her neck, she saw distinctly, and, taking out a roll of bank notes, he separated one from the rest, and handing it to her, exclaimed--"there's all the explanation you can want; a close mouth, Nelly, is the sign of a wise-head, an' by keepin' a close mouth, you'll get more explanations of this kind. Do you understand that?" said he. "I do," she replied.

"Very well, then," he observed "let that be the law and gospel between us."

When he fell asleep, she got up, and looking at the box, saw that it was stuffed with bank notes, had a broken hinge--the hinge was freshly broken--and something like two letters on the lid of it.

"She then did not see it," she continued, "until some weeks ago, when his daughter and herself having had a quarrel, in which the girl cut her--she (his daughter) on stretching up for some cobwebs on the wall to stanch the bleeding, accidentally pulled the box out of a crevice, in which it had been hid. About this time," she added, "the prisoner became very restless at night, indeed, she might say by day and night, and after a good deal of gloomy ill temper, he made inquiries for it, and on hearing that it had again appeared, even threatened her life if it were not produced." She closed her evidence by stating that she had secreted it, but could tell nothing of its ultimate and mysterious disappearance.

Hanlon's part in tracing the murder is already known, we presume, to the reader. He dreamt, but his dream was not permitted to go to the jury, that his father came to him, and said, that if he repaired to the Grey Stone, at Glendhu, on a night which he named, at the hour of twelve o'clock, he would get such a clue to his murder as would enable him to bring his murderer to justice.

"Are you the son, then, of the man who is said to have been murdered?"

asked the judge.

"He was his son," he replied, "and came first to that part of the country in consequence of having been engaged in a Party fight in his native place. It seems a warrant had been issued against him and others, and he thought it more prudent to take his mother's name, which was Hanlon, in order to avoid discovery, the case being a very common one under circ.u.mstances of that kind."

Rody Duncan's explanation, with respect to the Tobacco-Box, was not called for on the trial, but we shall give it here in order to satisfy the reader. He saw Nelly M'Gowan, as we may still call her, thrusting something under the thatch of the cabin, and feeling a kind of curiosity to ascertain what it could be, he seized the first opportunity of examining, and finding a tobacco-box, he put it in his pocket, and thought himself extremely fortunate in securing it, for reasons which the reader will immediately understand. The truth is, that Rody, together with about half a dozen virtuous youths in the neighborhood, were in the habit of being out pretty frequently at night--for what purposes we will not now wait to inquire. Their usual place of rendezvous was the Grey Stone, in consequence of the shelter and concealment which its immense projections afforded them. On the night of the first meeting between Sarah and Hanlon, Rody had heard the whole conversation by accident, whilst waiting for his companions, and very judiciously furnished the groans, as he did also upon the second night, on both occasions for his own amus.e.m.e.nt. His motives for ingratiating himself through means of the box, with Sarah and Hanlon, are already known to the reader, and require no further explanation from us.

In fact, such a train of circ.u.mstantial evidence was produced, as completely established the Prophet's guilt, in the opinion of all who had heard the trial, and the result was a verdict of guilty by the jury, and a sentence of death by the judge.

"Your case," said the judge, as he was about to p.r.o.nounce sentence, "is another proof of the certainty with which Providence never, so to speak, loses sight of the man who deliberately sheds his fellow creature's blood. It is an additional and striking instance too, of the retributive spirit with which it converts all the most cautious disguises of guilt, no matter how ingeniously a.s.sumed, into the very manifestations by which its enormity is discovered and punished."

After recommending him to a higher tribunal, and impressing upon him the necessity of repentance, and seeking peace with G.o.d, he sentenced him to be hanged by the neck on the fourth day after the close of the a.s.sizes, recommending his soul, as usual, to the mercy of his Creator.

The Prophet was evidently a man of great moral intrepidity and firmness.

He kept his black, unquailing eye fixed upon the judge while he spoke, but betrayed not a single symptom of a timid or vacillating spirit. When the sentence was p.r.o.nounced, he looked with an expression of something like contempt upon those who had broken out, as usual, into those murmurs of compa.s.sion and satisfaction, which are sometimes uttered under circ.u.mstances similar to his.

"Now," said he to the gaoler, "that every thing is over, and the worst come to the worst, the sooner I get to my cell the better. I have despised the world too long to care a single curse what it says or thinks of me, or about me. All I'm sorry for is, that I didn't take more out of it, and that I let it slip through my hands so asily as I did. My curse upon it and its villany! Bring me in."

The gratification of the country for a wide circle round, was now absolutely exuberant. There was not only the acquittal of the good-hearted and generous old man, to fill the public with a feeling of delight, but also the unexpected resurrection, as it were, of honest Bartholomew Sullivan, which came to animate all parties with a double enjoyment. Indeed, the congratulations which both parties received, were sincere and fervent. Old Condy Dalton had no sooner left the dock than he was surrounded by friends and relatives, each and all anxious to manifest their sense of his good fortune, in the usual way of "treating"

him and his family. Their grat.i.tude, however, towards the Almighty for the unexpected interposition in their favor, was too exalted and pious to allow them to profane it by convivial indulgences. With as little delay, therefore, as might be, they sought their humble cabin, where a scene awaited them that was calculated to dash with sorrow the sentiments of justifiable exultation which they felt.

Our readers may remember that owing to Sarah's illness, the Prophet, as an after thought, had determined to give to the abduction of Mave Sullivan the color of a famine outrage; and for this purpose he had resolved also to engage Thomas Dalton to act as a kind of leader--a circ.u.mstance which he hoped would change the character of the proceedings altogether to one of wild and licentious revenge on the part of Dalton. Poor Dalton lent himself to this, as far as its aspect of a mere outbreak had attractions for the melancholy love of turbulence, by which he had been of late unhappily animated. He accordingly left home with the intention of taking a part in their proceedings; but he never joined them. Where he had gone to, or how he had pa.s.sed the night, n.o.body knew. Be this as it may, he made his appearance at home about noon on the day of his father's trial, in evidently a dying state, and in this condition his family found him on their return. 'Tis true they had the consolation of perceiving that he was calmer and more collected than he had been since the death of Peggy Murtagh. His reason, indeed, might be said to have been altogether restored.

They found him sitting in his father's arm chair, his head supported--oh, how tenderly supported!--by his affectionate sister, Mary.

Mrs. Dalton herself had come before, to break the joyful tidings to this excellent girl, who, on seeing her, burst into tears, exclaiming in Irish--