The Black Prophet Part 55

"Sir," replied the other, "I am thankful and grateful to you for that kindness, but it's now too late; I am not able to go back upon it; I have neither money nor stock of any kind. I am deeply and gratefully obliged to you; but I have not a sixpence worth in the world to put on it. An honest heart, sir, an' a clear fame, is all that G.o.d has left me, blessed be His name."

"Don't b'lieve a word of it," replied the Pedlar. "Only let your honor give him a good lease, at a raisonable rint, makin' allowance for his improvements--"

"Never mind conditions, my good friend," said the agent, "but proceed; for, if I don't mistake, you will yourself give him a lift."

"May be, we'll find him stock and capital a thrifle, any way," replied the Pedlar with a knowing wink. "I haven't carried the pack all my life for nothing, I hope."

"I understand," said the agent to Dalton, "that one of your sons is dead. I leave town to-day, but I shall be here this day fortnight;--call then, and we shall have every thing arranged. Your case was a very hard one, and a very common one; but it was one with which we had nothing to do, and in which, until now, we could not interfere. I have looked clearly into it, and regret to find that such cases do exist upon Irish property to a painful extent, although I am, glad to find that public opinion, and a more enlightened experience, are every day considerably diminis.h.i.+ng the evil."

He then rang for some one-else, and our friends withdrew, impressed with a grateful sense of his integrity and justice.

CHAPTER x.x.xII. -- Conclusion.

The interest excited by the trial, involving as it did so much that concerned the Sullivans, especially the hopes and affections of their daughter Mave, naturally induced them--though not on this latter account--young and old, to attend the a.s.sizes, not excepting Mave herself; for her father, much against her inclination, had made a point to bring her with them. On finding, however, how matters turned out, a perfect and hearty reconciliation took place between the two families, in the course of which Mave and the Prophet's wife once more renewed their acquaintance. Some necessary and brief explanation took place, in the course of which allusion was made to Sarah and her state of health.

"I hope," said Mave, "you will lose no time in goin' to see her. I know her affectionate heart; an' that when she hears an' feels that she has a mother alive an' well, an' that loves her as she ought to be loved, it will put new life into her."

"She is a fine lookin' girl," replied her mother, "an' while I was spakin' to her, I felt my heart warm to her sure enough; but she's a wild crature, they say."

"Hasty a little," said Mave; "but then such a heart as she has. You ought to go see her at wanst."

"I would, dear, an' my heart is longin' to see her; but I think it's betther that I should not till afther his thrial to-morrow. I'm to be a witness against the unfortunate man."

"Against her father!--against your own husband!" exclaimed Mave, looking aghast at this information.

"Yes, dear; for it was my brother he murdhered an' he must take the consequences, if he was my husband and her father ten times over. My brother's blood mustn't pa.s.s for nothin'. Besides, the hand o' G.o.d is in it, an' I must do my duty."

The heart of the gentle and heroic Mave, which could encounter contagion and death, from a principle of unconscious magnanimity and affection, that deserved a garland, now shrunk back with pain at the sentiments so coolly expressed by Sarah's mother. She thought for a moment of young Dalton, and that if she were called upon to prosecute him,--but she hastily put the fearful hypothesis aside, and was about to bid her acquaintance good-bye, when the latter said:

"To-morrow, or rather the day afther, I'd wish to see her for then I'll know what will happen to him, an' how to act with her; an' if you'd come with me, I'd be glad of it, an' you'd oblige me."

Mave's gentle and affectionate spirit was disquieted within her by what she had already heard; but a moment's reflection convinced her that her presence on the occasion might be serviceable to Sarah, whose excitable temperament and delicate state of health required gentle and judicious treatment.

"I'm afeard," said Mrs. M'Ivor, "that by the time the trial's over to-morrow, it'll be too late; but let us say the day afther, if it's the same to you."

"Well, then," replied Mave, "you can call to our place, as it's on your way, an' we'll both go together."

"If she knew her," said Mave to her friends, on her way home, "as I do; if she only knew the heart she has--the lovin', the fearless, the great heart;--oh, if she did, no earthly thing would prevent her from goin' to her without the loss of a minute's time. Poor Sarah!--brave and generous girl--what wouldn't I do to bring her back to health! But ah, mother, I'm afeard;" and as the n.o.ble girl spoke, the tears gushed to her eyes--"'It's my last act for you,' she whispered to me, on that night when the house was surrounded by villains--'I know what you risked for me in the shed; I know it, dear Mave, an' I'm now sthrivin' to pay back my debt to you.' Oh, mother!" she exclaimed, "where--where could one look for the like of her! an' yet how little does the world know about her goodness, or her greatness, I may say. Well," proceeded Mave, "she paid that debt; but I'm afeard, mother, it'll turn out that it was with her own life she paid it."

At the hour appointed, Mrs. M'Ivor and Mave set out on their visit to Sarah, each now aware of the dreadful and inevitable doom that awaited her father, and of the part which one of them, at least, had taken in bringing it about.

About half an hour before their arrival, Sarah, whose anxiety touching the fate of old Dalton could endure no more, lay awaiting the return of her nurse--a simple, good-hearted, matter-of-fact creature, who had no notion of ever concealing the truth under any circ.u.mstances. The poor girl had sent her to get an account of the trial the best way she could, and, as we said, she now lay awaiting her return. At length she came in.

"Well, Biddy, what's the news--or have you got any?"

The old woman gently and affectionately put her hand over on Sarah's forehead, as if the act was a religious ceremony, and accompanied an invocation, as, indeed, she intended it to do.

"May G.o.d in His mercy soon relieve you from your thrials, my poor girl, an' bring you to Himself! but it's the black news I have for you this day."

Sarah started.

"What news," she asked, hastily--"what black news?"

"Husth, now, an' I'll tell you;--in the first place, your mother is alive, an' has come to the counthry."

Sarah immediately sat up in the bed, without a.s.sistance, and fastening her black, brilliant eyes upon the woman, exclaimed--"My mother--my mother--my own mother!--an' do you dare to tell me that this is black news? Lave the house, I bid you. I'll get up--I'm not sick--I'm well.

Great G.o.d! yes, I'm well--very well; but how dare you name black news an' my mother--my blessed mother--in the same breath, or on the same day?"

"Will you hear me out, then?" continued the nurse.

"No," replied Sarah, attempting to get up--"I want to hear no more; now I wish to live--now I am sure of one, an' that one my mother--my own mother--to love me--to guide me--to taich me all that I ought to know; but, above all, to love me. An' my father--my poor unhappy father--an'

he is unhappy--he loves me, too. Oh, Biddy, I can forgive you now for what you said--I will be happy still--an' my mother will be happy--an'

my father,--my poor father--will be happy yet; he'll reform--repent maybe; an' he'll wanst more get back his early heart--his heart when it was good, an' not hardened, as he says it was, by the world. Biddy, did you ever see any one cry with joy before--ha--ha--did you now?"

"G.o.d strengthen you, my poor child," exclaimed the nurse, bursting into tears; "for what will become of you? Your father, Sarah dear, is to be hanged for murdher, an' it was your mother's evidence that hanged him.

She swore against him on the thrial an' his sentence is pa.s.sed. Bartle Sullivan wasn't murdhered at all, but another man was, an' it was your father that done it. On next Friday he's to be hanged, an' your mother, they say, swore his life away! If that's not black news, I don't know what is."

Sarah's face had been flushed to such a degree by the first portion of the woman's intelligence, that its expression was brilliant and animated beyond belief. On hearing its conclusion, however, the change from joy to horror was instantaneous, shocking, and pitiable, beyond all power of language to express. She was struck perfectly motionless and ghastly; and as she kept her large lucid eyes fixed upon the woman's face, the powers of life, that had been hitherto in such a tumult of delight within her, seemed slowly, and with a deadly and scarcely perceptible motion, to ebb out of her system. The revulsion was too dreadful; and with the appearance of one who was anxious to shrink or hide from something that was painful, she laid her head down on the humble pillow of her bed.

"Now, asth.o.r.e," said the woman, struck by the woeful change--"don't take it too much to. heart; you're young, an' please G.o.d, you'll get over it all yet."

"No," she replied, in a voice so utterly changed and deprived of its strength, that the woman could with difficulty hear or understand her.

"There's but one good bein' in the world," she said to herself, "an'

that is Mave Sullivan: I have no mother, no father--all I can love now is Mave Sullivan--that's all."

"Every one that knows her does," said the nurse.

"Who?" said Sarah, inquiringly.

"Why, Mave Sullivan," replied the other; "worn't you spakin' about her?"

"Was I?" said she, "maybe so--what was I sayin'?"

She then put her hand to her forehead, as if she felt pain and confusion; after which she waved the nurse towards her, but on the woman stooping down, she seemed to forget that she had beckoned to her at all.

At this moment Mave and her mother entered, and after looking towards the bed on which she lay, they inquired in a whisper, from her attendant how she was.

The woman pointed hopelessly to her own head, and then looked significantly at Sarah, as if to intimate that her brain was then unsettled.

"There's something wrong here," she added, in an under tone, and touching her head, "especially since I tould her what had happened."

"Is she acquainted with everything?" asked her mother.

"She is," replied the other; "she knows that her father is to die on Friday an' that you swore agin' him."