Kilgorman Part 36

"And as for officers, sure we're well off for them. Isn't Larry Flanagan here a rale born secretary; and Jake Finn makes an iligant treasurer; and as for captain--"

"Ah, I can name you the man for that."

"Who now? for it's not iverybody that'll suit."

"Tim Gallagher's your man."

If I started at this, the sound was lost in the general acclamation which the proposal evoked.

"Faith, and you've named the very boy. Young as he is, his heart's in the business."

"And more by tokens, he's well spoke of by them that know. I'm even told Lord Edward has a good word for him."

"If there's anything against him, it is that he's brother to that scurvy informer that set Gorman on to us, and who, I hear, is still about. Tim will have to go the whole hog if he's to lead us. There's hunting down to be done, I warn you, as well as fighting."

"Anyhow, Tim's the boy for us, and I propose him. He's due back this week, if he's not caught by his honour's ferrets."

"That brings us to the other matter," said the man already spoken of as Flanagan, the secretary, in whom I recognised one of my old persecutors, "and it's about that same vermin. I've a letter from the Ulster Committee bidding us deal with Gorman in a way that's best for the good of Ireland."

"That means a bullet in him," said one man bluntly.

"Faith, and you've hit it, my lad. We've been squeamish enough."

"It's got to be done, and soon, or he'll get the upper hand of us.

There's men of his away seizing the arms in Rathmullan and Milford this week--him as was the manes of bringing them in too!"

"It's one man's job. His house is too well guarded for a raid; he must be met on the hillside. I say, let's draw lots. To-morrow he's to ride to Malin by the Black Hill road."

"Ay, that's the road Terence Gorman rode the night he paid his debts.

It's a grand place for squaring up is the Black Hill."

"Come now," said Flanagan, who had been busily marking a piece of paper, "there's a paper for each of yez, and the one that draws the cross is the boy for the job. Come, one at a time now; draw out of my ould hat, and good luck to yez all."

One by one they advanced and drew, and the lot fell on one they called Paddy Corkill, whose vicious face fell a little as he saw the fatal mark.

"Arrah, and it's me hasn't aven a gun," said he.

"Take mine--it's a good one," said the secretary; "and more by tokens it was Tim Gallagher's once, for he gave it me, and his name's on it. To- morrow noight we meet here to hear your news, Paddy, if we're not on the hill, some of us, to see the job done."

"Faith, if it must be done it must," said Paddy. "It's no light thing setting a country free."

"Away with yez now," said the secretary, "or the ghost will be hunting yez."

On which the meeting dispersed. I could hear their footsteps die away down the pa.s.sage, and presently pa.s.s crunching on the gravel outside, while I remained crouched where I was, as still as a mouse, hardly knowing if I was awake or dreamed.

There was no time to be lost, that I could plainly see. But how to prevent this wicked crime was what puzzled me. I could not hope to gain admittance to Knockowen at this time of night; or if I did, I should probably only thwart my own object, and subject myself to arrest as the a.s.sociate of a.s.sa.s.sins. His honour, I knew, was in the habit of starting betimes when business called him to Malin. If I was to do anything, it must be on the Black Hill itself; and thither, accordingly, I resolved to go.

But before I quitted Kilgorman I had another duty scarcely less sacred than that of saving a life from destruction. I stood on the very spot to which my mother's last message had pointed me, and nothing should tear me now from the place till that wandering spirit was eased of its nightly burden.

"_If you love G.o.d, whoever you are_," (so the message ran), "_seek below the great hearth; and what you find there, see to it, as you hope for grace. G.o.d send this into the hands of one who loves truth and charity.

Amen_."

Even while I repeated the words to myself, my ear seemed to catch the fluttering footstep advancing down the pa.s.sage and hear the rustle of the woman's dress as she pa.s.sed through the door and approached my hiding-place. A beam of moonlight struck across the floor, and the night wind-swept with a wail round the gables without. Then all was silence, except what seemed to my strained senses a light tap, as with the sole of a foot, on the flagstone that stretched across in front of the fireplace. After that even the wind hushed and the moonlight went out.

I advanced cautiously over the embers, and felt my way down the room and into the pa.s.sage without. There, where the conspirators had left it, stood the candle, and the tinder-box beside it. I carried the light back to the hearth, shading it with my hand for fear any one without might see it, and set it down beside the flagstone. All over this stone I groped without finding any trace of a rift or any hint of how to lift so formidable a weight. It seemed fast set in the boards, and gave no sound of hollowness or symptom of unsteadiness when I tried it.

I was almost beginning to lose heart, when I knelt by chance, not on the stone, but on a short board at the side, which ran at right angles with the general planks, and seemed intended as part of a kind of framework to the stone. This board creaked under my weight; and when I looked more closely at it, I discovered a couple of sunk hinges let deep into the plank adjoining, and covered over with dust and rust. With my sailor's knife I cleared away at the edges, and after several trials, one of which broke my blade, I managed to raise it and swing it back on its hinges.

The slight cavity below was full of dirt and rubbish, and it was not till I had cleared these away that I found it ran partly under the adjoining flagstone. The hole was too small to look into, but I could get in my hand, and after some groping came upon what I wanted.

It was a small leather packet, carefully folded and tied round, not much larger than an envelope, and fastened on either side with a wafer.

Slipped under the outer string was a smaller folded paper, on the cover of which I recognised, to my great amazement, my own name.

I thrust both packet and paper into my pocket, and after satisfying myself that the hole contained nothing more, filled it up again, and restored the hinged board to its old position. Then I extinguished and replaced the candle, and a few minutes later was hurrying, with my precious freight, down the rocky corridor towards the cave where I had left my boat.

I was not long in getting into the outer world once more. My boat I left where it was, and scrambled up the rocks to the place from which I had once watched the _Arrow_ as she lay at anchor. Here I flung myself on the turf and waited impatiently for daylight.

It came at last, and at its first glow I took the packet from my pocket.

The small outer paper addressed to me was in Tim's hand, and was very brief. "Dear Barry," it said, "I searched as I promised, and have read this letter. Time enough when Ireland's business is done to attend to yours and mine.--Tim." From this I turned with trembling curiosity to the packet itself, and took from it a faded paper, written in a strange, uncultured hand, but signed at the end with my mother's feeble signature, and dated a month after Tim's and my birth.

This is the strange matter it contained:--

"I, Mary Gallagher, being at the point of death,"--that was as she then supposed, but she lived many a year after, as the reader knows--"and as I hope for mercy from G.o.d, into whose presence I am summoned, declare that the girl-child who was buried beside my Mistress Gorman was not hers but mine. My twins were the boy who lives and the girl who died.

My lady's child is the boy who pa.s.ses as twin-brother to mine. It was Maurice Gorman led me to this wrong. The night that Terence Gorman, my master, was murdered and my lady died of the news, Maurice persuaded me to change my dead girl for my lady's living boy, threatening that unless I did so he would show that Mike, my husband, was his master's murderer.

To save my husband I consented. Had I been sure of him I would have refused; but I feared Mike had a hand in that night's work, though I am sure it was not he who fired the shot. Thus I helped Maurice Gorman to become master of Kilgorman and all his brother's property. But they no more belong to him than the boy belongs to me. And if this be the last word I say on earth, it is all true, as Maurice knows himself, and Biddy the nurse, who writes this from my lips. G.o.d forgive me, and send this to the hands of them that will make the wrong right.

(Signed)

"Mary Gallagher."

"N.B.--The above is true, every word, to my knowledge.

(Signed)

"Biddy McQuilkin."

CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE.

ON THE BLACK HILL ROAD.

This, then, was the mystery which for eighteen years had hung over Kilgorman. My mother's letter cleared up a part of it, but the rest it plunged into greater mystery still. That Maurice Gorman was a villain and a usurper was evident. But who was the rightful heir my mother, either through negligence or of set purpose, had failed to state. Was it Tim? or I?

I recalled all I could of my mother's words and acts to us both--how she taught us our letters; how she sang to us; how, when need be, she chid us; how, with a hand for each, she took us as children to church; how she kissed us both at nights, and gave us our porridge when we started for the hills in the morning. In all this she never by a sign betrayed that one of us was her son and the other a stranger. Even to the last, on the day she died, the words she spoke to me, I was convinced, she would equally have spoken to Tim, had he, not I, been there to hear them.

Could it be possible that she did not herself know? Any mother who reads this will, I think, scoff at the notion; and yet I think it was so. Weak and ill as she was when it all happened, bewildered and dazed by the murder of her master and the terrible suspicion thrown on her husband, lying for weeks after in a half swoon, and believing herself at the gate of death, I think, in spite of all the mothers in Ireland, that when at last she came back to life, and looked on the two little fellows nestled in the bed at her side, she knew not the one from the other.