James stared. He did not understand. "Why, man, he's no Jacobite," he cried, "whoever the other is!" His surprise was genuine.

"I will say nothing as to that," Colonel John answered precisely.

"Then, faith, what are you saying?" James asked. Asgill stood by smiling, aware that silence would best fight his battle.

"This," Colonel John returned. "That I know those things of him that make him unfit company here."

"The devil you do!"

"And——"

But James's patience was at an end. "Unfit company for whom?" he cried. "Eh! Unfit company for whom? Is it Darby he'll be spoiling? Or Thaddy the lad? Or"—resentment gradually overcoming irony—"is it Phelim or Morty he'll be tainting the souls of, and he a Protestant like yourself? Curse me, Colonel Sullivan, it's clean out of patience you put me! Are we boys at school, to be scolded and flouted and put right by you? Unfit company? For whom? For whom, sir? I'd like to know. More, by token, I'd like to know also where this is to end—and I will, by your leave! For whom, sir?"

"For your sister," Colonel John replied. "Without saying more, Mr. Asgill is not of the class with whom your grandfather——"

"My grandfather—be hanged!" cried the angry young man—angry with some cause, for it must be confessed that Colonel John, with the best intentions, was a little heavy-handed. "You said you'd be master here, and faith," he continued with bitterness, "it's master you mean to be. But there's a limit! By Heaven, there's a limit——"

"Yes, James, there is a limit!" a voice struck in—a voice as angry as The McMurrough's, but vibrating to a purer note of passion; so that the indignation which it expressed seemed to raise the opposition to Colonel John's action to a higher plane. "There is a limit, Colonel Sullivan!" Flavia repeated, stepping from the foot of the stairs, on the upper flight of which—drawn from her room by the first outburst—she had heard the whole. "And it has been reached! It has been reached when the head of The McMurroughs of Morristown is told on his own hearth whom he shall receive and whom he shall put to the door! Limit is it? Let me tell you, sir, I would rather be the poorest exile than live thus. I would rather beg my bread barefoot among strangers, never to see the sod again, never to hear the friendly Irish tongue, never to smell, the peat reek, than live on this tenure, at the mercy of a hand I loathe, on the sufferance of a man I despise, of an informer, a traitor, ay, an apostate——"

"Flavia! Flavia!" Colonel John's remonstrance was full of pain.

"Ah, don't call me that!" she rejoined passionately. "Don't make me hate my own name! Better a hundred times an open foe——"

"Have I ever been anything but an open foe?" he returned. "On this point at any rate?"

She swept the remonstrance by. "Better," she cried vehemently, "far better a fate we know, a lot we understand; far better freedom and poverty, than to live thus—yesterday a laughing-stock, to-day slaves; yesterday false to our vows, to-day false to our friends! Oh, there must be an end! There——"

She choked on the word, and her distress moved Asgill to do a strange thing. He had listened to her with an admiration that for the time purified the man, lifted him above selfishness, put the desire to triumph far from him. Now he stepped forward. "I would rather never cross this threshold again," he cried; "never, ay, believe me, I would rather never see you again, than give you this pain! I go, dear lady, I go! And do not let one thought of me trouble or distress you! Let this gentleman have his way. I do not understand. I do not ask to understand, how he holds you, or constrains you. But I shall be silent."

He seemed to the onlookers as much raised above himself as Colonel John seemed depressed below himself. There could be no doubt with whom the victory lay: with whom the magnanimity. Asgill stood erect, almost beatified, a Saint George, a knight of chivalry. Colonel Sullivan showed smaller to the eye, stood bowed and grey-faced, a man beaten and visibly beaten.

But as Asgill turned on his heel Flavia found her voice. "Do not go!" she cried impulsively. "There must be an end! There must be an end of this!"

But Asgill insisted. He saw that to go, to submit himself to the sway against which she revolted was to impress himself upon her mind, was to commend himself to her a hundred times more seriously than if he stayed. And he persisted. "No," he said; "permit me to go." He stepped forward and, with a grace borrowed for the occasion, and with lips that trembled at his daring, he raised and kissed her hand. "Permit me to go, dear lady. I would rather banish myself a hundred times than bring ill into this house or differences into this family."

"Flavia!" Colonel Sullivan said, finding his voice at last, "hear first, I am begging you, what I have to say! Hear it, since against my will the matter has been brought to your knowledge."

"That last I can believe!" she cried spitefully. "But for hearing, I choose the part this gentleman has chosen—to go from your presence. What?" looking at the Colonel with white cheeks and flaming eyes—Asgill had turned to go from the room—"has it come to this? That we must seek your leave to live, to breathe, to have a guest, to eat and sleep, and perhaps to die? Then I say—then I say, if this be so, we have no choice but to go. This is no place for us!"

"Flavia!"

"Ah, do not call me that!" she retorted. "My hope, joy, honour, are in this house, and you have disgraced it! My brother is a McMurrough, and what have you made of him? He cowers before your eye! He has no will but yours! He is as good as dumb—before his master! You flog us like children, but you forget that we are grown, and that it is more than the body that smarts. It is shame we feel—shame so bitter that if a look could lay you dead at my feet, though it cost us all, though it left us beggared, I would look it joyfully—were I alone! But you, cowardly interloper, a schemer living on our impotence, walk on and trample upon us——"

"Enough," Colonel Sullivan cried, intolerable pain in his voice. "You win! You have a heart harder than the millstone, more set than ice! I call you to witness I have struggled hard, I have struggled hard, girl——"

"For the mastery," she cried venomously. "And for your master, the devil!"

"No," he replied, more quietly. "I think for God. If I was wrong, may He forgive me!"

"I never will!" she protested.

"I shall not ask for your forgiveness," he retorted. He looked at her silently, and then, in an altered tone, "The more," he said, "as my mind is changed again. Ay, thank God, changed again. A minute ago I was weak; now I am strong, and I will do my duty as I have set myself to do it. When I came here I came to be a peacemaker, I came to save the great from his folly and the poor from his ignorance, to shield the house of my fathers from ruin and my kin from the gaol and the gibbet. And I stand here still, and I shall persist—I shall persist."

"You will?" she exclaimed.

"I shall! I shall remain and persist."

Passion choked her. She could not find words. After all she had said he would persist. He was not to be moved—he would persist. He would still trample upon them, still be master. The house was no longer theirs, nor was anything theirs. They were to have no life, no will, no freedom—while he lived. Ah, while he lived. She made an odd gesture with her hands, and turned and went up the stairs, leaving him master of the field. The worse for him! The worse, the worse, the worse for him!



CHAPTER XVIII

A COUNTERPLOT

Luke Asgill rode slowly from the gates, not without a backward glance that raked the house. The McMurrough walked by his stirrup, talking rapidly—he, too, with furtive backward glances. In five minutes he had explained the situation and the Colonel's vantage ground. At the end of those minutes, and when they were at some distance from the house, "I see," Asgill said thoughtfully. "Easy to put him under the sod! But you're thinking him worse dead than alive."

"Sorra a doubt of it!"

"Yet the bogs are deep," Asgill returned, his tone smacking faintly of raillery. "You might deal with him first, and his heir when the time came. Why not?"

"God knows!" James answered. "And I've no taste to make the trial." He did not name the oath he had taken to attempt nothing against Colonel John, nor to be a party to any attempt. He had slurred over that episode. He had dwelt in preference on the fact of the will and the dilemma in which it placed him.

Asgill looked for some moments between his horse's ears, flicking his foot the while with his switch. When he spoke he proved in three or four sentences that if his will was the stronger, his cunning was also the more subtle. "A will is revocable," he said. "Eh?"

"It is."

"And the man that's made one may make another?"

"Who's doubting it?"

"But you're doubting," Asgill rejoined—and he laughed as he spoke—"that it would not be in your favour, my lad."

"Devil a bit do I doubt it!" James said.

"No, but in a minute you will," Asgill answered. And stooping from his saddle—after he had assured himself that his groom was out of earshot—he talked for some minutes in a low tone. When he raised his head again he clapped The McMurrough on the shoulder. "There!" he said, "now won't that be doing the trick for you?"

"It's clever," James answered, with a cruel gleam in his eyes. "It is d—d clever! The old devil himself couldn't be beating it by the length of his hoof! But——"

"What's amiss with it?"

"A will's revocable," James said, with a cunning look. "And what he can do once he can do twice."

"Sorrow a doubt of that, too, if you're innocent enough to let him make one! But you're not, my lad. No; the will first, and then——" Luke Asgill did not finish the sentence, but he grinned. "Anything else amiss with it?" he asked.

"No. But the devil a bit do I see why you bring Flavvy into it?"

"Don't you?"

"I do not."

Asgill drew rein, and by a gesture bade his groom ride on. "No?" he said. "Well, I'll be telling you. He's an obstinate dog; faith, and I'll be saying it, as obstinate a dog as ever walked on two legs! And left to himself, he'd, maybe, take more time and trouble to come to where we want him than we can spare. But, I'm thinking, James McMurrough, that he's sweet on your sister!"

The McMurrough stared. The notion had never crossed his mind. "It's jesting you are?" he said.

"It's the last thing I'd jest about," Asgill answered sombrely. "It is so; whether she knows it or not, I know it! And so d'you see, my lad, if she's in this, 'twill do more—take my word for it that know—to break him down and draw the heart out of him, so that he'll care little one way or the other, than anything you can do yourself!"

James McMurrough's face, turned upwards to the rider, reflected his admiration. "If you're in the right," he said, "I'll say it for you, Asgill, you're the match of the old one for cleverness. But do you think she'll come to it, the jewel?"

"She will."

James shook his head. "I'm not thinking it," he said.

"Are you not?" Asgill answered, and his face fell and his voice was anxious. "And why?"

"Sure and why? I'll tell you. It was but a day or two ago I'd a plan of my own. It was just to swear the plot upon him; swear he'd come off the Spanish ship, and the rest, d' you see, and get him clapped in Tralee gaol in my place. More by token, I was coming to you to help in it. But I thought I'd need the girl to swear to it, and when I up and told her she was like a hen you'd take the chickens from!"

Asgill was silent for a moment. Then, "You asked her to do that?" he said, in an odd tone.

"Just so."

"And you're wondering she didn't do it?"

"I am."

"And I'm thanking God she'd not be doing it!" Asgill retorted.

"Oh!" James exclaimed. "You're mighty particular all in a minute, Mr. Asgill. But if not that, why this. Eh? Why this?"

"For a reason you'd not be understanding," Asgill answered coolly. "But I know it myself in my bones. She'll do this if she's handled. But there's a man that'll not be doing it at all, at all, and that's Ulick Sullivan. You'll have to be rid of him for a time, and how I'm not saying."

"I'll be planning that."

"Well, make no mistake about it. He must not get wind of this."

"Ain't I knowing it?" James returned restively. He had been snubbed, and he was sore.

"Well, there was a thing you were not knowing," Asgill retorted, with a look which it was fortunate that the other did not see. "And still there's a thing you've not thought of, my lad. It's only to a Protestant he can leave it, and you must have one ready. Now if I——"

"No!" James cried, with sudden energy. And he drew back a step, and looked the other in the face. "No, Mr. Asgill," he continued; "if it is to that you've been working, I'd as soon him as you! Ay, by G——d, I would! I'd sooner turn myself!"

"I can believe that."

"A hundred times sooner!" James repeated. "And what for not? What's to prevent me? Eh? What's to prevent me?"

"Your sister," Asgill answered.

James's face, which had flamed with passion, lost its colour.

"Your sister," Asgill repeated with gusto. "I'd like fine to see you asking her to help you turn Protestant! Faith, and, for a mere word of that same, I'll warrant she'd treat you as the old gentleman treated you!"

"Anyway, I'll not trust you," James replied, with venom. "Sooner than that I'll have—ay, that will do finely—I'll have Constantine Hussey of Duppa. He's holder for three or four already, and the whole country calls him honest! I'll have him and be safe."

"You'll do as you please about that," Asgill answered equably. If he felt any chagrin, he hid it well. "And that being settled, I wish you luck. Only, mind you, I don't use my wits for nothing. If the estate's to be yours, Flavia's to be mine—if she's willing."

"Willing or unwilling for what I care!" James answered brutally.

Asgill did not hide his scorn. "An excellent brother!" he said. "And so, good-day to you. But have a care of old Ulick."

"Do you think I'm a fool?" James shouted after him.

It was well, perhaps, that the wind carried Asgill's answer across the water and wasted it on the dusk, which presently swallowed his retreating form. The McMurrough stood awhile where the other had left him. He watched the rider go, and twice he shook his fist after him.

"Marry my sister, you dog," he muttered. "Ay, if it will give me my place again! But for helping you to the land first and to her afterwards, as you'd have me, you schemer, you bog-trotter, it would make Tophet's dog sick! You d——d dirty son of an upstart! You'd marry my sister, would you? It will be odd"—he paused—"if I don't jink you yet, when I've made my use of you! I'm a schemer too, Mister Asgill, only—one at a time, one at a time! The Colonel first, and you afterwards! Ay, you afterwards, brother-in-law!"

With a last gesture of defiance—Asgill had long passed out of sight—he returned to the house.

It was two or three days after this interview that Colonel Sullivan, descending at the breakfast hour, found Flavia in the room. He saw her with surprise; with greater surprise he saw that she remained, for during those three days the girl had not sat at meals with him. Once or twice his entrance had surprised her, but it had been the signal for her departure; and he had seen no more of her than the back of her head or the tail of her gown. More often he had found the men alone and had sat down with them. Far from resenting this avoidance, he had found it natural and even proper; and suffering it patiently, he had hoped, though almost against hope, that steering a steady course he would gradually force her to change her opinion of him. He, on his part, must not give way. He had saved the house from a great peril; he had cleared it of—vermin. As he had begun he must continue, and hug, for comfort, the old proverb, Femme souvent varie.

That she was already beginning to change he could scarcely hope; yet, when he saw on this morning that she meant to abide his coming, he was elated—secretly and absurdly elated.

She was at the window, but she turned on hearing his step. "I am wishing to speak to you," she said. But her unforgiving eyes looked out of a hard-cut face, and her figure was stiff as a sergeant's cane.

After that he did not try to compass a commonplace greeting. He bowed gravely. "I am ready to listen," he answered.

"I am wanting to give you a warning," she said. "Your man Bale—I have no reason to wish him ill. But he does not share the immunity which you have secured, and if you'll be taking my advice you will send him away. My uncle is riding as far as Mallow; he will be absent ten days. If you think fit, you will allow your man to go with him. The interval may"—she halted as if in search of a word, but her eyes did not leave his—"I do not say it will, but it may mend matters."

"I am obliged to you," he answered. Then he was silent, reflecting.

"You are not wishing," she said, with a touch of contempt, "to expose the man to a risk you do not run yourself?"

"Heaven forbid!" he answered. "But——"

"If you think he is a protection to you," she continued in the same tone, "do not send him."

"He is not that," he replied, unmoved by her taunt. "But I am alone, and he is a comfort to me."

"As you please," she answered.

"Nevertheless he shall go," he continued. "It may be for the best." He was thinking that if he rejected this overture, she might make no other: and, hard as it would prove to persuade Bale to leave him, he must undertake it. "In any case," he added, "I thank you."

She did not deign to answer, but she turned on her heel and went out. On the threshold she met a serving-boy and she paused an instant, and the Colonel caught a momentary glimpse of her face. It wore a strange look, of disgust or of horror—he was not sure which—that appalled him; so that when the door closed upon her, he remained gazing at it. Had he misread the look? Or—what was its meaning? Could it be that she hated him to that degree! At once the elation which the interview and her thoughtfulness for Bale had roused in him sank; and he was in a brown study when Uncle Ulick, the only person, Bale excepted, to whom he could look for support or sympathy, came in and confirmed the story of his journey.

"You had better come with me," he said, with a meaning look at James and the O'Beirnes, who talked with averted faces, turned their shoulders on their elders and flouted the Colonel as far as they dared. "I shall lie at Tralee one night, and at Ross Castle one night, and at Mallow the third."

But Colonel John had set his course, and was resolved to abide by it. After breakfast he saw Bale, and he had the trouble with him which he had foreseen. But in the end military obedience prevailed and the man consented to go—with forebodings at which his master affected to smile.

"None the less I misdoubt them," the man said, sticking to his point with the east-country doggedness, which is the antipodes of the Irish character. "I misdoubt them, your honour. They were never so careful for me," he added grimly, "when they were for piking me in the bog!"

"The young lady had naught to do with that," Colonel John replied.

"D——n me if I know!"

"Nonsense, man!" the Colonel said sharply. "I'll not hear such words."

"But why separate us, your honour?" Bale pleaded. "Not for good, I swear. No, not for good!"

"For your greater safety, I hope."

"Oh, ay, I understand that! But what of your honour's?"

"I have explained to you," the Colonel said patiently, "why I am safe here."

"For my part, and that's flat, I hate their soft sawder!" the man burst out. "It's everything to please you while they sharpen the pike to stick in your back. If old Oliver, that was a countryman of my own, and bred not so far off, had dealt with a few more of the rogues——"

"Hush!" Colonel John cried sternly. "And, for my sake, keep your tongue between your teeth. Have done with such talk, or you'll not be safe, go or stay; Be more prudent, man!"

"It's my belief I'll never see your honour again!" the man cried, with passion. "That's my belief! That's my belief and you'll not stir it."

"We've parted before in worse hap," Colonel John answered, "and come together again. And, please God, we'll do the same this time."

The man did not answer, but he shook his head obstinately. For the rest of the day he clung to his master like a burr, and it was with an unusual sinking of the heart that Colonel John saw him ride away on the morrow. With him went Uncle Ulick, the Colonel's other friend in the house; and certainly the departure of these two seemed unlucky, if it was nothing worse. But the man who was left behind was not one to give way to vain fears. He thrust down the rising doubt, and chid himself for a presentiment that belittled Providence. Perhaps in the depths of his heart, he welcomed a change, finding cheer in the thought that the smaller the household at Morristown, the more prominently, and therefore the more fairly, he must stand in Flavia's view.

Be that as it might, he saw nothing of her on that day or the following day. But though she shunned him, others did not. He began to remark that he was seldom alone, even in the house. James and the O'Beirnes were always at his elbow—watching, watching, watching, it seemed to him. They said little, and what they said they whispered to one another in corners; but if he came out of his chamber, he found one in the passage, and if he mounted to it, one forewent him! This dogging, these whisperings, this endless watching, would have got on the nerves of a more timid man; it began to disturb him. He began to fancy that even Darby and the serving-boys looked askance at him and kept him in view. Once he took a notion that the butler, who had been friendly within limits—for the sake of that father who had met his man in Tralee churchyard—wished to say something to him. But at the critical moment Morty O'Beirne popped up from somewhere, and Darby sneaked off in silence.

The Colonel disdained to ask what was afoot, but he thought that he would give Morty a chance of speaking. "Are you looking for your brother?" he asked suavely.

"I am not," Morty answered, with a gloomy look.

"Nor for The McMurrough?"

"I am not. I am thinking," he added, with a grin, "that he has his hands full with the young lady."

Colonel John was somewhat startled. "What's the matter?" he asked.

"Oh, two minds in a house. Sorrow a bit more than that. It's no very new thing in a family," Morty added. And he went out whistling "'Twas a' for our rightful King." But he went, as the Colonel noted, no farther than the courtyard, whence he could command the room through the window. He lounged there, whistling, and now and again peeping.

Suddenly, on the upper floor, Colonel John heard a door open, and the clamour of a voice raised in anger. It was James's voice. "Tell him? Curse me if you shall!" Colonel John heard him say. The next moment the door was sharply closed and he caught no more.

But he had heard enough to quicken his pulses. What was it she wished to tell him? Souvent femme varie? Was she already seeking to follow up the hint which she had given him on Bale's behalf? And was the special surveillance to which he had been subjected for the last two days aimed at keeping them apart, that she might have no opportunity of telling him—something?

Colonel John suspected that this might be so. And his heart beat, as has been hinted, more quickly. At the evening meal he was early in the room, on the chance that she might appear before the others. But she did not descend, and the meal proved unpleasant beyond the ordinary, James drinking more than was good for him, and taking a tone, brutal and churlish, if not positively hostile. For some reason, the Colonel reflected, the young man was beginning to lose his fears. Why? What was he planning? How was he, even if he had no respect for his oath, thinking to evade that dilemma which ensured his guest's safety?

"Secure as I seem, I must look to myself," Colonel John thought. And he slept that night with his door bolted and a loaded pistol under his pillow. Next morning he took care to descend early, on the chance of seeing Flavia before the others appeared. She was not down: he waited, and she did not come. But neither did his watchers; and when he had been in the room five minutes a serving-girl slipped in at the back, showed him a scared face, held out a scrap of paper and, when he had taken it, fled in a panic and without a spoken word.

He hid the paper about him and read it later. The message was in Flavia's hand; he had seen her write more than once. But if he had not, he knew that neither James nor the O'Beirnes were capable of penning a grammatical sentence. Colonel John's spirits rose as he read the note.

"Be at the old Tower an hour after sunset. You must not be followed."

"That is more easily said than done," he commented.

Nor, if he were followed through the day as closely as on previous days, did he see how it was to be done. He stood, cudgelling his brains to evolve a plan that would enable him to give the slip to the three men and to the servants who replaced them when they were called away. But he found none that might not, by awakening James's suspicions, make matters worse; indeed, it seemed to him that James was already suspicious. He had at last to let things take their course, in the hope that when the time came they would shape themselves favourably.

They did. For before noon he gathered that James wanted to go fishing. The O'Beirnes also wanted to go fishing, and for the general convenience it became him to go with them. He said neither No nor Yes; but he dallied with the idea until it was time to start and they had made up their minds that he was coming. Then he declined.

James swore, the O'Beirnes scowled at him and grumbled. Presently the three went outside and held a conference. His hopes rose as he sat smiling to himself, for their next step was to call Darby. Evidently they gave him orders and left him in charge, for a few minutes later they went off, spending their anger on one another, and on the barefoot gossoons who carried the tackle.

Late in the afternoon Colonel John took up his position on the horse-block by the entrance-gates, where the June sun fell on him; there he affected to be busy plaiting horse-hair lines. Every two or three minutes Darby showed himself at the door: once in a quarter of an hour the old man found occasion to cross the court to count the ducks or rout a trespassing beggar. Towards sunset, however, he came less often, having to busy himself with the evening meal. The Colonel smiled and waited, and presently the butler came again, found him still seated there, and withdrew—this time with an air of finality. "He's satisfied," the Colonel muttered, and the next moment—for the sun had already set a full hour—he was gone also. The light was waning fast, night was falling in the valley. Before he had travelled a hundred yards he was lost to view.

The fishing-party had started the contrary way, so that he had nothing to fear from them. But that he might omit no precaution, when he had gone a quarter of a mile he halted and listened, with his ear near the ground, for the beat of pursuing footsteps. He heard none, nor any sounds but the low of a cow whose calf was being weaned, the "Whoo! hoo! hoo!" of owls beginning to mouse beside the lake, and the creak of oars in a boat which darkness already hid. He straightened himself with a sigh of relief, and hastened at speed in the direction of the waterfall.

He gave Flavia credit for all the virtues, if for some of the faults of a proud, untamed nature. Therefore he believed her to be fearless. Nevertheless, before he stood on the platform and made out the shape of the Tower looming dark and huge above him, he had come to the conclusion that the need which forced her to such a place at such an hour must be great. The moon would not rise before eleven o'clock, the last shimmer of the water had faded into unfathomable blackness beneath him; he had to tread softly and with care to avoid the brink.

He peered about him, hoping to see her figure emerge beside him. He did not, and, disappointed, he coughed. Finally, in a subdued voice, he called her by name, once and twice. Alas! only the wind, softly stirring the grass and whispering in the ivy, answered him. He was beginning to think—with a chill of disappointment, excessive at his age and in the circumstances—that she had failed to come, when, at no great distance before him, he fancied some one moved. He groped his way forward half a dozen paces, found a light break on his view, and stood in astonishment.

The movement had carried him beyond the face of the Tower, and so revealed the light, which issued from a doorway situate in the flank of the building. He paused; but second thoughts, treading on the heels of surprise, reassured him. He saw that in that position the light was not visible from the lake or the house; and he moved quickly to the open door, expecting to see Flavia. Three steps led down to the basement room of the Tower; great was his surprise when he saw below him in this remote, abandoned building—in this room three feet below the level of the soil—a table set handsomely with four lighted candles in tall sticks, and furnished besides with a silver inkhorn, pens, and paper. Beside the table stood a couple of chairs and a stool. Doubtless there was other furniture in the room, but in his astonishment he saw only these.

He uttered an exclamation, and descended the steps. "Flavia!" he cried. "Flavia!" He did not see her, and he moved a pace towards that part of the room which the door hid from him.

Crash! The door fell to, dragged by an unseen hand. Colonel John sprang towards it; but too late. He heard the grating of a rusty key turned in the lock; he heard through one of the loopholes the sound of an inhuman laugh; and he knew that he was a prisoner. In that moment the cold air of the vault struck a chill to his bones; but it struck not so cold nor so death-like as the knowledge struck to his heart that Flavia had duped him. Yes, on the instant, before the crash of the closing door had ceased to echo in the stone vaulting above him, he knew that, he felt that! She had tricked him. She had deceived him. He let his chin sink on his breast. Oh, the pity of it!



CHAPTER XIX

PEINE FORTE ET DURE

For many minutes, fifteen, twenty perhaps, Colonel John sat motionless in the chair into which he had sunk, his eyes fixed on the flames of the candles that, so still was the night, burned steadily upwards. His unwinking gaze created about each tongue of flame strange effects of vapour, halo-like circles that widened and again contracted, colours that came and went. But he saw these things with his eyes without seeing them with his mind. It was not of them, it was not of the death-cold room about him, in which the table and chairs formed a lighted oasis out of character with the earthen floor, the rough walls, and the vaulted roof—it was not of anything within sight he was thinking; but of Flavia!

Of Flavia, who had deceived him, duped him, cajoled him. Who, for all he knew—and he thought it likely—had got rid of Uncle Ulick. Who had certainly got rid of Bale by playing on his feeling for the man. Who, by affecting a quarrel with her brother, had thrown him off his guard, and won his confidence, only to betray it. Who, having lured him thither, had laughed—had laughed! Deep sighs broke at long intervals from Colonel John's breast as he thought of her treachery. It cut him to the heart. He looked years older as he sat and pondered.

At length, with a sigh drawn from his very soul, he roused himself, and, taking a candle, he made the round of the chamber. The door by which he had entered was the only outlet, and it was of stout oak, clamped with iron, and locked. For windows, a pair of loopholes, slits so narrow that on the brightest day the room must be twilit, pierced the wall towards the lake. If the room had not been used of old as a prison, it made an admirable one; for the ancient walls were two feet thick, and the groined roof was out of reach, and of stone, hard as the weathering of centuries had left it. But not so hard, not so cruel as her heart! Flavia! The word almost came from his lips in a cry of pain.

Yet what was her purpose? He had been lured hither; but why? He tried to shake off the depression which weighed on him, and to think. His eyes fell on the table; he reflected that the answer would doubtless be found among the papers that lay on it. He sat down in the chair which was set before it, and he took up the first sheet that came to hand, a note of a dozen lines in her handwriting—alas! in her handwriting.

"SIR," so it ran,—

"You have betrayed us; and, were that all, I'd still be finding it in my heart to forgive you. But you have betrayed also our Country, our King, and our Faith; and for this it's not with me it lies to pardon. Over and above, you have thought to hold us in a web that would make you safe at once in your life and your person; but you are meshed in your turn, and will fare as you can, without water, food, or fire, until you have signed and sealed the grant which lies beside this paper. We're not unmerciful; and one will visit you once in twenty-four hours until he has it under your hand, when he will witness it. That done, you will go where you please; and Heaven forgive you. I, who write this, am, though unjustly, the owner of that you grant, and you do no wrong.

"FLAVIA MCMURROUGH."

He read the letter with a mixture of emotions. Beside it lay a deed, engrossed on parchment, which purported to grant all that he held under the will of the late Sir Michael McMurrough to and for the sole use of Constantine Hussey, Esquire, of Duppa. But annexed to the deed was a separate scroll, illegal but not unusual in Ireland at that day, stating that the true meaning was that the lands should be held by Constantine Hussey for the use of The McMurrough, who, as a Roman Catholic, was not capable of taking in his own name.

Fully, only too fully, enlightened by Flavia's letter, Colonel John barely glanced at the parchments; for, largely as these, with their waxen discs, prepared to receive the impress of the signet on his finger, bulked on the table, the gist of all lay in the letter. He had fallen into a trap—a trap as cold, cruel, heartless as the bosom of her who had decoyed him hither. Without food or water! And already the chill of the earthen floor was eating into his bones, already the damp of a hundred years was creeping over him.

For the moment he lacked the spirit to rise and contend by movement against the one or the other. He sat gazing at the paper with dull eyes. For, after all, whose interests had he upheld? Whose cause had he supported against James McMurrough and his friends? For whose sake had he declared himself master at Morristown, with no intention, no thought, as Heaven was his witness, of deriving one jot or one tittle of advantage for himself? Flavia's! Always Flavia's! And she had penned this! she had planned this! She had consigned him to this, playing to its crafty end the farce that had blinded him!

His mind, as he sat brooding, travelled back to the beginning of it all; to the day on which Sir Michael's letter, with a copy of his will, had reached his hands, at Stralsund on the Baltic, in his quarters beside the East Gate, in one of those Hanse houses with the tall narrow fronts which look like nothing so much as the gable-ends of churches. The cast of his thoughts at the reading rose up before him; the vivid recollections of his home, his boyhood, his father, which the old man's writing had evoked, and the firmness with which, touched by the dead man's confidence, a confidence based wholly on report, he had resolved to protect the girl's interests. Sir Michael had spoken so plainly of James as to leave the reader under no delusion about him. Nevertheless, Colonel John had conceived some pity for him; in a vague way he had hoped that he might soften things for him when the time came. But that the old man's confidence should be justified, the young girl's inheritance secured to her—this had been the purpose in his mind from first to last.

And this was his reward!

True, that purpose would not have embroiled him with her, strong as was her love for her brother, if it had not become entwined under the stress of events with another—with the resolve to pluck her and hers from the abyss into which they were bent on flinging themselves. It was that resolution which had done the mischief, and made her his enemy to this point. But he could not regret that. He could not repent of that—he who had seen war in all its cruel phases, and fierce rebellions, and more cruel repressions. Perish—though he perished himself in this cold prison—perish the thought! For even now some warmth awoke at his heart, some heat was kindled in him by the reflection that, whatever befell him, he had saved scores and hundreds from misery, a countryside from devastation, women and children from the worst of fates. Many and many a one who cursed his name to-day had cause, did he know it, to remember him in his prayers. And though he never saw the sun again, though the grim walls about him proved indeed his grave, though he never lived to return to the cold lands where he had made a name and a place for himself, he would at least pass beyond with full hands, and with the knowledge that for every life he, the soldier of fortune, had taken, he had saved ten.

He sat an hour, two hours, thinking of this, and of her; and towards the end less bitterly. For he was just, and could picture the wild, untutored heart of the girl, bred in solitude, dwelling on the present wrongs and the past greatness of her race, taking dreams for realities, and that which lay in cloudland for the possible. Her rough awakening from those dreams, her disappointment, the fall from the heaven of fancy to the world as it was, might—he owned it—have driven even a generous spirit to cruel and heartless lengths. And still he sighed—he sighed.

At the end of two hours he roused himself perforce. For he was very cold, and that could only be mended by such exercise as the size of his prison permitted. He set himself to walk briskly up and down. When he had taken a few turns, however, he paused with his eyes on the table. The candles? They would serve him the longer if he burned but one at a time. He extinguished three. The deed? He might burn it, and so put the temptation, which he was too wise to despise, out of reach. But he had noticed in one corner a few half-charred fragments of wood, damp indeed, but such as might be kindled by coaxing. He would preserve the deed for the purpose of kindling the wood; and the fire, as his only luxury, he would postpone until he needed it more sorely. In the end the table and the chairs—or all but one—should eke out his fuel, and he would sleep. But not yet.

For he had no desire to die; and with warmth he knew that he could put up for a long time with the lack of food. Every hour during which he had the strength and courage to bear up against privation increased his chances; it was impossible to say what might not happen with time. Uncle Ulick was due to return in a week—and Bale. Or his gaolers might relent. Nay, they must relent for their own sakes, if he bore a stout heart and held out; for until the deed was signed they dared not let him perish.

That was a good thought. He wondered if it had occurred to them. If it had, it was plain that they relied on his faint-heartedness, and his inability to bear the pangs of hunger, even within limits. For they could put him on the rack, but they dared not push the torment so far as to endanger his life. With that knowledge, surely with that in his mind, he could outstay their patience. He must tighten his belt, he must eke out his fuel, he must bear equably the pangs of appetite; after all, in comparison with the perils and privations through which he had passed on the cruel plains of Eastern Europe, and among a barbarous people, this was a small thing.

Or it would have been a small thing if that profound depression, that sadness at the heart which had held him motionless so long had not still sapped his will, undermined his courage, and bowed his head upon his breast. A small thing! a few hours, a few days even of hunger and cold and physical privation—no more! But when it was overpast, and he had suffered and was free, to what could he look forward? What prospect stretched beyond, save one grey, dull, and sunless, a homeless middle age, an old age without solace? He was wounded in the house of his friend, and felt not the pain only, but the sorrow. In a little while he would remember that, if he had not to take, he had still to give: if he had not to enjoy, he had still to do. The wounds would heal. Already shadowy plans rose before him.

Yet for the time—for he was human—he drew small comfort from such plans. He would walk up and down for a few minutes, then he would sink into his chair with a stern face, and he would brood. Again, when the cold struck to his bones, he would sigh, and rise of necessity and pace again from wall to wall.

His had been a mad fancy, a foolish fancy, a fancy of which—for how many years rolled between him and the girl, and how many things done, suffered, seen—he should have known the outcome. But, taking its rise in the instinct to protect, which their relations justified, it had mastered him slowly, not so much against his will as without his knowledge; until he had awakened one day to find himself possessed by a fancy—a madness, if the term were fitter—the more powerful because he was no longer young, and in his youth had known passion but once, and then to his sorrow. By-and-by, for a certainty, the man's sense of duty, the principles that had ruled him so long—and ruled more men then than now, for faith was stronger—would assert themselves. And he would go back to the Baltic lands, the barren, snow-bitten lands of his prime, a greyer, older, more sombre man—but not an unhappy man.

Something of this he told himself as he paced up and down the gloomy chamber, while the flame of the candle crept steadily downward, and his shadow in the vault above grew taller and more grotesque. It must be midnight; it must be two; it must be three in the morning. The loopholes, when he stood between them and the candle, were growing grey; the birds were beginning to chirp. Presently the sun would rise, and through the narrow windows he would see its beams flashing on the distant water. But the windows looked north-west, and many hours must pass before a ray would strike into his dungeon. The candle was beginning to burn low, and it seemed a pity to light another, with the daylight peering in. But if he did not, he would lack the means to light his fire. And he was eager to do without the fire as long as possible, though already he shivered in the keen morning air. He was cold now, but he would be colder, he knew, much colder by-and-by, and his need of the fire would be greater.

From that the time wore wearily on—he was feeling the reaction—to the breakfast hour. The sun was high now; the birds were singing sweetly in the rough brakes and brambles about the Tower; far away on the shining lake, of which only the farther end lay within his sight, three men were fishing from a boat. He watched them; now and again he caught the tiny splash as they flung the bait far out. And, so watching, with no thought or expectation of it, he fell asleep, and slept, for five or six hours, the sleep of which excitement had cheated him through the night. In warmth, morning and evening, night and day differed little in that sunken room. Still the air in it profited a little by the high sun; and he awoke, not only less weary, but warmer. But, alas! he awoke also hungry.

He stood up and stretched himself: and, seeing that two-thirds of the second candle had burned away while he slept, he was thankful that he had lit it. He tried to put away the visions of hot bacon, cold round, and sweet brown bread that rose before him; he smiled, indeed, considering how much more hungry he would be by-and-by, this evening—and to-morrow. He wondered ruefully how far they would carry it: and, on that, mind got the better of body, and he forgot his appetite in a thought more engrossing.

Would she come? Every twenty-four hours, her letter said, a person would visit him, to learn if his will had yielded to theirs. Would she be the person? Would she who had so wronged him have the courage to confront him? And, if she did, how would she carry it off? It was wonderful with what interest, nay, with what agitation, he dwelt on this. How would she look? how would she bear herself? how would she meet his eye? Would the shame she ought to feel make itself seen in her carriage, or would her looks and her mien match the arrogance of her letter? Would she shun his gaze, or would she face it without flinching, with a steady colour and a smiling lip? And, if the latter were the case, would it be the same when hours and days of fasting had hollowed his cheeks, and given to his eyes the glare which he had seen in many a wretched peasant's eyes in those distant lands? Would she still be able to face that sight without flinching, to view his sufferings without a qualm, and turn, firm in her cruel purpose, from the dumb pleading of his hunger?

"God forbid!" he cried. "Ah! God forbid!"

And he prayed that, rather than that, rather than have that last proof of the hardness of the heart that dwelt in that fair shape, he might not see her at all. He prayed that, rather than that, she might not come; though—so weak are men—that she might come, and he might see how she bore herself, and how she carried off his knowledge of her treason—was now the one interest he had, the one thought, prospect, hope that had power to lighten the time, and keep at bay—though noon was long past, and he had fasted twenty-four hours—the attacks of hunger!

The thought possessed him to an extraordinary extent. Would she come? And would he see her? Or, having lured him by that Judas letter into his enemies' power, would she leave him to be treated as they chose, while she lay warm and safe in the house which his interference had saved for her?

Oh! cruel!

Then—for no man was more just than this man, though many surpassed him in tact—the very barbarity of an action so false and so unwomanly suggested that, viewed from her side, it must wear another shape. For even Delilah was a Philistine, and by her perfidy served her country. What was this girl gaining? Revenge, yes; yet, if they kept faith with him, and, the deed signed, let him go free, she had not even revenge. For the rest, she lost by the deed. All that her grandfather had meant for her passed by it to her brother. To lend herself to stripping herself was not the part of a selfish woman. Even in her falseness there was something magnanimous.

He sat drumming on the table with his fingers, and thinking of it. She had been false to him, treacherous, cruel! But not for her own sake, not for her private advantage; rather to her hurt. Viewed on that side, there was something to be said for her.

He was still staring dreamily at the table when a shadow falling on the table roused him. He lifted his eyes to the nearest loophole, through which the setting sun had been darting its rays a moment before. Morty O'Beirne bending almost double—for outside, the arrow-slit was not more than two feet from the ground—was peering in.

"Ye'll not have changed your quarters, Colonel," he said, in a tone of raillery which was assumed perhaps to hide a real feeling of shame. "Sure, you're there, Colonel, safe enough?"

"Yes, I am here," Colonel John answered austerely. He did not leave his seat at the table.

"And as much at home as a mole in a hill," Morty continued. "And, like that same blessed little fellow in black velvet that I take my hat off to, with lashings of time for thinking."

"So much," Colonel John answered, with the same severe look, "that I am loth to think ill of any. Are you alone, Mr. O'Beirne?"

"Faith, and who'd there be with me?" Morty answered in true Irish fashion.

"I cannot say. I ask only, Are you alone?"

"Then I am, and that's God's truth," Morty replied, peering inquisitively into the corners of the gloomy chamber. "More by token I wish you no worse than just to be doing as you're bid—and faith, it's but what's right!—and go your way. 'Tis a cold, damp, unchancy place you've chosen, Colonel," he continued, with a grin; "like nothing in all the wide world so much as that same molehill. Well, glory be to God, it can't be said I'm one for talking; but, if you're asking my advice, you'll be wiser acting first than last, and full than empty!"

"I'm not of that opinion, sir," Colonel John replied, looking at him with the same stern eyes.

"Then I'm thinking you're not as hungry as I'd be! And not the least taste in life to stay my stomach for twenty-four hours!"

"It has happened to me before," Colonel John answered.

"You're not for signing, then?"

"I am not."

"Don't be saying that, Colonel!" Morty rejoined. "It's not yet awhile, you're meaning?"

"Neither now nor ever, God willing," Colonel John answered. "I quote from yourself, sir. As well say it first as last, and full as empty!"

"Sure, and ye'll be thinking better of it by-and-by, Colonel."

"No."

"Ah, you will," Morty retorted, in that tone which to a mind made up is worse than a blister. "Sure, ye'll not be so hard-hearted, Colonel, as to refuse a lady! It's not Kerry-born you are, and say the word 'No' that easy!"

"Do not deceive yourself, sir," Colonel John answered severely, and with a darker look. "I shall not give way either to-day or to-morrow."

"Nor the next day?"

"Nor the next day, God willing."

"Not if the lady asks you herself? Come, Colonel."

Colonel John rose sharply from his seat; such patience, as a famished man has, come to an end.

"Sir," he said, "if this is all you have to say to me, I have your message, and I prefer to be alone."

Morty grinned at him a moment, then, with an Irish shrug, he gave way. "As you will," he said.

He withdrew himself suddenly, and the sunset light darted into the room through the narrow window, dimming the candle's rays. The Colonel heard him laugh as he strode away across the platform, and down the hill. A moment and the sounds ceased. He was gone. The Colonel was alone.

Until this time to-morrow! Twenty-four hours. Yes, he must tighten his belt.

* * * * *

Morty, poking his head this way and that, peering into the chamber as he had peered yesterday, wished he could see Colonel John's face. But Colonel John, bending resolutely over the handful of embers that glowed in an inner angle of the room, showed only his back. Even that Morty could not see plainly; for the last of the candles had burned out, and in the chamber, dark in comparison with the open air, the crouching figure was no more than a shapeless mass obscuring the glow of the fuel.

Morty shaded his eyes and peered more closely. He was not a sensitive person, and he was obeying orders. But he was not quite comfortable.

"And that's your last word?" he said slowly. "Come, Colonel dear, ye'll say something more to that."

"That's my last word to-day," Colonel John answered as slowly, and without turning his head.

"Honour bright? Won't ye think better of it before I go?"

"I will not."

Morty paused, to tell the truth, in extreme exasperation. He had no great liking for the part he was playing; but why couldn't the man be reasonable? "You're sure of it, Colonel," he said.

Colonel John did not answer.

"And I'm to tell her so?" Morty concluded.

Colonel John rose sharply, as if at last the other tried him too far. "Yes," he said, "tell her that! Or," lowering his voice and his hand, "do not tell her, as you please. That is my last word, sir! Let me be."

But it was not his last word. For as Morty turned to go, and suffered the light to fall again through the aperture, the Colonel heard him speak—in a lower and a different tone. At the same moment, or his eyes deceived him, a shadow that was not Morty O'Beirne's fell for one second on the splayed wall inside the window. It was gone as soon as seen; but Colonel John had seen it, and he sprang to the window.

"Flavia!" he cried. "Flavia!"

He paused to listen, his hand on the wall on either side of the opening. His face, which had been pinched and haggard a moment before, was now flushed by the sunset. Then "Flavia!" he repeated, keen appeal in his voice. "Flavia!"

She did not answer. She was gone. And perhaps it was as well. He listened for a long time, but in vain; and he told himself again that it was as well. Why, after all, appeal to her? How, could it avail him? What good could it do? Slowly he went back to his chair and sat down in the old attitude over the embers. But his lip quivered.



CHAPTER XX

AN UNWELCOME VISITOR

A little before sunset on that same day—almost precisely indeed at the moment at which Flavia's shadow darkened the splayed flank of the window in the Tower—two men stood beside the entrance at Morristown, whence the one's whip had just chased the beggars. They were staring at a third, who, seated nonchalantly upon the horse-block, slapped his boot with his riding switch, and made as poor a show of hiding his amusement as they of masking their disgust. The man who slapped his leg and shaped his lips to a silent whistle, was Major Payton of the —th. The men who looked at him, and cursed the unlucky star which had brought him thither, were Luke Asgill and The McMurrough.

"Faith, and I should have thought," Asgill said, with a clouded face, "that my presence here, Major, and I, a Justice——"

"True for you!" Payton said, with a grin.

"Should have been enough by itself, and the least taste more than enough, to prove the absurdity of the Castle's story."

"True for you again," Payton replied. "And ain't I saying that but for your presence here, and a friend at court that I'll not name, it's not your humble servant this gentleman would be entertaining"—he turned to The McMurrough—"but half a company and a sergeant's guard!"

"I'm allowing it."

"You've no cause to do other."

"Devil a bit I'm denying it," Asgill replied more amicably; and, as far as he could, he cleared his face. "It's not that you're not welcome. Not at all, Major! Sure, and I'll answer for it, my friend, The McMurrough is glad to welcome any English gentleman, much more one of your reputation."

"Truth, and I am," The McMurrough assented. But he had not Asgill's self-control, and his sulky tone belied his words.

"Still—I come at an awkward time, perhaps?" Payton answered, looking with a grin from one to the other.

For the first time it struck him that the suspicions at headquarters might be well-founded; in that case he had been rash to put his head in the lion's mouth. For it had been wholly his own notion. Partly to tease Asgill, whom he did not love the more because he owed him money, and partly to see the rustic beauty whom, rumour had it, Asgill was courting in the wilds—a little, too, because life at Tralee was dull, he had volunteered to do with three or four troopers what otherwise a half-company would have been sent to do. That he could at the same time put his creditor under an obligation, and annoy him, had not been the least part of the temptation; while no one at Tralee believed the story sent down from Dublin.

He did not credit it even now for more than two seconds. Then common sense, and his knowledge of Luke Asgill reassured him. "Eh! An awkward time, perhaps?" he repeated, looking at The McMurrough. "Sorry, I'm sure, but——"

"I'd have entertained you better, I'm thinking," James McMurrough said, "if I'd known you were coming before you came."

"Devil a doubt of it!" said Asgill, whose subtle brain had been at work. "Not that it matters, bedad, for an Irish gentleman will do his best. And to-morrow Colonel Sullivan, that's more knowledge of the mode and foreign ways, will be back, and he'll be helping his cousin. More by token," he added, in a different tone, "you know him of old?"

Payton, who had frowned at the name, reddened at the question. "Is that," he asked, "the Colonel Sullivan who——"

"Who tried the foils with Lemoine at Tralee?" Asgill cried heartily. "The same and no other! He is away to-day, but he'll be returning tomorrow, and he'll be delighted to see you! And by good luck, there are foils in the house, and he'll pass the time pleasantly with you! It's he's the hospitable creature!"

Payton was far from pleased. He was anything but anxious to see the man whose skill had turned the joke against him; and his face betokened his feelings. Had he foreseen the meeting he would certainly have remained in Tralee, and left the job to a subaltern. "Hang it!" he exclaimed, vexed by the recollection, "a fine mess you led me into there, Asgill!"

"I did not know him then," Asgill replied lightly. "And, pho! Take my word for it, he's no man to bear malice!"

"Malice, begad!" Payton answered, ill-humouredly; "I think it's I——"

"Ah, you are right again, to be sure!" Asgill agreed, laughing silently. For already he had formed a hope that the guest might be manoeuvred out of the house on the morrow. Not that he thought Payton was likely either to discover the Colonel's plight, or to interfere if he did. But Asgill had another, and a stronger motive for wishing the intruder away. He knew Payton. He knew the man's arrogance and insolence, the contempt in which he held the Irish, his view of them as an inferior race. And he was sure that, if he saw Flavia and fancied her—and who that saw her would not fancy her?—he was capable of any rudeness, any outrage; or, if he learned her position in regard to the estate, he might prove a formidable, if an honourable, competitor. In either case, to hasten the man's departure, and to induce Flavia to remain in the background in the meantime, became Asgill's chief aim.

James McMurrough, on the other hand, saw in the unwelcome intruder an English officer; and, troubled by his guilty conscience, he dreaded above all things what he might discover. True, the past was past, the plot spent, the Spanish ship gone. But the Colonel remained, and in durance. And if by any chance the Englishman stumbled on him, released him and heard his story, and lived to carry it back to Tralee—the consequences might be such that a cold sweat broke out on the young man's brow at the thought of them. To add to his alarm, Payton, whose mind was secretly occupied with the Colonel, sought to evince his indifference by changing the subject, and in doing so, hit on one singularly unfortunate.

"A pretty fair piece of water," he said, rising with an affected yawn, and pointing over the lake with his riding-switch. "The tower at the head of it—it's grown too dark to see it—is it inhabited?"

The McMurrough started guiltily. "The tower?" he stammered. Could it be that the man knew all, and was here to expose him? His heart stood still, then raced.

"The Major'll be meaning the tower on the rock," Asgill said smoothly, but with a warning look. "Ah, sure, it'll be used at times, Major, for a prison, you understand."

"Oh!"

"But we'll be better to be moving inside, I'm thinking," he continued.

Payton assented. He was still brooding on his enemy, the Colonel, and his probable arrival on the morrow. Curse the man, he was thinking. Why couldn't he keep out of his way?

"Take the Major in, McMurrough," Asgill said, who on his side was on tenter-hooks lest Flavia and Morty O'Beirne should arrive from the Tower. "You'll like to get rid of your boots before supper, Major?" he went on. "Bid Darby send the Major's man to him, McMurrough; or, better, I'll be going to the stables myself and I'll be telling him!"

As the others went in, Asgill strolled on this pretext towards the stables. But when they had passed out of sight he turned and walked along the lake to meet the girl and her companion. As he walked he had time to think, and to decide how he might best deal with Flavia, and how much and what he should tell her. When he met them, therefore—by this time the night was falling—his first question related to their errand, and to that which an hour before had been the one pre-occupation of all their minds.

"Well," he said, "he'll not have yielded yet, I am thinking?"

Dark as it was, the girl averted her face to hide the trouble in her eyes. She shook her head. "No," she said, "he has not."

"I did not count on it," Asgill replied cheerfully. "But time—time and hunger and patience—devil a doubt he'll give in presently."

She did not answer, but he fancied—she kept her face averted—that she shivered.

"While you have been away, something has happened," he continued. After all, it was perhaps as well, he reflected, that Payton had come. His coming, even if Flavia did not encounter him, would divert her thoughts, would suggest an external peril, would prevent her dwelling too long or too fancifully on that room in the Tower, and on the man who famished there. She hated the Colonel, Asgill believed. She had hated him, he was sure. But how long would she continue to hate him in these circumstances? How long if she learned what were the Colonel's feelings towards her? "An unwelcome guest has come," he continued glibly, "and one that'll be giving trouble, I'm fearing."

"A guest?" Flavia repeated in astonishment. She halted. What time for guests was this? "And unwelcome?" she added. "Who is it?"

"An English officer," Asgill explained, "from Tralee. He is saying that the Castle has heard something, and has sent him here to look about him."

Naturally the danger seemed greater to the two than to Asgill, who knew his man. Words of dismay broke from Flavia and O'Beirne. "From Tralee?" she cried. "And an English officer? Good heavens! Do you know him?"

"I do," Asgill answered confidently. "And, believe me or no, I can manage him." He began to appreciate this opportunity of showing himself the master of the position. "I hold him, like that, not the least doubt of it; but the less we'll be doing for him the sooner he'll be going, and the safer we'll be! I would not be so bold as to advise," he continued diffidently, "but I'm thinking it would be no worse if you left him to be entertained by the men."

"I will!" she cried, embracing the idea. "Why should I be wanting to see him?"

"Then I think he'll be ordering his horse to-morrow!"

"I wish he were gone now!" she cried.

"Ah, so do I!" he replied, from his heart.

"I will go in through the garden," she said.

He assented; it was to that point he had been moving. She turned aside, and for a moment he bent to the temptation to go with her. Since the day on which he had voluntarily left the house at the Colonel's dictation he had made progress in her favour. He was sure that he had come closer to her—that she had begun not only to suffer his company, but to suffer it willingly. And here, as she passed through the darkling garden under the solid blackness of the yews, was an opportunity of making a further advance. She would have to grope her way, a reason for taking her hand might offer, and—his head grew hot at the thought.

But he thrust the temptation from him. He knew that it was not only the stranger's presence that weighed her down, but her recollection of the man in the Tower and his miserable plight. This was not the time, nor was she in the mood for such advances; and, putting pressure on himself, Asgill turned from her, satisfied with what he had done.

As he went on with Morty, he gave him a hint to say as little in Payton's presence as possible, and to leave the management to him. "I know the man," he explained, "and where he's weak. I'm for seeing the back of him as soon as we can, but without noise."

"There's always the bog," grumbled Morty. He did not love Asgill overmuch, and the interview with the Colonel had left him in a restive mood.

"And the garrison at Tralee," Asgill rejoined drily, "to ask where he is! And his troopers to answer the question."

Morty fell back on sullenness, and bade him manage it his own way. "Only I'll trouble you not to blame me," he added, "if the English soger finds the Colonel, and ruins us entirely!"

"I'll not," Asgill answered pithily, "if so be you'll hold your tongue."

So at supper that night Payton looked in vain for the Kerry beauty whose charms the warmer wits of the mess had more than once painted in hues rather florid than fit. Lacking her, he found that the conversation lay wholly between Asgill and himself. Nor did this surprise him, when he had surmounted his annoyance at the young lady's absence; for the contempt in which he held the natives disposed him to expect nothing from them. On the contrary, he found it natural that these savages should sit silent before a man of the world, and, like the clowns they were, find nothing to say fit for a gentleman to hear. Under such circumstances he was not unwilling to pose before them in an indolent, insolent fashion, to show them what a great person he was, and to speak of things beyond their ken. Playing this part, he would have enjoyed himself tolerably—nor the less because now and again he let his contempt for the company peep from under his complaisance—but for the obtuseness, or the malice of his friend; who, as if he had only one man and one idea in his head, let fall with every moment some mention of Colonel John. Now, it was the happy certainty of the Colonel's return next day that inspired his eloquence; now, the pleasure with which the Colonel would meet Payton again; now, the lucky chance that found a pair of new foils on the window ledge among the fishing-tackle, the old fowling-pieces, and the ragged copies of Armida and The Don.

"For he's ruined entirely and no one to play with him!" Asgill continued, a twinkle, which he made no attempt to hide, in his eye. "No one, I'm meaning, Major, of his sort of force at all! Begad, boys, you'll see some fine fencing for once! Ye'll think ye've never seen any before I'm doubting!"

"I'm not sure that I can remain to-morrow," Payton said in a surly tone. For he began to suspect that Asgill was quizzing him. He noticed that every time the Justice named Colonel Sullivan, whether he referred to his return, or exalted his prowess, a sensation, a something that was almost a physical stir passed round the table. Men looked furtively at one another, or looked straight before them, as if they were in a design. If that were so, the design could only be to pit Colonel Sullivan against him, or in some way to provoke a quarrel between them. He felt a qualm of distrust and apprehension, for he remembered the words the Colonel had used in reference to their next meeting; and he was confirmed in the plan he had already formed—to be gone next day. But in the meantime his temper moved him to carry the war into the enemy's country.

"I didn't know," he snarled, taking Asgill up in the middle of a eulogy of Colonel John's skill, "that he was so great a favourite of yours."

"He was not," Asgill replied drily.

"He is now, it seems!" in the same sneering tone.

"We know him better. Don't we, boys?"

They murmured assent.

"And the lady whose horse I sheltered for you," the Major continued, spitefully watching for an opening—"confound you, little you thanked me for it!—she must be still more in his interest than you. And how does that suit your book?"

Asgill had great self-control, and the Major was not, except where his malice was roused, a close observer. But the thrust was so unexpected that on the instant Payton read the other's secret in his eyes—knew that he loved, and knew that he was jealous. Jealous of Sullivan! Jealous of the man whom he was for some reason praising. Then why not jealous of a younger, a more proper, a more fashionable rival? Asgill's cunningly reared plans began to sink, and even while he answered he knew it.

"She likes him," he said, "as we all do."

"Some more, some less," Payton answered with a grin.

"Just so," the Irishman returned, controlling himself. "Some more, some less. And why not, I'm asking."

"I think I must stay over to-morrow," Payton remarked, smiling at the ceiling. "There must be a good deal to be seen here."

"Ah, there is," Asgill answered in apparent good humour.

"Worth seeing, too, I'll be sworn!" the Englishman replied, smiling more broadly.

"And that's true, too!" the other rejoined.

He had himself in hand; and it was not from him that the proposal to break up the party came. The Major it was who at last pleaded fatigue. Englishmen's heads, he said, were stronger than their stomachs; they were a match for port but not for claret. "Too much Bordeaux," he continued, with careless contempt, "gives me the vapours next day. It's a d—d sour drink, I call it! Here's a health to Methuen and sound Oporto!"

"You should correct it, Major, with a little cognac," The McMurrough suggested politely.

"Not to-night; and, by your leave, I'll have my man called and go to bed."

"It's early," James McMurrough said, playing the host.

"It is, but I'll have my man and go to bed," Payton answered, with true British obstinacy. "No offence to any gentleman."

"There's none will take it here," Asgill answered. "An Irishman's house is his guest's castle." But, knowing that Payton liked his glass, he wondered; until it occurred to him that the other wished to have his hand steady for the sword-play next day. He meant to stay, then! "Hang him! Hang him!" he repeated in his mind.

The McMurrough, who had risen, took a light and attended his guest to his room. Asgill and the O'Beirnes—the smaller folk had withdrawn earlier—remained seated at the table, the young men scoffing at the Englishman's weak head, and his stiffness and conceit of himself, Asgill silent and downcast. His scheme for ridding himself of Payton had failed; it remained to face the situation. He did not distrust Flavia; no Englishman, he was sure, would find favour with her. But he distrusted Payton, his insolence, his violence, and the privileged position which his duellist's skill gave him. And then there was Colonel John. If Payton learned what was afoot at the Tower, and saw his way to make use of it, the worst might happen to all concerned.

He looked up at a touch from Morty, and to his astonishment he saw Flavia standing at the end of the table. There was a hasty scrambling to the feet, for the men had not drunk deep, and by all in the house, except her brother, the girl was treated with respect. After a fashion, they were to a man in love with her.

"I was thinking," Asgill said, foreseeing trouble, "that you were in bed and asleep." Her hair was tied back negligently and her dress half-fastened at the throat.

"I cannot sleep," she answered. And then she stood a moment drumming with her slender fingers on the table, and the men noticed that she was unusually pale. "I cannot sleep," she repeated, a tremor in her voice. "I keep thinking of him. I want some one—to go to him."

"Now?"

"Now!"

"But," Asgill said slowly, "I'm thinking that to do that were to give him hopes. It were to spoil all. Once in twenty-four hours—that was agreed, and he was told. And it is not four hours since you were there. If there is one thing needful, not the least doubt of it!—it is to leave him thinking that we're meaning it."

He spoke gently and reasonably. But the girl laboured, it was plain, under a weight of agitation that did not suffer her to reason, much less to answer him reasonably. She was as one who wakes in the dark night, with the terror of an evil dream upon him, and cannot for a time shake it off. "But if he dies?" she cried in a woeful tone. "If he dies of hunger? Oh, my God, of hunger! What have we done then? I tell you," she continued, struggling with overwhelming emotion, "I cannot bear it! I cannot bear it!" She looked from one to the other as appealing to each in turn to share her horror, and to act. "It is wicked, it is wicked!" she continued, in a shriller tone and with a note of defiance in her voice, "and who will answer for it? Who will answer for it, if he dies? I, not you! I, who tricked him, who lied to him, who lured him there!"

For a moment there was a stricken silence in the room. Then, "And what had he done to you?" Asgill retorted with spirit—for he saw that if he did not meet her on her own plane she was capable of any act, however ruinous. "Or, if not to you, to Ireland, to your King, to your Country, to your hopes?" He flung into his voice all the indignation of which he was master. "A trick, you say? Was it not by a trick he ruined all? The fairest prospect, the brightest day that ever dawned for Ireland! The day of freedom, of liberty, of——"

She twisted her fingers feverishly together. "Yes," she said, "yes! Yes, but—I can't bear it! I can't! I can't! It is no use talking," she continued with a violent shudder. "You are here—look!" she pointed to the table strewn with the remains of the meal, with flasks and glasses and tall silver-edged horns. "But he is—starving! Starving!" she repeated, as if the physical pain touched herself.

"You shall go to him to-morrow! Go, yourself!" he replied in a soothing tone.

"I!" she cried. "Never!"

"Oh, but——" Asgill began, perplexed but not surprised by her attitude—"But here's your brother," he continued, relieved. "He will tell you—he'll tell you, I'm sure, that nothing can be so harmful as to change now. Your sister," he went on, addressing The McMurrough, who had just descended the stairs, "she's wishing some one will go to the Colonel, and see if he's down a peg. But I'm telling her——"

"It's folly entirely, you should be telling her!" James McMurrough replied, curtly and roughly. Intercourse with Payton had not left him in the best of tempers. "To-morrow at sunset, and not an hour earlier, he'll be visited. And then it'll be you, Flavvy, that'll speak to him! What more is it you're wanting?"

"I speak to him?" she cried. "I couldn't!"

"But it'll be you'll have to!" he replied roughly. "Wasn't it so arranged?"

"I couldn't," she replied, in the same tone of trouble. "Some one else—if you like!"

"But it's not some one else will do," James retorted.

"But why should I be the one—to go?" she wailed. She had Colonel John's face before her, haggard, sunken, famished, as, peering into the gloomy, firelit room, she had seen it that afternoon, ay, and as she had seen it later against the darkness of her bedroom. "Why should I," she repeated, "be the one to go?"

"For a very good reason," her brother retorted with a sneer. And he looked at Asgill and laughed.

That look, which she saw, and the laugh which went with it, startled her as a flash of light startles a traveller groping through darkness. "Why?" she repeated in a different tone. "Why?"

But neither her tone nor Asgill's warning glance put James McMurrough on his guard; he was in one of his brutal humours. "Why?" he replied. "Because he's a silly fool, as I'm thinking some others are, and has a fancy for you, Flavvy! Faith, you're not blind!"—he continued, forgetting that he had only learned the fact from Asgill a few days before, and that it was news to the younger men—"and know it, I'll be sworn, as well as I do! Any way, I've a notion that if you let him see that there is no one in the house wishes him worse than you, or would see him starve, the stupid fool, with a lighter heart—I'm thinking it will be for bringing him down, if anything will!"

She did not answer. And outwardly she was not much moved. But inwardly, the horror of herself and her part in the matter, which she had felt as she lay upstairs in the darkness, thinking of the starving man, whelmed up and choked her. They were using her for this! They were using her because the man—loved her! Because hard words, cruel treatment, brutality from her would be ten times more hard, more cruel, more brutal than from others! Because such treatment at her hands would be more likely to break his spirit and crush his heart! To what viler use, to what lower end could a woman be used, or human feeling be prostituted?

Nor was this all. On the tide of this loathing of herself rose another, a newer and a stranger feeling. The man loved her. She did not doubt the statement. Its truth came home to her at once, although, occupied with other views of him, she had never suspected the fact. And because it placed him in a different light, because it placed him in a light in which she had never viewed him before, because it recalled a hundred things, acts, words on his part which she had barely noted at the time, but which now took on another aspect, it showed him, too, as one whom she had never seen. Had he been free at this moment, prosperous, triumphant, the knowledge that he loved her, that he, her enemy, loved her, might have revolted her—she might have hated him the more for it. But now that he lay a prisoner, famished, starving, the fact that he loved her touched her heart, transfixed her with an almost poignant feeling, choked her with a rising flood of pity and self-reproach.

"So there you have it, Flavvy!" James cried complacently. "And sure, you'll not be making a fool of yourself at this time of day!"

She stood as one stunned; looking at him with strange eyes, thinking, not answering. Asgill, and Asgill only, saw a burning blush dye for an instant the whiteness of her face. He, and he only, discovered, with the subtle insight of one who loved, a part of what she was thinking. He wished James McMurrough in the depth of hell. But it was too late, or he feared so.

Great was his relief, therefore, when she spoke. "Then you'll not—be going now?" she said.

"Now?" James retorted contemptuously. "Haven't I told you, you'll go to-morrow?"

"If I must," she said slowly, "I will—if I must."

"Then what's the good of talking, I'm thinking?" The McMurrough answered. And he was going on—being in a bullying mood—to say more in the same strain, when the opportunity was taken from him. One of the O'Beirnes, who happened to avert his eyes from the girl, discovered Payton standing at the foot of the stairs. Phelim's exclamation apprised the others that something was amiss, and they turned.

"I left my snuff-box on the table," Payton said, with a sly grin. How much he had heard they could not tell. "Ha! there it is! Thank you. Sorry! Sorry, I am sure! Hope I don't trespass. Will you present me to your sister, Mr. McMurrough?"

James McMurrough had no option but to do so—looking foolish; while Luke Asgill stood by with rage in his heart, cursing the evil chance which had brought Flavia downstairs.

"I assure you," Payton said, bowing low before her, but not so low that the insolence of his smile was hidden from all, "I think myself happy. My friend Asgill's picture of you, warmly as he painted it, fell infinitely—infinitely below the reality!"



CHAPTER XXI

THE KEY

Colonel John rose and walked unsteadily to the window. He rested a hand on either jamb and looked through it, peering to right and left with wistful eyes. He detected no one, nothing, no change, no movement, and, with a groan, he straightened himself. But he still continued to look out, gazing at the bare sward below the window, at the sparkling sheet of water beyond and beneath it, at the pitiless blue sky above, in which the sun was still high, though it had begun to decline.

Presently he grew weary, and went back to his chair. He sat down with his elbows on his knees and his head between his hands. Again his ears had deceived him! Again hope had told her flattering tale! How many more times would he start to his feet, fancying he heard the footstep that did not fall, calling aloud to those who were not there, anticipating those who, more hard of heart than the stone walls about him, more heedless than the pitiless face of nature without, would not come before the appointed time! And that was hours away, hours of thirst and hunger, almost intolerable; of patience and waiting, weary waiting, broken only by such a fancy, born of his weakened senses, as had just drawn him to the window.

The suffering which is inevitable is more easy to bear than that which is caused by man. In the latter case the sense that the misery felt may be ended by so small a thing as another's will; that another may, by lifting a finger, cut it short, and will not; that to persuade him is all that is needful—this becomes at the last maddening, intolerable, a thing to upset the reason, if that other will not be persuaded.

Colonel John was a man sane and well-balanced, and assuredly not one to despair lightly. But even he had succumbed more than once during the last twelve hours to gusts of rage, provoked as much by the futility of his suffering as by the cruelty of his persecutors. After each of these storms he had laughed, in wonder at himself, had scolded himself and grown calm. But they had made their mark upon him, they had left his eyes wilder, his cheeks more hollow; his hand less firm.

He had burned, in fighting the cold of the past night, all that would burn, except the chair on which he sat; and with the dawn the last spark of his fire had died out. Notwithstanding those fits of rage he was not light-headed. He could command his faculties at will, he could still reflect and plan, marshal the arguments and perfect the reasons that must convince his foes, that, if they inflicted a lingering death on him, they did but work their own undoing. But at times he found himself confounding the present with the past, fancying, for a while, that he was in a Turkish prison, and turning, under that impression, to address Bale; or starting from a waking dream of some cold camp in Russian snows—alas! starting from it only to shiver with that penetrating, heart-piercing, frightful cold, which was worse to bear than the gnawing of hunger or the longing of thirst.

He had not eaten for more than seventy hours. But the long privation which had weakened his limbs and blanched his cheeks, which had even gone some way towards disordering his senses, had not availed to shake his will. The possibility of surrender did not occur to him, partly because he felt sure that James McMurrough would not be so foolish as to let him die; but partly, also, by reason of a noble stubbornness in the man, a fixedness that for no pain of death would leave a woman or a child to perish. More than once Colonel Sullivan had had to make that choice, amid the horrors of a retreat across famished lands, with wolves and Cossacks on his skirts; and perhaps the choice then made had become a habit of the mind. At any rate, whether that were the cause or no, in this new phase he gave no thought to yielding.

He had sat for some minutes in the attitude of depression, or bodily weakness, which has, been described, when once more a sound startled him. He raised his head and turned his eyes, sharpened by hunger, on the window. But this time, distrusting his senses, he did not rise until the sound was repeated. Then he faltered to his feet, and once again went unsteadily to the window, and, leaning a hand on each jamb, looked out.

At the same moment Flavia looked in. Their eyes met. Their faces were less than a yard apart.

The girl started back with a low cry, caused either by alarm on finding him so near her or by horror at the change in his aspect. If the latter, there was abundant cause. For she had left him hungry, she found him starving; she had left him haggard, she found him with eyes unnaturally large, his temples hollow, his lips dry, his chin unshaven. It was indeed a mask rather than a face, a staring mask of famine, that looked out of the dusky room at her, and looked not the less pitifully, not the less wofully, because, as soon as its owner took in her identity, the mask tried to smile.