"Mother of God!" she whispered. Her face had grown nearly as white as his. "O Mother of God!" She had imagined nothing like this.

And Colonel John, believing—his throat was so dry that he could not speak at once—that he read pity as well as horror in her face, felt a sob rise in his breast. He tried to smile the more bravely for that, and presently he found his voice, a queer, husky voice.

"You must not leave me—too long," he said. His smile was becoming ghastly.

She drew in her breath, and averted her face, to hide, he hoped, the effect of the sight upon her. Or perhaps—for he saw her shudder—she was mutely calling the sunlit lake on which her eyes rested, the blue sky, the smiling summer scene, to witness against this foul cruelty, this dark wickedness.

But it seemed that he deceived himself. For when she turned her face to him again, though it was still colourless, it was hard and set.

"You must sign," she said. "You must sign the paper."

His parched lips opened, but he did not answer. He was as one struck dumb.

"You must sign!" she repeated insistently. "Do you hear? You must sign!"

Still he did not answer; he only looked at her with eyes of infinite reproach. The pity of it! The pity of it! She, a woman, a girl, whom compassion should have constrained, whose tender heart should have bled for him, could see him tortured, could aid in the work, and cry "Sign!"

She could indeed, for she repeated the word—fiercely, feverishly. "Sign!" she cried. And then, "If you will," she said, "I will give you—see! See! You shall have this. You shall eat and drink; only sign! For God's sake, sign what they want, and eat and drink!"

And, with fingers that trembled with haste, she drew from a hiding-place in her cloak, bread and milk and wine. "See what I have brought," she continued, holding them before his starting eyes, his cracking lips, "if you will sign."

He gazed at them, at her, with anguish of the mind as well as of the body. How he had mistaken her! How he had misread her! Then, with a groan, "God forgive you!" he cried, "I cannot! I cannot!"

"You will not sign?" she retorted.

"Cannot, and will not!" he said.

"And why? Why will you not?"

On that his patience, sorely tried, gave way; and, swept along by one of those gusts of rage, he spoke. "Why?" he cried in hoarse accents. "You ask me why? Because, ungrateful, unwomanly, miserable as you are—I will not rob you or the dead! Because I will not be false to an old man's trust! I will not give to the forsworn what was meant for the innocent—nor sell my honour for a drink of water! Because,"—he laughed a half-delirious laugh—"there is nothing to sign, nothing! I have burned your parchments these two days, and if you tempt me two more days, if you make me suffer twice as much as I have suffered, you can do nothing! If your heart be as hard as—it is, you can do nothing!" He held out hands which trembled with passion. "You can do nothing!" he repeated. "Neither you, who—God forgive you, are no woman, have no woman's heart, no woman's pity!—nor he who would have killed me in the bog to gain that which he now starves me to get! But I foiled him then, as I will foil him to-day, ingrate, perjured, accursed, as he is, accursed——"

He faltered and was silent, steadying himself by resting one hand against the wall. For a moment he covered his eyes with the other hand. Then "God forgive me!" he resumed in a lower tone, "I know not what I say! God forgive me! And you—Go! for you too—God forgive you—know not what you do. You do not know what it is to hunger and thirst, or you would not try me thus! Nor do you know what you were to me, or you would not try me thus! Yet I ought to remember that—that it is not for yourself you do it!"

He turned his back on her then, and on the window. He had taken three steps towards the middle of the room, when she cried, "Wait!"

"Go!" he repeated with a backward gesture of the hand. "Go! and God forgive you, as I do!"

"Wait!" she cried. "And take them! Oh, take them! Quick!" He turned about slowly, almost with suspicion. She was holding the food and the drink through the window, holding them out for him to take. But it might be another deception. He was not sure, and for a moment a cunning look gleamed in his eyes, and he took a step in a stealthy fashion towards the window, as if, were she off her guard, he would snatch them from her. But she cried again, "Take them! Take them!" with tears in her voice. "I brought them for you. May God indeed forgive me!"

The craving was so strong upon him that he took them then without a word, without answering her or thanking her. He turned his back on her, as soon as he had possessed himself of them, as if he dared not let her see the desire in his face; and standing thus, he drew the stopper from the bottle of milk, and drank. He would fain have held the bottle to his lips until he had drained the last drop: but he controlled himself, and when he had swallowed a few mouthfuls, he removed it. Then, with the solemnity of a sacrament, perhaps with the feeling that should attend one, he broke off three or four small fragments of the bread, and ate them one by one and slowly—the first with difficulty, the second more easily, the third with an avidity which he checked only by a firm effort of the will. "Presently!" he told himself. "Presently! There is plenty, there is plenty." Yet he allowed himself two more mouthfuls of bread and another sip of milk—milk that was nectar, rather than any earthly drink his lips had ever encountered.

At length, with new life running in his veins, and not new life only, but a pure thankfulness that she had proved herself very woman at the last, he laid his treasures on the chair, and turned to her. She was gone.

His face fell. For while he had eaten and drunk he had felt her presence at his back, and once he was sure that he had heard her sob. But she was gone. A chill fell upon his spirits. Yet she might not be gone far. He staggered—for he was not yet steady on his feet—to the window, and looked to right and left.

She had not gone far. She was lying prone on the sward, her face hidden on her arms; and it was true that he had heard her sob, for she was weeping without restraint. The change in him, the evidence of suffering which she had read in his face, to say nothing of his reproaches, had done something more than shock her. They had opened her eyes to the true nature—already dimly seen—of the plan to which she had lent herself. They had torn the last veil from the selfishness of those with whom she had acted, their cupidity and their ruthlessness. And they had shown the man himself in a light so new and startling, that even the last twenty-four hours had not prepared her for it. The scales of prejudice which had dimmed her sight fell at length, and wholly, from her eyes; and, for the first time, she saw him as he was. For the first time she perceived that, in pursuing the path he had followed, he might have thought himself right; he might have been moved by a higher motive than self-interest, he might have been standing for others rather than for himself. Parts of the passionate rebuke which suffering and indignation had forced from him remained branded upon her memory; and she wept in shame, feeling her helplessness, her ignorance, her inexperience, feeling that she had no longer any sure support or prop. For how could she trust those who had drawn her into this hideous, this cruel business? Who, taking advantage at once of her wounded vanity, and her affection for her brother, had led her to this act, from which she now shrank in abhorrence?

There was only, of all about her, Uncle Ulick to whom she could turn, or on whom she could depend. And he, though he would not have stooped to this, was little better, she knew, than a broken reed. The sense of her loneliness, the knowledge that those about her used her for their own ends—and those the most unworthy—overwhelmed her; and in proportion as she had been proud and self-reliant, was her present abasement.

When the first passion of self-reproach had spent itself, she heard him calling her by name, and in a voice that stirred her heart-strings. She rose, first to her knees and then to her feet, and, averting her face, "I will open the door," she said, humbly and in a broken voice. "I have brought the key."

He did not answer, and she did not unlock. For as, still keeping her face averted that he might not see her tears, she turned the corner of the Tower to gain the door, her brother's head and shoulders rose above the level of the platform. As The McMurrough stepped on to the latter from the path, he was in time to see her skirt vanishing. He saw no more. But his suspicions were aroused. He strode across the face of the Tower, turned the corner, and came on her in the act of putting the key in the lock.

"What are you doing?" he cried, in a terrible voice. "Are you mad?"

She did not answer, but neither did he pause for her answer. The imminence of the peril, the thought that the man whom he had so deeply wronged, and who knew him for the perjured thing he was, might in another minute be free—free to take what steps he pleased, free to avenge himself and punish his foes, rose up before him, and he thrust her roughly from the door. The key, not yet turned, came away in her hand, and he tried to snatch it from her.

"Give it me!" he cried. "Do you hear? Give it me!"

"I will not!" she cried. "No!"

"Give it up, I say!" he retorted. And this time he made good his hold on her wrist. He tried to force the key from her. "Let it go!" he panted, "or I shall hurt you!"

But he made a great mistake if he thought that he could coerce Flavia in that way. Her fingers only closed more tightly on the key. "Never!" she cried, struggling with him. "Never! I am going to let him out!"

"You coward!" a voice cried through the door. "Coward! Coward!" There was a sound of drumming on the door.

But Colonel John's voice and his blows were powerless to help, as James, in a frenzy of rage and alarm, gripped the girl's wrist, and twisted it. "Let it go! Let it go, you fool!" he cried brutally, "or I will break your arm!"

Her face turned white with pain, but for a moment she endured in silence. Then a shriek escaped her.

It was answered instantly. Neither he nor she had had eyes for aught but one another; and the hand that fell, and fell heavily, on James's shoulder was as unexpected as a thunderbolt.

"By Heaven, man," a voice cried in his ear. "Are you mad? Or is this the way you treat women in Kerry? Let the lady go! Let her go, I say!"

The command was needless, for at the first sound of the voice James had fallen back with a curse, and Flavia, grasping her bruised wrist with her other hand, reeled for support against the Tower wall. For a moment no one spoke. Then James, with scarcely a look at Payton—for he it was—bade her come away with him. "If you are not mad," he growled, "you'll have a care! You'll have a care, and come away, girl!"

"When I have let him out, I will," she answered, her eyes glowing sombrely as she nursed her wrist. In her, too, the old Adam had been raised.

"Give me the key!" he said for the last time.

"I will not," she said. "And if I did—" she continued, with a glance at Payton that reminded the unhappy McMurrough that, with the secret known, the key was no longer of use—"if I did, how would it serve you?"

The McMurrough turned his rage upon the intruder. "Devil take you, what business will it be of yours?" he cried. "Who are you to come between us, eh?"

Payton bowed. "If I offend," he said airily, "I am entirely at your service." He tapped the hilt of his sword. "You do not wear one, but I have no doubt you can use one. I shall be happy to give you satisfaction where and when you please. A time and place——"

But James did not stop to hear him out. He turned with an oath and a snarl, and went off—went off in such a manner that Flavia could not but see that the challenge was not to his taste. At another time she would have blushed for him. But his brutal violence had done more during the last ten minutes to depose his image from her heart than years of neglect and rudeness.

Payton saw him go, and, blessing the good fortune which had put him in a position to command the beauty's thanks, he turned to receive them. But Flavia was not looking at him, was not thinking of him. She had put the key in the lock and was trying to turn it. Her left wrist, however, was too weak, and the right was so strained as to be useless. She signed to him to turn the key, and he did so, and threw open the door, wondering much who was there and what it was all about.

He did not at once recognise the man who, pale and haggard, a mere ghost of himself, dragged himself up the three steps, and, exhausted by the effort, leant against the doorpost. But when Colonel John spoke and tried to thank the girl, he knew him.

He whistled. "You are Colonel Sullivan!" he said.

"The same, sir!" Colonel John murmured mechanically.

"Are you ill?"

"I am not well," the other replied with a sickly smile. The indignation which he had felt during the contest between the girl and her brother had been too much for his strength. "I shall be better presently," he added. He closed his eyes.

"We should be getting him below," Flavia said in an undertone.

Payton looked from one to the other. He was in a fog. "Has he been here long?" he asked.

"Nearly four days," she replied, with a shiver.

"And nothing to eat?"

"Nothing."

"The devil! And why?"

She did not stay to think how much it was wise to tell him. In her repentant mood she was anxious to pour herself out in self-reproach. "We wanted him to convey some property," she said, "as we wished."

"To your brother?"

"Ah, to him!" Then, seeing his astonishment, "It was mine," she added.

Payton knew that estates were much held in trust in that part, and he began to understand. He looked at her; but no, he did not understand now. For if the idea had been to constrain Colonel Sullivan to transfer her property to her brother, how did her interest match with that? He could only suppose that her brother had coerced her, and that she had given him the slip and tried to release the man—with the result he had witnessed.

One thing was clear. The property, large or small, was still hers. The Major looked with a thoughtful face at the smiling valley, with its cabins scattered over the slopes, at the lake and the fishing-boats, and the rambling slate-roofed house with its sheds and peat-stacks. He wondered.

No more was said at that moment, however, for Flavia saw that Colonel Sullivan's strength was not to be revived in an hour. He must be assisted to the house and cared for there. But in the meantime, and to lend some strength, she was anxious to give him such wine and food as he could safely take. To procure these she entered the room in which he had been confined.

As she cast her eyes round its dismal interior, marked the poor handful of embers that told of his long struggle with the cold, marked the one chair which he had saved—for to lie on the floor had been death—marked the beaten path that led from the chair to the window, and spoke of many an hour of painful waiting and of hope deferred, she saw the man in another, a more gentle, a more domestic aspect. She had seen the heroism, she now saw the pathos of his conduct, and tears came afresh to her eyes. "For me!" she murmured. "For me! And how had I treated him!"

Her old grievance against him was forgotten, wiped out of remembrance by his sufferings. She dwelt only on the treatment she had meted out to him.

When they had given him to eat and drink he assured them, smiling, that he could walk. But when he attempted to do so he staggered. "He will need a stronger arm than yours," Payton said, with a grin. "May I offer mine?"

For the first time she looked at him gratefully "Thank you," she said.

"I can walk," the Colonel repeated obstinately. "A little giddy, that is all." But in the end he needed all the help that both could give him. And so it happened that a few minutes later Luke Asgill, standing at the entrance to the courtyard, a little anxious indeed, but aware of no immediate danger, looked along the road, and saw the three approaching, linked in apparent amity.

The shock was great, for James McMurrough had fled, cursing, into solitude and the hills, taking no steps to warn his ally. The sight, thus unforeseen, struck Asgill with the force of a bullet. Colonel John released, and in the company of Flavia and Payton! All his craft, all his coolness forsook him. He slunk out of sight by a back way, but not before Payton had marked his retreat.



CHAPTER XXII

THE SCENE IN THE PASSAGE

Asgill saw himself in the position of a commander whose force has been outflanked, and who has to decide on the instant how he may best re-form it on a new front. Flavia and Colonel Sullivan, Flavia and Payton, Payton and Colonel Sullivan—each of these conjunctions had for him a separate menace; each threatened either his suit for Flavia, or his standing in the house through which, and through which alone, he could hope to win her. In addition, the absence of James McMurrough at this critical moment left Asgill in the most painful perplexity. If James knew what had happened, why was he wanting at this moment, when it behoved them to decide, and to decide quickly, what line they would take?

Under the shadow of the great peat-stack at the back of the house, whither he had retired that he might make up his mind before he faced the three, Asgill bit his nails and cursed The McMurrough with all his heart, calling him a score of names, each worse than the other. It was, it must be, through his folly and mismanagement that the thing had befallen, that the prisoner had been released, that Payton had been let into the secret. The volley of oaths that flew from Asgill expressed no more than a tithe of his rage and his bewilderment.

How was he to get rid of Payton? How prevent Colonel John from resuming that sway in the house which he had exercised before? How nip in the bud that nascent sympathy, that feeling for him which Flavia's outbreak the night before had suggested? Or how, short of all this, was he to face either Payton or the Colonel?

Again a volley of oaths flew from him.

In council with James McMurrough he might have arranged a plan of action; at least, he would have learned from him what Payton knew. But James's absence ruined all. In the end, after waiting some time in the vain hope that he would appear, Asgill went in to supper.

Colonel Sullivan was not there; he was in no condition to descend. Nor was Flavia; whereon Asgill reflected, with chagrin, that probably she was attending upon the invalid. Payton was at table, with the two O'Beirnes, and three other buckeens. The Englishman, amused and uplifted by the discovery he had made, was openly disdainful of his companions; while the Irishmen, sullen and suspicious, were not aware how much he knew, nor all of them how much there was to know. If The McMurrough chose to imprison his strange and unpopular kinsman, it was nothing to them; nor a matter into which gentlemen eating at his table and drinking his potheen and claret were called upon to peer too closely.

The position was singular; for the English officer, partly by virtue of his mission and partly by reason of the knowledge he had gained, carried himself as if he held that ascendency in the house which Colonel Sullivan had enjoyed—an ascendency, like his, grudged and precarious, as the men's savage and furtive glances proved. But for his repute as a duellist they would have picked a quarrel with the visitor there and then. And but for the presence of his four troopers in the background they might have fallen upon him in some less regular fashion. As it was, they sat, eating slowly and eyeing him askance; and, without shame, were relieved when Asgill entered. They looked to him to clear up the situation and put the interloper in his right place. At any rate, the burden was now lifted from their shoulders.

"I'm fearing I'm late," Asgill said, as he took his seat. "Where'll The McMurrough be, I wonder?"

"Gone to meet your friend, I should think," Payton replied with a sneer.

Asgill maintained a steady face. "My friend?" he repeated. "Oh, Colonel Sullivan?"

"Yes, your friend who was to return to-day," the other retorted. "Have you seen anything of him?" he continued, with a grin.

Asgill fixed his eyes steadily on Payton's face. "I'm fancying you have the advantage of me," he said. "More by token, I'm thinking, Major, you have seen that same friend already."

"Maybe I have."

"And had a bout with him?"

"Eh?"

"And, faith, had the best of the bout, too!" Asgill continued coolly, and with his eyes fixed on the other's features, as if his one aim was to see if he had hit the mark. "So much the best that I'll be chancing a guess he's upstairs at this moment, and wounded! Leastwise, I hear you and the young lady brought him to the house between you, and him scarcely able to use his ten toes."

Payton, with his mouth open, glared at the speaker in a manner that at another time must have provoked him to laughter.

"Isn't that the fact?" Asgill asked coldly.

"The fact!" the other burst forth. "No, I'm cursed if it is! And you know it is not! You know as well as I do——" And with that he poured forth a version of the events of the afternoon, and of those leading up to them, which included not only the Colonel's release, but the treatment to which he had been subjected and the motive for it.

When he had done, "That's a strange story," Asgill said quietly, "if it's true."

"True?" Payton rejoined, laying his hand on a glass and speaking in a towering rage. "Damn you, you know it's true!"

"I know nothing about it," Asgill replied, with the utmost coolness.

"Nothing?"

"And for a good reason. Sure, and I'm the last person they would be likely to tell it to!"

"And you were not a party to it?" Payton cried.

"Why should I be?" Asgill rejoined, calmly cutting a slice of bread. "What have I to gain by robbing the young lady of her inheritance? I'd be more likely to lose by it than gain."

"Lose by it? Why?"

"That is my affair," Asgill answered. And he hummed:

They tried put the comether on Judy McBain: One, two, three, one, two, three! Cotter and crowder and Paddy O'Hea; For who but she's owner of Ballymacshane?

He made his meaning so clear, and pointed it so audaciously before them all, that Payton, after scowling at him for some seconds with his hand on a glass as if he meant to throw it, dropped his eyes and his hand and fell into a gloomy study. He could not but own the weight of the other's argument. If Asgill was a pretender to the heiress's hand—and Payton did not doubt this—the last thought in his mind would be to divest her of her property.

Asgill read his thoughts, and presently, "I hope the wound is not serious?" he said.

"He is not wounded," the Major answered curtly. A few minutes before he would have flown out at the other; now he took the thrust quietly. He was thinking. Meanwhile the O'Beirnes and their fellows grinned their open-mouthed admiration of the bear-tamer; and by-and-by, concluding the fun was at an end, they went out one by one, until the two men were left together.

They sat some way apart, Payton brooding savagely, with his eyes on the table, Asgill toying with the things before him and from time to time glancing at the other. Each saw the prize clear before him; each saw the other in the way and wondered how he could best brush him from it. Payton cared for the girl herself, only as a toy that had caught his fancy; but he was sunk in debt, and his mouth watered for her possessions. Asgill cared, as has been said, little or nothing for the inheritance, but he swore that the other man should never live to possess the woman. "It is a pity," Payton meditated, "for, with his aid, I could take the girl, willing or unwilling. She'd not be the first Irish girl who has gone to her marriage across the pommel!" While Asgill reflected that if he could find Payton alone on a dark night it would not be his small-sword would help him or his four troopers would find him! But it must not be at Morristown.

Each owned, with reluctance, that the other had advantages. Asgill was Irish, and known to Flavia, and had come to be favoured by her. But Payton, though English, was the younger, the handsomer, the better born, and, in his braggart fashion, the better bred. Both were Protestants; but if Asgill was the cleverer, Payton was an officer and a gentleman. The latter flattered himself that, given a little time, he would win, if not by favour, still by force or fraud. But, could he have looked into Asgill's heart, he would have trembled, perhaps he would have drawn back. For he would have known that, while Irish bogs were deep and Irish pikes were sharp, his life would not be worth one week's purchase if he wronged this girl. Bad man as Asgill was, his love was of no common kind, even as the man was no common man.

And he suspected the other; and he shook—ay, so that the table against which he leant trembled—with rage at the thought that Payton might offer the girl some rudeness. The suspicion weighed so heavily on him that he was fixed to see the other to his room that night. When Payton rose to go, he rose also; and when, by chance, Payton sat down again, he sat down also, with a look that betrayed his thoughts. At once the Englishman understood; and thenceforth they sat with frowning faces, each thinking more intently than before how he might thrust the other from his path; each more certain, with every moment, that, the other removed, his path to the goal was clear and open. Neither gave a thought to Colonel Sullivan, sleeping the sleep of exhaustion upstairs: Payton, because the Colonel seemed to him a middle-aged man, plain and grey; and Asgill, because a more immediate and pressing jealousy had thrust his mistrust of the Colonel from his mind.

There was claret on the table, and the Major, dull and bored, and resenting the other's vigilance, did not spare it. When he rose to his feet to retire he was heated and flushed, but not drunk. "Where's that young cub?" he asked, breaking the silence.

Asgill shrugged his shoulders. "I can't hope to fill his place," he said with a smooth smile. "But I will be doing the honours as well as I can.'

"You are d——d officious, it seems to me," Payton growled. And then, more loudly, "I am going to bed," he said.

"In his absence," Asgill answered, with mock politeness, "I will have the honour of lighting you."

"You needn't trouble."

"Faith, and it's no trouble at all," Asgill replied in the same tone. And, taking two of the candles from the table, he preceded the Englishman up the stairs.

The gradual ascent of the lights and the men's mounting footsteps should have given Flavia warning of their coming. But either she disdained concealment or she was thinking of other things, for when they entered the passage beyond the landing they espied the girl standing, in what had been darkness, outside the Colonel's door. A pang shot through Asgill's heart, and he drew in his breath.

She raised her hand. "Ah," she said, "he has been crying out! But I think it was in his sleep. Will you be making as little noise as you can?"

Asgill did not answer, but Payton did. "Happy man!" he said. And, being in his cups, he said it in such a tone and with such a look that a deep blush crimsoned the girl's face.

Her eyes snapped. "Good-night," she said coldly.

Asgill continued to keep silence. Unfortunately Payton did not. "Wish I'd such a guardian!" he said with a chuckle. "I'd be a happy man then!" And, without thinking what he did, having Asgill's air in his head, he hummed, with his head on one side and a grin on his face:

"They tried put the comether on Judy McBain: One, two, three, one, two, three! Cotter and crowder and Paddy O'Hea; For who but she's owner of Ballymacshane?"

Asgill's face was dark with passion, but "Goodnight" Flavia repeated coldly. And this time the displeasure in her tone silenced the Major. The two men went on to their rooms, though Asgill's hands itched to be at the other's throat. A moment later two doors closed sharply.

Flavia remained in the darkness of the passage, but she no longer listened—she thought. Presently she went back to her room.

There, when the door had closed upon her, she continued to stand and to think. And the blush which the Major's insinuation had brought to her cheek still burned there. It was natural that Payton's words should direct her thoughts more closely and more intimately to the man outside whose door he had found her; nor less natural that she should institute a comparison between the two, should picture the manner of the one and the manner of the other, should consider how the one had treated her in an abnormal crisis, when he had held her struggling in his arms, when in her despair she had beaten his face with her hands, when, after her attempt on his life, he had subdued her by sheer force; and how the other had treated her in the few hours he had known her! And so comparing, she could not but find in the one a nobility, in the other a—a dreadfulness. For, looking back, and having Payton's words and manner fresh in her mind, she had to own that, in all his treatment of her, Colonel Sullivan, while opposing and thwarting her, had still, and always, respected her.

Strange to say, she could not now understand, much less could she sustain, that rage against him which had before carried her to such lengths. What had he done? How had he wronged her? She could find no sufficing answer. A curtain had fallen between the past and the present. Long years, it seemed to her, had elapsed, so that she could now see things in their due proportions and with a clear sight. The rising? It stood on a sudden very distant, very dim, a thing of the past, an enterprise lofty and romantic, but hopeless. She supposed that he had seen it in that light all through, and that for acting on what he saw she had hated him. The contemptuous words in which he had denounced it rang again in her ears, but they no longer kindled her resentment; they convinced. As one recovering from sickness looks back on the delusions of fever, Flavia reviewed the hopes and aspirations of the past month. She saw now that it was not in that remote corner, it was not with such forces as they could command, it was not with a handful of cotters and peasants, that Ireland could be saved, or the true faith restored!

She was still standing a pace within her door, and thinking such thoughts when a foot stumbled heavily on the stairs. She recognised it for James's footstep—she had heard him stumble on those stairs before—and she laid her hand on the latch. She had never had a real quarrel with him until now, and, bitterly as he had disappointed her, ruthlessly as he had destroyed her illusions about him, outrageously as he had treated her, she could not bear to sleep without making an attempt to heal the breach. She opened the door, and stepped out.

James's light was travelling up the stairs, but he had not himself reached the landing. She had just noted this when a door between her and the stairs opened, and Payton looked out. He saw her, and, still flushed with claret, he misunderstood her presence and her purpose. He stepped towards her.

"Thought so!" he chuckled. "Still listening, eh? Why not listen at my door? Then it would be a pretty man and a pretty maid. But I've caught you." He shot out his arm and tried to draw her towards him. "There's no one to see, and the least you can do is to give me a kiss for a forfeit!"

The girl recoiled, outraged and angry. But, knowing her brother was at hand, and seeing in a flash what might happen in the event of a collision, she did so in silence, hoping to escape before he came upon them. Unfortunately Payton misread her silence and took her movement for a show of feigned modesty. With a movement as quick as hers, he grasped her roughly, dragged her towards him and kissed her.

She screamed then in sheer rage—screamed with such passion and such unmistakable earnestness that Payton let her go and stepped back with an oath. As he did so he turned, and the turn brought him face to face with James McMurrough.

The young man, tipsy and smarting with his wrongs, saw what was before his eyes—his sister in Payton's arms—but he saw something more. He saw the man who had thwarted him that day, and whom he had not at the time dared to beard. What he might have done had he been sober, matters not. Drink and vindictiveness gave him more than the courage he needed, and, with a roar of anger, he dashed the glass he was carrying—and its contents—into Payton's face.

The Englishman dropped where he was, and James stood over him, swearing, while the grease guttered from the tilted candle in his right hand. Flavia gasped, and, horror-struck, clutched James's arm as he lifted the candlestick, and made as if he would beat in the man's brains.

Fortunately a stronger hand than hers interfered. Asgill dragged the young man back. "Haven't you done enough?" he cried. "Would you murder the man, and his troopers in the house?"

"Ah, didn't you see, curse you, he——"

"I know, I know!" Asgill answered hoarsely. "But not now! Not now! Let him rise if he can! Let him rise, I say! Payton! Major!"

The moment James stood back the fallen man staggered to his feet, and though the blood was running down his face from a cut on the cheek-bone, he showed that he was less hurt than startled. "You'll give me satisfaction for this!" he muttered. "You'll give me satisfaction for this," he repeated, between his teeth.

"Ah, by G—d, I will!" James McMurrough answered furiously. "And kill you, too!"

"At eight to-morrow! Do you hear? At eight to-morrow! Not an hour later!"

"I'll not keep you waiting," James retorted.

Flavia leant almost fainting against her door. She tried to speak, tried to say something. But her voice failed her.

And Payton's livid, scowling, bleeding face was hate itself. "Behind the yews in the garden?" he said, disregarding her presence.

"Ah, I'll meet you there!" The McMurrough answered, pot-valiant. "And, more by token, order your coffin, for you'll need it!" Drink and rage left no place in his brain for fear.

"That will be seen—to-morrow," the Englishman answered, in a tone that chilled the girl's marrow. Then, with his kerchief pressed to his cheek to staunch the blood, he retreated into his room, and slammed the door. They heard him turn the key in it.

Flavia found her voice. She looked at her brother. "Ah, God!" she cried. "Why did I open my door?"

James, still pot-valiant, returned her look. "Because you were a fool, you slut!" he said. "But I'll spit him, never fear! Faith, and I'll spit him like a fowl!" In his turn he went on unsteadily to his room, disappeared within it, and closed the door. He took the candle with him, but from Asgill's open door, and from Flavia's, which stood ajar, enough light issued to illumine the passage faintly.

Flavia and Asgill remained together. Her eyes met his. "Ah, why did I open my door?" she cried. "Why did I open my door? Why did I?"

He had no comfort for her. He shook his head, but did not speak.

"He will kill him!" she said.

Asgill reflected in a heavy silence. "I will think what can be done," he muttered at last. "I will think! Do you go to bed!"

"To bed?" she cried.

"There is naught to be done to-night," he answered, in a low tone. "If the troopers were not with him—then indeed; but that is useless. And—his door is locked. Do you go to bed, and I will think what we can do!"

"To save James?" She laid her hand on Asgill's arm, and he quivered. "Ah, you will save him!" She had forgotten her brother's treatment of her earlier in the day.

"If I can," he said slowly. His face was damp and very pale. "If I can," he repeated. "But it will not be easy to save him honourably."

"What do you mean?" she whispered.

"He'll save himself, I fancy. But his honour——"

"Ah!" The word came from her in a cry of pain.



CHAPTER XXIII

BEHIND THE YEWS

Under the sky the pale softness of dawn had yielded place to the sun in his strength—in more poetical words, Aurora had given way to Phoebus—but within, the passages were still grey and chill, and silent as though night's ghostly sentinels still walked them, when one of the bedchamber doors opened and a face peeped out. The face was Flavia's. The girl was too young, too full of life and vigour, to be altered by a single sleepless night, but the cold reflection of the whitewashed walls did that which watching had failed to do. It robbed her eyes of their brightness, her face of its colour, her hair of its lustre. She stood an instant, and gazed, frowning, at the doors that, in a row and all alike, hid nevertheless one a hope, and another a fear, and a third perhaps a tragedy. But drab, silent, closed, each within a shadow of its own, they told nothing. Presently the girl stepped forward—paused, scared by a board that creaked under her naked foot—then went on again. She stood now at one of the doors, and scratched on it with her nail.

No one answered the summons, and she pushed the door open and went in. And, as she had feared, enlightened by Asgill's hint and by what she had seen of her brother's conduct earlier in the day, she found. James was awake—wide awake—and sitting up in his bed, his arms clasped about his knees. His eyes met hers as she entered, and in his eyes, and in his form, huddled together as in sheer physical pain, she read beyond all doubt, beyond all mistake—fear. Why she had felt certain, courageous herself, that this was what she would find, she did not know. But there it was, as Asgill had foretold it, and as she had foreseen it, through the long, restless, torturing hours; as she had seen it, and now denied it, now, with a sick heart, owned its reality.

James tried to utter the oath that, deceiving her, might rid him of her presence. But his nerves, shaken by his overnight drink, could not command his voice even for that. His eyes dropped in shame, the muttered "What the plague will you be wanting at this hour?" was no more than a querulous whisper.

"I couldn't sleep," she said, avoiding his eyes.

"I, no more," he muttered. "Curse him! Curse him! Curse you, too! Why were you getting in his way? You've as good as murdered me with your tricks and your poses!"

"God forbid!" she exclaimed.

"Ah, you have!" he answered, rocking himself to and fro in his excitement. "If it were any one else, I'm as ready to fight as another! And why not? But he's killed four men, and he'll kill me! Oh, the differ, if I'd not come up at that minute! If I'd not come up at that minute!"

The picture of what he would have escaped had he mounted the stairs a minute later, of what he had brought on himself by mounting a moment earlier, was too much for him. Not a thought did he give to what might have happened to her had he come on the scene later; but, with all his cowardly soul laid bare, he rocked himself to and fro in a paroxysm of self-pity.

Yet he did not suffer more sorely, he did not wince more tenderly under the lash of his own terrors, than Flavia suffered; than she winced, seeing him thus, seeing at last her idol as he was—the braggadocio stripped from him, and the poor, cringing creature displayed. If her pride of race—and the fabled Wicklow kings, of whom she came, were often in her mind—if that pride needed correction, she had it here. If she had thought too much of her descent—and the more in proportion as fortune had straitened the line, and only in this corner of a downtrodden land was its greatness even a memory—she was chastened for it now! She suffered for it now! She could have wept tears of shame. And yet, so plain was the collapse of the man before her, and so futile words, that she did not think of reproach; even had she found heart to chide him, knowing that her words might send him to his death.

All her thought was, could she hide the blot? Could she mask the shame? Could she, at any rate, so veil it that this insolent Englishman, this bully of the conquering race, might not perceive it? That were worth so much that her own life, on this summer morning, seemed a small price to pay for it.

But, alas! she could not purchase it with her life. Only in fairy tales can the woman pass for the man, and Doris receive in her tender bosom the thrust intended for the sterner breast. Then how? How could they shun at least open disgrace, open dishonour? For it needed but a glance at her brother's pallid face and wandering eye to assure her that, brought to the test, he would flinch; that, brought to the field, he would prove unequal even to the task of cloaking his fears.

She sickened at the thought, and her eyes grew hard. Was this the man in whom she had believed? And when, presently, he turned on his side and hid his face in the pillow and groaned, she had small pity to spare for him. "Are you not well?" she asked.

"Can't you be seeing?" he answered fractiously; but for very shame he could not face her eyes. "Cannot you be seeing I am not fit to get up, let alone be meeting that devil? See how my hand shakes!"

"What is to be done, then?"

He cursed Payton thrice in a frenzy of rage. He beat the pillow with his fist.

"That does no good," she said.

"I believe you want to kill me!" he retorted, with childish passion. "I believe you want to see me dead! Why can't you be managing your own affairs, without—without——Oh, my God!" And then, in a dreadful voice, "My God, I shall be dead to-night! I shall be dead to-night! And you care nothing!"

He hid unmanly tears on his pillow, while she looked at the wall, pale to the lips and cut to the heart. Her worst misgivings, even those nightmare fears which haunt the dawn, had not pictured a thing so mean as this, a heart so low, a spirit so poor. And this was her brother, her idol, the last of the McMurroughs of Morristown, he to whom she had fondly looked to revive the glories of the race! Truly she had not understood him, or others. She had been blind indeed, blind, blind!

She had spoken to Luke Asgill the night before. He guessed, if he did not know the worst, and he would help her, she believed. But for that she would have turned, as her thoughts did turn, to Colonel John. But he lay prostrate, and, if she could have brought herself to go to him, he was in no state to give aid. The O'Beirnes were out of the question; she could not tell them. Youth has no pity, makes no allowance, expects the utmost, and a hundred times they had heard James brag and brawl. They would not understand, they would not believe. And Uncle Ulick was away.

There remained only Luke Asgill, who had offered his help.

"If you are not well," she said, in the same hard voice, "shall I be telling Mr. Asgill? He may contrive something."

The man cringing in the bed leapt at the hope, as he would have leapt at any hope. Nor was he so bemused by fear as not to reflect that, whatever Flavia asked, Asgill would do. "Ah, tell him," he cried, raising himself on his elbow. "Do you be telling him! He can make him—wait, may be."

At that moment she came near to hating her brother. "I will send him to you," she said.

"No!" he cried anxiously. "No! Do you be telling him! You tell him! Do you hear? I'm not so well to see him."

She shivered, seeing plainly the cowardice, the unmixed selfishness of the course he urged. But she had not the heart to answer him. She went from the room without another word, and, going back to her own chamber, she dressed. By this time it wanted not much of seven. The house was astir, the June sunshine was pouring with the songs of birds through the windows, she heard one of the O'Beirnes stumble downstairs. Next Asgill opened his door and passed down. In a twinkling she slipped out and followed him. At the bottom of the staircase he turned, hearing her footstep behind him, but she made a sign to him to go on, and led him into the open air. Nor when they were outside did she speak until she had put the courtyard between herself and the house.

For she would have hidden their shame from all if she could! Even to say what she had to say to one, and though he already guessed the truth, cost her in pain and humiliation more than her brother had paid for aught in his selfish life. But it had to be said, and, after a pause, and with eyes averted, "My brother is ill," she faltered. "He cannot meet—that man, this morning. It is—as you feared. And—what can we do?"

In another case Luke Asgill would have blessed the chance that linked him with her, that wrought a tie between them, and cast her on his help. But he had guessed, before she opened her mouth, what she had to say—nay, for hours he had lain sleepless on his bed, with eyes staring into the darkness, anticipating it. He had been certain of the issue—he knew James McMurrough; and, being a man who loved Flavia indeed, but loved life also, he had foreseen, with the cold sweat on his brow, what he would be driven to do.

He made no haste to answer, therefore, and his tone, when he did answer, was dull and lifeless. "Is it ill he is?" he said. "It's a bad morning to be ill, and a meeting on hand."

She did not answer.

"Is he too bad to stand?" he continued. He made no attempt to hide his comprehension or his scorn.

"I don't say that," she faltered.

"Perhaps he told you," Asgill said—and there was nothing of the lover in his tone—"to speak to me?"

She nodded.

"It is I am to—put it off, I suppose?"

"If it be possible," she cried. "Oh, if it be possible! Is it?"

He stood, thinking, with a gloomy face. From the first he had seen that there were two ways only of extricating The McMurrough. The one by a mild explanation, which would leave his honour in the mud. The other by an explanation after a different fashion, vi et armis, vehementer, with the word "liar" ready to answer to the word "coward." But he who gave this last explanation must be willing and able to back the word with the deed, and stop cavilling with the sword-point.

Now, Asgill knew the Major's skill with the sword; none better. And under other circumstances the Justice—cold, selfish, scheming—would have gone many a mile about before he entered upon a quarrel with him. None the less, love and much night-thinking had drawn him to contemplate this very thing. For surely, if he did this and lived, Flavia would smile on him. Surely, if he saved her brother's honour, or came as near to saving it as driving the foul word down his opponent's throat could bring him, she would be won. It was a forlorn, it was a desperate expedient. For no worldly fortune, for no other advantage, would Luke Asgill have faced the Major's sword-point. But, whatever he was, he loved. He loved! And for the face and the form beside him, and for the quality of soul within them that shone from the girl's eyes, and made her what she was, and to him different from all other women, he had made up his mind to run the risk.

It went for something in his decision that he believed that Flavia, if he failed her, would go to the one person in the house who had no cause to fear Payton—to Colonel Sullivan. If she did that, Asgill was sure that his own chance was at an end. This was his chance. It lay with him now, to-day, at this moment—to dare or to retire, to win her favour at the risk of his life, or to yield her to another. In the chill morning hour he had discovered that the choice lay before him, that he must risk all or lose all: and he had decided. That decision he now announced.

"I will make it possible," he said slowly, questioning in his mind whether he could make terms with her—whether he dared make terms with her. "I will make it possible," he repeated, still more slowly, and with his eyes fixed on her face.

"If you could!" she cried, clasping her hands.

"I will!" he said, a sullen undertone in his voice. His eyes still dwelt darkly on her. "If he raises an objection, I will fight him—myself!"

She shrank from him. "Ah, but I can't ask that!" she cried, trembling.

"It is that or nothing."

"That or——"

"There is no other way," he said. He spoke with the same ungraciousness; for, try as he would, and though the habit and the education of a life cried to him to treat with her and make conditions, he could not; and he was enraged that he could not.

The more as her quivering lips, her wet eyes, her quick mounting colour, told of her gratitude. In another moment she might, almost certainly she would, have said a word fit to unlock his lips. And he would have spoken; and she would have pledged herself. But fate, in the person of old Darby, intervened. Timely or untimely, the butler appeared in the distant doorway, cried "Hist!" and, by a backward gesture, warned them of some approaching peril.

"I fear——" she began.

"Yes, go!" Asgill replied, almost roughly. "He is coming, and he must not find us together."

She fled swiftly, but the garden gate had barely closed on her skirts before Payton issued from the courtyard. The Englishman paused an instant in the gateway, his sword under his arm and a handkerchief in his hand. Thence he looked up and down the road with an air of scornful confidence that provoked Asgill beyond measure. The sun did not seem bright enough for him, nor the air scented to his liking. Finally he approached the Irishman, who, affecting to be engaged with his own thoughts, had kept his distance.

"Is he ready?" he asked, with a sneer.

With an effort Asgill controlled himself. "He is not," he said.

"At his prayers, is he? Well, he'll need them."

"He is not, to my knowledge," Asgill replied. "But he is ill."

Payton's face lightened with a joy not pleasant to see. "A coward!" he said coolly. "I am not surprised! Ill is he? Ay, I know that illness. It's not the first time I've met it."

Asgill had no wish to precipitate a quarrel. On the contrary, he had made up his mind to gain time if he could; at any rate, to put off the ultima ratio until evening, or until the next morning. Only in the last resort had he determined to fling off the mask. But at that word "coward," though he knew it to be well deserved, his temper, sapped by the knowledge that love was forcing him into a position which reason repudiated, gave way, and he spoke his true thoughts.

"What a d—d bully you are, Payton!" he said, in his slowest tone. "Sure, and you insult the man's sister in your drink——"

"What's that to you?"

"You insult the man's sister," Asgill persisted coolly, "and because he treats you like the tipsy creature you are, you'd kill him like a dog."

Payton turned white. "And you, too," he said, "if you say another word! What in Heaven's name is amiss with you, man, this morning? Are you mad?"

"I'll not hear the word 'coward' used of the family—I'll soon be one of!" Asgill returned, speaking on the spur of the moment, and wondering at himself the moment he had made the statement. "That's what I'm meaning! Do you see? And if you are for repeating the word, more by token, it'll be all the breakfast you'll have, for I'll cram it down your ugly throat!"

Payton stared dumbfounded, divided between rage and astonishment. But the former was not slow to get the upper hand, and "Enough said," he replied, in a voice that trembled, but not with fear. "If you are willing to make it good, you'll be coming this way."

"Willingly!" Asgill answered.

"I'll have one of my men for witness. Ay, that I will! I don't trust you, Mr. Asgill, and that's flat. Get you whom you please! In five minutes, in the garden, then?"

Asgill nodded. The Englishman looked once more at him to make sure that he was sober; then he turned on his heel and went back through the courtyard. Asgill remained alone.

He had taken the step there was no retracing. He had cast the dice, and the next few minutes would decide whether it was for life or death. He had done it deliberately; yet at the last he had been so carried away by impulse that, as he stood there, looking after the man he had insulted, looking on the placid water glittering in the early sunshine, looking along the lake-side road, by which he had come, he could hardly credit what had happened, or that in a moment he had thrown for a stake so stupendous, that in a moment he had changed all. The sunshine lost its warmth and grew pale, the hills lost their colour and their beauty, as he reflected that he might never see the one or the other again, might never return by that lake-side road by which he had come; as he remembered that all his plans for his aggrandisement, and they were many and clever, might end this day, this morning, this hour! Life! It was that, it was all, it was the future, with its pleasures, hopes, ambitions, that he had staked. And the stake was down. He could not now take it up. It might well be, for the odds were great against him, that it was to this day that all his life had led up; that life by which men would by-and-by judge him, recalling this and that, this chicane and that extortion, thanking God that he was dead, or perhaps one here and there shrugging his shoulders in good-natured regret.

From the hedge-school in which he had first grasped the clue-line of his life, to the day when his father had encouraged him to "turn Protestant," that he might the better exploit his Papist neighbours, ay, and forward to this day on which, at the bidding of a woman, he had given the lie to his instincts, his training, and his education—from the one to the other he saw his life stretched out before him! And he could have cried upon his folly. Yet for that woman——"

"Faith, Mr. Asgill," cried a voice in his ear, "it's if you're ill, the Major's asking. And, by the power, it's not very well you're looking this day!"

Asgill eyed the interrupter—it was Morty O'Beirne—with a sternness which his pallor made more striking. "I am coming," he said, "I am going to fight him."

"The devil you are!" the young man answered. "Now, are you meaning? This morning that ever is?"

"Ay, now. Where is——"

He stopped on the word, and was silent. Instead, he looked across the courtyard in the direction of the house. If he might see her again. If he might speak to her. But, no. Yet—was it certain that she knew? That she understood? And if she understood, would she know that he had gone to the meeting well-nigh without hope, aware against what skill he pitted himself, and how large, how very large were the odds against him?

"But, faith, and it's no jest fighting him, if the least bit in life of what I've heard be true!" Morty said, a cloud on his face. He looked uncertainly from Asgill to the house and back. "Is it to be doing anything you want me?"

"I want you to come with me and see it out," Asgill said. He wheeled brusquely to the garden gate, but when he was within a pace of it he paused and turned his head. "Mr. O'Beirne," he said, "I'm going in by this gate, and it's not much to be expected I'll come out any way but feet first. Will you be telling her, if you please, that I knew that same?"

"I will," Morty answered, genuinely distressed. "But I'm asking, is there no other way?"

"There is none," Asgill said. And he opened the gate.

Payton was waiting for him on the path under the yew-trees, with two of his troopers on guard in the background. He had removed his coat and vest, and stood, a not ungraceful figure, in the sunshine, bending his rapier and feeling its point with his thumb. He was doing this when his eyes surprised his opponent's entrance, and, without desisting from his employment, he smiled.

If the other's courage had begun to wane—but, with all his faults, Asgill was brave—that smile would have restored it. For it roused in him a stronger passion than fear—the passion of hatred. He saw in the man before him, the man with the cruel smile, who handled his weapon with a scornful ease, a demon—a demon who, in pure malice, without reason and without cause, would take his life, would rob him of joy and love and sunshine, and hurl him into the blackness of the gulf. And he was seized with a rage at once fierce and deliberate. This man, who would kill him, and whom he saw smiling before him, he would kill! He thirsted to set his foot upon his throat and squeeze, and squeeze the life out of him! These were the thoughts that passed through his mind as he paused an instant at the gate to throw off the encumbering coat. Then he advanced, drawing his weapon as he moved, and fixing his eyes on Payton; who, for his part, reading the other's thoughts in his face—for more than once he had seen that look—put himself on his guard without a word.

Asgill had no more than the rudimentary knowledge of the sword which was possessed in that day by all who wore it. He knew that, given time and the decent observances of the fencing-school, he would be a mere child in Payton's hands; that it would matter nothing whether the sun were on this side or that, or his sword the longer or the shorter by an inch. The moment he was within reach therefore, and his blade touched the other's he rushed in, lunging fiercely at his opponent's breast and trusting to the vigour of his attack and the circular sweep of his point to protect himself. Not seldom has a man skilled in the subtleties of the art found himself confused and overcome by this mode of attack. But Payton had met his man too often on the green to be taken by surprise. He parried the first thrust, the second he evaded by stepping adroitly aside. By the same movement he put the sun in Asgill's eyes.

Again the latter rushed in, striving to get within his opponent's guard; and again Payton stepped aside, and allowed the random thrust to pass wasted under his arm. Once more the same thing happened—Asgill rushed in, Payton parried or evaded with the ease and coolness of long-tried skill. By this time Asgill, forced to keep his blade in motion, was beginning to breathe quickly. The sweat stood on his brow, he struck more and more wildly, and with less and less strength or aim. He was aware—it could be read in the glare of his eyes—that he was being reduced to the defensive; and he knew that to be fatal. An oath broke from his panting lips and he rushed in again, even more recklessly, more at random than before, his sole object now to kill the other, to stab him at close quarters, no matter what happened to himself.

Again Payton avoided the full force of the rush, but this time after a different fashion. He retreated a step. Then, with a flicker and a girding of steel on steel, Asgill's sword flew from his hand, and at the same instant—or so nearly at the same instant that the disarming and the thrust might have seemed to an untrained eye one motion—Payton turned his wrist and his sword buried itself in Asgill's body. The unfortunate man recoiled with a gasping cry, staggered and sank sideways to the ground.

"By the powers," O'Beirne exclaimed, springing forward, "a foul stroke! By G—d, a foul stroke! He was disarmed. I——"

"Have a care what you say!" Payton answered slowly, and in a terrible tone. "You'd do better to look to your friend—for he'll need it."

"It's you that struck him after he was disarmed!" Morty cried, almost weeping with rage. "Devil a bit of a chance did you give him! You——"

"Silence, I say!" Payton answered, in a fierce tone of authority. "I know my duty; and if you know yours you'll look to him."

He turned aside with that, and thrust the point of his sword twice and thrice into the sod before he sheathed the weapon. Meanwhile Morty had cast himself down beside the fallen man, who, speechless, and with his head hanging, continued to support himself on his hand. A patch of blood, bright-coloured, was growing slowly on his vest: and there was blood on his lips.

"Oh, whirra, whirra, what'll I do?" the Irishman exclaimed, helplessly wringing his hands. "What'll I do for him? He's murdered entirely!"

Payton, aided by one of the troopers, was putting on his coat and vest. He paused to bid the other help the gentleman. Then, with a cold look at the fallen man, for whom, though they had been friends, as friends go in the world, he seemed to have no feeling except one of contempt, he walked away in the direction of the rear of the house.

By the time he reached the back door the alarm was abroad, the maids were running to and fro and screaming, and on the threshold he encountered Flavia. Pale as the stricken man, she looked on Payton with an eye of horror, and, as he stood aside to let her pass, she drew—unconscious what she did—her skirts away, that they might not touch him.

He went on, with rage in his heart. "Very good, my lady," he muttered, "very good! But I've not done with you yet. I know a way to pull your pride down. And I'll go about it!"

He might have moved less at ease, he might have spoken less confidently, had he, before he retired from the scene of the fight, cast one upward glance in the direction of the house, had he marked an opening high up in the wall of yew, and noticed through that opening a window, so placed that it alone of all the windows in the house commanded the scene of action. For then he would have discovered at that casement a face he knew, and a pair of stern eyes that had followed the course of the struggle throughout, noted each separate attack, and judged the issue—and the man.

And he might have taken warning.



CHAPTER XXIV

THE PITCHER AT THE WELL

The surgeon of that day was better skilled in letting blood than in staunching it, in cupping than in curing. It was well for Luke Asgill, therefore, that none lived nearer than distant Tralee. It was still more fortunate for him that there was one in the house to whom the treatment of such a wound as his was an everyday matter, and who was guided in his practice less by the rules of the faculty than by those of experience and common sense.

Even under his care Asgill's life hung for many hours in the balance. There was a time, when he was at his weakest, when his breath, in the old phrase, would not raise a feather, and those about his bed despaired of detaining the spirit fluttering to be free. The servants were ready to raise the "keen," the cook sought the salt for the death-plate. But Colonel John, mindful of many a man found living on the field hours after he should, by all the rules, have died, did not despair; and little by little, though the patient knew nothing of the battle which was maintained for his life, the Colonel's skill and patience prevailed. The breathing grew stronger and more regular; and, though it seemed likely that fever would follow and the end must remain uncertain, death, for the moment, was repelled.

Now, he who possesses the habit of command in emergencies, who, when others are distraught and wring their hands, knows both what to do and how to do it, cannot fail to impress the imagination. Unsupported by Flavia, unaided by her deft fingers, Colonel John might have done less: yet she who seconded him the most ably, who fetched and carried for him, and shrank from no sight of blood or wound, was also the one who yielded him the fullest meed, and succumbed the most completely to his ascendancy. Flavia's feelings towards her cousin had been altering hour by hour; and this experience of him hastened her tacit surrender. She had seen him in many parts. It had been hers to witness, by turns, his defeat and his triumph. She had felt aversion, born of his unwelcome appearance in the character of her guardian, yield to a budding interest, which his opposition to her plans, and his success in foiling them, had converted anew into disdain and hatred.

But in all strong passions lurk the seeds of the opposite. The object of hatred is the object of interest. So it had been in her case. The very lengths to which she had allowed herself to be carried against him had revolted her, and pity had taken the place of hatred. Nor pity alone. For, having seen how high he could rise in adversity, what courage, what patience, what firmness he could exert—for her sake who persecuted him—she now saw also how naturally he took the lead of others, how completely he dominated the crowd. And while she no longer marvelled at the skill with which he had baffled the Admiral and Cammock, and thwarted plans which she began to appraise at their value, she found herself relying upon him, as she watched him moving to and fro, to an extent which startled and frightened her.

Was it only that morning that she had trembled for her brother's life? Was it only that morning that she had opened her eyes and known him craven, unworthy of his name and race? Was it only that morning that she had sent into peril the man who lay wan and moribund before her; only that morning that she had felt her unhappiness greater than she could bear, her difficulties insuperable, her loneliness a misery? For if that were so why did she now feel so different? Why did she now feel inexplicably relieved, inconceivably at ease, almost happy? Why, with the man whom she had thrust into peril lying in extremis before her, and claiming all her gratitude, did she find her mind straying to another? Finally, why, with her troubles the same, with her brother no less dishonoured, were her thoughts neither with him nor with herself, but with the man whose movements she watched, whose hands touched hers in the work of tendance, whose voice once chid her sharply—and gave her an odd pang of pleasure—who, low-toned, ordered her hither and thither, and was obeyed?

She asked herself the question as she sat in the darkened room, watching. And in the twilight she blushed. Once, at a crisis, Colonel John had taken her roughly by the wrist and forced her to hold the bandage so, while he twisted it. She looked at the wrist now, and, fancying she could see the imprint of his fingers on it, she blushed more deeply.

Presently there came, as they sat listening to the fluttering breath, a low scratching at the door. At a sign from Colonel Sullivan, who sat on the inner side of the bed, she stole to it and found Morty O'Beirne on the threshold. He beckoned to her, and, closing the door, she followed him downstairs, to where, in the living-room, she found the other O'Beirne standing sheepishly beside the table.

"It's not knowing what to do, we are," Morty said.

He did not look at her, nor did his brother. Her heart sank. "What is it?" she asked.

"The fiend's in the man," Morty replied, tapping with his fingers on the table. "But—it's you will be telling her, Phelim."

"It's he that's not content," Phelim muttered. "The thief of the world!"

"Curse him!" cried his brother.

"Not content?" she echoed. "Not content? After what he's done?" For an instant her eyes flashed hot indignation, her very hair seemed to rise about her head. Then the downcast demeanour of the two, their embarrassment, their silence, told the story; and she gasped. "He's for—fighting my brother?" she whispered.

"He'll be content with no less," Morty answered, with a groan. "Bad cess to him! And The McMurrough—sure it's certain death, and who's blaming him, but he's no stomach for it. And whirra, whirra, on that the man says he'll be telling it in Tralee that he'd not meet him, and as far as Galway City he'll cut his comb for him! Ay, bedad, he says that, and that none of his name shall show their face there, night or day, fair or foul, race or cockfight—the bloody-minded villain!"

She listened, despairing. The house was quiet, as houses in the country are of an afternoon, and the quieter for the battle with death which was joined in the darkened room upstairs. Her thoughts were no longer with the injured man, however, but in that other room, where her brother lurked in squalid fear—fear that in a nameless man might have been pardoned, but in him, in a McMurrough, head of his race, last of his race, never! She came of heroes, to her the strain had descended pure and untainted, and she would rather have seen him dead. The two men before her—who knew, alas! who knew!—she was sure that they would have taken up the glove, unwillingly and perforce, perhaps, but they would have fought! While her brother, The McMurrough—— But even while she thought of it, she saw through the open door the figure of a man saunter slowly past the courtyard gates, his sword under his arm. It was the Englishman. She felt the added sting. Her cheek, that had been pale, burned darkly, her eyes shone.

"St. Patrick fly away with the toad and the ugly smile of him!" Morty said. "I'm thinking it's between the two of us, Phelim, my jewel! And he that's killed will help the other."

"God forbid!" Flavia cried, pale with horror at the thought. "Not another!"

"But sure, and I'm not seeing how else we'll be rid of him handsomely," Phelim replied.

"No!" she repeated firmly. "No! I forbid it!"

Again the man sauntered by the entrance, and again he cast the same insolent, smiling look at the house. They watched him pass, an ominous shadow in the sunshine, and Flavia shuddered.

"But what will you be doing, then?" Morty asked, rubbing, his chin in perplexity. "He's saying that if The McMurrough'll not meet him by four o'clock, and it isn't much short of it, he'll be riding this day! And him once gone he's a bitter tongue, and 'twill be foul shame on the house!"

Flavia stood silent in thought, but at length she drew in her breath sharply—she had made up her mind. "I know what I will do," she said. "I will tell him all." And she turned to go.

"It's not worth the shoe-leather!" Morty cried after her, letting his scorn of James be seen.

But she was out of hearing, and when she returned a minute later she was followed, not by James McMurrough, but by Colonel Sullivan. The Colonel's face, seen in the full light, had lost the brown of health; it was thin and peaky, and still bore signs of privation. But he trod firmly, and his eyes were clear and kind. If he was aware of the O'Beirnes' embarrassment, his greeting did not betray it.

"I am willing to help if I can," he said. "What is your trouble?"

"Tell him," Flavia said, averting her face.

They told him lamely—they were scarcely less jealous of the honour of the house than she was—in almost the same words in which they had broken the news to her. "And the curse of Cromwell on me, but he's parading up and down now," Morty continued, "and cocking his eye at the sun-dial whenever he passes, as much as to say, 'Is it coming, you are?' till the heart's fairly melted in me with the rage!"

"And it's shame on us we let him be!" cried Phelim.

Colonel John did not answer. He was silent even when, under the eyes of all, the ominous shadow passed again before the entrance gates—came and went. He was so long silent that Flavia turned to him at last, and held out her hands. "What shall we do?" she cried—and in that cry she betrayed her new dependence on him. "Tell us!"

"It is hard to say," Colonel John answered gravely. His face was very gloomy, and to hide it or his thoughts he turned from them and went to one of the windows—that very window through which Uncle Ulick and he had looked at his first coming. He gazed out, not that he might see, but that he might think unwatched.

They waited, the men expecting little, but glad to be rid of some part of the burden, Flavia with a growing sense of disappointment. She did not know for what she had hoped, or what she had thought that he would do. But she had been confident that he could help; and it seemed that he could do no more than others. Neither to her, nor to the men, did it seem as strange as it was that they should turn to him, against whose guidance they had lately revolted so fiercely.

He came back to them presently, his face sad and depressed. "I will deal with it," he said—and he sighed. "You can leave it to me. Do you," he continued, addressing Morty, "come with me, Mr. O'Beirne."

He was for leaving them with that, but Flavia put herself between him and the door. She fixed her eyes on his face. "What are you going to do?" she asked in a low voice.

"I will tell you all—later," he replied gently.

"No, now!" she retorted, controlling herself with difficulty. "Now! You are not going—to fight him?"

"I am not going to fight," he answered slowly.

But her heart was not so easily deceived as her ear. "There is something under your words," she said jealously. "What is it?"

"I am not going to fight," he replied gravely, "but to punish. There is a limit." Even while he spoke she remembered in what circumstances those words had been used. "There is a limit," he repeated solemnly. "He has the blood of four on his head, and another lies at death's door. And he is not satisfied. He is not satisfied! Once I warned him. To-day the time for warning is past, the hour for judgment is come. God forgive me if I err, for vengeance is His and it is terrible to be His hand." He turned to Phelim, and, in the same stern tone, "my sword is broken," he said. "Fetch me the man's sword who lies upstairs."

Phelim went, awe-stricken, and marvelling. Morty remained, marvelling also. And Flavia—but, as she tried to speak, Payton's shadow once more came into sight at the entrance-gates and went slowly by, and she clapped her hand to her mouth that she might not scream. Colonel Sullivan saw the action, understood, and touched her softly on the shoulder. "Pray," he said, "pray!"

"For you!" she cried in a voice that, to those who had ears, betrayed her heart. "Ah, I will pray!"

"No, for him," he replied. "For him now. For me when I return."

She dropped on her knees before a chair, and, shuddering, hid her face in her hands. And almost at once she knew that they were gone, and that she was alone in the room.

Then, whether she prayed most or listened most, or the very intensity of her listening was itself prayer—prayer in its highest form—she never knew; but only that, whenever in the agony of her suspense she raised her head from the chair to hear if there was news, the common sounds of afternoon life in the house and without lashed her with a dreadful irony. The low whirr of a spinning-wheel, a girl's distant chatter, the cluck of a hen in the courtyard, the satisfied grunt of a roving pig, all bore home to her heart the bitter message that, whatever happened, and though nightfall found her lonely in a dishonoured home, life would proceed as usual, the men and the women about her would eat and drink, and the smallest things would stand where they stood now—unchanged, unmoved.

What was that? Only the fall of a spit in the kitchen, or the clatter of a pot-lid. Would they never come? Would she never know? At this moment—what was that? That surely was something. They were returning! In a moment she would know. She rose to her feet and stared with stony eyes at the door. But when she had listened long—it was nothing. Nothing! And then—ah, that surely was something—was news—was the end! They were coming now. In a moment she would know. Yes, they were coming. In a moment she would know. She pressed her hands to her breast.

She might have known already, for, had she gone to the door, she would have seen who came. But she could not go. She could not move.

And he, when he came in, did not look at her. He walked from the threshold to the hearth, and—strange coincidence—he set the unsheathed blade he carried in the self-same angle, beside the fire-back, from which she had once taken a sword to attempt his life. And still he did not look at her, but stood with bowed head.

At last he turned. "God forgive us all," he said.

She broke into wild weeping. And what her lips, babbling incoherent thanksgiving, did not tell him, the clinging of her arms, as she hung on him, conveyed.



CHAPTER XXV

PEACE

Uncle Ulick, with the mud of the road still undried on his boots, and the curls still stiff in the wig which the town barber at Mallow had dressed for him, rubbed his chin with his hand and, covertly looking round the room, owned himself puzzled. He had returned a week later to the day than he had arranged to return. But had his absence run into months instead of weeks the lapse of time had not sufficed to explain the change which he felt, but could not define, in his surroundings.

Certainly old Darby looked a thought more trim, and the room a trifle better ordered than he had left them. But he was sensible, though vaguely, that the change did not stop there—perhaps did not begin there. Full of news of the outer world as he was, he caught himself pausing in mid-career to question himself. And more than once his furtive eyes scanned his companions' faces for the answer his mind refused to give.

An insolent Englishman had come, and given reins to the 'ubris that was in him, and, after running Luke Asgill through the body, had paid the penalty—in fight so fair that the very troopers who had witnessed it could make no complaint nor raise trouble. So much Uncle Ulick had learned. But he had not known Payton, and, exciting as the episode sounded, it did not explain the difference in the atmosphere of the house. Where he had left enmity and suspicion, lowering brows and a silent table, he found smiles, and easiness, and a cheerful sense of well-being.

Again he looked about him. "And where will James be?" he asked, for the first time missing his nephew.

"He has left us," Flavia said slowly, with her eyes on Colonel Sullivan.

"It's away to Galway City he is," Morty O'Beirne explained with a chuckle.

"The saints be between us and harm!" Uncle Ulick exclaimed in astonishment. "And why's he there?"

"The story is long," said Colonel Sullivan.

"But I can tell it in a few words," Flavia continued with dignity. "And the sooner it is told the better. He has not behaved well, Uncle Ulick. And at his request and with—the legal owner's consent—it's I have agreed to pay him one-half of the value of the property."

"The devil you have!" Uncle Ulick exclaimed, in greater astonishment. And, pushing back his seat and rubbing his huge thigh with his hand, he looked from one to another. "By the powers! if I may take the liberty of saying so, young lady, you've done a vast deal in a very little time-faith, in no time at all, at all!" he added.

"It was done at his request," Flavia answered gravely.

Uncle Ulick continued to rub his thigh and to stare. These things were very surprising. "And they're telling me," he said, "that Luke Asgill's in bed upstairs?"

"He is."

"And recovering?"

"He is, glory be to God!"

"Nor that same's not the best news of him," Morty said with a grin. "Nor the last."

"True for you!" Phelim cried. "If it was the last word you spoke!"

"What are you meaning?" Uncle Ulick asked.

"He's turned," said Morty. "No less! Turned! He's what his father was before him, Mr. Sullivan—come back to Holy Church, and not a morning but Father O'Hara's with him making his soul and what not!"

"Turned!" Uncle Ulick cried. "Luke Asgill, the Justice? Boys, you're making fun of me!" And, unable to believe what the O'Beirnes told him, he looked to Flavia for confirmation.

"It is true," she said.

"Bedad, it is?" Uncle Ulick replied. "Then I'll not be surprised in all my life again! More by token, there's only one thing left to hope for, my jewel, and that's certain. Cannot you do the same to the man that's beside you?"

Flavia glanced quickly at Colonel John, then, with a heightened colour, she looked again at Uncle Ulick. "That's what I cannot do," she said.

But the blush, and the smile that accompanied it, and something perhaps in the way she hung towards her neighbour as she turned to him, told Uncle Ulick all. The big man smacked the table with his hand till the platters leapt from the board. "Holy poker!" he cried, "is it that you're meaning? And I felt it, and I didn't feel it, and you sitting there forenent me, and prating as if butter wouldn't melt in your mouth! It is so, is it? But there, the red of your cheek is answer enough!"

For Flavia was blushing more brightly than before, and Colonel John was smiling, and the two young men were laughing openly.

"You must get Flavia alone," Colonel John said, "and perhaps she'll tell you."

"Bedad, it's true, and I felt it in the air," Ulick Sullivan answered, smiling all over his face. "Ho, ho! Ho, ho! Indeed you've not been idle while I've been away. But what does Father O'Hara say, eh?"

"The Father——" Flavia began in a small voice.

"Ay, what does the Father say?"

"He says," Flavia continued, looking down demurely, "that it's a rare stick that's no bend in it, and—and 'tis very little use looking for it on a dark night. Besides, he——" she glanced at her neighbour, "he said he'd be master, you know, and what could I do?"

"Then it's the very wrong way he's gone about it!" Uncle Ulick cried, with a chuckle. "For there's no married man that I know that's master! It's you, my jewel, have put the comether on him, and I'll trust you to keep it there!"

But into that we need not go. Our task is done. Whether Flavia's high spirit and her husband's gravity, her youth and his experience travelled the road together in unbroken amity, or with no more than the jars which the accidents of life occasion, however close the link, it does not fall within this story to tell. Nor need we say whether Father O'Hara proved as discreet in the long run as he had been liberal in the beginning. Probably the two had their bickerings which did not sever love. But one thing may be taken for granted; in that part of Kerry the King over the Water, if his health was sometimes drunk of an evening, stirred up no second trouble. Nor, when the '45 convulsed Scotland, and shook England to its centre, did one man at Morristown raise his hand or lose his life. For so much at least that windswept corner of Kerry, beaten year in and year out by the Atlantic rollers, had to thank Colonel Sullivan.

Nor for that only. In many unnamed ways his knowledge of the world blessed those about him. The small improvements, the little advances in civilisation which the English intruders were introducing into those parts, he adopted: a more orderly house, an increased neatness, a few more acres brought under the plough or the spade, whole roofs and few beggars—these things were to be seen at Morristown, and in few other places thereabouts. And, above all, his neighbours owned the influence of one who, with a reputation gained at the sword's point, stood resolutely, unflinchingly, abroad as at home, at fairs and cockfights as on his own hearth, for peace. More than a century was to elapse before private war ceased to be the amusement of the Irish gentry. But in that part of Kerry, and during a score of years, the name and weight of Colonel Sullivan of Morristown availed to quiet many a brawl and avert many a meeting.

To follow the mean and the poor of spirit beyond the point where their fortunes cease to be entwined with those of better men is a profitless task. James McMurrough, tried and found wanting, where all favoured him, was not likely to rise above his nature where the odds were equal, and all men his rivals. What he did in Galway City, that bizarre, half-foreign town of the west, how long he tarried there, and whither he went afterwards, in the vain search for a place where a man could swagger without courage and ruffle it without consequences, it matters not to inquire. A time came when his kin knew not whether he lived or was dead.

Luke Asgill, who could rise as much above The McMurrough as he had it in him to fall below him, who was as wicked as James was weak, was redeemed, one may believe, by the good that lurked in him. He lay many weeks on a sick-bed, and returned to everyday life another man. For, whereas he had succumbed, a passionate lover of Flavia, he rose wholly cured of that passion. It had ebbed from him with his blood, or waned with his fever. And whereas he had before sought both gain and power, restrained by as few scruples as the worst men of a bad age, he rose a pursuer of both, but within bounds; so that, though he was still hard and grasping and oppressive, it was possible to say of him that he was no worse than his class. Close-fisted, at Father O'Hara's instance he could open his hand. Hard, at the Father's prayer he would at times remit a rent or extend a bond. Ambitious, he gave up, for his soul's sake and the sake of the Faith that had been his fathers', the office which endowed him with power to oppress.

There were some who scoffed behind his back, and said that Luke Asgill had had enough of carrying a sword and now wished no better than to be rid of it. But, in truth, as far as the man's reformation went, it was real. The devil was well, but he was not the devil he had been. The hours he had passed in the presence of death, the thoughts he had had while life was low in him, were not forgotten in his health. The strong nature, slow to take an impression, was stiff to retain it. A moody, silent man, going about his business with a face to match the sullen bogs of his native land, he lived to a great age, and paid one tribute only to the woman he had loved and forgotten—he died a bachelor.

THE END

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