"The time was," said Sullivan, "an' it's not long since, when I could give you a comfortable welcome as well as a willin' one; but now 'tis but poor and humble tratement I can give you. But if it was betther, you should just be as welcome to it, an' what more can you say?"
"Well," replied the other, "what more can you say, indeed? I'm thankful to you, Jerry, an' I'll accept your kind offer."
The night had set in when they reached the house, where the traces of poverty were as visible upon the inmates as upon the furniture.
Sullivan was strangely excited--he had discovered a stolen interview outside between his eldest daughter and young Condy Dalton.
Mave Sullivan--a young creature of nineteen, of rare natural beauty and angelic purity--turned deadly pale when her father spoke.
"Bridget," Sullivan said, turning to his wife, "I tell you that I came upon that undutiful daughter of ours coortin' wid the son of the man that murdhered her uncle, my only brother--coortin' wid a fellow that Dan M'Gowan here knows will be hanged yet, for he's jist afther tellin' him so."
"You're ravin', Jerry," exclaimed his wife. "You don't mean to tell me that she'd spake to, or make any freedoms whatsomever wid young Condy Dalton? Hut, no, Jerry; don't say that, at all events!"
But Sullivan's indignation passed quickly to alarm and distress, for his daughter tottered, and would have fallen to the ground if Donnel had not caught her.
"Save me from that man!" she shrieked at Donnel, clinging to her mother. "Don't let him near me! I can't tell why, but I am deadly afraid of him!"
Her parents, already sorry for their harsh words, tried their utmost to console her.
"Don't be alarmed, my purty creature," said the Black Prophet softly. "I see a great good fortune before you. I see a grand and handsome husband, and a fine house to live in. Grandeur and wealth is before her, for her beauty an' her goodness will bring it all about."
When the family, after the father had offered up a few simple prayers, retired to rest, Sullivan took down his brother's old great coat, and placed it over M'Gowan, who was already in bed. But the latter immediately sat up and implored him to take it away.
Next morning before departing, Donnel repeated to Mave Sullivan his prophecy of the happy and prosperous marriage.
But Mave, who knew where her affection rested, found no comfort in these predictions, for the Daltons were pressed as hard by poverty as their neighbours.
As for Donnel M'Gowan, cunning and unscrupulous, his plan was to secure Mave for young Dick o' the Grange, a small landowner, and a profligate. To do this he relied on the help of his daughter Sarah and was disappointed. For Sarah was to find Mave Sullivan her friend, and she renounced her father's scheme, so that no harm happened to the girl.
III.--The Shadow of Crime
With famine came typhus fever, and the state of the country was frightful beyond belief. Thousands were reduced to mendicancy, numbers perished on the very highways, and the road was literally black with funerals. Temporary sheds were erected near the roadsides, containing fever-stricken patients who had no other home.
Under the ravening madness of famine, legal restraints and moral principles were forgotten, and famine riots broke out. For, studded over the country were a number of farmers with bursting granaries, who could afford to keep their provisions in large quantities until a year of scarcity and high prices arrived; and the people, exasperated beyond endurance, saw long lines of provision carts on their way to the neighbouring harbours for exportation.
Such was the extraordinary fact!
Day after day, vessels laden with Irish provisions, drawn from a population perishing with actual hunger, and with pestilence which it occasioned, were passing out of our ports, whilst other vessels came in freighted with our provisions sent back, through the charity of England, to our relief.
Goaded by suffering, hordes of people turned out to intercept meal-carts and provision vehicles, and carts and cars were stopped on the highways, and the food which they carried openly taken away.
Sarah M'Gowan herself went to the Daltons, where typhus and starvation were doing their worst, to render what service she could, and Mave Sullivan would have done the same but for the entreaties of her parents, who feared the terrible fever.
The Black Prophet alone went on his way unmoved, scheming to accomplish his vile ends. It was not enough for him that Mave was to be abducted; he had also planned a robbery for the same night, and was further resolved to procure the conviction of old Condy Dalton for the almost forgotten murder of Sullivan in the glen.
M'Gowan was driven to this last step by his own disturbed mind. The disappearance of the tobacco-box troubled him, for on seeking it under the thatch it was no longer there, and the discovery by his wife of a skeleton buried near their cabin caused him still greater uneasiness. Then Sarah had followed him one night, when he was walking in his sleep, to the secret grave of the murdered man, and though the Prophet did not say anything on that occasion to incriminate himself, he was vexed by the occurrence.
So, on the information of Donnel M'Gowan, and a man called Roddy Duncan, who was deep in the Prophet's subtle villainies, the skeleton was dug up, and old Condy Dalton arrested.
"It's the will of God!" replied the old man, when the police-officers entered his unhappy dwelling, and charged him with the murder of Bartholomew Sullivan. "It's God's will, an' I won't consale it any longer. Take me away. I'm guilty--I'm guilty!"
Sarah was ministering to the Daltons at the very time when her father was informing against old Condy, and was present when the police took him away in custody. Shortly afterwards, when she had left the house, she was struck down by typhus.
In a shed that simply consisted of a few sticks laid up against the side of a ditch, with the remnant of some loose straw for bedding, Mave Sullivan found the suffering girl, with no other pillow than a sod of earth.
"Father of mercy!" thought Mave, "how will she live--how can she live here? An' is she to die in this miserable way in a Christian land?"
Sarah lay groaning with pain, and then raving in delirium.
"I won't break my promise, father, but I'll break my heart; an' I can't even give her warning. Ah, but it's treachery, an' I hate that. No, no; I'll have no hand in it--manage it your own way!"
"Dear Sarah, don't you know me?" said Mave tenderly. "Look at me--I am Mave Sullivan, your friend that loves you."
"Who is that?" Sarah asked, starting a little. "I never had anyone to take care o' me--nor a mother; many a time--often--often--the whole world--some one to love me. Oh, a dhrink! Is there no one to give me a dhrink? I'm burning, I'm burning! Mave Sullivan, have pity on me--I heard some one name her--I'll die without you give me a dhrink!"
Mave hastily fetched some water, and in the course of two or three days Sarah's situation, thanks to the attention of Mave and her neighbours, was changed for the better, and she was conveyed home to the Prophet's cabin on a litter--only to die in a few days.
It was the knowledge of what she owed Mave that forced Sarah to frustrate her father's plot for Mave's ruin.
The robbery was no more successful than the abduction, for Roddy Duncan withdrew from it, and Donnel M'Gowan learnt that the house to be plundered was well guarded.
IV.--An Amazing Witness
The court was crowded when Cornelius Dalton was put to the bar charged with the wilful murder of Bartholomew Sullivan, by striking him on the head with a walking stick, and when the old man stood up all eyes were turned on him. It was clear that there was an admission of guilt in his face, for instead of appearing erect and independent, he looked around with an expression of remorse and sorrow, and it was with difficulty that he was prevailed upon to plead "not guilty."