C9ay?9'i^eyt^:>^y L/ya^ . 
 
University of California • Berkeley 
 
 GIFT OF 
 
 The Friends of The Bancroft Library 
 

NABOTH'S VINEYARD 
 
ON THE HILL-SIDE. 
 
 [Pas-e 137. 
 
NABOTH'S VINEYARD 
 
 H Bovel 
 
 BY 
 
 E. (E. SOMERVILLE 
 
 AND 
 
 MARTIN ROSS 
 
 AUTHORS OF ' AN IRISH COUSIN ' 
 
 LONDON 
 SPENCER BLACKETT 
 
 35, ST. BRIDE STREET, LUDGATE CIRCUS, E.C. 
 1891 
 
 {All rights reserved] 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 I. A SEASIDE HOTEL - - . . i 
 
 II. UNWRITTEN LAW - - - - l6 
 
 29 
 
 III. MRS. DONOVAN AT HOME 
 
 IV. A MOONLIGHT PASTORAL - - "45 
 V. EXCLUSIVE DEALING - - - "57 
 
 VI. APPLIED PRINCIPLES - - - "74 
 
 VIL THE WAY OF TRANSGRESSORS - - 88 
 
 VIII. THE YELLOW PUNT - - - "97 
 
 IX. REJECTED - - - . 115 
 
 X. ON THE HILLSIDE - - - - 133 
 
 XI. AN OUTCAST - - - - " I4S 
 
 Xn. MEPHISTOPHELES - . - . i^^ 
 
 XIII. A HEART AND ITS BITTERNESS - - 167 
 
 XIV. A PLUNGE - - - - - 185 
 XV. OUT OF THE DEEP • - - " I9S 
 
vi CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 XVI. HUSBAND AND WIFE - - - 211 
 
 XVII. A WOLF IN A TRAP - - ' - 225 
 
 XVIII. A WOMAN SCORNED - - - 238 
 
 XIX. A SHAKE OF THE HAND - - - 248 
 
 XX. ' FOR YOU I DONE IT ' - - - 257 
 
 XXI. VOCES POPULI - . - - - 270 
 
NABOTH^S VINEYARD. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 A SEASIDE HOTEL. 
 
 Anyone who has glanced even cursorily at 
 the map of Ireland, will have noticed how 
 the south-west corner of It has suffered from 
 being the furthest outpost of European re- 
 sistance to the Atlantic. Winter after winter 
 the fight between sea and rock has raged on, 
 and now, after all these centuries of warfare, 
 the ragged fringe of points and headlands, 
 with long, winding inlets between them*, look 
 as though some hungry monster's sharp teeth 
 
 I 
 
2 NABOTH'S VINEYARD. 
 
 had torn the soft, green land away, gnawing 
 it out from between the uncompromising 
 lines of rock that stand firm, indigestible 
 and undefeated. 
 
 Violent and unlovely though the usurp- 
 ing process may sound, the results, as is often 
 the case, justify the usurper. Deep among 
 the hills the sea has forced its way, and, in 
 many quiet fiords, has settled itself down to 
 country life, surrounded by all sweet inland 
 sounds and sights, as serenely as if it had 
 never tossed the City of Rome about like a 
 shuttlecock, or climbed the tall Fastnet light- 
 house till its light looked out through green 
 water. 
 
 Near the junction of the counties of Cork 
 and Kerry there is one of these fiords, where 
 everything has combined to help the sea in 
 its masquerade of freshwater simplicity : a 
 long island lies across its mouth, blocking the 
 wide south-western horizon, and almost join- 
 
A SEASIDE HOTEL. 3 
 
 Ing the two arms of land that stretch to meet 
 each other on either side. Within them the 
 green-blue water spreads itself in no bad 
 imitation of a lake, till about a mile from the 
 entrance, when the land closes in upon it, and 
 the channel takes a sudden sharp twist to the 
 north, and from that point runs like a river 
 between hills that rise steeply from its 
 narrowing curves, and are covered with 
 thick woods that crowd to the water's edge, 
 and trail their branches over the gray rocks 
 and yellow seaweed. 
 
 The last thing that can be imputed to Irish 
 architects of the beginning of this century is 
 a wilful pandering to the picturesque, to the 
 neglect of practical qualities. The little 
 fishing town of Rossbrin was not built with 
 the idea of adding to the beauties of Tra- 
 hartha Harbour ; it was simply a fortunate 
 chance that the exigencies of shelter and 
 anchorage had given it its position midway 
 
 I — 2 
 
4 NABOTH'S VINEYARD. 
 
 between the open sea and the wooded bend 
 before mentioned. It had probably begun 
 with the battered row of fishermen's cottages 
 just above high-water mark, now almost 
 elbowed out of existence by a large ugly 
 building dominating the pier, with the 
 legend ' O'Grady's Stores ' painted in black 
 letters on its gray walls. Following their 
 lead, other cottages have perched themselves 
 one above the other right up the face of the 
 hill, till anyone standing at the head of the 
 nearly perpendicular lane, that persevering 
 house-builders have compelled to pose as a 
 street, can see the gleaming slate roofs below 
 him, like an Irregular flight of shining steps. 
 Two tall sycamores, outposts from the Tra- 
 hartha woods, stand in the middle of the 
 street at the foot of the hill, which arches so 
 suddenly above them that the dwellers In the 
 houses half-way up can almost see into the 
 rooks' nests in their topmost branches. 
 
A SEASIDE HOTEL. 5 
 
 These trees — 'the Two Trees,' as they are 
 affectionately specialized by the people of 
 Rossbrin — are the recognised centre whence 
 radiates all the gossip of the place. They 
 have the effect of growing out of the middle 
 of a great cairn of stones^ on the top of 
 which, according to tradition, the stocks once 
 held honourable position, and it is possible 
 that hereditary habit has something to say to 
 the invariable, almost helpless way in which 
 the male population of the place drift con- 
 gregationally into their shadow for purposes 
 of discussion and tobacco. Not till the top 
 of the hill is reached does Rossbrin begin to 
 expand and assert itself as one of the most 
 notable of the fishing villages of the south- 
 west. Here, in the three streets that detach 
 themselves from the central one, are the 
 post-office, the dispensary, the small but 
 refined establishment of ' Millinery in all its 
 branches,' kept by Miss Katty Vickery, 
 
6 NABOTWS VINEYARD. 
 
 arbiter of modes and manners In Rossbrin ; 
 the grocer's shop, where hob-nailed boots, 
 sickles, and coils of rope hang from the 
 ceiling, leaving little space for the more 
 legitimate occupancy of flitches of bacon and 
 bundles of dipped candles suspended by 
 their long wicks ; and here, most imposing 
 of all, stands Donovan's Hotel, a species of 
 glorified public-house, its green and gold 
 signboard showing to great advantage on 
 its pink-washed wall. In spite of its gilded 
 assumption of hotel rank, its proprietor was 
 well aware that a larger part of his income 
 came to him across the counter of the public- 
 house than he derived from the more elegant 
 department upstairs ; but it is doubtful if he 
 would have admitted as much to any of the 
 numerous rival publicans of Rossbrin ; and 
 his wife, a young lady with a high standard 
 of gentility, went so far as to ignore the 
 public-house altogether, except when neces- 
 
A SEASIDE HOTEL. 7 
 
 sity compelled her slightingly to refer to ' the 
 bar.' 
 
 On a certain fine October afternoon in the 
 year 1883, Mr. John Donovan himself might 
 have been seen at a railed-in desk at the end 
 of the bar counter, taking advantage of the 
 slack business of the early afternoon hours to 
 make up his books. His fat finger travelled 
 rapidly up and down the columns, and every 
 now and then from between his thick lips 
 came a sibilant murmur of multiplication and 
 addition. A large tin box stood open on a 
 high stool beside him, and at frequent in- 
 tervals he turned towards it, and, putting his 
 pen in his mouth, took bundles of papers 
 from it, and compared their contents with the 
 entries in his book. It seemed a complicated 
 system of accounts for either a hotel or a 
 public-house, the items requiring constant 
 reference to the most unexpected docu- 
 ments, such as leases, dirty I.O.U.'s, and 
 
8 NABOTH'S VINEYARD. 
 
 what appeared to be Inventories of farm 
 stock, with pencilled notes and erasures. 
 He was not a good-looking man, this 
 wealthy Mr. John Donovan ; not even a 
 pleasant-looking one, with his dull brown 
 eyes set high over a cocked nose, and his 
 heavy cheeks showing through a sparsely- 
 growing black beard ; and when after a time 
 he stood up, his coarse, high - shouldered 
 figure was as unattractive as his face. 
 
 A sound of leisurely wheels in the road 
 made him look out through the open door, 
 and, with a glance at the clock, he locked 
 and put away his tin box, and took down his 
 hat from a peg over his head ; then, opening 
 a door into the back regions, he called in a 
 high, husky voice to a certain Joanna to 
 come and ' mind the shop,' and stepped 
 into the street. There was waiting there 
 for him a low two-wheeled trap, the Irish 
 equivalent for a farmer's gig, with a dingy, 
 
A SEASIDE HOTEL. 9 
 
 ewe-necked black mare in the shafts, who 
 looked round at her proprietor with an ex- 
 pression of resentful melancholy as he took 
 the reins from the boy who had been holding 
 her, and got heavily into the trap. 
 
 ' See here, Michael,' he said to the boy. 
 ' Did Mr. O'Grady come up the street 
 yet?' 
 
 * He did. not, surr I think, for the fish 
 steamer didn't go yit.' 
 
 * Well, as soon as she's gone he'll be 
 coming up to see me, and let you be looking 
 out for him, and tell him not to leave the 
 town till I come back. Tell him I've busi- 
 ness beyond in Scariff.' 
 
 The chuck at the bit, which the mare had 
 been anticipating, followed the words, and 
 Mr. Donovan drove away up the street, 
 eyeing the loungers at the shop-doors with 
 an air of disapproving hauteur that was only 
 becoming in a man who was owed money by 
 
lo NABOTWS VINEYARD. 
 
 a large proportion of the inhabitants. Per- 
 haps, if he had condescended so far as to 
 look behind him, it might have occurred to 
 him that the interest with which they in 
 their turn regarded his broad, prosperous 
 back and slouching shoulders, as he drove 
 away from them, was not quite as gratifying 
 as that which he received periodically in 
 large and small amounts across his counter, 
 though it did not require at all the same 
 amount of stimulation. But Mr. Donovan 
 seldom looked behind him in any sense ; his 
 attention was altogether given to a future 
 more or less expansive — one, in fact, limited 
 only by a point that, distant though it was, 
 still required to be perpetually moved on — the 
 point up to which he felt his financial position 
 quite assured. 
 
 The shambling trot which the mare's self- 
 respect had induced her to maintain through 
 the town settled down into a resigned plod- 
 
A SEASIDE HOTEL. ii 
 
 ding as her owner's ponderous hand turned 
 her out of the street, and into a hilly road 
 that bent away inland, following the high 
 demesne wall that screened the outlook over 
 the Trahartha woods eastward to the open 
 sea. For about a quarter of a mile the gray 
 forbidding wall stretched without a break or 
 so much as a trail of ivy to soften its severity, 
 an obstacle all the more depressing to the 
 wayfarer from the knowledge of what it was 
 hiding from him ; but if custom had left to 
 Mr. Donovan a conscious opinion on the 
 subject, it would have been respectful admira- 
 tion for the amount of money it represented, 
 and for its small-boy resisting power. At 
 the top of the long hill from Rossbrin, there 
 was a break in its implacable monotony, and 
 between the pillars of a tall iron gate came a 
 dazzle of bright colour. A broad sunny 
 stretch of grass sloped away, broken by 
 clumps of elms that shone golden in the level 
 
12 NABOTH'S VINEYARD. 
 
 afternoon sun, to the great mass of the 
 woods ; and above all hung the high sea line, 
 with a lighthouse, poised like a white gull 
 between the two blues of sea and sky. The 
 mare's stout sides were heaving as she 
 reached the flat ground opposite the gateway, 
 but it w^as neither compassion for her, nor 
 any feeling of pleasure in the suddenly dis- 
 closed view, that induced Mr. Donovan to 
 bring her laboured crawl to a standstill. 
 He had caught a glimpse between the trees 
 of the park of a woma.n walking quickly over 
 the grass towards the gate. She was still 
 some little way off, and he sat waiting there 
 patiently till she should come within earshot. 
 His eyes, from under their thick hanging lids, 
 were concentrated on her, with an expression 
 that made his dull face almost fervid, and 
 revealed a fact that his most intimate friends 
 hardly suspected ; though to the woman now 
 nearing the gate, the knowledge that John 
 
A SEASIDE HOTEL. 13 
 
 Donovan was in love with his wife was a 
 sufficiently old story. 
 
 ' Why, Harriet, where were ye ?* he 
 called out to her. * I thought ye were below 
 in the town.' 
 
 She did not answer till she was near 
 enough to speak without raising her voice. 
 
 ' What'd keep me in the town ?' she 
 replied ungraciously. * I came up here to 
 get out of the smell of them beastly fish !' 
 
 She was a tall, strongly-built young woman 
 of, perhaps, thirty, pale-faced, with strong 
 black brows that gave emphasis to the rest- 
 less, stormy dark eyes beneath them. She was 
 distinctly handsome, although the lower part 
 of her face was disproportionately large, and 
 the underlip projected discontentedly, contra- 
 dicting the generous and somewhat sensuous 
 expression of her large full-lipped mouth. 
 
 * Well, indeed, the air'd be heartier like 
 for ye up here,' said Donovan conciliatingly. 
 
14 NABOTWS VINEYARD. 
 
 * Any way, we'll be done with this lot soon ; 
 I hear Rick O' Grady's steamer is for start- 
 ing this afternoon.' 
 
 * She's going now,' Harriet answered. * I 
 seen her getting up steam awhile ago. 
 There she is, in the harbour's mouth.' 
 
 She turned and pointed to a dark stream of 
 smoke, which just showed above the yellow 
 tree tops. Her husband's eyes contracted 
 suspiciously. 
 
 * And is it home you're going now ?' he 
 asked ; then, without waiting for her reply : 
 ' Wouldn't it be as good for ye to come on 
 with me to the Widow Leonard's ?' 
 
 She swung her cheap black-handled um- 
 brella to and fro, with her eyes fixed on the 
 ground, as if in uncertainty. Then she 
 flung a glance up at her husband's face, as he 
 bent a little towards her. 
 
 * No ; I don't want to go see them 
 Leonards,' she said, with the undercurrent 
 
A SEASIDE HOTEL. 15 
 
 of ill-humour in her voice rather more 
 pronounced than before ; M'm going back 
 home now.' She closed the gate behind 
 her and turned in the direction of Ross- 
 brin. 
 
 Donovan knew that set of Harriet's under- 
 lip, with its accompanying lift of the chin, 
 and judiciously abandoned a losing game. He 
 was a man not in the habit of betraying his 
 feelings, and the mare was the only one 
 qualified to argue, from the unusually heavy 
 blow with which she was again started on her 
 journey, that Donovan had any dislike to his 
 wife's returning to a tete-a-tite with Mr. 
 Richard O'Grady. 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 UNWRITTEN LAW. 
 
 It was mentioned, a few pages back, that 
 Trahartha Harbour curved sharply from its 
 original course inland ; but the geographical 
 crudities of a first description are seldom 
 sufficiently laid to heart by the reader, and 
 the purposes of this story make it, unhappily, 
 necessary to compel the attention to these 
 uninteresting details. 
 
 After that sudden and most graceful curve, 
 the harbour spreads itself into an excellent 
 imitation of a lake, and then stretches a long 
 narrow arm westward to meet the little 
 Rowrie River, that runs a fierce course from 
 
UNWRITTEN LA W. 1 7 
 
 its mother lake, four miles back in the bogs 
 of Corran, where wild-geese are seen in the 
 hard wihters, and the pike are said to be of 
 antediluvian age and size. The road which 
 Mr. Donovan was now taking made a long 
 loop round the Trahartha woods, and cross- 
 ing the river by a respectable stone bridge, 
 about half a mile from its mouth, struck into 
 the desolate hilly country north of the harbour. 
 The Widow Leonard's farm lay between this 
 bridge and the head of the harbour, and the 
 bohireen which led to it from the main road 
 was stony enough to have materially loosened 
 Mr. Donovan's hold over his temper by the 
 time he arrived at the farmyard. The bent 
 and rusty iron gate stood hospitably open, and 
 a fine flock of geese who were solemnly stalk- 
 ing forth to a muddy pond at the other side 
 of the bohireen were thrown into sudden con- 
 fusion by the mare and trap, and hurried, with 
 hysterical screechings, back to the manure- 
 
 2 
 
i8 NABOTH'S VINEYARD. 
 
 heap which graced the centre of the farmyard. 
 This was, as is common in the South of 
 Ireland, a small square, two sides of which 
 were formed by untidy thatched farm-build- 
 ings, and the third and fourth by the furze- 
 topped fence in which the gate was, and by 
 the house. In front of the latter stood its pro- 
 prietor, a big bony woman of about fifty, with 
 wavy grizzled hair and a startlingly red face. 
 Her entire appearance was determined and 
 even truculent, and just at this moment its 
 effect was much enhanced by the energy with 
 which she was lifting wet coils of linen from 
 a washing-tub, and shaking them out with 
 detonating flaps, before hanging them on the 
 line strained from the top rail of the open gate 
 to a conveniently stripped rafter of the pigsty. 
 ' Good-evening to ye, Misther Donovan,' 
 she said, in a voice that lent added violence 
 to the loud, argumentative Southern brogue. 
 She took from between her teeth a large 
 
UNWRITTEN LA IV. 19 
 
 brass pin, which slightly thickened her utter- 
 ance, and spearing through a thick flannel 
 petticoat with it, immediately addressed her- 
 self, as usual, to the topic uppermost in her 
 mind : * Nothing would sarve that brayching 
 little robber of a red heifer but to ate the tail 
 out of me new petticoat ! Faith, I knew by 
 her she was watching me spreadin' it above 
 on the bushes ; but she's that 'cute, she never 
 came next nor nigh it till she got me 
 within in the house, and I never felt her then 
 till she had it ate. Faith ! it's up this night 
 into Dhrimnahoon she'll go. Maybe she 
 won't lep them walls so handy, for as clever 
 as she is !' 
 
 During this address, Donovan had got out 
 of his trap, and he stood waiting in silence 
 till it was ended. 
 
 * I think ye'd do well, Mrs. Leonard,' he 
 said slowly, ' to send no more cattle out to 
 Drimnahoon.' 
 
 2 — 2 
 
20 NABOTH'S VINEYARD. 
 
 Mrs. Leonard checked herself abruptly In 
 the act of shaking out a towel. 
 
 ' And for why ?' she demanded, in a voice 
 loud enough to have been heard three fields 
 off. 
 
 Donovan looked all round the farmyard 
 before he answered. There was nothing to 
 be heard or seen except the pigs, eating 
 noisily and disgustingly in their sty, the 
 geese standing thoughtfully about on the top 
 of the manure-heap, and a few calves wait- 
 ing for their evening refection. But Dono- 
 van's slow, observant eye penetrated the 
 cavernous darkness of the cowshed, and dis- 
 covered there the figure of a man standing, 
 pitchfork in hand, in the dried bracken that he 
 had been shaking out for litter when the con- 
 versation outside had attracted his attention. 
 
 * The evening^s turning a trifle cold,* 
 observed the hotel-keeper, as if Mrs. Leonard 
 had not spoken. ' If it's agree'ble to ye, I'll 
 
UNWRITTEN LAW. 21 
 
 Step inside to the fire. Here, Dan,' he called ; 
 * come out and put a hand to the mare for 
 awhile.' 
 
 The man In the cowhouse put down his 
 fork, and slouching across the slushy yard 
 without looking at Donovan, took up his 
 position at the mare's head. In the distance 
 his strong rounded shoulders and thickset 
 figure had made him appear a middle-aged 
 man, so that It was almost startling to see 
 that his face was that of a sullen, ugly young 
 fellow of two or three and twenty : In colour 
 a brickdust pink ; in shape, a pudding that 
 has defied the restraining Influences of the 
 pudding-cloth ; In general effect, a remarkable 
 confirmation of the theory that those who 
 live on potatoes finally acquire a likeness to 
 that vegetable. Perhaps the strangest thing 
 about Dan Hurley's looks was the thatch of 
 pale hair that hung to his eyes in front, and 
 nearly touched the collar of his flannel jacket 
 
22 NABOTWS VINEYARD. 
 
 behind. It was almost white, and, con- 
 trasting with the darker tone of his face, 
 gave his light eyes an unnatural stare and 
 prominence. 
 
 Donovans eye rested on him with dis- 
 favour, and as he followed Mrs. Leonard into 
 the house he said, loud enough to be heard 
 by Dan : 
 
 * If that was my servant-boy I'd learn him 
 the manners to put his hand tc his hat when 
 he's spoke to by his betthers.' 
 
 ' His manners is good enough for me,' 
 responded Mrs. Leonard, with a sound in 
 her voice indicative of a gathering storm. 
 She dragged forward a chair for her guest, 
 and then, addressing herself to a big pot of 
 cabbage, that was bubbling over the turf fire 
 and blocking its friendly blaze, she hoisted 
 it off its hook and set it down on the earthen 
 floor with a thump. The demands of polite- 
 ness to a visitor had been fulfilled. 
 
UNWRITTEN LA W. 23 
 
 * And now maybe ye'll tell me what's this 
 ye're sayin' to me about Dhrimnahoon,' 
 she said. 
 
 Donovan settled himself in his chair, and 
 cleared his throat impressively. 
 
 * Well, Mrs. Leonard/ he began with a 
 moderation born of superiority, * I don't 
 doubt but ye'll remember the surkumstances 
 that was taking place on that farm of Drim- 
 nahoon all these months back. You know 
 very well the way poor James Mahony had 
 to quit out of it, because he couldn't pay the 
 rack-rent, and the risolewtions that the 
 League passed in regard of it ' 
 
 Mrs. Leonard had been stooping over the 
 pot, stirring and breaking up the cabbage in 
 it, while Donovan spoke, but at this point 
 she straightened herself up. 
 
 ' There's no one need come here to tell me 
 about the Land Laygue !' she shouted ; M'm 
 as good a mimber as there is in it. I pay 
 
24 NABOTH'S VINEYARD. 
 
 my dues regular, and I thank my God I'm 
 able to do it, and no thanks to annyone in the 
 counthry !' 
 
 Whenever Mrs. Leonard thanked her God 
 in this aggressive manner it might safely be 
 assumed that her temper and her self-esteem 
 had risen to boiling-point. She stood with 
 the steaming pot-stick clenched in her right 
 hand, and glared at Donovan through the 
 fumes of the cabbage. 
 
 ' There's no one disputin ye' re not a good 
 Leaguer, Mrs. Leonard,' he said with the 
 same exasperating suavity ; ' and that was 
 what was surprisin' us that you'd be the one 
 to take a farm that was boycotted by ordhers 
 from Head Quarthers.' 
 
 * An' didn't me own mother's brother have 
 that land before Jamesy Mahony took it ?' 
 replied Mrs. Leonard, still in the high key of 
 righteous indignation ; * an' I never thought 
 to take It till I heard Tom Carey was applyin' 
 
UNWRITTEN LA W. 25 
 
 for it — him that's the landlords' man and 
 never ped a penny to the Laygue — ''an 
 sure," says I, ''isn't it betther a good 
 Layguer should have it than the likes of 
 him?"' W 
 
 Donovan rose to his feet and let his cold 
 fishy eye rest on her excited face. 
 
 ' Ye'll please to take notice now,' he said, 
 'that as President of the Rossbrin Branch, 
 I have inforrmed you that the ordhers of the 
 League is that you give up the farm of Drim- 
 nahoon. And as a friend I may tell ye that 
 we cannot be responsible if outrages occurs. 
 There is them in this counthry that cares 
 nayther for the Law nor the League, so long 
 as they'll get quit of land-grabbers. 'Tisn't 
 so long since Captain Moonlight was heard 
 of hereabouts.' 
 
 * To the divil I pitch Captain Moonlight !' 
 retorted Mrs. Leonard unhesitatingly, with 
 defiant arms akimbo ; * and my answer to the 
 
26 NABOTH'S VINEYARD, 
 
 Laygue is that when I give over payin' me 
 subscription it'll be time for them to be givin' 
 me their ordhers about me own uncle's land ; 
 but as long as I'm payin' regular there's no 
 one has any call to intherfare with me !' 
 
 She received no answer. Donovan was 
 already half-way to the door, his face showing 
 no irritation or wish to prove his case. This 
 departure in silence was the most effective he 
 could possibly have chosen, a fact of which 
 he was well aware, so it was especially an- 
 noying that just as he reached the door it 
 was flung open in his face and a heavy can 
 of milk was set down at his very feet, block- 
 ing his exit and surprising him into an un- 
 dignified backwards start. 
 
 ' Who's that ? Can't ye mind where ye're 
 comin' I' he said sharply ; then recognising 
 Dan in the dark entry : ' What the devil 
 business had you to leave the mare ?' 
 
 * It was carry in' in the can of milk he was 
 
UNWRITTEN LA W. 27 
 
 for me, MIsther Donovan,' replied a girl's 
 voice apologetically. 
 
 ' 'Twould be betther for him to do as he's 
 bid,' replied Donovan, shouldering past Dan 
 into the vard. 
 
 * And what call had he to obey your ordhers 
 more than my daughther's ?' screamed the 
 widow from within, hurrying forth to do battle. 
 * It's you he may thank that he's a sarvant- 
 boy this day, an' he knows that well 1 A 
 grand Land Layguer ye are to be talkin' 
 to me about Dhrimnahoon, an' you fattening 
 yer bastes on the land that was his mother's 
 till ye dhruv her to the workhouse !' 
 
 ' Ah, whisht, mother !' said the girl, who 
 seemed to hold Donovan in far more awe 
 than did her stalwart parent. ' I'm very 
 sorry, Misther Donovan. I thought the 
 horse would stand.' 
 
 This fact was at the moment self-evident, 
 the mare's head being drooped between her 
 
28 NABOTWS VINEYARD. 
 
 knees in a sluggish doze ; but Donovan dis- 
 regarded the apology. He climbed into his 
 trap, and then, as he slowly dragged the 
 mare's head round towards the gate, he turned 
 to Ellen Leonard. 
 
 * Maybe ye've more sense than your 
 mother, and if ye have I tell ye it'll be the 
 best of your play to make her mind what I'm 
 afther sayin' to her about that farm of Drim- 
 nahoon/ 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 MRS. DONOVAN AT HOME. 
 
 The fish-steamer had slowly and cautiously- 
 picked her way through her little fleet of 
 satellites, the brown-sailed fishing boats, and 
 had disappeared round the eastern point of 
 the harbour with her cargo of tightly-packed 
 fish-barrels. The dark breath from her 
 funnel smeared the faint rose-colour of the 
 sky, and the foam of her wake still swam on 
 the smooth ripples round the smart yellow 
 punt in which Rick O' Grady was pulling 
 himself ashore. He rowed fast ; the October 
 air was fresh and sharp, and he had been for 
 several hours watching the slow stowing of 
 
30 NABOTWS VINEYARD. 
 
 his fish-barrels in the steamer's hold, so that 
 the exertion was pleasant to him. Every- 
 thing seemed pleasant to him this afternoon, 
 as his vigorous strokes sent the punt along 
 towards the quay. A delightful sense of 
 prosperous well-being was upon him. The 
 cargo he had just sent off was an unusually 
 large one, and he was feeling, not for the 
 first time, all the keen exhilaration of having 
 in the face of opposition started a new enter- 
 prise and carried it through by force of his 
 own pluck and longheadedness. 
 
 Fish-buying on this large scale was a 
 new trade in Rossbrin ; and when Rick came 
 home from America, and, instead of being 
 content to invest his savings in land, or in 
 the manner still more sanctified by custom, 
 a public-house, set to work to buy barrels 
 and build stores, the opinion of the place 
 was that Rick O'Grady's folly was pitiable, 
 if not impertinent. That was six months 
 
MRS. BONO VAN AT HOME. 3 1 
 
 ago, and already the local sages had changed 
 their tune, and pointed to the big stores on 
 the quay as a fitting embodiment of their 
 views on the investment of capital. 
 
 Rick had been thrown early on his own 
 resources, and he had hitherto found him- 
 self rather more than equal to any emergency 
 that life had offered him. If he was self- 
 confident, he had been justified by success ; 
 and though it may be at once admitted that 
 there was nothing at all remarkable about 
 him, except perhaps his good looks, he had 
 a certain stirring, practical quality that always 
 kept him in 'the movement,' whatever it 
 might be. Even in a society so little given 
 to gush as a ^ Pork-circle ' in Chicago, his 
 push and his clear views about his own 
 interests had wrung from a rival the grati- 
 fying if obscure commendation — * There ain't 
 no flies on him! In fact, he was one of 
 those fortunate persons whose brains are so 
 
32 NABOTH'S VINEYARD. 
 
 nicely proportioned to their ambitions that 
 failure is a word of which they have very 
 Httle practical experience. 
 
 It has been insinuated that his good looks 
 were remarkable, but it must be confessed 
 that they were not of a pre-eminently 
 classical or intellectual type. His reddish- 
 brown hair curled a trifle too redundantly on 
 his broad, low forehead. His nose, though 
 straight and well shaped, was put on at a 
 more salient angle than is common in Greek 
 art. In spite of the thick, dark brows above 
 them, his sea-blue eyes contrasted rather too 
 brilliantly with his flamboyant, yellow - red 
 moustache and fresh-coloured face, and his 
 head, though small and well set on his 
 square shoulders, had that thickness above 
 the ears which, though it has the merit of 
 betokening force of character, undeniably 
 spoils its contour. 
 
 The punt was soon in the clear, shallow 
 
MRS. DONOVAN AT HOME. 33 
 
 water alongside the slip, and Rick made her 
 fast and started up the hill with the air of a 
 man who has no time to spare. As he 
 turned the corner by the two large sycamore- 
 trees he paused to look at his watch before 
 attacking the steepest pinch of the ascent. 
 
 * Half-past four already,' he thought ; ' an 
 I told her I'd be there by four. Well, afther 
 
 all ' He did not finish his thought 
 
 intelligibly, but with a half-smile and shrug 
 of his shoulders went quickly on up the hill, 
 with his eyes bent downwards towards the 
 ground, as men are said to look when they 
 think about the past. 
 
 There was only one customer in the bar 
 of Donovan's hotel — an old woman buying 
 tobacco, who moved respectfully to one side 
 to make way for the young man when his 
 light, strong figure appeared in the door- 
 way. The boy who had brought Donovan's 
 trap to the door jumped off a cask in the 
 
 3 
 
34 NABOTH'S VINEYARD. 
 
 corner, and hurriedly concealing the jew's- 
 harp that had solaced his leisure moments, 
 delivered himself of his message in a slightly 
 amended form. 
 
 ' Misther Donovan's gone to Scariff, and 
 ye' re to step inside in the parlour to wait for 
 him r 
 
 He opened the door at the end of the 
 shop, and Rick passed through it into a 
 dark little passage that smelt like a lodging- 
 house cupboard — a cupboard in which cheese, 
 bread, and mice have been kept. A little 
 light came from three panes of glass in a 
 door at the end of it ; Rick knocked, 
 and a voice from inside told him to come 
 in. 
 
 Harriet Donovan was sitting in state in 
 her parlour. She was working at a white 
 crochet antimacassar, a companion to those 
 which were hanging cheerlessly over the 
 mahogany backs of the * suite of dining-room 
 
MRS. BONO VAN AT HOME. 35 
 
 chairs/ which her husband had, on the 
 occasion of his wedding, purchased at a 
 forced sale of one of his numerous creditors. 
 The fire was burning briskly in the small 
 grate, but there was scarcely an ash on *the 
 polished hearthstone, and the mustiness of 
 the room was sufficient testimony to the 
 fact that it had only been lighted an hour 
 ago. The round oilcloth-covered table was 
 bare of any adornments save a tall vase of 
 artificial flowers, two or three books of 
 gilded devotional exterior, and a tray with 
 glasses and a black bottle of wine on it. 
 
 Mrs. Donovan did not rise as her visitor 
 came in ; on the contrary, she leaned back 
 with as good an imitation of fashionable 
 indolence as her high-backed armchair would 
 permit of, and extended a large and passably 
 white hand to her guest. 
 
 ' I'm very sorry if I kept you waiting, Mrs. 
 Donovan; I couldn't be here earlier,' Rick 
 
 3—2 
 
36 NABOTWS VINEYARD. 
 
 said as he took her hand and shook it with 
 the peculiarly hearty ungracefulness of his 
 class. * The steamer was late startin'/ 
 
 He knew as he said it that in making an 
 apology he was placing himself at a dis- 
 advantage, but he was one of those fortunate 
 young men who had no objection to placing 
 himself at a disadvantage with a woman, 
 experience having shown him that such a 
 position tended not infrequently to the 
 strengthening of his hand. 
 
 Harriet instantly assumed the expected 
 attitude. 
 
 'Oh don't mention it, Mr. O'Grady! 
 'Deed, I scarcely expected you, you were so 
 uncertain about it yesterday ; and I thought 
 it was Mr. Donovan you wanted to see.' 
 As she spoke she was conscious of the 
 accusing presence of the festive preparations 
 on the table. * Mr. Donovan left a bottle 
 of port-wine out on the chance you'd come,' 
 
MRS. DO NO VAN AT HOME. 37 
 
 she said ; ' won't ye take a glass while ye're 
 waiting for him ?' 
 
 Rick helped himself, and placed a chair 
 close to hers. 
 
 * Ye might know Td come when I told ye 
 I would,' he said, with a little judicious 
 pathos in his voice, ' mightn't ye, now ?' 
 
 Mrs. Donovan did not answer, unless the 
 threefold energy with which she applied 
 herself to her crochet, and the slow, dark 
 spread of colour in her "pale face, amounted 
 to a reply. . 
 
 Rick finished his glass of wine with a 
 toss, and wiped his aggressive moustache 
 with the back of his hand. He had played 
 the game of making love to Harriet Kelly 
 many years ago with considerable zest . 
 but now that it seemed open to him 
 to begin it over again on more exciting, if 
 more perilous lines, he found it had lost its 
 charm. 
 
38 NABOTH'S VINEYARD. 
 
 * Well, now, what's this that John wants to 
 speak to me about ?' he said, changing the 
 conversation to a more practical topic ; * is it 
 League business, or what ?' 
 
 Whatever Harriet's feelings may have 
 been at this abrupt transition from romance 
 to business, she concealed them very suc- 
 cessfully. 
 
 ' Indeed, I know very little about his 
 business one way or the other,' she answered 
 coldly, ' I believe it's something about that 
 boycotted farm that Mrs. Leonard is after 
 taking. He got a notification about it from 
 the Secretary, in X , yesterday.' 
 
 * It's a good farm,' Rick said meditatively. 
 ' Mahony was a fool to go leave it the way 
 he did !' 
 
 ' Maybe he's sorry enough now,' said Har- 
 riet, with a short laugh ; ' and I wouldn't say 
 but Mrs. Leonard '11 be sorry enough too 
 before she's done.' 
 
MRS. BONO VAN AT HOME. 39 
 
 Rick was silent, as was his manner on 
 receiving information that required to be 
 assorted and compared with what he already 
 possessed. It was characteristic of him that 
 in small matters as well as in great he 
 shielded his opinions in this way, using 
 quite instinctively the best and least offensive 
 method, without an idea of its value. He 
 had lately joined the Rossbrin branch of 
 the Land League, and he knew most of the 
 circumstances in connection with the farm of 
 Drimnahoon. What he did not know was 
 the extent to which the president, John 
 Donovan, trusted his wife. For his part, in 
 spite of, or perhaps in consequence of, his 
 early knowledge of her, he felt inclined to 
 proceed with caution. 
 
 *Well, there's no sayin' how things will 
 happen,' he said ; ' but I thought likely the 
 widow 'd have more trouble out of that than 
 she bargained for.' Then, irrelevantly : 
 
40 NA BOTE'S VINEYARD. 
 
 * That daughter of hers is a nate little 
 piece.' 
 
 Harriet studied the white cotton petals of 
 one of her crocheted roses with a smile that 
 made her lips look thin. 
 
 * They say Dan Hurley, her mother's 
 servant-boy, thinks the same.' 
 
 ' Is it that white-headed bosthoon that was 
 in chapel with them last Sunday ?' said Rick 
 incredulously. ' He's as ugly as if he was 
 bespoke !' 
 
 'You've hit it now, said Harriet with 
 another laugh, * for that's just what he is. 
 Indeed, they're all saying that the widow 
 must be hard set for a son-in-law, if that's 
 the best she can get for her daughter ! 
 Well ! Maybe she thinks she'd rather be 
 sure, than sorry with ne'er a one at all.' 
 
 Rick got up from his chair and began to 
 study the oleograph of Mr. Parnell which 
 occupied the place of honour over the narrow 
 
MRS. BONO VAN AT HOME. 4 1 
 
 mantelshelf, as if the subject had ceased to 
 interest him. 
 
 Harriet felt that she had overshot her 
 mark, and her irritated inner consciousness 
 told her the thought that was passing through 
 Rick's mind with unconscious cynicism— the 
 thought that it was not advisable for him to 
 praise another woman to Mrs. Donovan. She 
 looked up at him with eyes in which some- 
 thing had subdued their usual daring, but her 
 wish to recover her lost ground could find no 
 better utterance than to say : 
 
 ' However, it's little I know of Ellen 
 Leonard, one way or the other. I dare say 
 it's only foolish talking, after all.' Then, after 
 an instant, tense with the strain of repressing 
 some wild speech or other, she went on : 'I'm 
 sorry you have to be kept here waiting so 
 long for John. It isn't usual with him to be 
 so late. Won't you sit down and take another 
 glass of wine ?' 
 
42 NABOTWS VINEYARD. 
 
 In his secret soul Rick would have been 
 glad to hear the hotel-keeper's heavy step 
 in the little passage, but he turned from his 
 meditation on the melancholy features of the 
 uncrowned king, and said, with a smile that 
 showed his white teeth to great advantage : 
 
 * There's no reason ye should be sorry for 
 me, Mrs. Donovan, so long as I'm not sorry 
 for myself — but for all that, I'm afraid I can't 
 make much more delay.' 
 
 She thought him the most beautiful crea- 
 ture she had ever seen, as he stood twisting 
 his orange-coloured moustache and smiling 
 irresolutely at her. He had changed a good 
 deal since the old days, when all Rossbrin 
 knew that he was ' afther Harriet Kelly/ 
 and a sudden fierce hatred filled her for the 
 girl who had allowed him to go to America 
 in disgust with her and all things, because 
 she had thrown him over to marry the richest 
 man in Rossbrin. 
 
MRS. BONO VAN AT HOME. 43 
 
 * It's like old times, havin' you here/ she 
 said almost timidly — 'the times before you 
 went to America. You used to call me 
 "Harriet" then.' 
 
 His self-possession did not prevent him 
 from looking rather foolish. 
 
 * Oh, that's a long time ago,' he said with 
 some embarrassment. ' There's been many 
 a change since then.' 
 
 ' I know there has,' Harriet murmured, 
 almost inaudibly ; and then, fixing her dark 
 eyes on his face with such intensity that a 
 fire seemed to kindle in them, * Rick !' she 
 faltered, ' are ye angry with me still for the 
 way I threated ye T 
 
 It was the only unpractical point in Rick's 
 character that he could seldom find it in his 
 heart to say anything that would hurt a 
 woman's feelings. 
 
 'Angry with ye ! Indeed, ye know I wasn't 
 — at least — of course ' he stammered. 
 
44 NABOTWS VINEYARD. 
 
 The swing-door between the shop and the 
 passage creaked on its hinges, and the high 
 husky voice that Harriet was learning to hate 
 was heard giving an order to someone out- 
 side. 
 
 Rick made a snatch at his smart deer- 
 stalker cap, and going out into the passage, 
 he greeted Mr. Donovan with a heartiness 
 that was quite unaffected. 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 A MOONLIGHT PASTORAL. 
 
 The * brayching little robber of a red heifer ' 
 was absent. True to her promise, Mrs. 
 Leonard had exiled her to the farm of 
 Drimnahoon, where, round James Mahony's 
 empty house, such dainties as flannel-petti- 
 coats were not procurable. Perhaps it was 
 in search of some such relish after the mono- 
 tony of the coarse upland grass that she had 
 wandered from the herd, and drawn upon 
 herself the maledictions of Dan Hurley, who, 
 in the streaming sunrise of a wet October 
 morning, was as usual making the rounds of 
 the farm and counting the stock. 
 
46 NABOTH'S VINEYARD. 
 
 She was certainly not in the field where 
 the other cattle had spent the night. Dan 
 counted them all : nine of them, standing 
 stupidly about in the thick mist, or discon- 
 solately nosing at the soaked grass ; but the 
 tenth, the costliest and best-looking heifer of 
 them all, was nowhere to be seen. Dan 
 crossed the little stream that came oozing 
 down among the rocks and tufts of heather 
 from the height at the back of the farm, 
 and walked along the muddy grass-track in 
 the next field, towards a ragged plantation 
 of larch and laurel. The red heifer was 
 noted as a fencer, and knowledge of her 
 power of ' breaching ' a wall made Dan 
 tolerably certain that he would find her 
 in the plantation luxuriously tearing the 
 leaves off the laurels that formed its under- 
 growth. 
 
 But the weak spot in the fence, which she 
 would inevitably have found out, was not 
 
A MOONLIGHT PASTORAL. 47 
 
 broken through, and a search of the plan- 
 tation proved fruitless. 
 
 * Unless she's above in the cabbage-garden,' 
 said Dan to himself, * she's every shtep of the 
 way back to Scariff this minnit — bad luck to 
 her!' 
 
 He climbed clumsily out over the wall, and 
 went quickly up the cart-track towards the 
 cottage, behind which a plot of tilled ground 
 still showed some heads of cabbages among 
 the weeds. The house hid the cabbage- 
 garden from his sight; but as Dan passed 
 through the gateway into the little yard, he 
 saw that his search was at an end. 
 
 There, tumbled up against the shut door of 
 the cabin, lay the red heifer, dead, in a pool of 
 her own blood that had flowed from a dozen 
 gashes in her sleek skin. Fastened to the 
 door was a dirty sheet of copybook paper, 
 with a few crooked lines of writing on it. 
 Dan walked up to it with a strange trembling 
 
48 NABOTWS VINEYARD. 
 
 all over him. The gusts of mist had driven 
 against the door since long before sunrise, 
 and had blurred the misshapen letters, so 
 that he found some difficulty in reading 
 it. 
 
 * Take notis, that this is the way I will 
 sarve all Land-grabbers. 
 
 *Captin Moonlight/ 
 
 The usual conventional coffin, barbarously 
 drawn, put a portentous end to this announce- 
 ment. Dan looked fearfully round the yard. 
 For anything he knew, Captain Moonlight 
 was waiting to carry out his threat : perhaps 
 the barrel of his gun was at this minute being 
 steadied on the sill of one of the little cabin 
 windows, and was pointing through a broken 
 pane at him. The thought kept him fixed 
 where he was standing, with the veins of his 
 head throbbing as if a force-pump were at 
 work there, and his ugly face turning a sort 
 
A MOONLIGHT PASTORAL. 49 
 
 of blotched gray in colour. After what 
 seemed to him several minutes, he ventured 
 to turn round and look about him. There 
 were the marks of feet in the mud, but no 
 other intimation of human presence was 
 visible. He gathered courage from the 
 stillness to take the paper off the door, and 
 walk away from the house, glancing furtively 
 from side to side as he went. 
 
 As soon as he was in the lane he began 
 to run, and, once started, ran faster and faster 
 till he was out in the middle of the big bare 
 field where he had left the rest of the cattle. 
 He stood still there, panting as if he had 
 run a very long distance, and taking the 
 paper out of his pocket, tried to read its 
 contents again ; but he felt himself swaying 
 from side to side, and the words swam 
 before his eyes and faded in a red pulsating 
 mist. A cold sweat broke out all over 
 him, tangible darkness seemed to press in 
 
 4 , 
 
50 NABOTWS VINEYARD. 
 
 upon his spinning brain, then a horror like 
 death. 
 
 ***** 
 When he next knew anything he found 
 himself lying on the drenched grass, with 
 stiffened legs drawn up under him, and ice- 
 cold fingers twisted into the coarse tufts of 
 grass. He sat up with difficulty, while 
 recollection of what had happened came 
 slowly back to him. The last time he had 
 had a seizure of this kind had been that day, 
 years ago, when he had watched the work- 
 house van carrying his mother away, and 
 someone — who was it ? — had given him a 
 blow with a stick, and told him he'd have 
 to work now if he didn't want to go to the 
 house too. He had forgotten that blow till 
 now ; it had been blotted out somehow by 
 what had followed it. He struggled on to 
 his feet, still trying to clear his confused 
 mind, when he saw on the ground the paper 
 
A MOONLIGHT PASTORAL. 51 
 
 that he had taken off the door. He picked 
 it up, and as he read the words scrawled 
 on it, the name of the giver of that long-for- 
 gotten blow came to him like a hint mys- 
 teriously given to help him to the answer 
 of this dark riddle. 
 
 In a mind like his, thought is scarcely a 
 coherent process, but resolves itself into a 
 succession of more or less crude emotions. 
 Dan had passed from fright to a kind of 
 slow rage, which was gradually, whether 
 reasonably or no, concentrating itself upon 
 one object, the man who from his childhood 
 had seemed to him the origin of evil as far 
 as he was concerned. If John Donovan had 
 known the oaths and inarticulate threats of 
 hatred and vengeance that were being 
 levelled against him from the cold pastures 
 of the boycotted farm of Drimnahoon, his 
 slumbers in his comfortable feather - bed 
 would have been somewhat disturbed, even 
 
 4—2 
 
 k 
 
52 NABOTH'S VINEYARD. 
 
 though he might have considered that his 
 conscience was technically clear in the matter. 
 To Dan, this attack upon property which he 
 regarded as all but his own seemed the natural 
 culmination of a spite which had shadowed 
 him all his life, and the hatred that had been 
 coiled sluggishly about his heart woke to 
 a quick venomous life. 
 
 The Widow Leonard was an early riser, 
 and her household necessarily followed in her 
 vigorous footsteps. At half- past six o'clock, 
 Bridget, the elephantine servant-girl, was 
 giving the pigs their steaming breakfast of 
 black potatoes when Dan came into the yard. 
 
 ' Ye're home soon, Danny,' she remarked, 
 rubbing the potato flour off her thick arms ; 
 ' ye won't get yer brekfish this half-hour.' 
 Then suddenly fixing her eyes on his face, 
 ' Why, thin, what ails ye, at all ?' she ex- 
 claimed. ' Is it sick y'are }' 
 
 Dan's only answer was to walk past her 
 
A MOONLIGHT PASTORAL. 53 
 
 to the cowhouse, from whose open door came 
 the steady, quiet sound of milking. 
 
 Ellen was there, looking, had Dan had the 
 eyes to see it, the realization of all pastoral 
 romance, sitting on a low stool, with her 
 fair head leaned against the rough black side 
 of the cow that she was milking, and with 
 the pale morning light touching her slender 
 figure Into emphasis against the dark back- 
 ground of the cowhouse. Her face was of 
 a type more common in the South of Ireland 
 than is generally supposed : a long, almost 
 melancholy oval, with straight brows and 
 grave gray eyes ; a beautiful face and a 
 conscientious one, with the smooth half-moon- 
 shaped forehead that generally implies moral 
 rather than intellectual strength. 
 
 She had heard Dan's footstep in the yard, 
 and looked round as he came in. He came 
 over and stood beside her silently. Some- 
 thing indefinable about him struck Ellen ; 
 
54 NABOTWS VINEYARD. 
 
 she stopped her milking, and, looking hard 
 at him, said, as Bridget had done : 
 
 * Why Dan, what ails ye ? What brings 
 ye home so early ?' 
 
 Dan passed the back of his hand across 
 his dry lips before he spoke ; then he said 
 hoarsely : 
 
 'The big red heifer's killed above, in 
 Drimnahoon !' 
 
 * Almighty God !' ejaculated Ellen, starting 
 up ; * what killed her ?' 
 
 ' They have her near cut to pieces, lyin' 
 bet up agin Jim Mahony's door,' continued 
 Dan in the same husky whisper, ' and this 
 writin' on the door over her,' producing the 
 paper from his pocket. * He may call 
 himself "• Captin Moonlight " — the d— d 
 ruffin I — but as sure as I'm alive this day, 
 I know well who 'twas !' 
 
 ' And who was it, Dan ?' gasped 
 Ellen. 
 
A MOONLIGHT PASTORAL. 55 
 
 Dan's light eyes peered furtively round 
 the cowhouse, and finally rested on Ellen's 
 white, excited face. 
 
 ' 'T would be no good for me to tell ye,' 
 he said at length, regarding her with an ex- 
 pression in which cunning was curiously 
 blended with fondness. * But I'll tell ye this 
 much, that 'twould be besht for us to give up 
 Dhrlmnahoon.' 
 
 * Me mother '11 never give it up !' cried 
 Ellen, the tears that followed on the shock 
 now running down her cheeks. * Oh, Dan 
 asthore, we're disthroyed ! What'll we do 
 at all !' 
 
 She seized his hand in her distress, and 
 with her other hand over her swimming eyes, 
 she swayed herself to and fro In a kind 
 of distraction. 
 
 There was not much of manhood or 
 courage in Dan, but what there was came 
 uppermost at this crisis. 
 
56 NABOTH'S VINEYARD. 
 
 * Ah, now, don't be cryin',' he said, putting 
 his arm awkwardly round her waist. * Sure, 
 they'll have to kill me first before I'll let any 
 harm happen to ye 1' 
 
 His voice shook with the unwonted wave 
 of feeling, and its meaning penetrated 
 through Ellen's fears. She drew herself 
 quickly away from him and let go his 
 hand. 
 
 * But mother, Dan !' she said ; * ye didn't 
 tell me mother yet ! Let me into the house 
 till I tell her.' 
 
 She ran out of the cowhouse before he 
 had time to stop her, and hurried across 
 the yard to the cottage, on the threshold of 
 which her mother was shrilly calling the 
 chickens to their morning meal. 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 EXCLUSIVE DEALING. 
 
 A FEW days after Mrs. Leonard had received 
 the news of the slaughter of her heifer, Mr. 
 John Donovan spent a long afternoon at home 
 in a manner sufficiently agreeable to himself. 
 He had magnanimously given permission 
 to his two servants to attend in company a 
 funeral in the neighbourhood, being aware 
 that such an attraction as a * berryin' ' would 
 empty Rossbrin of most of its inhabitants, and 
 bring business to a standstill for the time. 
 
 His accounts kept him pleasantly engaged 
 during the slow progress of one uneventful 
 hour, and having finished them, he settled 
 
58 NABOTWS VINEYARD. 
 
 himself comfortably down to read the Free- 
 maits Journal, with his back against a line of 
 mahogany drawers, and his hat tilted over his 
 eyes. He gave his whole attention to what 
 he was reading, whispering the words to him- 
 self with a carefulness that would have been 
 vastly flattering to the editor ; but not a foot- 
 fall in the street escaped his practised ear, 
 and the infrequent passer-by was followed for 
 a moment by a sharp glance from under the 
 brim of the seedy pot-hat which was conse- 
 crated to use in the shop. 
 
 It is not, perhaps, out of place to note the 
 habit that prevails among tradesmen of Mr. 
 Donovan's class of wearing a hat while 
 administering the affairs of the shop. It 
 seems to have a threefold purpose : it speaks 
 the master of the house, and his authority, to 
 the poorer customers ; it gives, in the taking 
 of it off, a more finished respect for the 
 ' quality,' and its final, and perhaps most 
 
EXCLUSIVE DEALING, 59 
 
 interesting, expression is its hint of other and 
 outside affairs, in which the counter and the 
 scales are but an interlude. 
 
 In spite of the air of contented languor 
 which apparently pervaded Mr. Donovan on 
 this quiet afternoon, a very close observer 
 might have detected in him some slight 
 touch of expectation, or waiting for some 
 person or event that delayed in coming. 
 Once he had even reached out a big hand 
 and moved a little on one side a decanter of 
 mahogany-coloured sherry that stood in the 
 line of those quick looks out of the window. 
 He had finished the Freeman, from the fiery 
 leaders down to the last delusive paragraphic 
 advertisement, when a shadow fell on the 
 paper that was lying on his knees, and 
 he had only just time to take it up, and 
 seemingly absorb himself in its innermost 
 depths, before Ellen Leonard came into the 
 shop. 
 
6o NABOTWS VINEYARD. 
 
 She hesitated for a minute, looking from 
 one counter to the other, until a rustle from 
 the newspaper made Donovan's presence 
 known to her. The plaid shawl that she 
 wore over her head and shoulders hid most 
 of her face ; it might have been its shadow 
 that lay darkly under her gray eyes, and 
 gave her a look of such weariness and dejec- 
 tion that Mr. Donovan was hard put to it to 
 keep his thick lips from widening into a grin 
 as he noted it ; and noting, too, the whiteness 
 of the cheeks, and the trembling of the small 
 brown hand that rested on the counter, he 
 thought how smartly the admirable discipline 
 of the boycott was being brought to bear 
 upon this daughter of revolt. 
 
 ' I want a half-pound of tay, Misther 
 Donovan, plaze,' began Ellen, setting a large 
 empty basket down on the floor beside her, 
 and beginning to fumble in the breast of her 
 dress for her purse ; * and ' 
 
EXCLUSIVE DEALING. 6i 
 
 ' I'm sold out of tay,' remarked Mr. 
 Donovan curtly. 
 
 * Why, then, that's what I'm afther being 
 told at Murphy's and Egan's !' said Ellen, 
 surprise dying into disappointment in her 
 voice ; ' I thought there was no fear but Td 
 get it here.' 
 
 Donovan raised the paper and lowered 
 his head to a paragraph at the foot of the 
 page, but said nothing. 
 
 * Well, would ye give me a pound of 
 sugar ' 
 
 * We don't keep sugar,' Donovan struck 
 in, with his face hidden by the paper. 
 
 ' Is it not keep sugar !' Ellen said, her 
 fatigue forgotten in her astonishment ; * why, 
 Misther Donovan, it isn't three weeks since I 
 got sugar here !' 
 
 * Well, I've none in stock to-day.' 
 Ellen's face flushed suddenlv. 
 
 *WelI, isn't it a quare thing I can get 
 
62 NABOTWS VINEYARD. 
 
 nothing I want to-day !' she said, trying to 
 speak Hghtly. 'But ye have yallow male, 
 whatever.' She pointed to a barrel of Indian 
 corn standing open by the counter. *ril be 
 obliged to ye if ye'd give me a stone of that.' 
 
 Donovan turned his newspaper inside out 
 very slowly. 
 
 * That's all ordhered by different parties,' 
 he said. 
 
 He pushed his hat back, and yawned as 
 he looked up and down the columns. 
 
 Ellen said no more. She replaced her 
 purse in her bosom, and, taking up her empty 
 basket, she went out into the street. Its 
 familiar outlines and objects were blurred by 
 the tears that fear and mortification forced 
 to her eyes, as she hurried along the uneven 
 pavement, as miserable and as hopeless as 
 James Mahony's most devoted adherent could 
 wish. She understood now the apathy of 
 that usually energetic trader, Mr. John 
 
EXCLUSIVE DEALING. 63 
 
 Donovan, and the amazing scarcity of the 
 necessaries of life in so flourishing a place 
 as Rossbrin. We fear that the quali- 
 ties of the historical heroine were want- 
 ing in Ellen. Political convictions she had 
 none, but her private opinions were, like 
 those of most women of her class, soundly 
 based on expediency, and the first resolution 
 which she came to while speeding along by 
 the high demesne wall was that that bone of 
 contention, the farm of Drimnahoon, should 
 no longer intervene between her mother's 
 household and its daily bread. 
 
 She turned in at the gate where Harriet 
 had met her husband, and struck across the 
 broad grass fields to the woods through which 
 lay the short-cut to Scariff. A thin fog was 
 rising with the sunset, and was drawing the 
 horizon into a narrow circle around her. 
 She looked back, as she closed the gate, at 
 the edge of the trees, over the dimmed 
 
1^* 
 
 64 NABOTH'S VINEYARD, 
 
 grassy stretches, and her heart shrank within 
 her with a nervousness that w^as partly 
 physical and partly superstitious, as she 
 entered the depth and silence of the woods 
 that lay between her and home. The trees 
 stood motionless and mysterious in their 
 carpet of red leaves, with the pale breath of 
 the fog creeping about their stems and closing 
 the vistas between them ; she longed for a 
 wind to drive the leaves before it, and shake 
 the ghostly branches, and deaden the loud 
 fall of her own footsteps. About half-way to 
 Scariff there came an opening in the wood : 
 a long narrow glade through which flowed a 
 river of brown bracken, with big furze bushes 
 standing in it like dark islands. Ellen walked 
 steadily on, with the bracken breast-high on 
 either side of her ; she was less frightened 
 now, but her nerves still fluttered at every 
 sound. Suddenly she stood stock-still and 
 listened. 
 
EXCLUSIVE DEALING. 65 
 
 There was a rustling^ in the wood at one 
 side of her, a breaking of branches, and 
 then a doe leaped out through the bracken, 
 bucked across the path, and was lost in an 
 instant in the covert on the other side. 
 Ellen sprang back with a startled cry, and, 
 as if in answer, there came a succession of ex- 
 cited squeals from the direction in which the 
 doe had come, and then a small nondescript 
 yellow dog darted yelping across the path, 
 running the hot scent of the doe in an anguish 
 of excitement, and a passion of belief in its 
 own powers of overtaking and slaying her. 
 A dog hunting deer in the much-poached 
 Trahartha woods was not an unusual circum- 
 stance ; of the two, it broke in rather cheer- 
 fully on the solitude, and Ellen proceeded on 
 her way with a lighter heart. She had not 
 gone many steps, however, before her terrors 
 awoke sevenfold at the dull unmistakable 
 beat of running footsteps following her up 
 
 5 
 
66 NABOTH'S VINEYARD. 
 
 the grassy path. Then a man's voice 
 shouted to her, angrily she thought, some- 
 thing that she could not understand. The 
 foolish impulse of flight overcame her, and 
 dropping her big empty market basket, 
 she ran wildly down the path, conscious to 
 agony of the hopeless lengths of lonely wood 
 that lay between her and home. 
 
 She ran fast, but her pursuer gained rapidly 
 on her, and it seemed to her that a dreadful 
 laugh, a laugh such as would fitly match the 
 savage motley of a moonlighter, came pant- 
 ingly after her. The moment of capture came 
 sooner than she had thought it must come. 
 Something, at once hard and light, came 
 down over her head and stopped her pro- 
 gress, and with a cry like a spent hare, she 
 stumbled forward on to her knees. Whatever 
 the dreadful engine with which she had been 
 snared was, it was straightway lifted off, and 
 an unmistakably friendly voice exclaimed : 
 
EXCLUSIVE DEALING, 67 
 
 ' Bedad ! I have ye caught at last ! Who- 
 ever ye are, ye're a good runner.' 
 
 Ellen lifted her fear-stricken face to her 
 captor, and saw Rick O'Grady standing and 
 laughing at her, holding in his hand the thing 
 in which he had encaged her, her own empty 
 basket. 
 
 ' Oh, Misther O'Grady !' she gasped, ' I 
 didn't think it was you !' 
 
 * May I be happy! But it's Ellen Leonard,' 
 responded Rick, still rather breathless, and 
 looking at her with undisguised interest and 
 amusement ; * and what in the name of for- 
 tune possessed ye to run that way ? Sure, 
 it wasn't you I was hunting at all, but me 
 dog, until I seen ye making tracks, and I was 
 bound to see who ye were, and to tell ye 
 ye'd lost your basket.' He began to laugh. 
 ' I stopped ye pretty handy now, didn't I .^' 
 
 ' I thought,' she panted — ' I thought 'twas 
 them that killed our heifer was afther me.' 
 
 5-2 
 
68 NABOTH'S VINEYARD. 
 
 ' And what made ye think such a thing as 
 that ?' said Rick, his blue eyes looking all 
 the admiration and compassion that he felt. 
 * I don't think there's any man livin' would 
 want to hurt ye !' 
 
 Ellen gave a cautious glance at his face. 
 There was no mistaking its friendliness, im- 
 possible though it seemed to reconcile it with 
 the fact that Mr. O'Grady was a prominent 
 member of the association in whose blackest 
 books she and her mother were inscribed. 
 In that instant's study of his face, however, 
 she made up her mind to trust him, with 
 a quickness that surprised herself. She 
 smoothed back the wisps of yellow hair that 
 had straggled over her forehead, and with a 
 sidelong look from under her thick eye- 
 lashes : 
 
 * If I knew it was you, I wouldn't have 
 been frightened/ she said ; * but since ever I 
 seen that paper they put up over the heifer 
 
EXCLUSIVE DEALING. 69 
 
 they killed in Dhrimnahoon, I'd be afraid of 
 everyone I meet.' 
 
 She had begun to walk on towards Scariff, 
 and Rick, still carrying her basket, strolled 
 along beside her. 
 
 ' I wouldn't mind the half them blackguards 
 would threaten ; they haven't the grit to do 
 more than kill a cow,' Rick answered, with 
 the contempt for his fellow-countrymen which 
 the Irishman usually imports from America. 
 
 ' Anyone that would slaughther an innocent 
 baste for spite would think little to kill the 
 likes of me or me mother.' She hesitated, 
 then with an anxious look up at his hand- 
 some face : * I undherstand we're to be boy- 
 cotted altogether now,' she said timidly. 
 
 Rick cleared his throat uncomfortably. 
 
 ' The League had no more to say to the 
 heifer being killed than you had yourself; 
 that was no part of the boycotting.' 
 
 Ellen saw her advantage. 
 
70 NABOTH'S VINEYARD, 
 
 ' I brought in that basket/ she said, ' the 
 way I do every week, to get it filled with the 
 little things we'd want in the house ; but 
 there was ne'er a one in Rossbrin, Misther 
 Donovan himself, nor one of them, would 
 sell me a grain of tay — no, nor sugar, nor male 
 nayther ; and 'tis the same thing to be 
 starved as killed whatever !' 
 
 Rick's eyes fell mechanically on the 
 basket on his arm. It gave admirable point 
 to her story, but he said nothing. The little 
 yellow dog had some time before returned, 
 with the guiltiest of consciences, from its pur- 
 suit of the doe, and having trotted cautiously 
 in the rear for some time, now gathered 
 courage to sneak past its master, with tail 
 sunk, and a wary eye fixed on his face. To 
 its surprise, it received no rebuke. Rick was 
 looking straight on ahead of him into the 
 foggy gloom of the wood, his mind struggling 
 with a new view of a social problem that he 
 
EXCLUSIVE DEALING. 71 
 
 thought he had mastered in every aspect. 
 He had forgotten the difficulties that attend 
 on the personal application of ah abstract 
 theory. 
 
 * Well,' he said at length, ' I think your 
 mother had best give up that farm as quick 
 as she can. She'll get no good of going agen 
 the League.' 
 
 * I know that well,' Ellen answered with 
 pathetic conviction ; * but ye might as well be 
 talking to them that's dead as to me mother. 
 I think if she seen every cow she has, and 
 me with them, killed forninst her two eyes, 
 'twould be the same story with her — she'd 
 howld on to Dhrimnahoon.' 
 
 Her voice broke a little as she ended, and 
 she put out her hand and let it fall to her 
 side with a gesture of utter dejection. They 
 had walked fast, and were now almost at the 
 farther verge of the wood, and they could 
 hear in front of them the Rowrie River fight- 
 
72 NABOTH'S VINEYARD. 
 
 ing its way downwards between high rocky 
 banks to the sea. Just where the path 
 emerged from the wood stood the low, roof- 
 less ruin of a mill, a desolate place, with its 
 gray stones held together by the thick ropes 
 of ivy that had knotted themselves round it. 
 The timbers of the wheel had long ago rotted 
 away from the rusty iron axle that projected 
 from the gable-end above the river ; the mill- 
 stones lay on the earthen floor inside, half 
 hidden by dead leaves, and the foot-bridge 
 that had been the mill's connecting-link with 
 the Scariff side of the river was now no more 
 than a couple of long fir-trees, laid across the 
 narrow gorge, with slimy, decaying logs 
 nailed side by side upon them to make a 
 footway, and a thin wooden rail on one side, 
 intended to impart security, but far more 
 calculated to betray any trust rashly placed 
 in it. 
 
 At the bridge Ellen turned. 
 
EXCLUSIVE DEALING. 73 
 
 ' Thank you for carryin' the basket/ she 
 said, putting out her hand for it. 
 
 Rick could see her face clearly in the com- 
 parative lightness outside the wood, and 
 could note the plaintive droop of lips whose 
 perfectness he only dimly felt, and the traces 
 of tears under the soft gray eyes. He took 
 her hand in his. 
 
 * Well, good-bye !' he said constrainedly ; 
 * here's your basket. Tm sorry I gave ye 
 such a fright in the wood.' He turned away 
 at once. 
 
 Ellen went across the bridge and up the 
 lane that led from it to her mother's house, 
 feeling that her little flicker of hope had been 
 pitilessly put out. 
 
CHAPTER Vi. 
 
 APPLIED PRINCIPLES. 
 
 A MINUTE or SO after Ellen had parted from 
 Rick O'Grady a tragedy of a small and 
 common kind was enacted within fifty yards 
 of the bridge. Between two ash • trees, 
 whose arching roots formed the openings of 
 an intricate series of rabbit burrows, ran the 
 tiny track worn by the rabbits in their soft- 
 footed goings to and fro, and here, half 
 hidden by dead leaves, had lain since mid- 
 day an unsuspected and venomous-looking 
 trap. In the twilight feeding hour its mission 
 was fulfilled, and following on the harsh 
 snap of its iron^ teeth, the still gray air 
 
APPLIED PRINCIPLES. 75 
 
 was torn by the screams of the miserable 
 little victim. 
 
 The rabbit's pangs were short. A man 
 who had a moment before started up, as if 
 from a hiding-place, in a thicket of furze, 
 near the bridge, and was standing looking at 
 Ellen Leonard's disappearing figure, turned 
 and came along towards the sound, swinging 
 by its heels a dead rabbit that he held in his 
 left hand. The brutal act of mercy to the 
 living one was quickly accomplished, and tying 
 both their hind-legs together, Dan Hurley 
 went on along the river bank with his spoil. 
 He visited two or three more traps with 
 varying success, and finally, having reached 
 the bounds of the widow's farm, he struck 
 across the fields for the house. 
 
 The small soul that dwelt in his ungainly 
 body was seething with jealous fright and 
 perplexity as he thought of the parting on 
 the bridge that he had just seen. What 
 
76 NABOTH'S VINEYARD. 
 
 right had Ellen to walk alone through the 
 woods with that — very ugly adjectives 
 rose in Dan s mind as he thought of Rick 
 O'Grady and his smart clothes. And he, 
 high up in the League, what call had he to 
 be trying to spy on them he was boycotting ? 
 It was making a fool of Ellen he was, and 
 so he, Dan, would tell her, and if she didn't 
 choose to mind him, it'd be the worse for 
 them that came between him and her. 
 
 It was quite dark when he got to the 
 cottage, and through the open half of the 
 door he saw Mrs. Leonard and Ellen at 
 their tea. He came in without speaking, 
 and, flinging down the rabbits on the dresser, 
 dragged a stool up to the table and sat down. 
 Mrs. Leonard poured him out a cup of tea 
 from the broken-nosed pot, and pushed it 
 towards him, saying : 
 
 ' There's yer tay !' 
 
 After which she fell again into a silence 
 
APPLIED PRINCIPLES. 77 
 
 which from its extreme unusualness was 
 clearly an intentional signal of wrath. 
 
 The meal was not an elaborate one : on 
 the bare boards of the table was set the tea 
 equipage, consisting of the teapot, once 
 brown, now burnt black from long stewings 
 in the hot ashes, a cracked white and blue 
 bowl full of soft sugar, a jug of milk, and a 
 large cake of home-made soda bread. From 
 this last Ellen cut an immense triano^le and 
 handed it silently to Dan. He looked about 
 for the usual coarse loaf of baker's bread, 
 which the Irish peasant has so frequently 
 the bad taste to prefer to his own admirable 
 griddle-baked bread. 
 
 * Where's the loaf-bread ?' he asked Ellen 
 in an undertone. 
 
 His voice was all that was needed to 
 loosen the impending avalanche. 
 
 ^ Ha thin ! Bread indeed !' began Mrs. 
 Leonard with a wholly inexpressible snort ; 
 
78 NABOTWS VINEYARD. 
 
 ' 'tis little baker's bread ye'll be gettin' from 
 this out ! Ye'll have to contint yerself with 
 pittaties now — for so grand as ye are, Dan 
 Hurley!' 
 
 Dan paused in the act of pulling the dough 
 out of his soda bread with his fingers. 
 
 * Why not ?' he demanded laconically. 
 
 * Why not ?' repeated the widow, her voice 
 rising to the pitch necessary for declamation. 
 ' Why not ? Ask Ellen, that has walked the 
 town of Rossbrin through and fro this day, 
 askin' for tay and sugar, and wouldn't be 
 given as much as would blind yer eye ! An' 
 me, as good a Land Layguer as any one of 
 them ; let alone John Donovan that has yer 
 mother's farm this minnit ! Aha ! well I 
 know why I'm boycotted — he have his eye 
 cocked on Dhrimnahoon for himself!' 
 
 * An' if he have,' said Ellen in the wearied 
 voice of a person who adds one more to a 
 series of disregarded arguments, ' 'tis as 
 
APPLIED PRINCIPLES. 79 
 
 good for US to give it to him. Shure the 
 world knows that whatever thing he'll want, 
 he'll never stop nor stay till he have it.' 
 
 Mrs. Leonard slopped the remains of her 
 cup of tea into her saucer with a defiant 
 flourish. 
 
 ' May this be the last dhrop of tay I put 
 into me mouth if I ever give up Dhrimna- 
 hoon to him or the likes of him I' 
 
 She took a sounding gulp from her saucer, 
 and dramatically flung the dregs into the hot 
 turf ashes on the hearth, with such a sudden- 
 ness that the musing cat retreated to the 
 fastnesses beneath the dresser with a tail 
 thickened with alarm and resentment. 
 
 Ellen leaned her head back against the 
 discoloured whitewashed wall behind her 
 and said no more. Dan stolidly went on 
 with his supper. In his heart he thought 
 Mrs. Leonard a fool even to think of pitting 
 herself against the League, but he was afraid 
 
8o NA BOTE'S VINEYARD. 
 
 to tell her so — afraid to say or do anything 
 that might lower him in her good graces. 
 He looked at Ellen furtively once or twice ; 
 the dull, jealous rage and distrust of an hour 
 ago was still hot in him, and he longed to put 
 some question that would force her to ex- 
 plain her walk through the wood with Rick 
 O'Grady. Perhaps, in the silence, the single 
 strenuous direction of his thought, insensibly 
 made a way for itself into the minds of the 
 others. 
 
 * What's this ye were tellin' me about 
 Rick O'Grady ?' resumed the widow, who 
 had taken up her knitting and was working 
 at it with incredible speed. * Me head's that 
 moidhered that I dunno the half ye were 
 sayin'.' 
 
 ' He said what I'm saying to ye all 
 through,' responded Ellen, still leaning her 
 pretty head against the wall, as if she were 
 too tired, mentally and bodily, to move. 
 
APPLIED PRINCIPLES. 8i 
 
 * He said we should give up the farm ; he 
 was friendly enough, but that was the only 
 word he had for me !' 
 
 ' That's the fine frinnship !' hooted Mrs. 
 Leonard ; ' the divil thank him for his frinn- 
 ship ! I suppose it's all in the way of frinnship 
 that him and the rest of them are playin' on 
 us this way I B'leeve me, if 'twas in Ross- 
 brin ye were walkin' in place of the back of 
 the woods, ye'd not find him so frindly!' 
 
 At this point there broke in on her 
 discourse a prolonged and fretful bleating 
 of a calf in one of the sheds outside. 
 
 'What ails the calf this way .^' she de- 
 manded of Dan. ' Didn't Jerry feed 
 him?' 
 
 * I didn't see Jerry since dinner,' Dan 
 answered In his loud grumbling voice. 
 
 * He'd betther mind out for himself before 
 I ketch him, lavin' his work this way !' said 
 Mrs. Leonard wrathfully ; * when well he 
 
 6 
 
82 NABOTWS VINEYARD. 
 
 knows that that big flahool of a Bridget went 
 from me yistherday — may the divil roast her ! 
 and there's her work to be done, let alone 
 his own.' 
 
 * He towld me this morning his father 
 got ordhers he wouldn't be let work here 
 any more/ said Dan, 'and I dunno did 
 he go home then or no.' 
 
 The widow regarded him speechlessly, 
 as Job might have stared at the last of the 
 messengers of evil. 
 
 ' That'll do,' she said at last with a kind 
 of difficulty ; ' that'll do. When me own 
 mother's sisther's son would forbid his child 
 to work for me, I'll say no more.' Then 
 with a sudden flash : ' Can't ye go out 
 yerself, ye gommoch, and give a bit to the 
 crayture that's roarin' for it ? I suppose 
 you II be lavin' me next ? But there's no 
 fear I'll hindher ye. If there wasn't a one 
 left in this house only meself and the Lord 
 
APPLIED PRINCIPLES. 83 
 
 Almighty Pd stay in it if the town of Ross- 
 brin came to put me out !' 
 
 Instead of replying, Dan took up a bat- 
 tered tin can that stood in the corner and 
 went out. 
 
 The flame of the paraffin-lamp that hung 
 against the wall gave a smoky leap with the 
 opening and shutting of the door. It roused 
 Ellen as her mother's voice had failed to do, 
 and, getting up, she shut the door, and began 
 to tidy up the house. She got through the 
 various small household duties mechanically, 
 but with a neatness that was second nature 
 to her ; and having finally carried in a 
 heavy apronful of turf from the big rick 
 in the yard, she made up the fire, propping 
 the long brick-like sods on their ends, with 
 a skill that embodied more scientific prin- 
 ciples of firemaking than she was aware of. 
 The kindly blaze began at once to make its 
 way through the brown pile and the soft 
 
 6—2 
 
84 NABOTH'S VINEYARD. 
 
 blue smoke, and putting a stool in the 
 chimney corner, Ellen sat down with her 
 elbows propped on her knees and her tired 
 head resting in her hands. Her fingers 
 were pressed against her closed eyelids, as 
 if to enforce on herself some activity of mind, 
 to help her to think hard and quickly of 
 some plan or other by which to work on the 
 feelings of the League ; and perhaps, most 
 of all, to shut out the remembrance of its 
 president, with his fat face half buried in his 
 newspaper, and his husky voice that in three 
 commonplace sentences had explained to her 
 her position. 
 
 Her mother's needles clicked on like 
 machinery ; they were the only things 
 moving in the quiet house, except for an 
 occasional stir and sleepy croak from the 
 hens roosting on a beam at the other end 
 of the room. In the silence Ellen began 
 to realize almost wildly the horrors that 
 
APPLIED PRINCIPLES. 85 
 
 might be ahead, with no one to look to for 
 help but Dan — she lifted her head from her 
 hands at that thought with a shudder; was 
 she prepared to pay the price that she in- 
 tuitively knew Dan would be likely to set on 
 his loyalty ? 
 
 The widow moved round quickly when 
 Ellen looked up, as if to bring her knitting 
 under the light ; but quick though she was, 
 Ellen saw her put her apron to her eyes 
 for an instant. Her heart almost stood still 
 at the sight. She had never before known 
 her mother cry, and she believed that she 
 now saw the despair of the strong spirit she 
 had always leaned on. She started up, 
 intending to kneel down before her mother 
 in a last entreaty, when a step outside the 
 door made her stop short. It was not Dan's 
 hobnailed tread ; the blood rushed to her 
 face as she thought of what it might be- 
 token. The widow heard it too, and, getting 
 
86 NABOTH'S VINEYARD. 
 
 up, tramped with determination to the 
 door. 
 
 ' Who's there ?' she called out, in a voice 
 whose very ferocity bespoke an inward 
 alarm. 
 
 * A friend,' replied a voice with a slight 
 Yankee twang that seemed familiar to Ellen's 
 straining ears. 
 
 ' And what may yer name be ?' asked Mrs. 
 Leonard, still in tones of thunder. 
 
 ' I think if ye'll open the door ye'll not 
 have occasion to ask me that,' was the reply, 
 with a good-humoured laugh. 
 
 * It's all right, mother !' whispered Ellen, 
 almost laughing, too, in her relief ; * it's 
 Misther O'Grady.' 
 
 She opened the door, and they saw Rick 
 standing outside in the moonlit fog, with 
 the collar of his overcoat turned up round 
 his face, and holding in his hand a large box 
 or parcel of some kind. 
 
APPLIED PRINCIPLES. By 
 
 ' I was sorry to hear the shops in Rossbrin 
 couldn't oblige ye to-day with what ye 
 wanted/ he said, looking hard at Ellen, 
 ' and so, as I happened to have got a box 
 of groceries over in the fish - steamer, I 
 thought that maybe some of them might 
 come handy to ye.' 
 
 As he spoke he wondered whether he 
 looked like the lie he was telling, but to 
 Ellen he seemed little short of a messenger 
 from heavenly places. 
 
CHAPTER VII. 
 
 THE WAY OF TRANSGRESSORS. 
 
 The Rossbrin Roman Catholic chapel stood 
 about half a mile out of the town at the foot 
 of a high rocky hill — a long plain white- 
 washed building, distinguished only from 
 the secular barn by its abnormal size, and by 
 a small stone arch on the eastern end of 
 the roof, with a cross on the top of it. The 
 arch had been destined to hold the bell, 
 but experience having shown that the half 
 of the parish that lay on the northward 
 side of the hill could scarcely catch so much 
 as a tinkle of the most strenuous summons 
 to prayer, an ingenious change had been 
 
THE WA V OF TRANSGRESSORS. 89 
 
 made, and the bell now swung in a wooden 
 cage on the top of the hill itself, to the 
 spiritual welfare of those ultramontane 
 parishioners who did not possess a clock, 
 and the indignation of the old sexton, whose 
 duty it was to climb up the hill and 
 ring it. 
 
 November the first, All Saints' Day, is, 
 as everyone knows, a notable feast in the 
 Church of Rome, and twice on that morning 
 the shrill voice of the bell had called from 
 its furze-covered steeple to all the parish of 
 Rossbrin. The early Mass had been 
 numerously attended, but it was at eleven 
 o'clock that the congregation mustered in 
 its greatest strength, and at the close of 
 the long service the green chapel - yard 
 was scarcely large enough for the crowd 
 that streamed from the chapel doors, 
 bringing with it a tainted whiff of hot 
 air and frieze coats, and a babel of deferred 
 
90 NABOTH'S VINEYARD. 
 
 gossip in English and Irish. The day 
 was brilliantly fine, and the people were 
 in no hurry to disperse, but formed them- 
 selves by a process of natural selection 
 into groups, and gave themselves up to 
 the charms of unrestrained conversa- 
 tion. 
 
 Almost the last persons to leave the 
 chapel were two women, who hesitated for a 
 moment in the porch, before stepping down 
 among their neighbours. Instantly there 
 was a slight but noticeable movement among 
 the crowd : there was no diminution in the 
 gabble of talk, but the groups about the 
 central path contracted so that it was left 
 clear, and as the two women passed down to 
 the gate, it would have been only possible 
 for them to recognise their female acquaint- 
 ances by the difference of colour or of texture 
 in the long-hooded backs of their cloaks. 
 The men were, for the most part, clustered 
 
THE IVA y OF TRANSGRESSORS. 91 
 
 about the gate, and they also drew aside to 
 let the two outcasts from society pass ; but, 
 unlike their womenkind, they took little 
 trouble to feign unconsciousness of their 
 presence, some even staring broadly at the 
 Widow Leonard's hot, defiant face in its set- 
 ting of snowy capfrill, and loud facetious 
 whispers following her and Ellen on their 
 way, told them that their neighbours found 
 much enjoyment in their discomfiture. 
 
 A fashionable party was walking in front 
 of them down the lane to the main road, 
 Mrs. Donovan's strong voice and noisy laugh 
 rising above the others as she turned from 
 time to time to fiing a remark to Rick 
 O'Grady, who was walking just behind the 
 rest. Ellen put a hand on her mother's 
 cloak. 
 
 * Let them out on the road before us,' she 
 whispered. 
 
 Rick's visit to the farm of two nights ago 
 
92 NABOTH'S VINEYARD. 
 
 might, for all she knew, have been an isolated 
 whim of kindness, and for his sake as well as 
 her own, she did not dare put him to the 
 test of a public recognition. But Mrs. 
 Leonard was devoid of all such refinements 
 of feeling. She twitched her cloak from 
 Ellen's hand and at once quickened her pace, 
 with the result that the pair drew level with 
 Rick just at the moment when Harriet, with a 
 look that was meant for him alone, turned and 
 asked him if he was coming home with them. 
 He did not even hear her ; he had turned 
 with smiling politeness to wish the Leonards 
 good-morning ; he was even — Harriet could 
 scarcely believe her eyes, but it was true 
 — taking off his hat with a Transatlantic 
 alertness to those whom Rossbrin and the 
 League had decided to ignore, and who were 
 at the best of times nothing but ' common 
 countrywomen.' 
 
 Ellen and her mother passed quickly by, 
 
THE WA Y OF TRANSGRESSORS. 93 
 
 the former flushed to a lovely colour by a 
 mark of respect that she had never received 
 before, and least of all expected now. At 
 the corner of the lane they took the turn 
 opposite to that of the Rossbrin contingent, 
 and were soon out of sight. 
 
 ' Upon me word !' observed Miss Vickery, 
 the Rossbrin modiste, who, walking in front 
 with Mr. Donovan, had not noticed Rick^s 
 action, * there's some is very brazen ! I think, 
 Mr. Donovan, when parties refuses to take the 
 advice of friends, 'twould be as well for them 
 to stay at home and not ^^fpose their igner- 
 ance, and I may say impairtinence, this 
 way.' 
 
 Miss Katty Vickery thrust her little per- 
 son forward inside her black beaded dolman 
 and drew down the corners of her mouth with 
 a righteous spasm of indignation. 
 
 'If I'm not greatly mistaken,' replied Mr. 
 Donovan, who was walking consequen- 
 
94 NABOTWS VINEYARD. 
 
 tially along in the middle of the road, 
 much morally upheld by the conscious- 
 ness of a clean * dicky ' shirt-front and a pair 
 of creaking boots, ' them parties '11 not come 
 to chapel agin till they have their minds 
 med up to leshen to their friends' advice, 
 supposin' that in the meantime they gets no 
 encouragements from them that has a right 
 to know better than to be patteronizin' them/ 
 
 Mr. Donovan spoke very loud, and looked 
 hard at Miss Vickery, exhibiting a profile of 
 great severity to those behind him. Clearly, 
 that Transatlantic flourish of Rick's hat had 
 not escaped his notice. 
 
 * Indeed, they'll get no encouragements 
 from me,' said Miss Vickery, with rancorous 
 energy. * 'Tis no trouble to me to do with- 
 out Mrs. Leonard's custom. If 'twas only 
 the makin's of an apron she was buyin', she'd 
 be huckstherin' and bargin* there till mid- 
 night, if I'd let hen' 
 
THE WAY OF TRANSGRESSORS. 95 
 
 Harriet struck Into the conversation with a 
 shrill laugh. 
 
 'Well, Miss Vickery, whatever trouble 
 Mrs. Leonard gave you, it's little the 
 daughter ever troubled your dressmaking, 
 nor hat-making neither! It's surprisin' the 
 way them counthry girls will be content to 
 go about with nothing only an old shawl 
 wisped over their heads.' 
 
 Mr. Ryan, the postmaster, was walking 
 between her and Rick, and she turned to 
 him for assent, thereby affording him a fuller 
 view of the stupendous stack of grass-green 
 ribbons that adorned her black hat. Mr. 
 Ryan, an elderly widower, to whom the 
 question had never before presented itself, 
 looked straight in front of him with an 
 expression of respectful and sympathetic 
 imbecility, and murmured : 
 
 * Quite so, ma'am — quite so.* 
 
 Harriet's eyes passed on from him to Rick, 
 
96 NABOTH'S VINEYARD. 
 
 the smile dying out that had masked the 
 anger in their depths. He was walking on 
 the grass by the side of the road, with his 
 hands in his pockets and his eyes cast down. 
 Me was unaware of Harriet's glance ; he was 
 seeing, through the haze of seven years, a 
 black-haired girl leaning over the gunwale of 
 a punt, to look at the reflection of a red plaid 
 shawl that he had bought for her and tied 
 about her head. He raised his eyes and 
 saw the same face, the youth and softness 
 gone out of it, and with a look in it that 
 warned him he was in another era of his 
 life, and one in which it behoved him to 
 walk with caution. 
 
CHAPTER Vlll. 
 
 THE YELLOW PUNT. 
 
 It was the Sunday next after the Feast of 
 All Saints. The Donovan Sabbath dinner 
 had passed through Its first and second stages 
 of boiled pork and greens, and a mound of 
 sodden pancakes, to its finale of hot whisky 
 and water, and clouds of strong tobacco. 
 Mr. Donovan leaned back In his chair, with 
 the three lower buttons of his waistcoat un- 
 fastened, and that expression of having done 
 a commendable thing which most men wear 
 when they have made a large and satisfactory 
 meal. He puffed sententlously at his pipe, 
 and took slow sips of his punch, as if at peace 
 
 7 
 
98 NABOTWS VINEYARD. 
 
 with himself and all the world, while from time 
 to time he looked from beneath the folds of his 
 heavy eyelids at the handsome discontented 
 face of his wife, who was sitting at the other 
 side of the fireplace, affecting to read the 
 local weekly paper. 
 
 Since the last appearance of Joanna with 
 the kettle neither had spoken. Donovan 
 was not a man much given to words, and, 
 moreover, he was so thoroughly occupied with 
 his own slowly-moving thoughts that he did 
 not notice the silence. His occasional glances 
 at his wife were evidently the outcome of 
 what was going on in his mind ; they were 
 cautious and speculative, and were, in fact, a 
 measurement of her outward seeming against 
 a certain theory that had lately occurred to 
 him. 
 
 At length, after some preliminary rubbing 
 of his hairy chin and throat with his hand, he 
 seemed to make up his mind to a line of 
 
THE YELLOW PUNT. 99 
 
 action. There is, perhaps, no creature so 
 Machiavellian in the subtleties of conversation 
 as an Irishman of John Donovan's type ; but 
 either the lubricating influence of the whisky 
 and water, or the unexpected circumstance 
 that in his own unspiritual way he loved his 
 wife, had the effect of making him approach 
 the subject more directly than he could have 
 wished. 
 
 ' That was a tremenjous take of fish they 
 had last night,' he began, looking medita- 
 tively into the fire ; ' I'm told they were up 
 all night salting it on the pier.' 
 
 ' Were they ?' 
 
 Harriet dropped out the monosyllables 
 as if the effort of opening her mouth was too 
 much for her. 
 
 ' It's a fine thrade,' Donovan continued ; 
 ' there's no sayin' the money O'Grady has 
 med out of it this season.' 
 
 No answer from Harriet. 
 
 7—2 
 
loo NABOTH'S VINEYARD. 
 
 ' But 'tis an oncertain thrade all the same, 
 and no one knows that betther than himself/ 
 He cleared his throat, and took a sip of 
 whisky and water. * He was sayin' to me 
 this two or three days ago that when he 
 had a bit more money put together, he'd be 
 for goin' back to the States. ** I have enough 
 of this owld counthry,'* says he, *' and as for 
 Rossbrin, I'd be dead if I was livin in it'" 
 John Donovan's eye travelled warily across 
 the fireplace in the wake of this ingenious 
 falsehood to observe its effect upon his 
 wife. 
 
 ' That's strange,' said Harriet in tones of 
 ice, though not all her self-control could stay 
 the colour from tingeing her cheek. ' It was 
 only yesterday evening he told me he was 
 thinking he'd build new stores down there on 
 the quay.' 
 
 * Where did ye see him yestherday even in' ?' 
 said Donovan quickly, his brain seeming to 
 
THE YELLOW PUNT. loi 
 
 leap with a new suspicion. ' Was that you 
 that I seen in the punt with him ?' 
 
 ' I was waitin' for the ferry-boat to go 
 across the water to see my aunt,' replied 
 Harriet; 'and as Mr. O'Grady was going 
 out to the steamer, he offered to put me 
 across first.' 
 
 She felt her position to be unassailable, and 
 Donovan recognised that direct attack would 
 be useless. He mixed himself his second 
 tumbler of punch, of an even more tawny 
 complexion than its predecessor, and ad- 
 dressed himself again to the conversation on 
 new lines. 
 
 * O'Grady's a smart young man at his 
 business,' he began reflectively ; * but if he 
 wants to have any respect from the people of 
 this place, he'll have to mind himself I 
 don't considher his principles is very sound. 
 There was plenty remarked his conduct to 
 them Leonards comin' out of chapel on the 
 
I02 NABOTWS VINEYARD. 
 
 Holyday last week, and plenty spoke to me 
 about it, what's more.' 
 
 Harriet laughed contemptuously. 
 
 ' It's because there isn't one here that has 
 as much knowledge or manners as would 
 make them take off their hat to a friend, that 
 they think such great things of it.' 
 
 Undue courtesies of this kind were not 
 among Mr. Donovan's weaknesses, and he 
 answered to the whip with a readiness that 
 showed it had cut him. 
 
 'Tm not disputin' that he's a d d fine 
 
 gentleman,' he said, with an ugly sneer ; ' but 
 as fine as he is, he wouldn't be so well 
 pleased if he heard what was said to me 
 th'other night.' 
 
 * Little he cares what anyone in this place 
 says about him!' flashed out Harriet, forgetting 
 prudence in a sudden whirl of repulsion for 
 the leering, malevolent face opposite to her. 
 
 ' Well, by what I could undherstand,' replied 
 
THE YELLOW PUNT. 103 
 
 Donovan, gaining calm as she lost It, ' they 
 say he has a great wish to please Ellen 
 Leonard. Of course, there's no sayin if it's 
 thrue or no/ he went on, with a tone in his 
 husky voice that Harriet knew boded evil ; 
 * for the maither of that, he was never the boy 
 to be thrustin' to one sweetheart ; but, plaze 
 God, it won't be much longer before I'll have 
 that matther sifted, and then it'll be seen 
 what the League '11 have to say to him.' 
 
 Harriet rose to her feet with such a fire 
 burning in her heart as she had never known 
 before. The hidden raw that she scarcely 
 owned to in her own thought had been 
 touched by her husband's coarse hand, and 
 the torture was almost unendurable. She 
 felt she could kill him as she looked down on 
 him, stretched out in sodden comfort before 
 the fire, with an egotistical smile on his 
 heavy face, and his fat hand caressing his 
 tumbler of whisky and water. She felt she 
 
I04 NABOTH'S VINEYARD. 
 
 must turn upon him, and tell him how she 
 loathed and despised him, and how that 
 some day, maybe, she'd prove to him that 
 was a lie about Ellen Leonard, in a way that 
 wouldn't please him. Her strong white 
 hands clenched and unclenched with a fever- 
 ish desire for action ; she turned to leave 
 the room, pushing her chair back so 
 roughly that it tilted over and fell on its back 
 on the floor. 
 
 Donovan laughed, the comfortable laugh 
 induced by a second tumbler of punch. 
 
 * Don't ye know that's a sign ye won't be 
 married this year .'^' he said jocosely ; 'any way, 
 I won't give ye a shance if I can help it. 
 Where are ye goin' ?' he continued, as Harriet 
 went quickly to the door. 'Come on, me gerrl, 
 and give me a kiss.' He lolled his head back- 
 wards over his chair towards where he be- 
 lieved she was, but was only in time to see 
 her open the door and go out. 
 
THE YELLOW PUNT. 105 
 
 He heard her go upstairs, and then her 
 quick footstep sounded in the room over- 
 head. He chuckled. 
 
 * She's in the divil of a temper now/ he 
 said softly; 'but she's a fine gerrl, whatever.' 
 
 He yawned, and gave the fire a kick 
 with the heel of his boot, and when, a 
 minute or two later, Harriet came downstairs 
 with her hat and brown ulster on, she heard 
 his snores vibrating through the wooden par- 
 tition of the passage. 
 
 She let herself out by the side-door, and 
 after a moment's hesitation she turned down 
 the hill. The usual Sunday loungers were 
 hanging about the corner where the two 
 brother sycamores stood in their huge stone 
 and mortar flower-pot in the middle of the 
 street, and one or two of the poorer 
 men touched their hats to Mr. Donovan's 
 wife. Harriet was scarcely popular enough 
 to make the others stretch a point in her 
 
io6 NABOTH'S VINEYARD, 
 
 favour, and they, for the most part, averted 
 their eyes as she passed to avoid the difficulty 
 of deciding as to the form of salutation, wait- 
 ing till she had gone by to expend on her the 
 cynical criticism of complete idleness. 
 
 The steep fall of the hill was ended by the 
 gate of the lower entrance into the Trahartha 
 woods, and Harriet turned in there instead of 
 passing on to the pier. A cold, gusty shower 
 came driving up the harbour, and she hurried 
 along the path by the water s edge to gain 
 the shelter of the trees. She could see 
 through the quick, stinging rain the boats 
 lying moored in Sunday quietness, and she 
 noticed at once the absence of Rick 
 O'Grady's yellow punt from its accustomed 
 place. In the frame of mind in which she 
 then was, it was only to be expected that she 
 should at once picture to herself the yellow 
 punt hauled up by the little landing-place 
 in Scariff Bay, while its owner — a wave 
 
THE YELLOW PUNT. 107 
 
 of incredulous scorn swept the thought 
 away. 
 
 Like many another woman who has caught 
 too late at a love once patiently proffered, 
 she could not believe that her opportunity 
 was lost for ever, and that she was grasping 
 at a thing that was dead. She had been 
 well content to marry the rich hotel-keeper, 
 and had been used to think with a mild, 
 sentimental complacency of Rick, eating his 
 heart out for her In America. The position 
 had become habitual ; when Rick O'Grady 
 came back after seven years, she looked 
 forward to his return as sure to infuse a 
 certain delicate element of romance Into a 
 life that had become monotonous, with talks 
 of old times, and veiled but sufficient hints of 
 an unchanged devotion. Rick came home 
 friendly, self-sufficing, well-to-do, and so 
 obviously absorbed in the present and its 
 prospects that the only sign of his not having 
 
io8 NABOTH'S VINEYARD. 
 
 quite forgotten the past was the noticeable 
 care he took not to allude to it. 
 
 It was nearly four months since the first 
 doubt of Rick's * unchanged devotion' had 
 crossed her mind ; but though she knew that 
 during that busy time he had scarcely spoken 
 to any other woman, doubt had turned to 
 anxiety, and anxiety to pique, and so on 
 through the vexed, familiar ways of growing 
 passion, till the hidden fight in her strong 
 nature became so unendurable that, on this 
 stormy afternoon of wild white gleams of 
 sunlight and sudden angry dashes of rain, a 
 venomous word had had strength to drive her 
 out to wander in the woods with one unrea- 
 soning longing for her guide, to find out for 
 herself if it were true, if it could be true, this 
 that her husband had said, that Rick had for- 
 gotten her and was courting Ellen Leonard. 
 
 The wind followed her boisterously along 
 the narrow path, and sent the wet red leaves 
 
THE YELLOW PUNT. 109 
 
 whirling round her feet. The fir-trees that 
 leaned over to the sea on her right swung in 
 the gusts and slashed the water with their 
 flat arms, and even at this sheltered part of 
 the estuary, the cold green current of the 
 out-going tide was rough with little white- 
 tipped waves. Harriet kept on her way 
 along the path by the water's edge with a 
 haste that took no heed of the weather. 
 There was only one more point between her 
 and the lake-like widening of the creek into 
 Scariff Bay, and she now noticed that there 
 would not be water enough even for the 
 yellow punt to get up to the landing-place 
 near the mouth of the Rowrie River. She 
 walked on more slowly, the hope that Rick 
 had not gone to Scariff, after all, struggling 
 with the disappointment of not meeting him, 
 when through an opening in the trees on the 
 seaward side of the path a gleam of yellow 
 caught her eye. She climbed cautiously 
 
no NABOTH'S VINEYARD. 
 
 down the steep bank and looked over the 
 low cliff ; there, hauled up on a little strand, 
 was the punt. 
 
 Then he had gone to Scariffl Harriet 
 struggled up to the path again, and almost 
 ran down the rocky slope to a spot farther 
 on where a series of rough steps led from 
 the path to the sea- level, resolved that, no 
 matter what came of it, she would see 
 him now. She had scarcely arrived at them 
 when a footstep in the wood ahead of her 
 made her heart stand still, and by what 
 seemed to her an incredible coincidence, 
 Rick came along between the trees towards 
 her. 
 
 He had seen her before she had seen him, 
 and this slight advantage had given him time 
 to determine the exact details of what he was 
 going to say, so that his manner as he came 
 forward to meet her had in it just the right 
 amount of pleased surprise. 
 
THE YELLOW PUNT. in 
 
 ' Hello ! Mrs. Donovan, that's bad 
 weather for ye to be out walking ! Where 
 are ye going at all ?' 
 
 For the life of her Harriet could not have 
 repressed the question with which she 
 answered his. 
 
 ' And where have you been to, Mr. 
 O'Grady ?^ 
 
 Her voice was set to the right pitch of 
 arch suggestion, but a little failing gasp on 
 the last word told that the answer would be a 
 momentous one to her. 
 
 ' Oh^ is it me T said Rick. ' If ye'll promise 
 not to tell Tom Kearney, or to make game 
 of me for being at me old poaching ways, I'll 
 tell ye. I was up at an otter-trap I fixed 
 above by the waterfall, and I might have 
 saved meself the journey, for the divil an 
 otter was there since I set it last night.' 
 
 He looked at her with the inscrutable 
 bright smile that charmed her against her 
 
112 NABOTWS VINEYARD. 
 
 will, and made her face relax into a softened 
 self-consciousness, and he felt that his 
 half-truth had successfully shielded another 
 episode of the afternoon. 
 
 * I don't want to make game of you,' she 
 said, dropping her eyes, and restlessly 
 working the moss off a rock at her feet with 
 the point of her umbrella. Then, as if 
 suspicion had again plucked at her sleeve, 
 
 * it's a deal more likely you're making game 
 of me. I suppose it was trapping otters 
 kept you from chapel this morning.' 
 
 Rick laughed easily. 
 
 * If I'd known you were looking out for me, 
 you bet I'd have gone ; but I got out of the 
 way of chapel-going when I was across the 
 water. Look here now,' he went on ; 
 
 * wouldn't it be as good for ye to let me put 
 ye home in the punt ? 'Twouldn't be the 
 first time I done that much for ye !' 
 
 It was not a highly creditable move on 
 
THE YELLOW PUNT. 113 
 
 Rick's part, but it must be remembered that 
 his training had not been of a kind to 
 develop his moral sense, and the danger of 
 discovery had been sharp. There was, from 
 his point of view, much to be gained in his 
 being seen by the world of Rossbrin rowing 
 home the wife of the President of the Land 
 League ; and as for her, it was a stroke of 
 luck that had given him this chance of 
 putting himself right with her : in the last 
 few minutes he had become intensely aware 
 that there is no such sharpener of a woman's 
 wits as jealousy. 
 
 Harriet was silent for a moment after 
 Rick had spoken ; she was beating about 
 for words in which should escape no frag- 
 ment of the delight that filled her like a 
 glow. 
 
 ' It's as good a way of getting home as 
 another. I'll come if you like, Rick.' 
 
 She could not help looking up at him as 
 
 8 
 
114 NABOTH'S VINEYARD. 
 
 she finished, her brilliant eyes losing their 
 hardness, and her sallow face transfigured by 
 the magic of sudden colour. 
 
 ' Well, I guess I do like it ' answered Rick, 
 going down the steps, and holding out his 
 hand to help her. She stepped into the punt 
 without a word, and he pushed it out from 
 the shore. 
 
CHAPTER IX. 
 
 REJECTED. 
 
 The fair of Cloonmore had been a large one. 
 All day long the hoarse hum of voices 
 ascended from the crowded market-place, 
 forming, like the drone of a bagpipe, a 
 monotonous accompaniment to the furious 
 cadenzas of the pigs and the blatant lamenta- 
 tions of the sheep and cattle. 
 
 There had been a light soft rain since 
 early morning, and the steam and smell of 
 wet frieze rose opulently upon the heavy air, 
 while buyers and sellers stood contentedly 
 about in mud of a depth and blackness only 
 procurable at an Irish fair, and wrangled 
 
 8—2 
 
ii6 NABOTH'S VINEYARD. 
 
 and lied with a leisurely indifference to 
 circumstances. The buying had been brisk, 
 and the prices good, and by half-past three 
 the streets were emptying fast, the dealers 
 having taken their purchases away by train, 
 and the fortunate sellers being, for the most 
 part, congregated in the innumerable public- 
 houses of the town. There had been a good 
 show of cattle, fat and well-favoured, and very 
 few remained unsold towards the close of the 
 day, and it was therefore all the more sur- 
 prising that at two o'clock Dan Hurley 
 might have been seen driving out of the 
 town the beasts he had driven into it soon 
 after daybreak. 
 
 The widow had taken warning by the 
 slaughter of the red heifer, and since the out- 
 rage the remaining nine had been safely 
 stalled down at Scarlff every night. There 
 had been no animals in the country to touch 
 them in size and condition ; Mrs. Leonard's 
 
REJECTED. 117 
 
 parting injunction to Dan had been to 
 ' keep a shtiff lip ' about their price, and she 
 had gone back into her house with a com- 
 placent certainty that that night the rents of 
 Scariff and Drimnahoon would be safe in her 
 pocket. 
 
 Dan had thought little of the fact that Mr. 
 John Donovan had driven past him into 
 Cloonmore that morning, and had pervaded 
 the fair in his usual slow, occupied manner : 
 the gombeen man was wont to hold quiet 
 dealings with a very large variety of people 
 on occasions of this kind. But as the day 
 wore on, and the heifers were not only not 
 bid for, but actually avoided, he began to 
 realize what was the drift of the confidences 
 that Mr. Donovan was exchanging with his 
 numerous friends and acquaintances. 
 
 He stood there with his cattle, a dejected 
 group in the damp and dirt of the fair ; the 
 people shouldering past him as if he did not 
 
Ii8 NABOTH'S VINEYARD. 
 
 exist, while each moment his hatred for his 
 enemy ran stronger and hotter in his veins. 
 He longed to escape from this hateful public 
 pillory of defeat, but he could not face the 
 humiliation of the moment when the people 
 would part to make a way for the excom- 
 municated to sneak out from among them 
 in full and final acknowledgment of failure. 
 It was not till the movement for the after- 
 noon train had begun that he started for 
 home, and at four o'clock he was still very 
 far from the end of his ten mile journey. 
 The November evening had fallen gloomy 
 and thick, and the wet gray walls marked out 
 the road in front of him in dreary perspective. 
 The cattle plodded patiently along, and Dan 
 followed in their rear, turning over in his 
 narrow mind ceaseless schemes for avenging 
 him of his enemy, with an inventive perti- 
 nacity that half surprised himself. He knew 
 by intuition that the League had little to say 
 
REJECTED. 119 
 
 to this matter ; he saw in it only the private 
 spite of one man, and, as he walked, there still 
 kept ringing in his ears the curses screamed 
 by his dying mother when the hospital van 
 came to take her from the cabin that was no 
 longer hers to the workhouse infirmary. 
 ' Hoy !' a loud voice shouted behind him, 
 
 * dhrive them bastes a-one side ' 
 
 Dan picked up a stone and flung it with 
 practised aim at the leading heifer, turning 
 her into the ditch, as Mr. Donovan's old 
 mare and trap rattled up alongside of him. 
 
 * Is that you, Dan }' called out Donovan ; ' I 
 suppose ye couldn't get yer price for the 
 heifers i^' 
 
 Dan made no answer. 
 
 * Maybe the feeding in Dhrimnahoon 
 didn't sarve them/ continued Mr. Donovan 
 with a hoarse laugh, looking back over his 
 shoulder as he whipped up his mare and jolted 
 on in front of Dan and his cortege. 
 
I20 NABOTWS VINEYARD. 
 
 It was a long tramp home to Scariff, but 
 Dan was scarcely aware of stony hill or 
 muddy hollow, or the tedious lengths of flat 
 bog road ; the heat and confusion of rage in 
 his head seemed to drive him along without 
 his own volition ; long as the road was, it 
 was not long enough for the perfecting of 
 certain schemes in which Mr. John Donovan 
 and Rick O'Grady took involuntarily leading 
 parts. 
 
 The Scariff farmyard, never at the best of 
 times a place to be passed through dryshod, 
 was deep in mire and slush, and the hoofs of 
 the tired cattle made little sound as they 
 passed through it, and found their own way 
 to the shed from which they had been driven 
 in the early morning. Dan fastened the door 
 on them, and stood irresolutely looking at the 
 lighted window of the cottage, wondering 
 what Mrs. Leonard would say to the news 
 he had to tell her, and how Ellen would like 
 
REJECTED. 121 
 
 it — Ellen, that had said the night that Rick 
 O'Grady brought them the present of the 
 tea, that no harm would happen them, now 
 that they had the likes of him. for a friend. 
 Maybe she'd change her tune now. 
 
 He had taken a step towards the house 
 when the sound of voices in the bohireen 
 outside the yard arrested hin, and he saw the 
 wavering gleam of a lantern on the tops of 
 the furze bushes that grew on the fence near 
 the gate. There was a clatter as of a spade 
 falling on the road, and then he heard Ellen's 
 laugh. 
 
 ' Now, maybe, ye'll let me carry the can by 
 myself. YeVe more than ye're able for with 
 the spade and the lantern.' 
 
 Dan stood stiff and still to hear the re- 
 joinder. 
 
 'The spade itself is more than I'm able 
 for,' Rick O'Grady's voice replied ; ' I guess 
 it's seven years good since I handled a 
 
122 NABOTH'S VINEYARD. 
 
 shovel, let alone made a pit of mangels. 
 Faith, I'm as tired now as if I'd been buryin' 
 me father !' 
 
 *Oh, indeed, then that's the pit!' Ellen 
 stopped to laugh again. * Them that sees it 
 will know we were hard set for a workman !' 
 
 * Wouldn't I give satisfaction, afther all ? 
 Wouldn't ye be content to let me work for 
 ye?' 
 
 The voice was softened and lowered, but 
 Dan heard every word — heard, too, Ellen s 
 answer : 
 
 * I'd be satisfied so long as the workman 
 wouldn't complain.' 
 
 And Rick's, spoken with unmistakable 
 meaning : 
 
 'Then I b'lieve ye have a servant that'd 
 work for ye all yer life.' 
 
 The light of the lantern flared into the yard. 
 
 * The gate's open, T declare !' she said ; * I 
 wondher if Dan's back from the fair.' 
 
REJECTED. 123 
 
 As If in answer, the light fell with a leap 
 on Dan himself, standing near the door in 
 his white flannel coat, with his head thrust 
 forward in the attitude of listening. 
 
 Ellen and Rick stopped short with startled 
 exclamations, and at the same moment Rick's 
 yellow terrier made a dash at what she doubt- 
 less believed to be an apparition, barking 
 shrilly and vociferously to persuade herself 
 and her master that she was not in the least 
 alarmed. 
 
 'Yes, I'm back,' Dan called out; then, as 
 the dog still circled barking round him, the 
 pent-up feelings of the day found vent in a 
 kick from his hobnailed boot that sent her 
 shrieking back across the yard. 
 
 ' What the devil right have you to kick my 
 dog ?' said Rick, putting down the spade and 
 lantern, and coming striding across the yard 
 towards the assailant. 
 
 *And what right have you or the dog 
 
124 NABOTWS VINEYARD. 
 
 here ?' retorted Dan, Inspired for the first 
 time in his life to courageous answer by that 
 strange stir and burning in his head. 
 
 ' Oh, Dan !' cried Ellen, horror-struck. 
 'What are ye sayin' at all? Sure, isn't 
 Misther O'Grady afther comin' here workin' 
 for us the whole evening !' 
 
 ' Then I tell him we're well able to do 
 without him and his work !' shouted Dan, 
 losing all control of himself at Ellen's inter- 
 ference. * He's a dommed spy, and I tell 
 him so to his face !' He raised his stick as if 
 he meant to strike at Rick, but before his 
 arm could fall, he found himself gripped by 
 the collar of his coat, and swung off his legs 
 on to his back in the dirt. 
 
 He lay so still for a moment that Ellen 
 thought he was dead, and ran to him with a 
 loud cry. At the same instant the cottage 
 door opened with a bang, and Mrs. Leonard 
 appeared, her hands covered with flour and 
 
REJECTED. 125 
 
 dough, and her face expressive of the utmost 
 consternation. 
 
 ' Who's hurt at all ?' she called out ; ' glory 
 be to God, Ellen ! was it you let that 
 screech ? I thought ye were killed !' Then, 
 seeing in the half-light of the lantern Dan 
 slowly getting on to his feet and picking up 
 his hat, ' Arrah, musha what knocked ye 
 there in the gutther, ye omadthawn ? Can't 
 ye spake ? Is it dhrunk ye are ?' 
 
 * He put as infernal a lie on me as any 
 man ever put !' said Rick heatedly, ' and 
 raised his stick to me, and I threw him there 
 the way he'd learn manners !' 
 
 ' Is that the thruth ?' demanded the widow 
 in formidable tones, going out and taking 
 Dan by the arm. 
 
 He turned such a face upon her that even 
 her tough nerves received a jar, it was so 
 sickly, unbelievably white ; and when he 
 spoke his lips drew back and showed hi§ 
 
126 NABOTWS VINEYARD. 
 
 teeth with the grin of a furious caged 
 animal. 
 
 * ril say it agin to him 1' he said, stuttering 
 and shivering with the effort to express him- 
 self. ' He's spyin' on ye, and I know — I 
 know who's sent him to do it !' 
 
 *And I say again to ye/ replied Rick, 
 coming and standing straight in front of him, 
 ' that ye're the infernalest liar in Ireland this 
 minute ; and if it wasn't that ye'd not repay 
 what throuble a man 'd have in kickin' ye, 
 I'd make ye that ye'd be sorry for this the 
 longest day ye'll live !' 
 
 * Lave him alone!' vociferated Mrs. Leon- 
 ard, her ready suspicion awake in a moment, 
 stretching out a thick floury arm to keep 
 Rick off. 'What is it, Dan Hurley ? Spake 
 out now — he'll not touch ye.' 
 
 ' I don't care whether he'll touch me or 
 not !' blustered Dan, warming under this 
 comfortable assurance ; then with a sudden 
 
REJECTED. 127 
 
 inspiration, into which was concentrated the 
 venom that was half choking him : * Maybe 
 he'll tell ye who it was was waitin' for him 
 in the wood last Sunday, afther he leavin' 
 this, an' went back in the boat with 
 him!' He ended with a laugh that might 
 have been taken from Caliban's rdpertoirey 
 and that sent a baleful gleam into his 
 light eyes, as, without turning his head, 
 he moved them from the widow's face to 
 Ellen's. 
 
 The pitfall opened before Rick with a 
 suddenness that nearly sent him off his 
 balance. To avoid the stammer or hesi- 
 tation that would have ruined him, he was 
 forced to pause before answering, and the 
 three members of his tribunal appreciated 
 each instant of delay, linking it to their 
 own thoughts, with exultation, with angry 
 conviction, and in one case with a painfully 
 growing fear. 
 
128 NABOTH'S VINEYARD, 
 
 ^ I met Mrs. Donovan by chance, walking 
 In the wood that afternoon,' he said as quietly 
 as he could ; * and I offered to row her home. 
 I suppose there's nothing very out-of-the- 
 way in that ?' 
 
 * No, indeed !' said Ellen, with a laugh — 
 whose kindliness had a little sickly ring in 
 it ; * what's the harm in anyone giving a lift 
 to a friend, Dan ?' 
 
 * Oh, no harm at all !' said Mrs. Leonard, 
 an unctuous politeness falling with tropical 
 calm into her speech. ' Of coorse, Misther 
 O'Grady has a right to oblige his friends- 
 more than all, sich an old friend as Mrs, 
 Donovan !' 
 
 The widow had jumped to her conclusion 
 with characteristic recklessness, goaded by 
 pride, distrust, and, It must be admitted, by 
 the contingent disappointment of seeing 
 certain nebulous matrimonial ideas melt Into 
 nothingness. Rick would have found it diffi- 
 
REJECTED. 129 
 
 cult to combat this alarming attitude, but 
 Dan gave him no time. 
 
 ' Go and look in yer cowhouse !' he said, 
 with a gesture towards it, * an' ye'll know 
 what work Misther O'Grady and his friends 
 have done for ye ! There's yer nine heifers 
 in it, and 'twould have been as good for them 
 to have been in it all day. There wasn't one 
 livin' crayture in the fair o' Cloonmore spoke 
 to me, nor put a hand on the cattle to price 
 them ; they had no more considheration for 
 me than if I was the dirt undher their 
 feet.' 
 
 Mrs. Leonard flung her arms out in front 
 of her, and struck her palms together. 
 
 ' That God may not see flesh on them !' 
 she burst out. * An may the day come when 
 themselves '11 be beggin' the price of what'll 
 fill their shtummuck from them that'll not 
 give !' 
 
 ' I saw the dommed ruflian that was tellin' 
 
 9 
 
130 NABOTWS VINEYARD. 
 
 the people to boycott me,' went on Dan, his 
 voice growing louder and wilder at every 
 word. * 'Twas John Donovan himself — 
 there was nothin' brought him to the fair, 
 only that. I declare to God he didn't buy 
 nor sell a baste in it. An' who was it told 
 him ye'd have cattle in it "^ Think now — 
 who was it ye told last Sunday ye'd be 
 sendin' them heifers to Cloonmore Fair to- 
 day ? Wasn't it to Rick O'Grady ye said 
 it, when he came out here so nice and so 
 natty in his Sunday clothes, tellin' ye he'd 
 help ye, an' lettin' on to be coortin' Ellen, 
 an* Mrs. Donovan waitin' for him in the wood 
 below, till he'd tell her how he had ye med a 
 fool of!' He flung his hat on the ground, 
 and squared his left arm in front of his head, 
 half in defiance, and half as if he expected to 
 be attacked. 
 
 Rick stood quite still, his clenched hands 
 hanging by his sides. 
 
REJECTED. 131 
 
 * Ye needn't be afraid,' he said ; * I'll not 
 touch ye this time. But I'll tell ye, Mrs. 
 Leonard, if ye believe the lies he's after 
 tellin ye, ye'U be turning away the only friend 
 ye have left.' 
 
 With a great effort Mrs. Leonard recovered 
 her sultry suavity of manner. 
 
 * I'd be sorry to part with such a good 
 friend as yeVe been to us ; but I think I'd 
 sooner have the price of me cattle than a 
 friend like ye. I'm obliged to ye for the 
 help ye give me, and I thrust in God He'll 
 presarve every poor woman that's hard set 
 like me, from sich help as that ! Good- 
 evenin' to ye, Misther O'Grady.' She 
 bobbed a sort of curtesy to him, and turned 
 towards the house. 
 
 Rick turned too, and marched straight to 
 the gate, his anger too hot in him for reply. 
 As he passed Ellen, he said ' Good-bye ' in a 
 hard, strained voice, and he felt it to be the 
 
 9—2 
 
132 NABOTWS VINEYARD. 
 
 final act of injustice that she made no 
 answer. 
 
 As he turned into the lane an impulse, that 
 he could not withstand, made him look back ; 
 and he saw the three of them standing there, 
 the light from the lantern on the ground 
 shining up on them, and making Dan's face 
 look diabolically triumphant. 
 
 It was at that moment that Ellen gathered 
 strength to break away from her indecision 
 and her daunting surroundings. She ran 
 after Rick into the lane ; she gave him her 
 hand, and said, with her soft voice quiver- 
 ing : 
 
 * Don't mind what they say. I know 
 ye're a good friend to us — I'll never believe 
 anything but that of ye. Good-bye !' 
 
 Then, before he could answer her, she had 
 run back again to take the consequences of 
 her action. 
 
CHAPTER X. 
 
 ON THE HILLSIDE. 
 
 The consequences were severe. Anyone 
 could have told that, who saw Ellen the next 
 morning, as she slowly climbed the hill at 
 the back of her mother's house, with a basket 
 of newly- washed linen on her head. Even 
 the light southerly wind that rustled freshly 
 through the furze -bushes brought only a 
 faint snatch of colour to her pale face, and 
 her transparent gray eyes had the pathetic 
 brilliancy that only young eyes can have after 
 bitter crying — the clear shining after much 
 rain. 
 
 Ellen was not much more than eighteen, 
 
134 NABOTH'S VINEYARD. 
 
 and her mother's anger was still a very- 
 terrible event to her, so that after the furious 
 outburst of it the night before, she had lain 
 awake, crying miserably and silently, while 
 her mother snored on implacably beside her ; 
 and when a delicately flashing sunrise had 
 called them both to their work, and she 
 found that she was to be treated with an 
 austere and gloomy aloofness, she felt, with 
 the touching, headlong despair of youth, that 
 she would rather die than bear all this un- 
 happiness. It cannot, of course, be supposed 
 that she explained her own emotions to her- 
 self very intelligibly; that luxury, or torment, 
 whichever it is, is reserved for the cultured ; 
 but it Is certain that when, last night, she lay 
 awake, in the thick darkness, with the tears 
 soaking into her pillow, and now, as she 
 took the basket from her head and put 
 it down on the short grass, the thought 
 that made the lump rise again in her 
 
ON THE HILLSIDE. 135 
 
 throat was of the injustice done to Rick 
 O'Grady. 
 
 She spread out the clothes on the furze- 
 bushes, and on a briary fence close by, 
 moving to and fro on the hillside, with the 
 sun shining on her yellow hair, and on the 
 white linen that lay all around her like snow. 
 Curlew and plover were swooping and 
 whistling high in the dazzling air above her, 
 and a couple of crows sat on a scraggy 
 thornbush half-way down the hill, and 
 debated hoarsely as to whether all this white 
 stuff that was being strewn about so carefully 
 was likely to be good to eat. Ellen was in 
 no hurry to return to the storm-fraught 
 atmosphere of the cottage ; the sun was 
 warm, and the silence was soothing, and she 
 lingered over her task of spreading and 
 opening out the linen. Even after she had 
 no further excuse for delay, and had picked 
 up her basket to go home, she stood with it 
 
136 NABOTH'S VINEYARD. 
 
 held against her hip with one hand, shading 
 her eyes with the other as she looked down 
 over her mother's farm, at the arm of the 
 harbour below, and the dangerous mud-flats 
 of Scariff Bay, gleaming bare in the low tide. 
 There was the little landing-place where 
 Rick had fastened up his boat, with the 
 golden-brown seaweed weltering in the sun 
 on the rocks in front of it ; her eye followed 
 the line of the river up to the ivy-grown old 
 mill by the bridge ; that was where she said 
 good-bye to him that first day ; and there, 
 down in the brown field by the river, she 
 could see the place where they had made the 
 pit of mangels together last night. The 
 pain was coming again about her throat, and 
 the mist gathering before her eyes, when she 
 heard, as if it dropped from the blue sky 
 above her, a voice calling her name. 
 
 She turned, and with her hand still 
 shading her eyes, looked up and down the 
 
ON THE HILLSIDE. 137 
 
 rocky hill, her heart beating loudly in her 
 ears. The brown outline of the hill-top 
 against the blue was jagged with great loose 
 boulders, and between a couple of these 
 she saw Rick O'Grady's well-known figure 
 standing. He waved his cap to her, and 
 with an ecstatic change of mood she waved 
 her hand in return. At once he disappeared 
 from against the sky-line, and with feelings 
 in which alarm and delight were about 
 equally blended, she watched his active 
 figure coming lightly down the heathery 
 slope towards her. She stood motionless as 
 he neared her ; somehow the delight was 
 fading out of her, and fear wholly asserted 
 itself as she saw that his fresh face looked 
 pale and grave. He took her hand and 
 pressed it hard before he spoke. 
 
 ' Ellen,* he said, * I couldn't sleep last night 
 thinking of the way yer mother treated me, 
 and wondering would she make ye believe 
 
138 NABOTH'S VINEYARD. 
 
 that lie the way she did herself.' His brisk 
 American accent had quite deserted him, and 
 his voice was low and troubled. * If I'd known 
 what was to happen your cattle at the fair, 
 I'd have gone there myself and bought them. 
 On me soul, I would, and you might believe 
 me.' 
 
 His earnestness, and the evident pain in 
 his blue eyes, made Ellen more than ever 
 ashamed for her mother's ingratitude. 
 
 * Me mother's very hasty that way,' she 
 answered confusedly ; * she believes anything 
 a person will tell her sometimes, and she was 
 
 that distracted like about the cattle ' She 
 
 paused, seeking desperately for some further 
 palliating motive on her mother's part. 
 
 * I think she had a right to believe me as 
 soon as that — that — ' he checked himself — ' as 
 soon as Dan. But it's not your mother I'm 
 thinking of. Tell me now, Ellen, do you be- 
 lieve all they said of me i*' 
 
ON THE HILLSIDE. 139 
 
 The same passion of faith in him that had 
 overcome her last night thrilled her through 
 and through again. 
 
 * Oh no, no, I don't — in troth I don't,' she 
 replied with such an earnestness that the 
 colour came glowing to her cheeks ; * it's you 
 I believe, and I don't mind what Dan nor 
 anyone said.' 
 
 Her eyes kindled with a brilliant light, and 
 as she looked up at Rick with her hair stirred 
 about her forehead by the breeze, he thought 
 her the loveliest sight he had ever seen in his 
 life. For a moment the only possible answer 
 seemed to be to put his arms about her and 
 tell her that as long as she believed in him 
 he did not care what anyone else thought of 
 him. But an unusual timidity and self-dis- 
 trust checked him on the verge of this summary 
 proceeding; there was such an unconscious- 
 ness about her faith in him that he felt afraid 
 to venture any shock to it. 
 
I40 NABOTWS VINEYARD. 
 
 'So long as you'll trust me I'm satisfied,' 
 he said, his eyes delaying long on her 
 face. A cloud drifted across the sun, and 
 threw the hillside into sudden shadow ; a 
 seagull wailed, swooping low over their 
 heads, and in a moment the warmth went 
 out of the wind. The glow went out of 
 Ellen's heart too, and all the difficulties 
 that beset her seemed to press up darkly 
 about her — foremost and most formidable 
 among them the thought of her mother's 
 furious indignation if this meeting with Rick 
 were ever found out. 
 
 ' I must go home,' she said anxiously ; ' if 
 Dan sees you, or me mother, I don't know 
 what'd happen me.' 
 
 Rick looked over the top of the fence down 
 to the farm below, 
 
 * Oh, it's all right,' he said, lowering his 
 voice, however ; * your mother's digging pota- 
 toes in the field by the house, and she'll 
 
ON THE HILLSIDE. 141 
 
 never see us up here. I've something I 
 must tell you/ he went on, leaning his elbows 
 against the fence and looking at her. ' This 
 boycotting that's been got up against your 
 mother is just a put-up job of Donovan s. 
 I had a letter this morning from a friend in 
 
 X ,' mentioning the principal town of the 
 
 neighbourhood, * and it showed me very plain 
 that them that's in authority there had no 
 hand in this business. They know as well 
 as me it was no question of rent made James 
 Mahony give up that farm, for all he owed 
 three years' rent to his landlord ; but he was 
 ashamed to stop in the counthry after — after 
 — any way, the rent was the excuse he put on 
 it. Tell me now, was there ever any quarrel 
 between your mother and Donovan ?' 
 
 The interest of the subject had revived 
 the practical tendencies of Rick's nature, and 
 Ellen suddenly felt herself immeasurably the 
 inferior of this smart, business-like young 
 
142 NABOTH'S VINEYARD. 
 
 man. She came near calling him 'sir' as 
 she replied : 
 
 * I don't remember that they ever were 
 very great with one another; an' I've often 
 heard me mother say that since ever the time 
 she took Dan for a servant -boy Misther 
 Donovan would never lose a chance to do 
 her a bad turn/ 
 
 Rick pulled his moustache thoughtfully. 
 
 *And was Donovan so set as all that to 
 have that beauty for himself i*' 
 
 Ellen turned her head to one side, and put 
 the corner of her apron over her mouth to 
 conceal the irrepressible smile which this idea 
 called forth. 
 
 'Oh, Misther O'Grady!' she said, with a 
 sidelong glance to see if Rick was as much 
 amused as she was, * sure you know very well 
 that John Donovan got the Hurleys' farm, 
 and hates the very name o' them. Sure it 
 was charity made me mother take poor Dan 
 
. ON THE HILLSIDE. 143 
 
 the time his mother went to the workhouse, 
 and Mr. Donovan was mad for he not going 
 into the house with the mother.' 
 
 'Angry, was he? H'm, that's strange!' 
 Rick commented, and fell again into silence. 
 
 Ellen looked up at his abstracted face, and 
 then thought of her mother, digging potatoes 
 in the field below. 
 
 * I think I'll have to go down now,' she 
 said; Vmaybe Ml be wanted. Dan has to be 
 back in Drimnahoon now every day, minding 
 the cattle, and there's not one to do a hand's 
 turn about the place, only meself and me 
 mother. * Oh I' she cried, with a bitter realiza- 
 tion of their hopeless plight, * God help us if 
 it's Misther Donovan that has us boycotted 
 this way ! He's too sthrong for poor people 
 like us.' 
 
 She turned away to pick up her basket 
 again, and this time Rick did not resist the 
 impulse that took possession of him. He 
 
144 NABOTWS VINEYARD. 
 
 gathered her sHght figure into his arms, and 
 lifted her frightened, bewildered face to his 
 own. 
 
 * Are ye frightened now, asthore ?' he whis- 
 pered. No answer from Ellen, except some- 
 thing that might have been a sob. * I know 
 well ye're not. Ye wouldn't be frightened when 
 ye know I love ye that way that Td die for 
 ye before anyone should hurt ye.' 
 
 The cloud-shadow swept away from over 
 the hill, and the sunlight turned her yellow 
 hair to gold, and swam in the depths of her 
 wet gray eyes as she lifted them at last and 
 gave her lips to her first lover. 
 
CHAPTER XL 
 
 AN OUTCAST. 
 
 Anyone who had felt the freshness of the 
 wind on Drimnahoon, and seen from its 
 heights the brightness of the sea, would 
 marvel that a man who had once known 
 those things could endure his life in a filthy 
 lodging-house in the slums of a small inland 
 town. It was not, therefore, to be wondered 
 at that after James Mahony had been for 
 about two months the occupant of a room in a 
 back lane of Cloonmore, the last remnants of 
 his vigour and self-respect seemed to have 
 slipped from him. He had felt himself to 
 have fallen low when he took the room, and 
 
 lO 
 
146 NABOTH'S VINEYARD. 
 
 began to work as a day-labourer wherever he 
 could get employment ; now, as he sat with 
 his gaunt frame huddled on a low wooden 
 bedstead, and chewed the hunch of bread and 
 drank the mug of muddy-looking tea that 
 formed his invariable diet, he had lost all 
 sense of degradation or incongruity in his 
 surroundings. 
 
 His little son, a creature like a Japanese 
 caricature of a frog, was perched on a painted 
 wooden box, whose gaudy, grimy labels testi- 
 fied that it had made the journey to America 
 and back. The signs of Transatlantic travel 
 and sojourn were on the boy as well as the 
 box ; in the wizened precocity of his yellow 
 face, and the twang in his shrill voice as 
 he asked his father for another 'sup o' 
 tay.' 
 
 ' There's no more for ye,' replied Mahony 
 shortly, putting away his mug on a shelf, 
 beneath which a pair of trousers and an old 
 
AN OUTCAST. 147 
 
 coat hung on a peg, and walking to the 
 window. 
 
 The child accepted the situation by turn- 
 ing up his mug and sucking the last sugary 
 dregs from it ; while his father, stooping 
 down to the level of the little window, 
 rubbed one of its panes comparatively clean 
 with his coat-sleeve, and looked out into the 
 lane. There was nothing to be seen there 
 except a couple of old hags, red-eyed and 
 ragged, who were telling each other in a 
 loud drunken hawl the events of the day's 
 begging ; but James Mahony remained there, 
 leaning his big muscular hands on the sill of 
 the window, and looking out into the failing 
 light. 
 
 He was thinking of how, on an evening like 
 this in the November of last year, he had 
 driven his own horse out of Cloonmore in 
 the smart new outside car that he had just 
 bought to please his wife, and that he had 
 
 10 — 2 
 
148 NABOTH'S VINEYARD. 
 
 spent more money on than he cared to 
 tell her. He had been married to her then 
 for eight anxious years — years in which he 
 had tried by alternate severity and spoiling 
 to win the heart or break the spirit of a girl 
 who had married a man thirty years older 
 than herself; a marriage that had been made 
 on the financial principles that govern the 
 alliances of crowned heads, and of the Irish 
 peasantry. He had in his own way done his 
 best ; but he was a rash, sanguine man, given 
 to theorizing and to a pugnacious belief in 
 his own theories, and his extravagant mis- 
 management of his farm was of a piece with 
 his treatment of his wife. She was a 
 Hegarty, of the same violent clan as the 
 Widow Leonard, whose near kinswoman she 
 was ; and though more subtle in her methods 
 than that imperious lady, she was equally 
 determined on having her own way. 
 
 Disaster of a double kind crept slowly 
 
AN OUTCAST. 149 
 
 towards him, though he would not believe in 
 its advance till one April evening, when he 
 came home from work, and his child, paddling 
 gleefully in the duck-pond, screamed to him 
 that his mammy had gone away on the new 
 car, and was gone to Cloonmore with Tom 
 Barrett driving her. 
 
 James Mahony went into his house with 
 some presentiment of coming evil ; it was 
 empty, the fire on the hearth had gone out, 
 and lying on the table, with its brass-bound 
 jaws wide open, was the old leather purse 
 that had held all his ready money. 
 
 It seemed to him afterwards that that had 
 been the worst moment, but it was perhaps 
 the waiting, the half-expectancy, while the 
 soft spring night drew in round him, that 
 had been the hardest to endure. The lad 
 from Cloonmore, who at nine o'clock brought 
 the car home, scarcely dared to give his 
 message to the silent old man, who came out 
 
ISO NABOTH'S VINEYARD. 
 
 ill the moonlight to meet him as he rattled 
 into the yard. Nothing but the luxury of 
 telling bad news upheld him during his 
 narration of how Tom Barrett and Mrs. 
 Mahony had told him to drive home the 
 car from the station, and how he had seen 
 them going off by the train that was to meet 
 the American steamer at Queenstown ; and, 
 in conclusion, would Mr. Mahony give him a 
 shilling for driving over the car ? 
 
 James Mahony's only answer was a look 
 so dreadful that the boy waited for no further 
 reply, and making the best of his way back 
 to Cloonmore, spread through the town the 
 piquant tale of how old James Mahony's wife 
 had gone away to America with his farm- 
 servant, and that James Mahony himself 
 was like to kill him when he told him the 
 news. 
 
 After this the tenant of Drimnahoon 
 seemed to live in a black rain of misfortune. 
 
AN OUTCAST. 151 
 
 Somehow the fact of the robbery of his 
 money leaked out, and quickened the appre- 
 hensions of his many creditors among the 
 shopkeepers of Rossbrin and Cloonmore ; 
 and their knowledge that his rent for three 
 Novembers had remained unpaid made 
 them not unreasonably anxious to get what 
 they could before there would be nothing of 
 the carcase left to devour. James Mahony 
 endured on in silence for a month or more ; a 
 still, fierce, brooding man, with a heart that 
 was being slowly eaten through by pain and 
 shame, as worms eat through a log. He 
 took no notice of the letters from his various 
 creditors, hired no workmen, did nothing, 
 in fact, beyond tending his child and the live 
 stock on the farm. The ' May gale ' of rent 
 came due ; but when the agent came in 
 person to threaten this defaulting tenant 
 with all the penalties of the law, he took 
 little good of his visit. The sleepless rage 
 
. 152 NABOTH'S VINEYARD. 
 
 found its outlet, and the agent drove away 
 with Mahony's threats and curses sounding 
 in his ears, and his mind made up to post a 
 writ to the tenant of Drimnahoon without 
 further delay. 
 
 He might have spared himself the trouble. 
 James Mahony sold all his stock next day 
 at the big May fair in Cloonmore, and two 
 days afterwards he and his boy left Drimna- 
 hoon in the gray of the morning, and set 
 forth for the country which to an Irishman 
 means either wealth or oblivion — whichever 
 he is in search of — America. 
 
 He told no one of his intention, and left 
 his landlord and his other creditors to fight it 
 out amongst them as best they could. Per- 
 haps his object was merely to escape from 
 the shame that clung to him like a garment ; 
 perhaps low in his bewildered mind there 
 lurked a hope that in the country where 
 everything seemed possible some chance of 
 
AN OUTCAST. 153 
 
 vague terrific revenge might be put in his 
 way. 
 
 Whatever the motive, it is certain that he 
 did not find what he wanted there. He was 
 too old a man to fill the gap in his life with 
 any fresh interest or enterprise ; and in the 
 roar and press of the big city in which 
 he found himself he thought more of the 
 green fields and the quiet life that he had 
 foregone than of present advantage or future 
 vengeance. The child pined in the scorch- 
 ing heat of the New York summer, and he 
 himself began to feel that he was old, and 
 unable to compete in this strenuous grapple 
 with fortune. He had still money enough to 
 take him home again, and after one or two 
 blazing Sunday afternoons, on which he 
 walked with little Tim to watch the start of a 
 big liner, the craving for his own country 
 mastered him, and he took ship for Ireland. 
 
 He had slipped out of Cloonmore like a 
 
154 NABOTH'S VINEYARD. 
 
 ghost, and like a ghost he came back to it, to 
 find, like many another ghost, perhaps, that 
 the place and things in which all his thoughts 
 had centred had entered on another phase of 
 existence in which he had no part. His 
 creditors had shared amongst them the 
 money brought by the sale of his tenant- 
 right, and the cattle of his nearest neighbour 
 throve on the grass that had been his. The 
 passion for home turned to a proud sullen 
 avoidance of old acquaintances, and a jealous 
 hatred of those who were prospering where 
 he had failed. He had spent all he had to get 
 back to Drimnahoon, and he found himself 
 obliged to remain In Cloonmore, falling in all 
 ways from bad to worse — drifting like a 
 wrecked ship that Is going to pieces on the 
 rocks outside its own harbour. 
 
 The November evening became grayer 
 and darker, and the people In the house 
 opposite lighted their lamp. Mahony turned 
 
AN OUTCAST. 155 
 
 from the window with an inarticulate growl, 
 and felt along the shelf for the matches. As 
 he struck one and applied it to the wick of 
 his chimneyless lamp, there was a loud knock 
 at the door, and before permission to enter 
 was given, it was pushed open wide enough 
 to admit the imposing figure of Mr. John 
 Donovan. 
 
CHAPTER XII. 
 
 MEPHISTOPHELES. 
 
 ' Well, James, how are ye ?' began Mr. 
 Donovan, in his pompous, unemotional voice. 
 ' I'm a little late, maybe, but I had business 
 the other side of the town.' 
 
 * Good-evenin',' responded Mahony, with a 
 surly apathy of manner that belied the ex- 
 citement in his sunken eyes, and the twitch- 
 ing of the muscles of his face. He hung the 
 lamp on a nail and turned to the child, who, 
 still sitting on the box, was staring at the 
 visitor with unrestrained curiosity. 
 
 • Go down out o' that and play in the 
 sthreet,' said his father, in the loud bullying 
 
MEPHISTOPHELES. 157 
 
 voice reserved by men of his class for children 
 and animals. ' Be off now !' as the child 
 lingered on his way to the door. 
 
 Mahony shut it after him, and took up 
 his original position on the bed, Donovan 
 having, after an inspection of the solitary 
 chair, preferred to establish himself on the 
 box in the window. 
 
 'Well, them's very busy times,' he remarked 
 — * very busy. I don't know when IVe had 
 so much to do, one way or th' other, as I 
 have now.' 
 
 ' Well, and is that what ye've come here 
 to say ?' asked Mahony morosely. * I lost half 
 me day's work the way I'd be here before ye.' 
 
 Donovan rolled a surprised eye upon his 
 host, not so much in resentment as in diag- 
 nosis. 
 
 * The old man has a dhrop taken,' he said 
 to himself. ' Well, no harm, no harm. 
 Well, James,' he continued aloud, ' I'm sorry 
 
158 NABOTWS VINEYARD. 
 
 I was delayed ; but business first, pleasure 
 aftherwards. Ha, ha !' he wheezed an 
 unctuous laugh, and pulled out a fat pocket- 
 book, from which, after some deliberation, he 
 selected a one-pound note. * I wanted to bring 
 ye this,' he said, slowly smoothing its dirty 
 creases out on his knee. * Ye were sayin' ye 
 wanted some sort of an advance the last time 
 I was here ; ye can take ye're own time to 
 pay me afther ye get the situation we were 
 speaking about,' 
 
 Mahony stretched out his hand for the 
 note, and put it in his pocket without a 
 word. 
 
 ' I didn't see ye now since the fair,' Dono- 
 van went on. * That was a pretty good fair, 
 mind ye, and a terrible high price for young 
 cattle, barrin' a few.' 
 
 The old man suddenly opened his great 
 jaws and laughed. 
 
 * Begor' ye had thim well soorted that 
 
MEPHISTOPHELES. 159 
 
 day !' he said. ' Ye're a smart man, John 
 Donovan/ 
 
 ' Them was nine fine bastes of the Widow 
 Leonard's was dh riven home,' continued 
 Donovan, placidly ignoring Mahony's remark. 
 ' There's no betther feeding in the counthry 
 than what there is in Drimnahoon, and them 
 bastes had the appairance of it.' His brown 
 swimming eye rested steadily on Mahony. 
 ' But no man should know that betther than 
 yerself, Jim, and that's the reason, as I was 
 sayin' to ye the last time I seen ye, that as 
 soon as that farm falls into my hands I'll be 
 well satisfied to put ye into it, and make a 
 dairy farm of it.' 
 
 * And what's to make Margaret Leonard 
 quit out of that ?' Mahony asked contemptu- 
 ously. * If hell was to open undher her 
 feet in it, she'd stay there !' 
 
 ' Maybe so,' replied Donovan, with his in- 
 describable accent of patient superiority. * But 
 
l6o NABOTH'S VINEYARD. 
 
 it's not thrusting to hell the agent'll be when 
 he*ll ax her for the rent, and she'll not have 
 it. I know well it was them heifers she was 
 depending on to pay the rent, and b'lieve you 
 me, Burke '11 be apt to be pretty smart with 
 her. He's had throuble enough out of Dhrim- 
 nahoon this year.' 
 
 The old man got up and walked once or 
 twice up and down the room, as if his long legs 
 were cramped. Then he opened the door and 
 looked out into the passage, and shutting it 
 again, came and stood in front of Donovan, 
 with a hot sparkle in his hollow eyes, and 
 his hands clenching and unclenching them- 
 selves as they hung at his sides. 
 
 * Throuble !' he repeated ; ' who knows 
 what throuble is as well as me ? What 
 throuble had he to drive to me doore to give 
 
 me his ordhers ? By ! if I'd had a gun 
 
 in me hand that day, he'd be rottin' in his 
 grave this minute !' 
 
MEPHISTOPHELES. i6i 
 
 ' Well, Indeed, an' ye shouldn't be blemt to 
 feel that way,' said Donovan sympathetic- 
 ally ; * it's a hard thing to see a poor man put 
 out of his little place for the lewcre of a 
 few pounds, and ye may be sure, James, I'll 
 not be the one that'll press ye for the little 
 matther of money that was between us when 
 ye left Dhrimnahoon.' 
 
 ' Ye got the haff of it whatever,' growled 
 Mahony. 
 
 * Certainly, of coorse !' with admirable 
 politeness ; ' I'm not disputin' that. But 
 supposin' now, James, that I was to get that 
 farm, and I was to put you back into it to 
 manage it, and you havin' the name of bein' 
 the tenant,' all these points emphasized by 
 the striking of a heavy forefinger into the 
 palm of the other hand, * wouldn't that be 
 betther for ye than to be the way y'are ? 
 Ye'd have yer own share out of the profits, 
 and as for any small matther of money ye may 
 
 11 
 
i62 NABOTH'S VINEYARD. 
 
 owe to me or any other one in Rossbrln, if 
 the people thought ye were to be reinstated 
 back in the farm, they'd have a bonfire before 
 ye in it, and cead mille failthe ! Bedad they 
 would ! there isn't one of them doesn't hate 
 the idaya of a land-grabber !' Mr. Donovan 
 paused, a little out of breath from the un- 
 wonted effort to be hearty and benevolent. 
 
 Mahony's sullen, uncertain eye rested on 
 him suspiciously, his eyebrows meeting and 
 his underlip dropping as he tried to con- 
 centrate his thoughts on the question as to 
 where in this attractive scheme lay the 
 disadvantage to himself. He felt that it 
 must be there, but he could not for the life 
 of him see it, and had to rest content with 
 saying : 
 
 * It's aisy talkin' ! I suppose ye think ye 
 have nothin' to do but to ax the farm of the 
 widda and she'll give it to ye !' 
 
 Donovan had at once appreciated Mahony*s 
 
MEPHISTOPHELES. 163 
 
 difficulty and its cause, and saw also how 
 well his plan had held water. He deter- 
 mined to lose no more time. 
 
 * If ye're satisfied with what Tm afther 
 sayin' to ye/ he said slowly, 'and if ye'll 
 stand by me the way I'll stand by you, I 
 think ye'll see the day that ye'll get that farm 
 without axing, because she'll be glad to be 
 shut of it.' 
 
 Mahony stared at him, compelled to a 
 belief in his power. 
 
 * I'll shtand by ye 1' he said excitedly ; * ye 
 know that well I I'd shtand by the divil 
 himself if he'd put Margaret Hegarty off me 
 land !' The very mention of the name that 
 had been his wife's seemed to madden him 
 like the cut of a whip. ' Damn it ! Spake 
 out, man, and tell me what ye want ! Do 
 ye want more of them heifers killed i^' 
 
 * Hold yer whisht !' said Donovan angrily. 
 ' Do ye want the neighbours to come to 
 
 II — 2 
 
i64 NABOTH'S VINEYARD. 
 
 listen to ye ? I never told ye to kill one of 
 the widow's heifers ; ye'll please to remember 
 that/ 
 
 * I'll swear on the Bible I'd never have 
 done it if it wasn't for ye !' replied Mahony, 
 sinking his voice to a fierce whisper ; * and 
 much good it done afther !' 
 
 * I tell ye what it done,' said Donovan, 
 * that there isn't one in Margaret Leonard's 
 house that isn't thrimblin' for their lives this 
 minute. I have the manes of knowin' that. 
 I know for a fact they have their beds dhrew 
 in undher the windows for fear they'd get a 
 shot in the night !' He struck his open hand 
 on his leg. ' But what I was goin' to men- 
 tion before was that maybe the widow will 
 make some sort of a thry to fatten them 
 heifers and send them to Cork, or maybe 
 Liverpool. She's a parsevaring woman, and 
 there's a gieat price for cattle in England. 
 She has good feedin' for them, too — the best. 
 
MEPHISTOPHELES. 165 
 
 There's no finer rick of hay in the counthry 
 than what she has.' He looked up into the 
 savage, expectant face of the old man. ' It's a 
 fine rick, James, and it'll stand her the whole 
 winther, unless' — he waited a second, and 
 looked, as it were, absently at the ceiling — 
 * unless there was any accident happened it.' 
 Mahony stooped towards him, a grin 
 spreading hideously over his face. Then he 
 swung himself back and laughed, clapping his 
 hands against his thighs. 
 
 * That'll do ! That'll do !' he said, stamp- 
 ing from one foot to the other, and rubbing 
 his hands. ' Say no more now !' 
 
 John Donovan rose to his feet and 
 buttoned up his coat. 
 
 * Well, James T he said in his expressionless 
 voice, ' I must be for the road, and it's a cold 
 night. Ye might as well come and have a 
 dhrop of somethin' at Mullins's.' 
 
 It had grown quite dark by this time, and 
 
i66 NABOTH'S VINEYARD. 
 
 Mahony held the lamp at the door to light 
 his visitor down the dirty broken staircase. 
 He stood there till Donovan's cautious and 
 shuffling descent was ended ; then he 
 replaced his lamp on the shelf, and putting 
 the box of matches in his pocket, followed 
 Donovan into the lane. 
 
CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 A HEART AND ITS BITTERNESS. 
 
 The small house that Rick had taken for 
 himself in Rossbrin possessed three attributes 
 that at once placed it on the pinnacle of 
 respectability. It had two stories, it kept its 
 hall-door closed, and its lower window had a 
 wire-blind. This last, indeed, had been for a 
 time looked on by the community as a mark 
 of almost offensive exclusiveness in the 
 young man whom they remembered in his 
 lawless youth as the scourge of the quiet 
 and respectable members of the community, 
 and by no means a credit to his father, an 
 ancient and peaceable naval pensioner. But 
 
i68 NABOTH'S VINEYARD. 
 
 with their slow recognition of his success 
 came a respect for what was regarded as an 
 eccentricity of genius, and the wire-blind 
 became in their eyes as much a symbol of 
 business and concealed riches, as if it bore 
 the four golden letters of the word ' Bank/ 
 
 What it did conceal was a dingy, comfort- 
 able room, with little in it besides a big table, 
 a big desk, and a big armchair, in which, on the 
 afternoon which Mr. Donovan had selected for 
 his drive into Cloonmore, Rick O'Grady was 
 sitting. The remains of his solitary dinner 
 were still on the table in untempting array, 
 and the plate from which the little yellow dog 
 had licked her master's leavings was on the 
 rug, surrounded by the potato-skins which 
 she had contemptuously nosed from out of 
 the mess as unfit for a lady of delicate appe- 
 tite. Rick had a pipe in his mouth, and a 
 note-book in his hand, the open page of the 
 latter thickly covered with entries and figures 
 
A HEART AND ITS BITTERNESS. 169 
 
 in a very clear round hand. Its purport was 
 of fish and fish barrels and consignments, and 
 might well have accounted for the anxious 
 frown with which its owner was staring at the 
 white and brown diamonds of wall - paper 
 opposite him. 
 
 He had sat there quite still for some time, 
 the note-book open at the same page, and his 
 teeth gripping the mouthpiece of his pipe, 
 which had gone out from lack of attention. 
 But still the difficulty that his mind was 
 trying in twenty different ways to penetrate 
 remained acute and intact as ever. Fish and 
 their transits had no place in it. It was, to 
 put it in the form in which It presented itself 
 to Rick's mind, the problem of how best to 
 convince the neighbourhood that Mr. John 
 Donovan was a liar and a traitor. 
 
 In his own mind he was certain of It ; he 
 knew that It was the personal influence of 
 the gombeen man that had created and bol- 
 
I70 NABOTH'S VINEYARD. 
 
 stered up the boycotting of the Widow Leon- 
 ard ; but in a case of this kind, where most of 
 the members of the League were debtors, either 
 present or possible; of its President, and self- 
 interest made every one of them ready to 
 declare that he was acting from conviction, an 
 empty denunciation would be worse than use- 
 less. He could bring no proof, he could allege 
 no motive ; who would believe him if he said 
 that all this large, troublesome machinery 
 had been set going by Donovan to gratify 
 his private spite against Dan Hurley ? And 
 yet what other motive could he have ? That 
 was the point that kept Rick at bay, and 
 blocked the way of all further plans. 
 
 These in themselves were simple enough. 
 He meant to marry Ellen Leonard, with or 
 without her mother's consent ; that was the 
 one star that shone clear to him out of dark 
 uncertainties ; but being in the main a pru- 
 dent and practical young man, he preferred, 
 
A HEART AND ITS BITTERNESS. 171 
 
 In the first Instance, to set himself straight 
 in the eyes not only of the world, but of that 
 redoubtable adversary, his future mother-in- 
 law. Once or twice his heart swelled fool- 
 ishly as his fancy took the bit In Its teeth, 
 and he imagined some impossible moment in 
 which his single act of valour should save 
 Ellen and all belonging to her from some 
 equally impossible climax of destruction ; and 
 each time he returned upon the ignoble reality 
 that he had for the last two days been obliged 
 to skulk and skirt behind the Scarlff hedges 
 and banks, waiting for the moment when luck 
 or strategy should enable Ellen to elude the 
 maternal eye. 
 
 From this point It was but a short and 
 seductive step to blissful reflection on Ellen's 
 many adorable qualities ; and he was for the 
 third time beginning to live over again his 
 last meeting with her, when there came a 
 single thump at the knocker of his hall door — 
 
172 NABOTWS VINEYARD. 
 
 a liberty instantly and furiously challenged by 
 Colleen, the yellow terrier. 
 
 Rick opened the door himself, silencing 
 Colleen's remonstrances with a deft side-kick, 
 and Mick, the boy from the hotel at the top 
 of the hill, handed him a letter. Rick went 
 back to his sitting-room ; he opened the blue 
 commercial envelope with a sense of interrup- 
 tion and uneasiness, and read the few words 
 written in violet ink on the thin, shiny 
 paper. 
 
 * Dear Mr. O'Grady, 
 
 ' If you could come across to the 
 hotel now, I would Be glad to speak to 
 you. 
 
 ' H. Donovan.' 
 
 He stood for a minute twisting the letter 
 impatiently about in his fingers. 
 
 * What's she up to now, I wonder !' he said 
 to himself. 
 
A HEART AND ITS BITTERNESS. 173 
 
 Then he put the letter in the fire, and, 
 picking up his cap and stick, went out of the 
 house. 
 
 The afternoon was rough and dark, and 
 the south - west wind was bringing large 
 gloomy companies of clouds in from the sea. 
 ' This wind ought to bring the boats in,' 
 thought Rick as he climbed the stiff rise of 
 the street. * I'll tell her I have to go on up 
 to the look-out before the light goes, to see 
 are they coming in.' 
 
 With the comforting thought that he now 
 held in reserve a means of escape, he knocked 
 at the private entrance of the hotel, and was 
 presently conducted by tortuous passages to 
 Harriet's sitting-room. 
 
 They had not met since the Sunday before, 
 when he had rowed her home in his boat, 
 and he thought with no small anxiety that the 
 part he had played on that occasion might 
 be a difficult one to sustain. But even as he 
 
174 NABOTWS VINEYARD. 
 
 shook hands with her, he was aware that the 
 atmosphere was charged with electricity, and 
 that in the three days since he had seen her 
 the barometer had dropped from * set fair ' lo 
 * stormy.' He could, however, scarcely have 
 told how he knew this. There was an almost 
 angelic sweetness in Harriet's manner as she 
 begged him to sit down, and hoped she had 
 not been very troublesome to him in asking 
 him to come up the hill. Rick, as in duty 
 bound, assured her that the trouble was a 
 pleasure, and inwardly wished he had not 
 been at home when Mrs. Donovan's note 
 arrived. 
 
 * I wouldn't have asked you to come,* went 
 on Harriet, as they sat down on each side of 
 the fire, 'only for Mr. Donovan being in 
 Cloonmore, and I was glad to have the 
 chance to speak to you privately.' 
 
 *Well, that's all right!' struck in Rick 
 vaguely with a nervous laugh. 
 
A HEART AND ITS BITTERNESS. 175 
 
 < T', 
 
 I'm told,' pursued Harriet unsmillngly, 
 ' that you're putting yerself in the way of 
 great danger/ She paused with her dark 
 eyes full on Rick. 
 
 He managed to laugh again, and said, 
 twirling his cap carelessly, 
 
 * That's news. Who told ye that ?' 
 Harriet did not fail to notice that her 
 
 words had been startling, but she made the 
 mistake that a woman in a higher class of 
 life would not have made in a similar case — 
 she thought she had frightened him about his 
 own personal safety. 
 
 * It's no matter who told me,' she said. 
 • I heard it from more than one, any way.' 
 
 * Well, ye might tell me what they said, I 
 suppose. It's a funny thing to tell a man 
 he's in danger, and not to tell him why,* 
 returned Rick, still affecting to treat the 
 affair as a joke, but mentally turning up his 
 shirt-sleeves. 
 
176 NABOTH'S VINEYARD. 
 
 *■ I think ye might know it without me 
 tellin' ye ; any way, the Land League knows 
 why, and, maybe, they'll tell ye the story 
 quicker than I could.' 
 
 Rick saw the light twinkle on the beaded 
 front of her dress with the quick rise and fall 
 of her bosom. 
 
 'Why, Harriet/ he said laughingly, *I 
 never knew till now ye were such a hot 
 Leaguer. I suppose ye'll be boycottin' me 
 next ; and then what would I do ?' 
 
 ' I think ye'd do very well !' broke out 
 Harriet, the first rift showing in the smooth 
 volcanic surface ; ' so long as ye can go to the 
 Widow Leonard's and do her dirty work for 
 her, it's little ye care to come here !' 
 
 ' And was it from yer husband ye got that 
 story ?' asked Rick, temporizing still, but 
 feeling determined and dangerous. 
 
 I know more about ye than ever my 
 husband knows,' she said, flashing her eyes 
 
A HEART AND ITS BITTERNESS. 177 
 
 upon him with sudden meaning. ' He 
 knows enough, and plenty, but if he heard 
 all I have to tell him, maybe ye'd be sorry.' 
 
 Rick sprang up. 
 
 ' Look here, Harriet,' he said roughly, * Til 
 stand no more of this fooling ; what I do 
 is my own affair, and not yours, nor Dono- 
 van's neither ; but, in the name of God, if ye 
 have anything sensible to say to me, spake 
 out!' 
 
 Harriet sat erect in her chair, her face dead 
 white, and her hands knotted together In her 
 lap. 
 
 * I'm much obliged to ye for tellln' me I'm 
 a fool, but, maybe, some day ye'll be sorry ye 
 didn't take a fool's advice, and give up keep- 
 ing company with them that's boycotted.' 
 
 ' Well, if they are boycotted,' retorted Rick, 
 playing his best card, ' it's only yer husband 
 knows the reason for it, for the Land League 
 doesn't !' 
 
 12 
 
178 NABOTH'S VINEYARD, 
 
 Harriet was silenced by surprise and con- 
 sternation. Fond as Mr. Donovan was of 
 his wife, he thought but meanly of women as 
 political confidantes ; but it happened that in 
 this matter Harriet's intuition and shrewd- 
 ness had made her independent of what he 
 chose to tell her, and she knew quite enough 
 of his schemes for Drimnahoon to tremble at 
 Rick's nearness to the truth. 
 
 * Sure, all Rossbrin knows as well as I do 
 that James Mahony ran away out of his farm, 
 and left it there,* continued Rick ; * I don't see 
 that's any reason against anyone else taking 
 it/ 
 
 ' Oh, indeed !' sneered Harriet, pulling her- 
 self together for the delivery of her final 
 taunt, * ye've changed yer tune a good deal 
 since the evenings ye used to sit here, so 
 pleasant and friendly, drinking yer glass, and 
 tellin' John *' land-grabbers was the curse of 
 the counthry "! But that was before ye were 
 
A HEART AND ITS BITTERNESS. 179 
 
 took on as servant-boy to make the pit of 
 mangels at Scarlff! Ha, ha! I know all 
 about it, ye see !' She ended with a burst of 
 shrill hysterical laughter. 
 
 Then she had set a spy on him ! It was 
 Rick's turn to be staggered now. He looked 
 down on her as she leaned back with a 
 quiver in her lips already beginning to mock 
 their own unreal laughter, and felt in the 
 midst of his own perplexities a kind of 
 horror in the thought that this spiteful, 
 treacherous woman could ever have been the 
 girl that he had wasted all his heart on. 
 
 * Well, Harriet,' he said bitterly, * ye treated 
 me bad once, but I never thought that ye'd 
 sarve me this way.' 
 
 There was no light in the room except the 
 feeble flicker of the fire, and he did not see at 
 first that she had put her hands over her face 
 as he spoke. ' I'll say good-bye to ye now,' 
 he said, turning from her, when the unex- 
 
 12 — 2 
 
i8o NABOTH'S VINEYARD, 
 
 pected sound of a strangling sob made him 
 stop with a new astonishment. 
 
 In a moment her sobs came so thick that 
 the words she was trying to frame were 
 caught from her over and over again. 
 
 ' Oh, Rick ' she gasped at length ; 
 
 * don't — don't go.' 
 
 He came to her side in spite of himself. 
 
 * What do ye want of me ?' he said more 
 gently ; ' why, what ails ye at all, Harriet ?' 
 
 * I never meant to treat ye badly,' she said, 
 the tears streaming through her fingers. 
 
 * It was only to warn ye there's them against 
 ye that would think little to kill ye.' Her head 
 sank forward in her hands till it rested on 
 her knees, and he heard her moan to herself : 
 
 * Oh, what would I do ! what would I do 1' 
 
 Rick was not more than human ; he 
 stooped over her, feeling both touched and 
 flattered, and putting his hand on her heaving 
 shoulder, said^very kindly : 
 
A HEART AND ITS BITTERNESS. i8i 
 
 * Ah, now, Harriet, don't cry that way ; 
 sure there's no harm will happen me.' 
 
 The handle of the door was turned, and 
 Rick started violently back as Mr. Donovan's 
 head was thrust in. 
 
 ' Are ye there, Harriet ?' he said in an 
 excited whisper. 
 
 Harriet sat up. 
 
 ' Yes, I am,' she replied, steadying her 
 voice with astonishing self-control. 
 
 * Well, see here,' he went on, evidently not 
 noticing Rick, who was standing in the deep 
 shadow behind Harriet's chair, * I want ye to 
 hurry and get a bit of supper for old James 
 Mahony in here ; and don't let on that he's in 
 the house. Be smart about it now, like a 
 good girl. I dropped him outside the town, 
 and he'll be here in a minute.' 
 
 * Very good,' replied Harriet ; and this 
 time not all her care could keep a suspicious 
 catch out of her low, even voice. 
 
i82 NABOTH'S VINEYARD. 
 
 But Donovan did not notice it. 
 
 * Well, hurry now,' he repeated ; ' I have to 
 get in a lot of things out of the trap.' He 
 shut the door, and they heard him go into the 
 shop. 
 
 Rick came forward with the inevitably 
 guilty air of a man who feels himself to 
 be in a false position. Harriet caught his 
 arm and pushed him towards the door. 
 
 * He'd kill me if he thought ye were here !' 
 she whispered ; * don't say a word, and I'll let 
 ye out before he comes out of the shop.' She 
 opened the door softly and crept out into the 
 passage. 
 
 He followed her through the same wind- 
 ings, now pitch-dark, by which he had come 
 in ; and as she went before him he heard 
 once or twice the slight shuddering, drawing- 
 in of her breath that told of the interrupted 
 tempest. A faint light came in through the 
 fanlight over the door, and he could just 
 
A HEART AND ITS BITTERNESS. 183 
 
 make out the white glimmer of her face, 
 when, with her hand on the latch, she turned 
 towards him. 
 
 * Don't be afraid I'll tell John what Tm 
 after sayin' to ye ; but, oh ! for God's sake 
 take care !' Then, with a trembling effort : 
 * I didn't know rightly what I was at awhile 
 ago ; don't be angry.' 
 
 He did not forgive her, but some impulse of 
 pity and remembrance came over him ; he 
 knew his own power and was half ashamed 
 of it, and with a man's reliance on an act 
 rather than a word of kindness, he bent down 
 and hurriedly kissed her cheek. 
 
 He walked quickly down the hill to his 
 own house, thinking uncomfortably of that 
 last moment of his interview, and pondering 
 deeply over all that had gone before it. He 
 would have been less puzzled, on at least one 
 point, had he known that about an hour ago 
 Dan Hurley, slouching away from the post- 
 
i84 NABOTH'S VINEYARD. 
 
 office, where he had been posting a letter for 
 his mistress, was followed by Mick with an 
 intimation that he was wanted by Mrs. 
 Donovan, and had subsequently held low 
 and long converse with her over the counter 
 of the hotel and a liberal pint of porter. 
 
CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 A PLUNGE. 
 
 When the Rossbrin boats came in that even- 
 ing, running up to their moorings before the 
 fresh wind, they brought with them the 
 largest take of mackerel they had had since 
 the beginning of the month. It was long 
 past dark before the last glittering basketful 
 had been landed, and the little crowd of men 
 and women who were waiting on the pier to 
 begin the serious business of cleaning and 
 salting made up their minds to being out of 
 their beds until at least four o'clock in the 
 morning, when the results of their night's 
 
i86 NABOTWS VINEYARD. 
 
 work would have to be started to catch the 
 early train at Cloonmore. 
 
 At ten o'clock the workers were in full 
 swing. There was a line of tables up the 
 middle of the pier, each with its paraffin lamp 
 smoking and flaring in the partial shelter of a 
 fish-box, and each with its wild Rembrandtish 
 group of women splitting the innumerable 
 mackerel, and rubbing lavish fistfuls of coarse 
 gray salt into each, before it was flung to the 
 men to be packed into barrels. The lamps 
 shone fantastically on the double row of 
 intent faces, on the quickly moving arms of 
 the women, crimsoned to the elbows, on the 
 tables, varnished with the same colour, and on 
 the cold silvery heaps of fish. The dark 
 hollow of the night seemed impenetrable 
 beyond this island of light and movement ; 
 the frail young moon that had just shown 
 above the trees of the Trahartha woods when 
 Rick left the hotel had set long before, and 
 
A PLUNGE. 187 
 
 the only stars that had not been blotted out 
 by the clouds were those that twinkled at the 
 mastheads of the fishing-boats in the middle 
 of the harbour. 
 
 The work was too strenuous and hurried 
 to admit of much conversation on the part of 
 those engaged in it, but the usual loafers 
 hung about on the pier, prepared to smoke 
 and talk till morning if necessary. Promi- 
 nent and most jovial among these loiterers 
 was Mr. John Donovan, who had, contrary 
 to his usual practice, condescended to stroll 
 dowai from the hotel to see what sort of 
 business his friend Rick O'Grady was doing. 
 That, at least, was the reason he gave as he 
 leaned against a mooring-post and affably 
 discussed with Rick the prospects of the 
 fishing - season. The latter found these 
 friendly attentions rather oppressive. They 
 came incongruously after what he had just 
 heard from Harriet of the esteem in which 
 
i88 NABOTWS VINEYARD. 
 
 he was held by the local Land League, and 
 instead of replying appropriately to the 
 genialities of its President, his mind was 
 disturbed by wonderings as to what they 
 portended. He felt angry and ashamed at 
 the thought that a few hours before he had 
 crept from this man's house like a thief. 
 He had up to that last moment, at all events, 
 done nothing that he need be ashamed of, 
 and even that foolishness had been the con- 
 sequence of having allowed himself to be 
 hustled off in that absurd way. He groaned 
 in spirit when he thought of Harriet, and 
 what he stigmatized to himself as ' her 
 nonsense,' and he stood there gnawing his 
 moustache, with his cap thrust over his eyes, 
 while Donovan prosed on sapiently beside 
 him, apparendy not noticing his preoccupa- 
 tion, or perhaps setting it down to an 
 incessant attention to the workers and their 
 business. 
 
A PLUNGE. 189 
 
 ' They're workin' well, Misther O'Grady/ 
 observed a fisherman, lounging up to them. 
 
 * But I think the rain '11 have ye bet, and we're 
 nearplenty of it. The tide '11 be ebbing in 
 another hour, and I'm thinking it's the most 
 it'll do to hold up till then.' 
 
 ' Bedad, Dinny, it'll be a bad job for me 
 if it doesn't hold dry for another couple 
 of hours.' Rick turned his back on the 
 line of blazing lamps as he spoke, and 
 looked up into the blackness of the sky. 
 
 * That's a queer light over there back o' the 
 woods !' he exclaimed ; ' ye'd think it was 
 the moon rising only that she set an hour 
 ago.' 
 
 The men standing by him turned also, and 
 stared at a faint glow perceptible in the sky 
 over the Trahartha woods. 
 
 * Moon !' said Dinny Macarthy, ' that's no 
 moon. It's liker a fire.' Even as he spoke 
 there came a red pulsation in the glow. ' Be 
 
I90 NA BOTE'S VINEYARD. 
 
 the powers above !' he shouted, ' it's the 
 woods is on fire !* 
 
 In an instant every creature on the pier 
 was gazing at the northern sky, and a chorus 
 of excited voices was echoing his words. 
 
 ' 'Tis the woods, sure enough,' said Dono- 
 van ; * and the art of man '11 not save them if 
 that's the case.' 
 
 ^ Get out a boat !' called out another man ; 
 * we can't see what it is at all till we're round 
 the point.' 
 
 As he spoke a big man came plunging 
 through the crowd towards the slip where the 
 boats were hauled up. 
 
 ' Hurry now !' he shouted; ' sure the wind's 
 west, and maybe if we got there in time it 
 wouldn't spread.' 
 
 * What's the good of that, ye fool ?' Dono- 
 van called out. * D'ye think ye can put it out 
 with yer hat ? What business is it of ours if 
 every stick in it was burnt^ and the man that 
 
A PLUNGE. 191 
 
 owns it, too ? If he wouldn't live in the 
 counthry and mind his place, let him lose it 
 and be d d to him !' 
 
 There was a sycophantic laugh or two of 
 approval at Mr. Donovan's words, but the 
 big woodranger, Tom Kearney, jumped into 
 a boat and pushed her out from the slip. 
 
 ' Arrah ! what is it to me where he lives, 
 so long as he pays me me wages ? Hurry 
 on, boys !' 
 
 Half a dozen men scrambled in after him, 
 and the boat was away into the darkness in a 
 moment. A contagious thrill of excitement 
 ran through the rest ; there was a rush for 
 the slip, a hustling and crowding, and, 
 without quite knowing how or why he got 
 there, Rick found himself in the stern of the 
 long lobster-boat, with her tiller in his hand, 
 steering her through the swarm of little 
 boats moored off the pier. 
 
 The lobster-boat was low in the water fron^ 
 
192 NABOTH'S VINEYARD. 
 
 the number of men who had crowded into 
 her, but six strong fellows sent her along at a 
 pace that soon lessened the distance between 
 her and Kearney's boat. Rick was too much 
 occupied for the first minute to think of who 
 were with him, and after Donovans loud 
 protests on the pier, he was considerably 
 astonished to hear his voice close to him. 
 
 ' Ye shaved Cat Island Point that close 
 ye'd think ye were in as big a hurry as Tom 
 Kearney,' he said. It was too dark to see 
 his face, but Rick seemed to hear a sneer in 
 the husky voice. ' Pull away, boys !' he con- 
 tinued ; * I'd be sorry Tom beat us, and we'll 
 all have a dhrop of something betther than 
 wather once we're done with the fire.' 
 
 That it was a big fire was evident. The 
 quivering glare became each moment more 
 vivid, and when they rounded the second 
 point, there was a weird flush on the rough 
 black water ahead of them, 
 
A PLUNGE. 193 
 
 * It must be in the back o' the woods down 
 by Scariff/ said Rick, trying to keep out of 
 his voice the anxiety that was growing in 
 him. 
 
 ' Well, with this wind the river will stop it,' 
 answered Macarthy, who was pulling stroke, 
 turning to look at the sky ; * but I think 
 meself 'tis north of the woods entirely/ 
 
 They were now close on the third point, 
 and the trees on the high shoulder of the hill 
 were silhouetted against the fiery clouds. 
 There was a shout from the leading boat, 
 and the rowers in both slackened. 
 
 * It's not the woods at all !' shouted Tom 
 Kearney ; ' it's the Widow Leonard's house !' 
 
 The words turned Rick blind and giddy 
 for an instant, like a blow, and in the next 
 had stimulated him to a kind of madness. 
 
 * Row !' he yelled, springing to his feet. 
 * What are ye stopping for, ye fools ?' 
 
 The boat swung round the point, the men 
 
194 NABOTWS VINEYARD. 
 
 Staring in amazement at Rick's agonized 
 features as he stood facing them with the 
 tiller in his hand and his eyes straining 
 ahead of him, till the full light of the blaze 
 fell on them, and with one accord all turned 
 towards it. 
 
 The fire itself could be only imperfectly 
 seen through the trees scattered along the 
 banks of the Rowrie, but Rick could make 
 out something that looked like a black gable 
 from which the lurid smoke and sparks went 
 streaming away down the wind. Donovan 
 burst into a peal of falsetto laughter. 
 
 * So that's what we were killin' ourselves 
 to get to ! The Widow Leonard's chimbley 
 afire ! Ho, ho, ho ! Well, boys, afther that 
 I think we might as well come about, and 
 get that dhrop of dhrink I was talking about.' 
 
 There was no mistaking the meaning of 
 his brutal indifference. Rick turned on 
 him, reckless 'of what he said or did. 
 
A PLUNGE. 195 
 
 ' Ye lie !' he said fiercely. ' Ye know well 
 that's no chimney ! Isn't it enough for ye 
 that ye have them near ruined without 
 leavin' them to burn, ye cowardly hound ? 
 Pull on, men — for God's sake, pull !' 
 
 Dinny Macarthy put his oar into the water, 
 but none of the other men stirred. There 
 was another cackle of laughter from Donovan. 
 
 * I thank ye for yer language to me, Mis- 
 ther O'Grady,' he said, raising his voice so 
 that the men in the other boat could hear ; 
 ' it shows yer fine breeding. Well, boys, 
 he's a great commandher, and he thinks he 
 can ordher us all about as if we were black 
 slaves, but I'd ad wise ye to mind yer own 
 business, and let him and his commands go 
 to the divil.' 
 
 The fire gave a stronger leap into the sky ; 
 by its light, Rick saw the broad face of his 
 enemy looking up at him with a coarse grin, 
 and his voice shook with rage and despera- 
 
 13—2 
 
10 NABOTH'S VINEYARD. 
 
 tion as he made his last appeal to the open- 
 mouthed, listening men. 
 
 * Is it him ye're afraid of? what sort of 
 cowards are ye that the likes of that skunk 
 has ye all under his thumb ? I tell ye 'tis for 
 his own reasons he has that woman boy- 
 cotted, and not for the sake o' the League ! 
 I tell ye no harm at all '11 happen ye if ye'll 
 come ashore with me now and lend a hand 
 to help those poor creatures ; sure, boys, ye 
 wouldn't see an old neighbour in danger and 
 leave her in it !* 
 
 The wildness and intensity of his ex- 
 pression transfigured him as he leaned 
 towards them, but there was no response 
 to his passionate appeal ; only a ghostly 
 echo babbled and hooted it back to 
 him from the darkness of the wooded hill 
 opposite. 
 
 Donovan seized the tiller and pushed it 
 hard down. 
 
A PLUNGE. 197 
 
 * Give way, men/ he said ; * we've had 
 enough o' this.' 
 
 The oars went in with a splash at the 
 bidding of the gombeen man, and the boat 
 lurched jerkily round. 
 
 * P'raps Misther Richard O'Grady ' 
 
 Without waiting for the end of the 
 
 sentence, Rick put his foot on the gunwale, 
 and sprang from the boat far out into the 
 water. They saw him rise a good ten yards 
 away, and an irrepressible * Bravo !' or two 
 mingled with the sound of the water in his 
 ears as he swam with all his strength for the 
 Point. 
 
CHAPTER XV. 
 
 OUT OF THE DEEP. 
 
 Ellen Leonard was very tired that Thurs- 
 day night when she had finished the last of 
 her many tasks and subsided beside her 
 mother into the mountainous feather-bed that 
 was a monument to the many geese who had 
 sufferingly yielded its substance from their 
 living breasts. She was so tired that in 
 a few minutes her overwhelming sleepiness 
 swathed itself soothingly round the new keen 
 happiness and anxiety that were shut up 
 together in her heart, and for an hour or more 
 she slept without a dream, without a stir. 
 Then slowly some glimmer of waking life 
 
OUT OF THE DEEP. 199 
 
 reached down to her in the black well of 
 unconsciousness. She realized that some 
 familiar sound was recurring again and again, 
 and in some way appealing to her. The 
 thought of morning came struggling into her 
 mind, and quite suddenly she found herself 
 broad awake listening to the cocks crowing, 
 loud and shrill, in a shed outside. She 
 turned herself towards the little window ; 
 there was a ruddy light in it that she could 
 not understand. ' Sure it couldn't be morn- 
 ing yet,' she said to herself. Something like 
 a falling star drifted past the window, another 
 and another followed ; then she started up, 
 trembling all over, and, calling loudly to her 
 mother, leaped out of bed and rushed to the 
 window. 
 
 The hayrick at Scariff was built at some 
 little distance to the west of the house, stand- 
 ing commandingly on a small rocky rise in a 
 corner of the wide field in which most of it 
 
200 NABOTH'S VINEYARD. 
 
 had grown and been made. It had been burn- 
 ing for more than half an hour before Ellen 
 saw it, and by the time that she and her 
 mother and Dan had hurried on their clothes 
 and rushed out to it, the flames were tower- 
 ing above its black ridge, and bending before 
 the west wind in stupendous banners of fire. 
 The sparks fell thickly round the three as 
 they ran through the clouds of stinging, 
 pungent smoke, and when they neared the 
 great glaring furnace, the muffled roar and 
 the heat became so dreadful that even the 
 widow's breathless curses and bewailings 
 were terrified to silence. 
 
 Gasping and choking, they made a wide 
 circuit to the windward side of the hayrick, 
 and there, with the wind fanning the murky 
 heat away from them, they saw the full extent 
 of the disaster. Half at least of the winter 
 provender of the widow's cattle was already a 
 mound of glowing ashes, and the other half 
 
OUT OF THE DEEP. 201 
 
 was being rapidly devoured, with a horrible 
 soft crackling sound, by the flames that the 
 wind was driving into its heart. 
 
 ' Wather I' shrieked Mrs. Leonard, waving 
 the bucket that she, like Dan and Ellen, had 
 snatched up as she left the house ; * throw 
 wather on it ! Oh, God help us ! God help 
 us !' 
 
 * Wather !' replied Dan hoarsely ; ' ye 
 might as well be spittin' on it ! if ye empt ed 
 the well on it itself, 'twouldn't save it.' 
 
 ' Oh, but look at the stack of sthraw,' 
 exclaimed Ellen ; ' the sparks is coming to it 
 already !' 
 
 The stack was a low round one, standing 
 partly in the lee of the hayrick, so that every 
 now and then the trailing sparks were swept 
 over or past it. As Ellen spoke, a little wisp 
 of burning hay drifted on to it, dying as it 
 alighted. 
 
 * Oh, Lord save us ! did ye see that T she 
 
202 NABOTWS VINEYARD. 
 
 cried. ' Hurry, hurry, Dan ! maybe we might 
 get the wather from the well that'd save it.' 
 
 She ran down the field towards the well in 
 its furthest corner ; and the widow and Dan 
 followed her. Journey after journey they 
 made ; running down the rough slope with 
 the empty buckets clanking, staggering up 
 the steps of the well, and back again across 
 the field, the precious water splashing out of 
 the buckets at every unguarded step ; and 
 then the moment came that seemed so 
 inadequate after all the toil, when the paltry 
 bucketful that had cost so much, and was 
 worth so little, was flung on the stack. 
 Sometimes they were forced back by a whim 
 of the wind sending a sickening, scorching 
 gust of smoke in their faces, and the sparks 
 would fly round them like a swarm of fiery 
 gnats, and each time as the smoke lifted 
 they expected to find the dreaded spot 
 glowing in the stack. But each time as 
 
OUT OF THE DEEP. 203 
 
 it cleared they saw the sparks hissing into 
 blackness on the wet straw, and they felt 
 encouraged to persevere. At last the widow 
 gave in ; half-way to the well she collapsed 
 on to the grass. 
 
 ' O God !' she cried, ' I'm owld and wake. 
 But yez that's young and has the strength, go 
 on while yez have it. O mother of God I Oh, 
 the bloody villians !' 
 
 They left her there, moaning and crying 
 and clapping her hands, and ran on to the 
 well. Ellen's breath was coming in thick 
 gasps, and her knees trembled under her as 
 she groped down the dark steps of the well. 
 Dan had got there before her, and she heard 
 him scooping the water into his bucket with 
 the bowl that was kept in the well for times 
 of drought. 
 
 * Go back, Ellen,' he said ; * there's not half 
 the full of a bucket left in it. We're done for 
 now entirely.' 
 
204 NABOTH'S VINEYARD, 
 
 The little vault of the well gave his voice a 
 hollow and fateful ring, and Ellen sank down 
 on the steps above him. 
 
 * The well dhry !' she said in a whisper ; 
 
 * 'tis too much misery we has to bear ! I wish 
 I was dead out o' this.' 
 
 He left his bucket in the shallow water, 
 and came and stood on the step below her. 
 
 * Is it wishin' yerself dead y'are ? There's 
 others is as mis'rable as yourself, and worse, 
 and not a word of pity ye have for them.' 
 He put his hands on her bent shoulders : 
 
 * Look up at me now ; don't ye know that 
 ever since I was a little gossoon I was aimin' 
 to marry ye ; ye knew that well, and ye 
 never said agin' it, and I was damn sure that 
 comin' on next Shraft we'd be marrid.' 
 Excitement had given him a power of words 
 that was very unusual to him, but here his 
 breath was caught by a dry sob. Ellen 
 looked up and saw his broad face working 
 
OUT OF THE DEEP. 205 
 
 and quivering, and his light eyes holding the 
 flare of the fire In them like a dog's. 
 
 * Dan,' she said, a sick chill of terror inter- 
 weaving itself with her despair, * don't talk 
 that way, for God's sake ; come out o' this ; 
 it's no good for us to stay here. Come on. 
 Why ! we must do what we can to save the 
 stack.' She tried to get up, but his great 
 hands pressed her down, and he went on as 
 if she had not spoken : 
 
 * I declare to me sowl I was glad when 
 they boycotted us ; I thought, surely ye'd 
 see then how 'twas for the sake of yerself, 
 and nothin' else, I stopped on here. 'Twas 
 little I thought ye'd turn about and threat 
 me like the dirt o' the road.' 
 
 ^Ye know I never done that, Dan/ 
 faltered Ellen. * Ye know I always had a 
 great wish for ye, and we were always 
 friends that way.' 
 
 ' Ye lie !' he said, with such fury that she 
 
2o6 NABOTWS VINEYARD. 
 
 shrank away with a terrified cry. * If ye 
 had any wish for me, ye'd not take up with 
 the worst enemy yerself and yer mother ever 
 had — him that's makin* a fool of you, and a 
 beggar of yer mother, for the sake of Dono- 
 van's wife !' 
 
 Ellen struggled to her feet with something 
 of her mother's spirit roused in her. 
 
 ' He thinks no more of Harriet Donovan 
 than I do !' she said, with no smallest 
 tremor of uncertainty in her voice ; ' and 
 I wouldn't care if everyone livin' was down 
 on their knees tellin' it to me. I wouldn't 
 believe that Rick O'Grady ever done a hand's 
 turn agin us !' 
 
 * There's one that maybe ye'd believe with- 
 out she goin' down on her knees to ye,' retorted 
 Dan ; * and she could tell ye that he was only 
 here to do her husband's business — and 
 there's what his business is !' — he flung his 
 hand out towards the burning hayrick. ' Ellen, 
 
OUT OF THE DEEP. 207 
 
 ril never sarve ye that way !* She was 
 standing on the step above him, and he 
 suddenly threw his arms round her waist 
 with a hoarse cry of rage and despair. * I'd 
 sooner see ye dead than married to him !' 
 
 Ellen had one glimpse of the face that 
 was so near to hers. There was a stare 
 like madness in the eyes, and she shrieked 
 as she tried to tear his long arms asunden 
 
 A light so fierce broke on them at that 
 moment that every stone and blade of grass 
 was lit up, and before she could realize what 
 it was, she found herself free. She turned 
 and faced, as Dan was facing, towards 
 the hayrick. Its eastern gable, undermined 
 by fire, had toppled over in one huge burning 
 mass on to the stack of straw, and the flamesj 
 were spouting up like the waters of a fountain, 
 Ellen saw between her and the blaze her 
 mother's figure, with wild arms waving above 
 her head, and she ran towards her, scarcely 
 
2o8 NABOTWS VINEYARD. 
 
 noticing that Dan made no further effort to 
 stop her. Had she looked at him, she would 
 have seen that his eyes were fixed on a man 
 who was running fast across the field towards 
 the hayrick ; but she saw only her mother's 
 despairing figure. She never looked back 
 as she sped along the wet path from the well, 
 and she was thus spared what would have 
 been for her the culmination of that night of 
 horror. Dan had fallen forward on his face 
 upon the slimy steps of the well, and was 
 lying there, breathing stertorously, with foam 
 upon his lips. 
 
 The widow saw Ellen coming, and ran 
 distractedly towards her. 
 
 * Come home, come home, ahudth !* she 
 wailed. ' It's all disthroyed on us, and we 
 might as well go undher the sod, for they'll 
 burn the house over us next! Mother of 
 God ! who's this ?' she shrieked, suddenly 
 falling on her knees. ' They're comin' to 
 
OUT OF THE DEEP. 209 
 
 murdher us altogether ! Run, Ellen, 
 run !' 
 
 But Ellen had seen as soon as her mother 
 the supposed murderer, and seen him with 
 such a flood of joy in her heart, that she had 
 no voice to call to him. She stumbled 
 towards him with outstretched hands, and 
 before Mrs. Leonard's appalled, incredulous 
 eyes she fell into his arms and laid her head 
 on his shoulder. 
 
 He was bare-headed and all breathless from 
 his run, and the sea water dripped from his 
 clothes. 
 
 * I couldn't save your hay,' he panted, * but, 
 thank God, I saved your house and your 
 cattle. And what signifies the hay so long 
 as you're safe yourselves ? What signifies 
 anything ' 
 
 His voice failed him, but it may be pre- 
 sumed that Ellen heard the rest of the 
 sentence. 
 
 14 
 
2IO NABOTH'S VINEYARD. 
 
 Amazement had so far relaxed the tension 
 of Mrs. Leonard's nerves that she had sunk 
 from her knees Into a sitting position on her 
 heels, but the most supreme emotion had 
 never been known to deprive her of her 
 power of speech. 
 
 * Let go me daughther, ye bloodthirsty 
 villain ! Isn't It enough for ye to ruinate 
 and disthroy us this way, without tellin' lies 
 that's as black and as bloody as yer own 
 heart !' 
 
 She shook her two clenched fists In the air 
 at the rescuer. 
 
 ' I came near losing me life to get here to 
 help ye/ said Rick, in a voice that carried 
 conviction with It ; * and If I hadn't come, 
 ye wouldn't have had a roof over yer heads 
 to-morrow. I found James Mahony on the 
 pigsty wall setting a light to the thatch of 
 the cowhouse, and he's lying there now in 
 the ditch under It, with his leg broke.' 
 
CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 HUSBAND AND WIFE. 
 
 Friday morning was dark and wet. The 
 south-west wind had not failed of its usual 
 custom, and Dinny Macarthy had spoken 
 truth when he told Rick that rain was near at 
 hand. But in spite of the heavy sluices that 
 darkened the heavens over Rossbrin, and 
 raced in yellow rivulets down its steep street, 
 the stir of a delightful new excitement was 
 perceptible in all its pulses — that is to say, 
 its public-houses. 
 
 Every man had his own version to give of 
 the scene of the night before, and still more 
 abundantly had every man his prognostica- 
 
 14 — 2 
 
212 NABOTH'S VINEYARD. 
 
 tion as to what would come of this quarrel 
 between the two leading luminaries of the 
 place. Rick O' Grady had been seen very 
 early that morning driving in the direction of 
 Cloonmore, and not long after his return, Mr. 
 Donovan had set off in the same direction. 
 These important facts having been discussed 
 in all their bearings, it seemed certain to Ross- 
 brin that * the gombeen ' had gone to swear 
 * informations ' against Rick for libel and 
 abusive language, and whatever the latter's 
 business might have been, it seemed pretty 
 certain that in one way or the other, the 
 quarrel would afford the pleasurable excite- 
 ment of a day in the Court House at Cloon- 
 more. 
 
 It happened, however, that Donovan's 
 object had been rather to seek information 
 than to impart it ; but it also happened that 
 he had been unsuccessful, and at about half- 
 past two o'clock he was nearing Rossbrin, no 
 
HUSBAND AND WIFE. 213 
 
 wiser, except in a negative sense, than he 
 had been when he started. He had made 
 inquiries at James Mahony's lodgings, and 
 was told by the harassed, good-natured 
 mistress of the house that Mahony wasn't in 
 all night, and that, indeed, it was a quare 
 thing for a man to lave his child that way, 
 and only for herself giving him his breakfast, 
 the creature'd be lost with the hunger. 
 Donovan gave her a shilling, and departed, 
 the unpleasant truth now forced upon him 
 that his ally had got into trouble of some 
 kind. He knew very well that the Rossbrin 
 sergeant of police must already have made 
 inquiries about the burning of the hayrick, 
 but as President of the Land League, his 
 diplomatic relations with that officer were a 
 trifle strained, and his guilty conscience con- 
 fused his power of deciding whether it would 
 be advisable to consult him on the subject. 
 His temper was not at its best, when cold, 
 
214 NABOTH'S VINEYARD. 
 
 wet, and hungry, he got back to his house ; 
 and the conditions there were not calculated 
 to soothe a man in his then frame of mind. 
 On the table of the sitting-room an uninviting 
 lump of half-cold pork surrounded by a dark 
 and flabby heap of cabbage was waiting for 
 him ; the fire was nearly out, and a half- 
 empty plate showed that his wife had not 
 paid him the compliment of postponing her 
 dinner on his account. The ill-humour 
 darkened in him as he bolted his unsavoury 
 meal. * How bad she was that she couldn't 
 wait a half-hour for me !' he thought resent- 
 fully as he rose to get the whisky out of the 
 cupboard by the fireplace. * And why 
 couldn't she come in here while I ate me 
 dinner, without leavin' me by meself this 
 way ?' He knelt heavily on one knee to 
 unlock the cupboard door, putting one hand 
 on the narrow wooden upright of the chim- 
 ney-piece to steady himself; and as he did so, 
 
HUSBAND AND WIFE. 215 
 
 a Stick that had been leaning in the corner 
 by it fell clattering on to the floor in front of 
 him. Donovan picked it up. It was a 
 smart blackthorn with a silver band, and he 
 did not need to read the letters R. O'G. 
 engraved on the band to tell him whose it 
 was. 'What the devil brings his stick 
 here ?' he said to himself, getting on to his 
 feet. ' It couldn't be he was here yestherday 
 evening afther she tellin' me last night he 
 wasn't when I axed her about him.' His 
 face reddened all over, and his fingers 
 clenched on the blackthorn till his hand 
 trembled. He went to the door, and calling 
 the girl from the kitchen, asked her where 
 her mistress was, and hearing that she was 
 * above stairs in the hotel parlour,' he went 
 straight up there, with the stick still in his 
 hand. 
 
 Harriet had betaken herself to the rarely 
 used hotel sitting-room, ostensibly to arrange 
 
2i6 NABOTH'S VINEYARD. 
 
 and dust its desolate decorations: but her 
 duster was lying clean and folded on the 
 dilapidated keyboard of the little old piano, 
 and she herself was standing in the window, 
 looking vacantly out into the rain, that in the 
 last hour or so had degenerated into a thin 
 drizzle. Her hands knotted and unknotted 
 the blind cord restlessly, while her thoughts 
 spun in an endless circle round one centre — 
 that stormy interview with Rick ; and no 
 matter how often she thought of it, her 
 pulses would give the same throb as she 
 lived over again the moment of farewell. It 
 had meant everything to her : confession, 
 promise, seal, the old passion reawakened on 
 his part, the new justified on hers. During 
 a sleepless night, and a long solitary morning, 
 she had fed her heart with these thoughts, 
 and now at length excitement and the uncer- 
 tainty of her hopeless and yet irrevocable 
 love wrought her up to the pitch of tears, not 
 
HUSBAND AND WIFE. ill 
 
 blinding and abundant, like those she had 
 shed last night, but of the slow-trickling and 
 agonizing kind. 
 
 Her husband's voice speaking to the 
 servant recalled her to herself. Her eyes 
 were dry in a moment, and when he came 
 into the room she was languidly dusting the 
 clinking glass pendants of the candlesticks 
 on the mantlepiece. She took no noti-e of 
 his entrance, and the big man stood silent for 
 a moment or two, certain of his purpose, 
 but irresolute how to enter upon it. At 
 last : 
 
 ' Harriet,' he said, ' didn't ye know I'd 
 come in ?' 
 
 * Yes, I did,' she answered, without turning 
 her head. 
 
 * Well, I think ye might have seen that me 
 dinner was hot for me, so,' he rejomed, 
 blustering a little so as to overcome a latent 
 fear of her. 
 
2i8 NABOTH'S VINEYARD. 
 
 To this he received no answer, and after 
 a slight pause he cleared his throat. 
 
 * Did ye get any news while I was out 
 about the business at Scarlff last night ?' 
 
 * I suppose it's the burning of the 
 Leonards' hayrick ye mean ?' replied Harriet 
 indifferently. ' I'm not In the habit of going 
 out looking for news, and as ye said nothing 
 to me about it, I didn't ask any questions. 
 It was Joanna had some talk about it. Is it 
 Captain Moonlight again, I w^onder ?' There 
 was a faintly mocking tone In her voice, and 
 she turned her head a little to see how her 
 husband took the insinuation. 
 
 He changed countenance slightly. 
 
 * There's no bellevin' the talk these people 
 have,' he said ; * I'll walk over meself in the 
 coorse of the afthernoon and see about it.' 
 
 Donovan had not thought it desirable to 
 tell his wife any of the details of his last 
 night's adventure, feeling that she already 
 
HUSBAND AND WIFE. 219 
 
 had more information about his affairs than 
 was good for her. He had thought much 
 and uneasily about Rick's accusation in the 
 boat, and now Harriet's elaborate indifference 
 seemed to confirm his suspicions. She had 
 been the traitor, and he held in his hand a 
 proof of her treachery. 
 
 * Was Rick O' Grady here at all yestherday?' 
 he asked carelessly, but in the mirror above 
 the chimney-piece Harriet saw his face alert 
 with sinister inquiry. 
 
 ' No ; I know nothing at all about him.* 
 
 Donovan drew from behind his back the 
 hand in which he had been holding the 
 stick. 
 
 ' Then I suppose I may take the liberty to 
 ax what brings his stick in my house ?' 
 
 Harriet turned very pale. 
 
 * I suppose he left it the last time he was 
 here.' 
 
 ' I'll swear that stick wasn't in the room 
 
220 NABOTH'S VINEYARD, 
 
 yesterday morning/ replied Donovan, coming 
 a step nearer, his small eyes sparkling with 
 the fury that was scarcely perceptible In his 
 voice ; ' I'd have seen it at dinner-time when 
 I went for the whisky the way I did to 
 day.' 
 
 * What's It to me where it was ?' replied 
 Harriet insolently. * There's many a one of 
 your friends comes in and out here unbe- 
 knownst to me !' 
 
 He came close to her, and, catching her by 
 the arm, swung her roughly round face to 
 face with him. 
 
 ' I'll have no more lies from ye. Was he 
 here last night, or was he not ?' 
 
 ' Let go my arm !' she exclaimed ; * ye're 
 hurting me.' 
 
 He relaxed his hold, but did not let her 
 
 go- 
 
 ' Answer me that, now : was he here ?' 
 
 'Ye needn't roar at me the way the 
 
HUSBAND AND WIFE. 221 
 
 servant '11 hear ye,' she said, becoming 
 malevolently cool and steady : * as ye're so 
 anxious to know, he was here ; and he heard 
 ye kindly ordhering James Mahony's supper 
 before ye sent him out to ' 
 
 Donovan cut her short with an oath. 
 
 * If ye say one other word ' he said in a 
 low voice, ' I'll put ye out into the street, and 
 there isn't one but will know the reason why 
 I do it !' He dragged her forward a pace, 
 and then flung her from him with the full 
 thrust of his arm. ' If I done right I'd beat 
 ye with this stick the way I'd beat a dog,' 
 he said deliberately ; * but I b'lieve if onst I 
 began I wouldn't stop till I killed ye.' 
 
 She felt for the first time the dread of his 
 physical strength, and stood silently there, 
 white-faced and panting, with her eyes 
 fastened on his face. 
 
 ' What did ye tell him last night about 
 James Mahony ?' 
 
222 NABOTH'S VINEYARD. 
 
 ' Nothing !' 
 
 *I suppose that's another lie !' He spoke 
 with a difficulty that told of mental torment 
 as well as rage. ' I suppose yeVe told me 
 so many lies already, ye think another makes 
 no differ.' 
 
 * I told him nothing,' she said again ; ' he 
 knows nothing but that James Mahony was 
 here.' 
 
 * Ye needn't throuble yerself to tell me 
 what he knows,' retorted Donovan. * He 
 knew enough to come sneaking to my house 
 when I was out, and to run and hide in the 
 dark like a rat when I come in !' 
 
 The fire came back to her eyes. 
 
 * He didn't hide ! He was standing looking 
 at ye, and for the matther o' that, it was / 
 asked him to come here !' 
 
 With a movement incredibly swift for so 
 cumbrous a man, he struck her across the 
 body with Rick's blackthorn. 
 
HUSBAND AND WIFE. 223 
 
 She caught at the piano to save herself 
 from falling, and a thin confused jangle came 
 from its yellow notes, and mingled gro- 
 tesquely with her cry of pain and terror. 
 
 Her husband stared at her, as if trying to 
 realize what he had done, and then he broke 
 the stick across his knee with one strong 
 effort, and dashed the pieces down at her 
 feet. 
 
 ' There !' he said, * ye may give him his 
 stick the next time he comes here, and tell 
 him the use I had for it ; but I think I'll be 
 apt to see him before you do, and to put him 
 in a way that he '11 not be goin' visitin' again 
 for awhile !' 
 
 ' Do yer best, ye cowardly brute !' she said, 
 with her right hand pressed to the place 
 where he had struck her; ' it's easy to sthrike 
 mey but I dar' ye to lay yer finger on kim ! 
 
 She was desperate at last, and she flung 
 the taunt gallantly at him. 
 
224 NABOTH'S VINEYARD. 
 
 He glared at her, and she at him for a few 
 tense, dangerous seconds ; then he made a 
 kind of plunge towards the door. 
 
 ' My God Almighty !' he said thickly, * let 
 me out o' this before I kill her ' 
 
 The door banged behind him, and a 
 minute or two afterwards she heard his step 
 in the street below. 
 
CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 A WOLF IN A TRAP. 
 
 Torture — a shivering numbness, and a par- 
 tial insensibility ; then torture renewed a 
 hundredfold, while unskilful hands jerked 
 and dragged and lifted him. Another wave 
 of sick faintness when he found himself 
 stretched at last upon hay and pillows, and 
 after that long hours of darkness following 
 each other like blind tormentors, before 
 James Mahony saw the dim wet daylight creep 
 through the holes in the door of the shed in 
 which he lay. As the light strengthened he 
 looked about him at the bare stone walls, and 
 realized to the full all the ignominy of his 
 
 15 
 
226 NABOTH'S VINEYARD. 
 
 position. Caught, and crippled, and disgraced, 
 with nothing to look forward to but the 
 prison infirmary, and dependent, meanwhile, 
 on the charity of his enemies, the man who had 
 slaughtered his neighbour s heifer and burned 
 her hayrick was in as miserable a plight as 
 the severest moralist could desire for him. 
 
 He closed his eyes and lay there, enduring 
 as best he could his pain of mind and body, 
 and listening with fevered anticipation to 
 every sound outside while the gloomy morn- 
 ing wore on. Ellen came to him once or 
 twice with food and drink, looking almost as 
 white and exhausted as he did himself; but 
 he neither looked at her nor thanked her. 
 Soon afterwards came the worst moment of 
 all, when the door was flung open by the 
 widow, and he saw the tall great-coated 
 figures and dark helmets of two of the Ross- 
 bi^in constabulary in the doorway. Their visit 
 was not a long one, nor did they gain much 
 
A WOLF IN A TRAP, 227 
 
 information by it, beyond that which Mrs. 
 Leonard was volubly anxious to bestow on 
 them. James Mahony told them his name, 
 and where he lived, but beyond this he would 
 answer no questions, and his broken leg 
 served him as a temporary protection from 
 further terrors of the law. Then they went 
 away, and his lonely suffering was unbroken 
 by any incident for another hour or two. 
 He guessed it must have been about noon 
 when he heard a quick footstep outside, and 
 then the widow's voice in excited questioning 
 from the cottage door. 
 
 ' Are they comin' for him ? I didn't look 
 to see ye back for another hour. Were ye 
 in Cloonmore at all ?' 
 
 The old man started erect on his couch of 
 hay to hear the answer. 
 
 ^ I was, to be sure !' answered Rick 
 O'Grady's voice. ' I got Hennessy's car in 
 Rossbrin, and I wasn't long on the road.' 
 
 15—2 
 
228 NABOTH'S VINEYARD. 
 
 * Throth, and ye were not ! But tell me 
 now, what's to be done at all ?' 
 
 Fortunately for Mahony, the closing of the 
 yard gate, always a complicated matter, kept 
 Rick outside, and enabled him to hear the 
 answer to the question. 
 
 ' They can't send for him at all to-day. 
 The hospital van was gone out ten miles the 
 other side of Cloonmore, and so I said ye'd 
 keep him till to-morrow. I went to the doctor 
 then, and he said he'd be out here before 
 night. I hope he'll not be late, for I have to 
 be back at home before the eight o'clock mail 
 car goes out.' 
 
 ' And what about the summons ?' The 
 widow's voice sank on the last word, and 
 the straining eager ears of the listener could 
 just catch the reply as Rick crossed the 
 yard. 
 
 ' I didn't go to the Cloonmore police at 
 all : I thought I'd thry could I get anything 
 
A WOLF IN A TRAP. 229 
 
 out of the old man himself first. I think 
 there's others ' 
 
 The end of the sentence was lost in the 
 shutting of the cottage door, and after that 
 there was silence for a long time, except for 
 the monotonous drip and patter of the rain, 
 and the disconsolate crooning of the hens 
 under a cart in the yard. 
 
 The doctor was better than his word, for it 
 was still daylight when his trap rattled up the 
 lane and he presently came into the shed 
 with Rick O'Grady. The agony was short, 
 but while it lasted Mahony never opened his 
 lips to complain ; nor when the strapping and 
 binding of the broken leg was ended did he 
 make any sign of relief or gratitude. The 
 dispensary doctor had seldom had a patient 
 of this kind, and his eyes wandered curiously 
 over the long gaunt figure as he gave 
 Rick his orders as to the treatment of the 
 case. 
 
230 NABOTH'S VINEYARD. 
 
 ' You can move him into the house now if 
 you like,' he said finally. 
 
 The patient fixed his hot suspicious eyes 
 upon the doctor. * Til not be stirred !' he 
 said. ' I'll stay where I am.' 
 
 * Oh, please yourself!' replied the doctor, 
 buttoning on his mackintosh, too hurried to 
 argue about a trifle ; * if you like hay better 
 than blankets, I don't care ; only keep quiet 
 wherever you are.' 
 
 When he was gone, Rick came back into 
 the shed. 
 
 * What way does the leg feel with ye now, 
 Mahony ?' he said not unkindly. 
 
 Mahony turned his head away. 
 
 * I don't know what way it is,' he muttered 
 sullenly. 
 
 Rick looked down at him uncertainly, with 
 his hands thrust deep in his pockets, and 
 at last sat down on the side of a furze-cutting 
 machine that stood near. 
 
A WOLF IN A TRAP, 231 
 
 *WelI, I'm sorry it was through me ye 
 were hurt that way/ he said. * I never got 
 such a surprise as when I seen it was you I 
 was afther knockln into the ditch.' He 
 waited to see if Mahony would speak, and 
 then went on : ' But what's more surprising 
 to me is that a decent man like you would 
 go put his hand to such work as that to spite 
 an old neighbour. I'd bet twenty pound 
 this minute that there's more than yerself in 
 the business.' 
 
 Mahony turned his head towards him. 
 
 * Ye're very smart,' he said slowly, with the 
 pant of pain still in his voice. 'And ye 
 think ye have me under yer fut now, but I'll 
 anser no questions to plaze ye.' 
 
 * Maybe It'd be better for ye if ye did,' said 
 Rick, standing up ; * but that's no affair of 
 mine. There'll be more than me asking ye 
 questions before they're done with ye.' He 
 walked to the door, but there stopped again. 
 
232 NABOTWS VINEYARD. 
 
 ' Come now, Mahony,' he said persuasively, 
 ' who was it set ye on to do it ?' 
 
 Mahony heaved himself on to one elbow. 
 
 ' Hon maun dhiaoul ! Will ye lave me 
 alone ?' 
 
 He had his wish ; the door was slammed 
 and Rick came near him no more. 
 
 Exhaustion had her way at last. While 
 the meagre light in the shed dwindled and 
 dwindled with the dying day, Mahony fell into 
 a doze which deepened into a heavy sleep. 
 It was quite dark when he was awakened by 
 loud voices in the yard, and for a minute or 
 two he did not take in things sufficiently to 
 distinguish whose they were, till a movement 
 on the part of the speakers brought them 
 nearer to the shed. 
 
 * I know as much of the League as yerself,' 
 said Rick O'Grady's voice. * And I have it 
 in black and white that this boycottin' is no 
 work o' theirs.' 
 
A WOLF IN A TRAP. 233 
 
 ' If ye knew anything of it, ye'd know It 
 was Its business to put down land-grabbing/ 
 said the voice that Mahony was somehow not 
 surprised to hear. * And if there's outrages 
 ensoo, that can't be helped ' 
 
 * Oh, curse it all !' broke out Rick, ' what's 
 the good of wasting time picking me words 
 for the likes o' you ? What I say, and what 
 I'll stick to, is that you, and no one else, is at 
 the bottom of this business. I saw that last 
 night in the boat; and, what's more, I say that 
 James Mahony was acting by your orders.' 
 
 * Ha, ha ! ye doublefaced villain ! Answer 
 that, ye mane blagyard !' 
 
 It need scarcely be said that this inter- 
 polation came from the widow. 
 
 * It's little use talkin' to them that won't 
 listen.' Donovan's voice was as coolly 
 deliberate as ever. ' But I may as well tell 
 ye, Misther O'Grady, that ye'll get no good 
 of thryin' t'intimidate me, and that ye're liable 
 
234 NABOTH'S VINEYARD. 
 
 this minute for an action, for accusin* me of 
 being a party to the outrages of that old beg- 
 ging thief. I'd tell him to his face, if I could 
 see him, that the sooner he goes to Cork Gaol 
 the betther plazed I'd be ! and if there was a 
 ha'porth I could swear agin him, I'd go into 
 the Coort to-morrow and give evidence/ 
 
 The listener in the shed clenched his bony 
 hands and groaned out an oath between his 
 teeth. 
 
 * Then perhaps at the same time ye'll 
 explain to the Coort what he was doing 
 sneakin' into yer house last night ?' The 
 accusing voice lacked somewhat of its first 
 energy and conviction. There was a slight 
 pause, and when Donovan answered, his 
 voice was low and hoarse with passion. 
 
 * Sneakin' !' he repeated ; ' if it wasn't that 
 ye're the damnedest sneak in Ireland yerself, 
 and well ye undherstand what I mane, ye'd 
 not know so much about what goes on in my 
 
A WOLF IN A TRAP. 235 
 
 house ! Ye may make any story ye can out of 
 my givin' a bit to eat to a starving man that 
 darn't show his face to his creditors In 
 Rossbrin, but ye'll have to explain more 
 than ye'll care for before ye're done with It, 
 and ye'll have to begin with me this very 
 
 night •— That's what I come here for, 
 
 and I'll not go till IVe done with ye ; come on 
 out of this, away from these infernal women, 
 and I'll let ye know who's a liar and a sneak !' 
 
 A shrill torrent of vituperation from the 
 widow drowned Rick's reply, but the sound of 
 movement made Mahony guess that he had 
 assented. Then Donovan's voice again, 
 this time nearer the cowshed. Mahony 
 gathered himself for an effort as the footsteps 
 neared the yard gate. 
 
 ' Open the doore !' he called out ; * open 
 the doore, till I spake to him !' 
 
 It was flung open immediately, and the 
 light from the wide-open cottage door, 
 
236 NABOTWS VINEYARD. 
 
 opposite, was just enough to show him the 
 figure of his late friend and employer. 
 
 * That's the man !' he cried, his voice 
 sharp with weakness and rage ; ^ John 
 Donovan's the man that done all this, and 
 dar's to call me a thief now ! I had his 
 money, and I had his ordhers, and I'm a 
 ruined man this night through him and his 
 lies. 'Twas for himself he wanted the farm 
 Drimnahoon, and I was to be his caretaker ; 
 deny that now, if ye can !' 
 
 He fell back in the hay, his head reeling 
 from the exertion. Owing to this and the 
 uncertain light, he could not see what 
 happened next. Whether it was that Rick 
 seized Donovan s arm at this, or that Dono- 
 van pushed the other roughly out of his path, 
 but there was suddenly a struggle between 
 the two men. Grappling together, they 
 passed out of his range of sight ; he heard 
 the trampling of their feet through the 
 
A WOLF IN A TRAP. 237 
 
 shrieks of the women, a clang as of the shut- 
 ting of the gate, and then Rick's voice loud 
 and breathless. 
 
 ' Go home now, and summons me as fast 
 as ye like ! I'm not afraid of ye, and I'll see 
 that there isn't one in the parish but'll know 
 the truth about ye by this time to-morrow !' 
 
 There was no response from the lane. 
 Evidently Mr. Donovan thought that, after 
 all, discretion was the better part of valour. 
 James Mahony fell back again in his bed of 
 hay, and felt that there was one pleasure that 
 misfortune had not had the power to take 
 from him — he had seen his desire upon his 
 enemy. 
 
CHAPTER XVIII. 
 
 A WOMAN SCORNED. 
 
 The place where her husband had struck her 
 still burned and ached as Harriet left the 
 hotel, and went quickly down the wet street 
 in the twilight towards Rick O'Grady's 
 house. She hesitated before she lifted the 
 knocker, and then beat such a tattoo upon 
 the door as brought Rick's old servant 
 shuffling up at her best speed. 
 
 * Did Mr. Donovan call here ?' 
 
 ' He did, ma'am ; he was here not half an 
 hour ago, asking for Misther O'Grady; and I 
 told him he wasn't here, and that he went up 
 to Scariff afther he come back from Cloon- 
 
A WOMAN SCORNED. 239 
 
 more, and he wouldn't be back here agin till 
 seven o'clock to night.' 
 
 *And what did Mr. Donovan say?' said 
 Harriet. 
 
 ' He said, ma^am, ^' No matther," says he ; 
 *' ril go meet him there," says he, and he 
 folly'd on then down through the woods.' 
 
 Harriet turned abruptly away, without 
 troubling herself to make any further remark, 
 and the old woman was left on the doorstep, 
 full of unimparted facts and of indignation 
 with Harriet for not waiting to listen tQ 
 them. 
 
 It was nearly five o'clock now, and though 
 the rain had stopped for a little while, the 
 heavy clouds made the evening very dark, 
 Harriet looked fearfully at the woods that 
 stood like a black barrier in front of her ; 
 everything had its suggestion for her excited 
 nerve?, and the trees, crowding darkly 
 togetlier, seemed to be sheltering vague 
 
240 NABOTH'S VINEYARD. 
 
 horrors, nightmares, that would creep 
 whispering after her along the path. At 
 another time she would have turned back, 
 but that same excitement of the nerves 
 proved itself stronger than its own tremors, 
 and she went straight on into the wood. All 
 about her in the gloom was the quiet ghostly 
 drip from the wet branches, and the smell of 
 decaying leaves rose rankly upon the damp 
 air. Her ears were strained for the sound of 
 footsteps, but the screeching and barking of 
 the herons down in the tall firs by the shore, 
 and the rumble of carts on the far-distant 
 Rossbrin road, were the only noises that 
 broke the stillness. 
 
 From what the old woman had told her, 
 Rick must have met her husband by this 
 time. The thought spurred her on, with 
 always the second mad thought following on 
 it, of how, when Rick heard from her of all 
 that had happened, he would avenge her of 
 
A WOMAN SCORNED. 241 
 
 that blow that his own stick had dealt her. 
 She had lost her mental perspective ; with the 
 memory of that kiss still living on her fore- 
 head, nothing was impossible or improbable ; 
 everything had changed, and she was living 
 in an agonizing, ecstatic world of blind hope 
 and unreason. The darkness deepened 
 about her, and when she came at length to 
 the top of the slope that led down to the old 
 bridge, the light in the Widow Leonard's 
 cottage on the hill at the other side of the 
 river twinkled distantly before her. She 
 paused at that sight ; it came like a full-stop 
 to the rhapsody of her mind, and for the first 
 time since she left the house she began to 
 consider the practical side of her project. 
 
 The light had one meaning for her above 
 all others ; it was shining from the place 
 where Rick was. She troubled herself with 
 no questions as to what brought him there ; 
 she had long ago made up her mind that he 
 
 16 
 
242 NABOTH'S VINEYARD. 
 
 had taken the Leonards' part out of anta- 
 gonism to her husband and a high-handed 
 contempt for authority, and every feeHng she 
 had was centred on the thought of seeing 
 him, and telHng him all she had endured for 
 his sake. The rain had begun again, drop- 
 ping sadly and heavily like tears of a grief 
 that is inconsolable. She made up her mind 
 quickly, as was her. wont, and went down 
 the path over the wet tufts of grass and 
 slippery sheets of rock, till she came to the 
 gaping doorway of the mill. A heap of 
 stones lay on its threshold, with the grass and 
 nettles growing up through them ; she 
 stepped In over it, receiving a drenching 
 blow from the bush of Ivy over the door as 
 she did so, and groped her way to the hole 
 in the wall in which the iron axle of the mill- 
 wheel lay in a paste of mud and its own rusty 
 flakes. The ivy grew like a tree on the top 
 of the gable, and protected her a little from 
 
A WOMAN SCORNED. 243 
 
 the rain ; she knelt down on the old mill- 
 stone that lay under the opening and strained 
 her eyes into the darkness outside. 
 
 What she could see was only the black 
 flood of the river beneath her, swollen high 
 and fierce by the rain, and the slight outline 
 of the bridge against the lesser darkness of 
 the sky. The river was so full that it ran 
 smoothly over the submerged rocks, except 
 where a glimmering white gush of water 
 showed here and there where some of the 
 bigger boulders still lifted their heads above 
 the swift current. She listened long and 
 earnestly, and thought once or twice that she 
 caught the sound of angry voices up at the 
 cottage ; but the waving and creaking of the 
 trees in the freshening wind, and the noise of 
 the water, made everything uncertain. She 
 gazed at the cottage light till her eyes were 
 tired, and changing her position, she put her 
 elbows on the broken ledge, and rested her 
 
 16 — 2 
 
244 NABOTH'S VINEYARD. 
 
 hot forehead on her hands, still listening 
 intently. 
 
 She had remained thus for a few minutes, 
 when a sound like the breaking of timber, 
 followed by a slight splash, startled her. She 
 looked towards the bridge ; there was a 
 figure on it. It was too dark to distinguish 
 anything beyond the fact that it was a man, 
 and with the instinct of a person in hiding, 
 she kept perfectly quiet. She heard again 
 the wrenching and breaking of wood, a 
 second splash and a third, just distinguishable 
 above the roar of the river, and then the 
 figure moved back along the bridge and went 
 away up along the opposite bank of the 
 stream. 
 
 Harriet scrambled to her feet and crept 
 out on to the path again. There was 
 nothing more to be seen or heard, and, after 
 a second's hesitation, she stepped on to the 
 bridge, and, with her hand on the rail, 
 
A WOMAN SCORNED. 245 
 
 advanced very cautiously a few steps. 
 Before she was half-way across she stopped 
 with an exclamation of terror. Right under 
 her feet the darkness moved ; it was the 
 water, ten feet below, that she saw through 
 a great gap in the timbers of the bridge. 
 The half-rotten logs had been torn from the 
 two supporting spars that spanned the stream, 
 leaving a space like a big open trap-door, a 
 space through which a man might easily fall 
 before he had time to put out a finger to 
 save himself. She looked down at the rapid 
 water in a kind of stupor; she saw the 
 intention very clearly, but for whom was the 
 trap set ? and who set it } There were just 
 then but two men in the world for her — the 
 man she abhorred, and the man she loved — 
 and of these one hated the other more than 
 anything on earth. These were her premises, 
 and with her husband's threats sounding in 
 her ears, the deduction was swift and sinister. 
 
246 NABOTH'S VINEYARD. 
 
 She crept back off the bridge and leaned 
 against the wall of the mill, her knees 
 bending under her from the shock. It was 
 hideous ! but yet, what better could she 
 have wished than to save his life from her 
 husband's treachery ? She would call to him 
 and stop him ; she would tell him of the 
 villainy that had been planned against him ; 
 he would know how true she had been to 
 him. There was a footstep in the lane on 
 the other side of the river. It came nearer, 
 a footstep not like Rick O'Grady's, but 
 heavy and uncertain. Then she heard a 
 cough, unmistakable to her accustomed ear, 
 and a clearing of the throat. It was her 
 husband. The crisis of Harriet's life 
 confronted her in one moment, and, to do 
 her justice, her first impulse was to call out 
 that there was danger ahead, but before her 
 lips opened some devil's messenger of a 
 thought shot luridly through her mind. 
 
A WOMAN SCORNED. 247 
 
 This was Rick's work ; he had met her hus- 
 band, he had heard disgrace and foul abuse 
 heaped upon her, and for her sake he had 
 taken this way of revenging her, and opening 
 a door into a new Hfe for her and for him. 
 
 Her husband's step was on the bridge ; 
 she became rigid and numb, and all things 
 seemed as unreal as a dream. Then she 
 heard a stumble, a cracking of wood as the 
 hand-rail broke, and a horrible hoarse shout 
 that was drowned in a splash below. A 
 shriek that she was scarcely conscious of 
 broke from her, and she rushed on to the 
 bridge. There was nothing to be seen 
 through the gap in its timbers except the 
 strong black river — nothing to be heard 
 except its flowing. 
 
 She turned, and, not knowing what she did, 
 fled away through the woods. 
 
CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 A SHAKE OF THE HAND. 
 
 The rain fell at intervals till a little after 
 midnight, and then with the turn of the tide 
 the weather changed. The wind no longer 
 drove the heavy clouds before it, and as the 
 dark cold hours wore on it fell to a sigh, and 
 finally there was a complete stillness. An 
 hour before the late winter dawn the 
 lethargy of the woods was stirred by the 
 first mysterious breath of coming day, and 
 the cocks crowed sleepily up at the widow's 
 farm. Soon afterwards there fell from the 
 uncertain obscurities overhead the faint 
 harsh quackings of a string of wild-duck. 
 
A SHAKE OF THE HAND. 249 
 
 coming from Corran Lake down to the sea, 
 and a kind of grayness began to be reflected 
 from the sky upon the mud flats in Scariff 
 Bay. 
 
 The tide was dead out. The serpentine 
 channel that the Rowrie River had worn for 
 itself in the mud began to show more and 
 more in the strengthening light, and the 
 piping and whistling of the curlews and 
 *kilkeentra' awoke as if by magic all over 
 the wide, palely-gleaming expanse. Tall 
 ragged stakes that marked the channel at 
 high water stood nakedly in the ooze, with the 
 seaweed hanging in glutinous branches from 
 them ; and sticking out of the mud on the 
 inside of one of these were the ribs of an old 
 boat, that had gone to pieces there years 
 before, and now, matted over with seaweed, 
 was the most chosen home and nursery for 
 crabs and fat mud-worms. As a rule, it was 
 at low tide the centre of a screaming, 
 
250 NABOTH'S VINEYARD. 
 
 squabbling party of birds, but on this bitter 
 November morning, while the gray streaks 
 of light lengthened in the sky, each bird, as 
 it alighted at the accustomed spot, lifted its 
 wings again, and skimmed away to find its 
 breakfast elsewhere. 
 
 A narrow strip of land, known as Scariff 
 Point, ran out southward into the mud to 
 about fifty yards from the boat. There was 
 a low scrub of furze-bushes on it, and a few 
 wind-dwarfed fir-trees, and between these, 
 just as the first thin rays of sun stole over 
 the crest of the hill eastward of Scariff, Dan 
 Hurley came running. He was quite breath- 
 less, and he stumbled two or three times 
 among the furze-stems, but he kept on with- 
 out a stop till he had scrambled down to the 
 water's edge. He sat down on a rock there, 
 and dragged off his hobnailed boots, and 
 tucked his trousers up above his knees. He 
 was so exhausted that he could scarcely get 
 
A SHAKE OF THE HAND. 251 
 
 Up again ; he had not slept since Ellen's cry 
 of fire had awakened him the night before 
 last, and the last time he had eaten anything 
 was nearly twenty-four hours ago, when, 
 after lying out in the field all night after that 
 seizure at the well, he had slunk into the 
 house for his breakfast, and gone out again, 
 no one knew whither. He himself was now 
 beginning to forget how he had spent his 
 day : things were narrowing in about him in 
 some strange way, leaving nothing clear but 
 his present object. 
 
 He had spent a long night of excitement, 
 wandering about the Trahartha woods, and 
 with the first gleam of day he had gone 
 down to the river bank to see whether the 
 tide had or had not begrudged to him the 
 sight of his victim. There was nothing 
 in the river ; he followed it down to its 
 mouth, and there was nothing there. But 
 even in that faint light he saw, as he looked 
 
252 NABOTH'S VINEYARD. 
 
 out across to Scarlff Point, something that 
 sent him running at full speed, scrambling 
 back across the perilous broken bridge, and 
 on among the gorse and trees till he got to 
 the Point. 
 
 He had changed very much in the last 
 two days. His face was flabby and blue, 
 and his bloodshot eyes had a stare that was 
 almost vacant, and yet had some wild 
 purpose in it. He climbed feebly over 
 the weedy rocks, and, plunging his bare feet 
 into the deathly cold mud, began to make 
 his way across it towards the old boat. He 
 had often waded about in the mud of Scariff 
 Bay, to get worms for bait, and now, 
 though he sank to his knees, he went 
 steadily on. The thing that he was making 
 for lay in a shapeless heap up against the 
 ribs of the boat, just as the last lift of the 
 falling tide had left it. As he neared it 
 there was something about it that puzzled 
 
A SHAKE OF THE HAND, 253 
 
 him. Rick had been wearing a light suit of 
 tweed when he saw him last, and this soaked, 
 huddled-up object was all dark ; besides, it 
 looked heavier and thicker. He made 
 what haste he could, though the exertion 
 was dreadful, floundering on through the 
 blue-gray mud that softened and deepened 
 as he neared the channel of the river, and 
 then at last he saw his work and its 
 failure. 
 
 There was little of John Donovan's face 
 to be seen, as he lay with his head plunged 
 into the rank tresses of seaw^eed, and a 
 big nerveless hand and arm sprawling out 
 over the mud. Dan stood staring at him, 
 the hatred of a lifetime almost forgotten 
 in unutterable amazement and disappoint- 
 ment, his teeth and hands clenched, and 
 the blood banging and hammering in his 
 head. What had brought Donovan up to 
 the farm last night ? Dan cursed the rest- 
 
254 NABOTWS VINEYARD. 
 
 lessness that had driven him away from that 
 safe hiding-place at the back of the cow- 
 house, where he had larked when he saw 
 Rick coming up the lane, and where he had 
 so successfully, as he thought, overheard 
 his plans. If he had been content to wait 
 there he might have known all about 
 Donovan or anyone else who went to the 
 farm. Well, it was no harm done, any way ; 
 he had had it in for him this long while. 
 It occurred to him then that the situation 
 was ludicrous, quite enchantingly so, in fact, 
 and he began to laugh in loud peals that 
 lifted the sea-birds from their feeding-place 
 in squealing, fluttering rings, and roused the 
 echoes in the hills. The echoes seemed to 
 amuse him too ; he listened to them and 
 laughed back to them till he was exhausted. 
 After all, it was a fine stroke of luck that had 
 put one of his enemies out of the way ; he 
 would go back now, and patch up the bridge : 
 
A SHAKE OF THE HAND. 255 
 
 not securely, of course, but so that he could 
 set his trap again to-night and catch another 
 big rat in it. 
 
 The thought nearly convulsed him again 
 with laughter, but he knew that he had 
 no time to waste. He stooped forward 
 and took John Donovans stiff hand in 
 his. 
 
 ' Well, good-bye to ye !' he said ; ' maybe 
 ye'll be out in the harbour's mouth before 
 night, and I mightn't see ye agin.' 
 
 He tried to shake the hand up and down, 
 but it felt as heavy as lead. It seemed 
 to him as if it were pulling him down ; 
 blackness came before his eyes, and he 
 screamed, or thought that he screamed. 
 But the hand still drew him down, and he 
 fell forward and lay, face downwards, in 
 the mud. 
 
 There was great quietness after this, and 
 before long the startled sandpipers and 
 
256 NABOTH'S VINEYARD. 
 
 curlews were hopping and running about, 
 and digging their long bills into the mud, 
 not twenty yards from where the two figures 
 lay. 
 
CHAPTER XX. 
 
 *FOR YOU I DONE IT.' 
 
 The dawn showed itself later in Harriet's 
 dark room than in Scariff Bay. While the 
 sky outside was becoming gray and bright, 
 the closed shutters and the paraffin - lamp 
 prolonged for her a night that hours before 
 had seemed endless ; and even when a pale 
 strip of light made its way in and fell upon 
 her bent shoulders and dark, dishevelled 
 head, she still sat on at the table in the 
 yellow glow of the lamp, with her hands 
 over her eyes, oblivious of the change. 
 
 Footsteps in the street made her lift her 
 head at last, and starting up, she went to the 
 
 17 
 
258 NABOTH'S VINEYARD. 
 
 window, opened the shutters, and raised the 
 sash softly. She looked eagerly out, with eyes 
 dazzled by the large mild light, and saw two 
 or three fishermen coming up the hill. They 
 were talking to each other in what seemed to 
 her lowered voices ; and as they passed the 
 house she drew back a little from the window 
 to listen. It was only something about their 
 trade, after all — some discussion of a sleepy, 
 interjectional kind about a neighbour's boat, 
 — and Harriet put her head out again and 
 looked down towards the sea. 
 
 She was still wearing the brown coat that 
 she had on in the woods the evening before, 
 and her hat lay on the undisturbed counter- 
 pane of the bed ; while the mud about her 
 boots and dress showed through what quag- 
 mires she must have wandered before she 
 came into the house. She had told the 
 servant, then, that she did not know where 
 the master was, or when he would be in, and 
 
'FOR YOU I DONE IT: 259 
 
 had gone up to her room to spend the night 
 sitting in a chair, with her wet clothes drying 
 slowly upon her — sometimes shivering and 
 thrilling with nervous excitement, sometimes 
 becoming like a stone from the ghastly fore- 
 bodings that fastened on her. There were 
 moments when the reiteration of one idea 
 produced a kind of mental numbness, much 
 as the thundering of a train at night will, for 
 a short instant, seem to die in the traveller's 
 tired ear ; but each space of insensibility was 
 bought by fiery awakening pangs, when some 
 sleepless intelligence lighted up the darkened 
 brain-picture, and the wet ivy touched her 
 cheekj and the logs were slippery under her 
 feet, and her husband's cry rang and rang in 
 the darkness. 
 
 The cold air at the window penetrated 
 through and through her, and leaving it, 
 she put out the lamp, feeling, as she did so, 
 that the night with its unrealities was over, 
 
 17 — 2 
 
26o NABOTH'S VINEYARD. 
 
 and that the daylight had brought her face 
 to face with the practical consequences of 
 her husband's death. Then she walked 
 across the room and looked at herself in the 
 glass. She saw there what might have been 
 expected, a gray-white face with miserable 
 ,black wisps of hair about it, and hot heavy 
 eyes, and mechanically taking up her brush, 
 she began to smooth her hair. Then another 
 idea occurred to her. She changed her dress 
 and boots, disarranged the bed so that it 
 should tell no tales, and then lay down on 
 it to consider her next move. 
 
 The servant was already moving about 
 downstairs, and as Harriet listened to her 
 singing at her work, and heard the cheerful 
 ordinary sounds in the street outside, the 
 agony of terror at what was to come caught 
 her with a ruthless hand. 
 
 * Oh, Rick !' she gasped, with her face 
 hidden in the senseless pillow, * my darling 
 
'FOR YOU I DONE IT! 261 
 
 boy, I knew 'twas for me you done it, and I 
 couldn't hinder your work — but if they find 
 you out — oh, my God ! if they find him 
 out ' 
 
 The fit passed off her again, and she lay 
 quiet and pallid on her bed till she heard 
 the clock below strike nine. She got up at 
 that, and putting on her hat and coat, went 
 downstairs. Michael was tidying and arrang- 
 ing the shop as she came into it, and she saw 
 him hang a bundle of blank bills inside the 
 railed desk, and put the pen and blotting- 
 paper ready for the hand that would never 
 use them again. The ground seemed to 
 rock under her feet, and for the first time 
 a faint whisper of remorse awoke in her, 
 but she walked steadily on out of the 
 shop. 
 
 A cold wind, with all the rawness of last 
 night's rain in it, struck at her as she went 
 down the street, and it, and the crude familiar 
 
262 NABOTH'S VINEYARD. 
 
 realisms of the shop windows, seemed to 
 take some of the white heat from her inten- 
 tion, and leave it shivering and feeble. She 
 met no one ; but down at the foot of the hill, 
 near the two trees, she saw a knot of fisher- 
 men, and as she crossed the street to Rick 
 O'Grady's house there came out of his door a 
 man whom she knew well — one Donaleen — 
 a purveyor of lobsters and crabs to the village. 
 He looked strangely at her, she thought, but 
 went down the hill without speaking to her, 
 and as she knocked at the door she saw him 
 join the group of men by the trees, who, she 
 now noticed, were all staring at her with un- 
 usual interest. 
 
 Something must have happened — they 
 must have found him. She had not ex- 
 pected it so soon, or in this way ; she had 
 imagined the messenger of death coming 
 to her house, but not to Rick's ; why should 
 they have come to Rick ? 
 
' FOR YOU I DONE IT: 263 
 
 * Oh my God !' she thought, ' have they 
 found him out ?' 
 
 She became aware that the door had been 
 opened, and that Rick was standing before 
 her. 
 
 * Come inside, Harriet,' he said in a low, 
 agitated voice, taking her cold hand, and 
 drawing her into the little sitting-room. He 
 shut the door behind them, and then, turning 
 white-faced to her, he said tremulously : 
 ' When did ye hear it ?' 
 
 She stood motionless, while Rick's dog, 
 roused from its sleep on the hearthrug, 
 jumped up at her, rubbing its head against 
 her passive hand. Then, with a single cry 
 of his name, she made an uncertain step 
 towards him, and threw herself upon his 
 breast. 
 
 ' Don't say a word to me — I know it all !* 
 she panted ; * I know that 'twas for me ye 
 done it, my darling, darling boy ! I was 
 
264 NABOTH'S VINEYARD. 
 
 waiting up at the bridge to speak to ye, 
 and I saw ye break it down, and then — 
 and then I heard John coming. Oh ! 
 Rick ' She broke off, sobbing hysteri- 
 cally ; * he struck me yesterday with your 
 stick — I was comin' out to tell ye — and I 
 
 heard him — I heard him ' 
 
 Rick caught at her circling arms and tried 
 to unloose them from his neck. 
 
 * What are you talking of, Harriet ? Are 
 ye gone mad ?' 
 
 * Don^t be afraid of me. Rick,' she went 
 on, in her infatuation clinging closer to him 
 than before. * No one '11 ever know ye done 
 it but me, and I forgive ye, Rick — I might 
 have stopped him before he got to the 
 bridge, but I knew they'd never find ye 
 out ' 
 
 'What are ye sayin' to me?' said Rick, 
 with all the horror that he felt in his voice 
 and face ; * is it that yer husband was knocked 
 
'FOR YOU I DONE IT: 265 
 
 off the bridge and that ye think I did 
 it ?' 
 
 ' Oh, I know it ! I know it !' shrieked 
 Harriet, losing all self-control ; * who else 
 would do it but you, that hated him as I 
 hated him ? But they'll never know it,' she 
 repeated — * they'll never know it, and you and 
 me that loves one another will be happy in 
 the end.' 
 
 Rick tore her arms -from round his neck 
 and started back from her. 
 
 ' Let go of me !' he said roughly, while he 
 stared into her white, passionate face to see 
 if she were really mad or no. * Do ye know 
 that yer husband's dead body was found 
 out on the mud at Scariff Bay, and Dan 
 Hurley's beside it .-^ It was Donaleen told 
 me that now, and I don't know what this is 
 ye're sayin' about the bridge — I never was 
 near it last night at all.' 
 
 She supported herself with one hand on 
 
NABOTWS VINEYARD. 
 
 the table, and leaning forward, returned his 
 gaze with an agonized intensity. Was this 
 consummate acting on his part ? or could it 
 be 
 
 ' Rick !* she burst out, unable to bear the 
 dreadful thought, 'don't say such things to 
 me, or ye'll kill me! I'll not say any more 
 to ye about last night if ye don't like. But, 
 oh !' she went on desperately, her wonderful 
 eyes melting and glowing, * what's the need 
 of secrets between us now ? when ye kissed 
 me two nights ago, then I knew ye were the 
 same to me that ye were in the old days — 
 and I was glad of the blow that he struck me — 
 I knew ye'd revenge it on him * 
 
 Rick turned away from her and groaned. 
 
 * It'll be all right now,' she went on 
 eagerly ; * we'll ' 
 
 * Hold yer tongue !' he shouted, wrought 
 from horror to disgust ; ' have ye no decency 
 in ye ? I never saw yer husband afther he 
 
'FOR YOU I DONE ITJ 267 
 
 left the Leonards' : we had words there, and 
 more, and I'm sorry for It, but Mrs. Leonard 
 and her daughter will tell ye I didn't leave 
 the house till an hour afther he was gone, 
 and I never was near the bridge at all — I 
 came home in the punt, the way I went up. 
 If anyone done any harm to him, it wasn't 
 me!' 
 
 * Then who was It done it, If It wasn't you ? 
 I saw ye tear the logs off the bridge and 
 throw them in the river — I'll swear it! I'll 
 swear It !' 
 
 The miserable creature intended it as a 
 menace, but even while she spoke her soul 
 was dying within her. Rick did not answer 
 for a few seconds, and when he spoke the 
 excitement and protest were gone out of his 
 voice. 
 
 * God forgive ye,' he said ; * and God for- 
 give me, too, If anything I said to ye put ye 
 asthray this way.' 
 
268 NABOTWS VINEYARD. 
 
 The change in his voice and manner had 
 more effect upon Harriet than all his previous 
 denials. She put one hand over her eyes, 
 and stretching the other out in front of her, 
 made as though she would stagger to the 
 door, but swayed so helplessly at her first 
 step that he had to catch at her arm to keep 
 her from falling. 
 
 * Ye needn't be afraid of me, Harriet,' he 
 said, unconsciously repeating her words to 
 him ; 'Til not give ye away, ye poor un- 
 fortunate creature/ 
 
 She looked at him with dry, scared eyes, 
 and saw the tears standing in his. 
 
 * God knows I was very fond of ye once, 
 and ye wouldn't have me then,' he went on ; 
 *and if ye hadn't changed to me, I'd never 
 have changed to you. But that's long ago 
 now — and ' 
 
 * Are ye goin' to marry her T interrupted 
 Harriet in a whisper. 
 
'FOR YOU I DONE IT: 269 
 
 He knew what she meant, and he nodded 
 his head. 
 
 She sank from his hand down on to the 
 floor, and caught his knees in her arms. 
 
 * It was for you I done it,' she gasped 
 almost inaudibly — ' for you, that doesn't care 
 if I was dead along with him !' 
 
 There was a sound of many feet in the 
 street outside, a buzz of suppressed voices, 
 and a crowd of people passed slowly up the 
 hill, with, in the middle of them, something 
 long and white, carried on a door supported 
 by two long oars. He tried to move quickly 
 between her and the window, but before he 
 could do so she had seen what was passing, 
 and catching at her loosened black hair with 
 a gesture as though she would tear it out, she 
 flung herself down with her face against the 
 dusty floor. 
 
CHAPTER XXL 
 
 VOCES POPULI. 
 
 For at least a month the people of Rossbrin 
 and its neighbourhood enjoyed a succession 
 of the most satiating topics of conversation. 
 John Donovan's death in itself, and under 
 the most ordinary circumstances, would have 
 been a social cataclysm of highest importance, 
 but shrouded and, as it were, embalmed in 
 mystery, it took a place far above anything 
 that had before occurred at Rossbrin. 
 
 That Dan Hurley's body should have been 
 found in inexplicable companionship with that 
 of the man whom he was known to hate 
 gave such a final touch of the marvellous as 
 
VOCES POPULT. 271 
 
 almost to stagger the receiving capacity of 
 the parish, and complicated the otherwise 
 obvious suggestion of the broken bridge. 
 The inquest was adjourned for some days in 
 order to take the affidavits of James Mahony, 
 and of Harriet Donovan, who, since the 
 morning when her husband's body had been 
 brought home, had been prostrated by a low 
 nervous fever — an illness that was con- 
 sidered by her friends a mark of admirable 
 taste and feeling. It had become known 
 that Mrs. Donovan had gone out to meet 
 her husband on the night of his death, 
 and had returned, wet through, without 
 having been able to find him, and had 
 gone out again the first thing in the morn- 
 ing to make inquiries about him. * And 
 to think,' as Miss Vickery said, 'that the 
 first thing that poor creature'd see was 
 himself coming up the street drowned, and 
 she out on a fastinsf stummick ! It'd be no 
 
272 NABOTH'S VINEYARt). 
 
 wonder if she'd lose her life after the like 
 of that !' 
 
 But it was not from Harriet's statement 
 that the truth, or as much of it as was ever 
 known, came out. It was proved that John 
 Donovan had set out for Scariff at half-past 
 four o'clock, and from the evidence given 
 by the Leonards and Rick O'Grady, it 
 appeared that he had arrived there about an 
 hour later, the time usually taken to walk 
 through the woods. He stayed there about 
 twenty minutes, and there had been, the 
 witnesses admitted, a dispute, which had 
 ended in Rick O'Grady turning him out of 
 the farmyard. Mahony's affidavit was then 
 read, establishing the statement of the other 
 witnesses, that Rick had not left the farm 
 for more than an hour after Donovan. It 
 was clear that the broken bridge must have 
 been the cause of the latter's death, and 
 the presumption was that it had been de- 
 
- VOCES POPULl. 273 
 
 stroyed by someone who had watched his 
 movements to and from the farm. Donaleen, 
 the fisherman who had found the bodies, had 
 seen footmarks leading from Scarlff Point 
 to the old boat, and a pair of boots, that the 
 widow identified as Dan's, was found on 
 the sliore. The most important part of the 
 evidence came last, when Mrs. Leonard 
 swore that Dan Hurley had all his life had 
 a ^^rudge against John Donovan, 'and in 
 throth, the poor boy and his mother had 
 hard thratement from him, God forgive 
 me for sayin' it of them that's dead !' 
 
 Mrs. Leonard at this drew her blue cloak 
 about her with an air that implied her power 
 of further revelation in the matter of Mr. 
 Donovan's usage of the Hurleys, had she 
 been so disposed. Further questioning at 
 first elicited only the fact that she thanked 
 her God she wasn't one to tell stories nor 
 carry talk, but she subsequently was Induced 
 
 18 
 
274 NABOTH'S VINEYARD. 
 
 to give an indication of Donovan's manner 
 of acquiring the Hurleys' farm. Her further 
 statement that Dan had been in a strange 
 and morose state for two or three days 
 before his death, and that he had not been 
 seen since breakfast-time the morning after 
 the fire, left a sufficiently strong impression 
 on the minds of the jury. In the end, how- 
 ever, a cautious verdict of ' Death by misad- 
 venture ' was brought in in Donovan's case, 
 there being no direct evidence to point to 
 Dan Hurley as the breaker of the bridge ; 
 and the medical evidence, showing that the 
 latter's death was caused by suffocation 
 in the mud, during an epileptic seizure, 
 made the verdict in his case a simple 
 matter. 
 
 These things and many questions arising 
 from them were still red-hot under the 
 hammers of public dispute, when James 
 Mahony was well enough to be able to 
 
VOCES POPULI. 275 
 
 Stand his trial as an incendiary in the 
 Cloonmore Court-house. The reader may 
 be spared the details of this proceeding, 
 interesting though it was to all those con- 
 cerned. The Parnell Commission has made 
 most people acquainted with the ways of 
 Irish witnesses of every type, and the facts 
 that James Mahony had to relate are not 
 unprecedented in the history of Irish crime. 
 He made a clean breast of it, sparing neither 
 himself nor the late President of the Ross- 
 brin branch of the League, and when he had 
 finished and stood waiting to receive his 
 sentence, everyone in the court knew how 
 ingeniously Mr. Donovan had combined 
 his political and private Interests. James 
 Mahony got off with a light sentence and 
 a weighty exordium from the County Court 
 judge, and he limped out of court with a 
 stoicism that was creditable in an old man 
 who had begun the world twice over, and 
 
 18—2 
 
276 NABOTH'S VINEYARD. 
 
 for the second time had been worsted in 
 the conflict. 
 
 A full account of the proceedings appeared 
 in the local paper, and was read in all sorts 
 of places, and by all sorts of readers. The 
 
 secretary of the League at X was one 
 
 of those to whom it was least agreeable. In 
 spite of his letter to Rick, he had not inter- 
 fered in the Drimnahoon business, and now 
 he did not attempt any vindication of his late 
 ally. Boycotting was a thing more easy to 
 start than to stop ; and a touch of discipline 
 would do no harm to Mrs. Leonard, who had 
 at all events shown herself to be insubordi- 
 nate. At a subsequent period, however, he 
 had even more cause to regret that he had 
 given Mr. Donovan a free hand, when he 
 found out that certain money had been, to 
 put it mildly, misappropriated by the late 
 head of affairs at Rossbrin ; and this painful 
 fact, combined with a lack of enthusiasm 
 
VOCES POPUU. 277 
 
 among the members now that the gombeen 
 man's personal influence was withdrawn, may 
 account for the retirement of Rossbrin from 
 poHtical usefulness. 
 
 Another copy of the paper was read by 
 Harriet, far away from the scene of her 
 husband's death and disgrace. She read it 
 with scarcely a change in her white face, and 
 when she had finished, laid it down and 
 looked absently out into the dingy Dublin 
 street. The grocer opposite to her lodging 
 had sprigged his window with holly and ivy 
 in honour of the approaching Christmas 
 season, and before she was aware of it, the 
 ignoble decorations, in their setting of hams 
 and globes of lard, led her thoughts back to 
 the rank abundance of the evergreens in the 
 Trahartha woods. The illness from which 
 she had just recovered lay like some dark 
 cloud between her and the past, and the 
 mental agony that had at first seemed 
 
278 NABOTH'S VINEYARD. 
 
 unendurable had become a dull, everyday- 
 part of her life. But the vulgar reality of the 
 newspaper, and the subtle suggestion of the 
 green things, together gave her a pang that 
 might have come from hell itself. This was 
 her last day as a free woman, a creature of 
 hopes and plans ; to-morrow she was to 
 become a cipher in a great system, and to 
 sink into the anonymity which the Church of 
 Rome offers to those who have found their 
 own part in life rather more than they are 
 able to play. 
 
 It may be doubted whether the Sisters 
 
 of Mercy would have considered her a very 
 suitable inmate for the religious quiet of their 
 establishment, had they seen her, late on the 
 last night of her liberty, kneeling at her bed- 
 side, her remorse and penitence put by for a 
 future day, weeping fierce unsatisfied tears, 
 with Rick O'Grady's photograph pressed to 
 her lips. 
 
VOCES POPULL 279 
 
 At that very time Rick was standing 
 beside Ellen Leonard at the yard gate at 
 Scariff, while the stars sparkled frostily in 
 the dark sky, and the country quietness lay 
 all about them. 
 
 ' Tm not as good a chap as what ye think,' 
 he was saying ; * whatever I did for you was 
 no hardship to me. There's things I can't 
 tell ye ; but ye may believe me, I was to 
 
 blame ' He stopped, and the hand that 
 
 held hers relaxed its clasp and fell to his 
 side. * I'm not good enough for ye, Ellen 
 asthore.' 
 
 Ellen's reply need not be recorded ; she 
 was very young, and very much in love, and 
 the pleasure of forgiving her lover was so 
 new and exquisite that it cannot be wondered 
 at if what she said was too incoherent to be 
 submitted to the severities of print. 
 
 Whatever she said, and whatever he 
 answered, it is certain that the widow, 
 
28o NABOTWS VINEYARD. 
 
 knitting away by the cottage fire, found that 
 her patience was exhausted before the con- 
 versation came to an end. 
 
 ' Come in out o' that, Ellen !' she screamed 
 from the door. ' Don't ye know I'm bate 
 out this minnit with walking Dhrimnahoon 
 showing them bastes to the butcher — never 
 welcome him to come the day Jerry was 
 carryin' the mare to be shod! Go home, 
 Rick, ye vagabone ! Isn't it enough for ye 
 that ye'll be marrid to-morrow ? Oh, musha, 
 musha ! Them that's in love is like no 
 one !' 
 
 THE END. 
 
 7i> '^- 2^ 
 
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 A Mere Child. L. B. Walford. 
 
 Love Until Death. R. Whelan Boyle. 
 
 The Queen's Token. Mrs. Cashel Hoey. 
 
 Three Notable Stories. Marquis of Lome, etc. 
 
 (Limp clothy is. 6d.) 
 A Rainy June. Ouida. 
 Don Gesualdo. Ouida. 
 James Daunton's Fate. Dora Russell. 
 Betty's Visions. Rhoda Broughton. 
 Topside and Turvey. Percy Fitzgerald. 
 Beforehand. L. T. Meade. 
 Laying Down the Cards. Hon. Mrs. Fetherston- 
 
 haugh. 
 A Fatal Affinity. Stuart Cumberland. 
 Doubt. J. S. Little. 
 
 The Crime of the Golden Gully. Gilbert Rock. 
 Against the Grain. C. T. C. James. 
 In the Shadow of Death. Sir Gilbert Campbell, 
 
 Bart. 
 Mad Love. Vsevolod Garshin. 
 Galloping Days at the Deanery. C. T. C. James. 
 At What Cost. Hugh Conway. 
 Sappho. Alphonse Daudet. 
 The Wife's Sacrifice. Adolphe D'Ennery. 
 The Divorced Princess. Rene de Pont-Jest. 
 Memoirs of Cora Pearl. By Herself. 
 Memoirs of Rose Pompon. By Herself. 
 Baffled. Shirley B. Jevons. 
 Slowborough. Frank E. Emson. 
 The Silent Shore. J. B. Burton. 
 Three Lucky Shots. Oscar Park. 
 The Cabman's Daughter. Anon. 
 The Cithern. Poems for Recitation. Mrs. Gowing. 
 The Great Landlords of London. Frank Banfield, 
 
 M.A. 
 Imprisoned in the House of Detention. John Dawson. 
 
H