"Call the next case, crier," said the judge. "Sit down, Mr. Morissy."
"Your worshipwmay commit me; but I will be heard--"
"Tipstaff! take that man into--" "When you hear of a mandamus from the King"s Bench--when you know that a case of compounding a felony--"
"Come away, Mr. Morissy; come quiet, sir!" said the police-sergeant.
"What were ye saying of a mandamus?" said the judge, getting frightened at the dreaded word.
"I was saying this, sir," said Morissy, turning fiercely round; "that I am possessed of information which you refused to hear, and which will make the voice of the Chief Justice heard in this court, which now denies its ear to truth."
"Conduct yourself more becomingly, sir," said one of the county magistrates, "and open your case."
Morissy, who was far more submissive to the gentry than to the chairman, at once replied in his blandest tone:--
"Your worship, it is now more than a month since I appeared before you in the case of Noonan versus M"Quade and others,--an aggravated case of homicide; I might go further, and apply to it the most awful term the vocabulary of justice contains! Your worship will remember that on that very interesting and important case a doc.u.ment was missing, of such a character that the main feature of the case seemed actually to hang upon it. This was no less than the deathbed confession of Noonan, formally taken before a justice of the peace, Mr. Styles, and written with all the accurate regard to circ.u.mstances the law exacts. Mr. Styles, the magistrate who took the deposition, was killed by a fall from his horse the following week; his clerk being ill, the individual who wrote the case was Con Cregan. Your worship may bear in mind that this man, when called to the witness box, denied all knowledge of this dying confession; a.s.serted that what he took down in writing were simply some brief and unsatisfactory notes of the affray, all to the advantage of the M"Quades, and swore that Mr. Styles, who often alluded to the doc.u.ment as a confession, was entirely in error, the whole substance of it being unimportant and vague; some very illegible and-ill-written notes corroborating which were produced in court as the papers in question.
"Noonan being dead, and Mr. Styles also, the whole case rested on the evidence of Cregan; and although, your worship, the man"s character for veracity was not of that nature among the persons of his own neighborhood to--"
"Confine yourself to the case, sir," said the judge, "without introducing matter of mere common report."
"I am in a position to prove my a.s.sertion," said Morissy, triumphantly.
"I hold here in my hand the abstracted doc.u.ments, signed and sealed by Mr. Styles, and engrossed with every item of regularity. I have more: a memorandum purporting to be a copy of a receipt for eighteen pounds ten shillings, received by Cregan from Jos. M"Quade, the wages of this crime; and, if more were necessary, a promissory note from M"Quade for an additional sum of seven pounds, at six months" date. These are the papers which I am prepared to prove in court; this the evidence which a few minutes back I tendered in vain before you; and there," said he, turning with a vindictive solemnity to where my father was standing, pale, but collected, "there"s the man who, distinguished by your worship"s confidence, I now arraign for the suppression of this evidence, and the composition of a felony!"
If Mr. Morissy was not perfectly correct in his law, there was still quite enough to establish a charge of misdemeanor against my father; and he was accordingly committed for trial at the approaching a.s.sizes, while I was delivered over to the charge of a police-sergeant, to be in readiness when my testimony should be required.
The downfall of a dynasty is sure to evoke severe recrimination against the late ruler; and now my parent, who but a few days past could have tilted the beam of justice at his mere pleasure, was overwhelmed with not merely abuse and attack, but several weighty accusations of crime were alleged against him. Not only was it discovered that he interfered with the due course of justice, but that he was a prime actor in, and contriver of, many of the scenes of insurrectionary disturbance which for years back had filled the country with alarm and the jails with criminals.
For one of these cases, a night attack for arms, the evidence was so complete and unquestionable that the Crown prosecutor, disliking the exhibition of a son giving evidence against his parent, dispensed with my attendance altogether, and prosecuting the graver charge obtained a verdict of guilty.
The sentence was transportation for life, with a confiscation of all property to the Crown. Thus my first step in life was to exile my father, and leave myself a beggar,--a promising beginning, it must be owned!
CHAPTER III. A FIRST STEP ON LIFE"S LADDER
It is amouung the strange and singular anomalies of our nature that however pleased men may be at the conviction of a noted offender, few of those instrumental to his punishment are held in honor and esteem.
If all Kilbeggan rejoiced, as they did, at my father"s downfall, a very considerable share of obloquy rested on me,--a species of judgment, I honestly confess, that I was not the least prepared for.
"There goes the little informer," said they, as I pa.s.sed; "what did ye get for hanging--" a very admirable piece of Irish exaggeration--"for hanging yer father, Con?" said one.
"Could n"t ye help yer stepmother to a say voyage?" shouted another.
"And then we "d be rid of yez all," chimed in a third.
"He"s rich now," whined out an old beggar-man that often had eaten his potatoes at our fireside. "He"s rich now, the chap is; he "ll marry a lady!"
This was the hardest to bear of all the slights, for not alone had I lost all pretension to my father"s property, but the raggedness of my clothes and the general misery of my appearance might have saved me from the reproach of what is so forcibly termed "blood-money."
"Come over to me this evening," said Father Rush; and they were the only words of comfort I heard from any side. "Come over to me about six o"clock, Con, for I want to speak to you."
They were long hours that intervened between that and six. I could not stay in the town, where every one I met had some sneer or scoff against me; I could not go home, I had none! and so I wandered out into the open country, taking my course towards a bleak common, about two miles off, where few, if any one, was like to be but myself.
This wild and dreary tract lay alongside of the main road to Athlone, and was traversed by several footpaths, by which the country people were accustomed to make "short cuts" to market, from one part of the road to another; for the way, pa.s.sing through a bog, took many a winding turn as the ground necessitated.
There is a feeling of lonely desolation in wide far-stretching wastes that accords well with the purposeless vacuity of hopelessness; but, somehow or other, the very similitude between the scene without and the sense of desolation within, establishes a kind of companionship. Lear was speaking like a true philosopher when he uttered the words, "I like this rocking of the battlements."
I had wandered some hours "here and there" upon the common; and it was now the decline of day when I saw at a little distance from me the figure of a young man whose dress and appearance bespoke condition, running along at a brisk pace, but evidently laboring under great fatigue.
The instant he saw me he halted, and cried out, "I say, my boy, is that Kilbeggan yonder, where I see the spire?"
"Yes, sir."
"And where is the high-road to Athlone?"
"Yonder, sir, where the two trees are standing."
"Have you seen the coach pa.s.s,--the mail for Athlone?"
"Yes, sir, she went through the town about half an hour ago."
"Are ye certain, boy? are ye quite sure of this?" cried he, in a voice of great agitation.
"I am quite sure, sir; they always change horses at Moone"s public-house; and I saw them "draw up" there more than half an hour since."
"Is there no other coach pa.s.ses this road for Dublin?"
"The night mail, sir, but she does not go to-night; this is Sat.u.r.day."
"What is to be done?" said the youth, in deep sorrow; and he seated himself on a stone as he spoke, and hid his face between his hands.
As he sat thus, I had time to mark him well, and scan every detail of his appearance.
Although tall and stoutly knit, he could not have been above sixteen, or at most seventeen, years of age; his dress, a kind of shooting-jacket, was made in a cut that affected fashion; and I observed on one finger of his very white hand a ring which, even to my uneducated eyes, bespoke considerable value.
He looked up at last, and his eyes were very red, and a certain trembling of the lips showed that he was much affected. "I suppose, my lad, I can find a chaise or a carriage of some kind in Kilbeggan?" said he; "for I have lost the mail. I had got out for a walk, and by the advice of a countryman taken this path over the bog, expecting, as he told me, it would cut off several miles of way. I suppose I must have mistaken him, for I have been running for above an hour, and am too late after all; but still, if I can find a chaise, I shall be in time yet."
"They "re all gone, sir," said I; "and sorry am I to have such tidings to tell. The Sessions broke up to-day, and they"re away with the lawyers to Kinnegad."
"And how far is that from us?"
"Sixteen miles or more, by the road."
"And how am I to get there?"
"Unless ye walk it--"
"Walk! impossible. I am dead beat already; besides, the time it would take would lose me all chance of reaching Dublin as I want."