"By Jove!" he gasps, and sits and stares at her--a man thoroughly startled and distressed.
Not to him need she apply for help in the plan that has already vaguely formed itself in her mind. She knows quite well that he would rather hinder then help her in any effort to save Power Magill. If he is to be saved at all, it must be at once, before they have time to remove him to Dublin; and the girl"s heart throbs and her brain grows dizzy as she tries to think out her simple yet daring scheme. It is that some one--as near his height and build as possible--should get leave to visit him, and then that they should change clothes, and Power Magill should walk out in place of his visitor. She has read of such things being done before; why should they not be done again? But the question is, What man in the county would willingly take the place of Power Magill?
"It must be done," the girl says to herself, as she listens to the talk going on about her; for of course every one is talking of the men taken in the affray of the past night, and their chances of heavy punishment.
"Some one can be got surely, to run the risk--if not for love, then for money!"
Brian Beresford is away at Drum; and she is glad of it--it would be awkward to have him about the house at the present crisis.
About a mile from Donaghmore, on the Boyne road, stands a cottage that, in the summer season, is almost hidden from sight by the ma.s.ses of wild roses and jasmine that cover its old walls. It is a picturesque little place enough, and wondrously clean for an Irish cottage; but it is not in good repute in the place. Magistrates shake their heads when they hear of meetings held on the quiet at Hugh Scanlan"s; and more than once terror and disaster have been carried into quiet homes by order of the men who meet there.
Scanlan is a man over eighty, but erect and vigorous, and full of subtle cunning. It is to this man Honor turns in trouble and perplexity. He is no friend of hers--all her life she has been taught to look upon him as an evil man and a bad neighbor, who would do any harm that lay in his power to her or hers. But to this she never gives a thought now. Power must be helped; and, if any man in Donaghmore can help him, it is Scanlan.
The afternoon sun shines brightly upon the strip of garden as she opens the gate and walks up to the half-closed door. From the threshold she can see all round the one room that the place contains. It is low, and would be dim but for the great fire burning, hot as the day is, on the low hearth. The owner of the cottage has been sitting before the fire smoking; but, at the sight of Honor standing on his doorstep, he rises to his feet.
"Good-evening!" the girl says in her low clear voice. "I want very much to speak to you! May I come in?"
For an instant the ready tact of his race seems to forsake the old man, and he stares at her stupidly.
"Robert Blake"s daughter asking to come into my house?" he mutters, raising his withered hands with a gesture of the most intense surprise.
"Yes," the girl answers gently. "I am in trouble; and I want you to help me, if you will."
She has stepped forward uninvited, and is close beside him now, looking up into his face with eyes that have not a shadow of fear or even distrust in them.
"There are more than yourself in the deep trouble this day, miss."
"Yes; and it is about one who is in deep trouble that I have come to talk to you."
He has placed a chair for her full in the light of the open door, where he can see every sign of feeling that crosses her face; but he keeps well in the shade himself. Oh, how Honor"s heart beats as she looks up at him and realizes that in this very room the leaders of last night"s outrage may have met to arrange their plans! She is not afraid, though her reason tells her there might be grave cause for fear in placing herself in the hands of a treacherous man and an open enemy of her father"s house.
"Faith, miss, an" if it"s all wan to you, you may do the talking and I"ll listen! Talking is mighty dangerous for the loikes of me, these times!"
"Yes, I know," the girl replies; "but I do not want you to talk. I will tell you what I want you to do, and then you can say, "Yes" or "No," as you think best. But, oh"--with a sudden clasping of the gloved hands lying on her lap--"I do hope you will say "Yes"!"
And simply and clearly, her pretty voice broken in its earnestness, her eyes shining like stars as they fix themselves on the gray wrinkled face before her, she tells him what it is she wants done, and how much she can offer toward paying for the doing of it.
"It is not much," she says, looking at the small roll of Irish pound-notes in her hand, "but it is all I have of my own in the world; and, when he is free, he will pay you himself liberally."
The old man listens to her like one lost in a dream. She looks to him more like an angel than a living woman as she stands there pleading so earnestly--for, in her agitation, she has risen and is facing him, the sunshine falling like a glory all about her.
In his excitement he takes to blessing her in Irish, and, as the rapid words, instinct with strong feeling, [lack in the text] upon her ears, Honor draws back disconcerted.
"Are you angry?" she says. "I thought you would have been glad to help him! He has given up everything--friends, position, home, and country, it may be, for this cause to which you belong."
"And I have nothing to give up but my life," the old man answers with sudden unlooked-for dignity; "and that I would lay down this hour to see him free and safe once more."
"Then you will help us?" she says eagerly.
"Shure I"m the most helpless of ould creatures, but I"ll do what I can," he answers guardedly, and with so swift a change of voice and manner that Honor almost loses hope.
However, there is no choice left her now, nothing to be done but to give the man her poor little bribe and go home, leaving Power Magill to his mercy.
Little does the girl dream, as she walks sadly back to Donaghmore through the waning light, that she has formed a protecting barrier round the old home and its inmates that will outlast the storms of years.
CHAPTER VIII.
Very slowly the days pa.s.s at Donaghmore; a detachment of the constabulary keeps strict guard over the old house, the master of which lies sick unto death.
It seems as if the old man"s life is fading with the year. The shot that entered his arm shattered the bone immediately below the elbow, and, the wound not healing, this, together with the shock and excitement of that night"s work, is telling on him.
Honor goes about like a ghost; she looks pitifully changed; but there is only faithful old Aileen to be troubled by her looks. Launce has gone back to Dublin and Horace has joined his regiment at Aldershot.
One care has been lifted off the girl"s heart; Power Magill is no longer a prisoner.
The first thing that Honor heard on her return from Scanlan"s cottage was that Power Magill and two others had got away, having given their guards the slip on the mountain road between Glen Doyle and Drum.
The body of the man who was shot on the moss that terrible night has been taken to Dublin by his friends, to be buried among his own people; and, if he was Kate Dundas"s lover, as Launce in his jealous rage declared, the widow has certainly taken his loss very coolly.
But there is one thing that she is not taking quite so coolly, and that is the desertion of her admirers. Rose Mount is no longer the center of attraction to the neighborhood--its pretty drawing-room is deserted.
Men do not care to visit at a house about which such ugly reports are circulated. They even fight shy of its beautiful mistress in public, and this is perhaps the cruelest form which punishment could a.s.sume for such a woman as Mrs. Dundas. She knows nothing of friendship and very little of love, but her desire for admiration is boundless, and her chance of that in Drum or Donaghmore is at an end forever.
November has set in cold and stormy. It seems to Honor, nervous and anxious as she is, that the wind never ceases day or night, and sometimes its shrill moans make her feel as if she were going mad.
Her father is able to come down-stairs now, but he misses the boys, and complains fretfully of the loneliness of the house.
One day Honor walks over to the rectory to see Belle Delorme. Belle is in the drawing-room reading a yellow-bound novel, which she slips dexterously out of sight at the sound of her visitor"s voice.
Belle is not quite so piquant and dashing as she used to be, perhaps; but if she has been fretting for Launce--as Honor thinks--she has certainly lost none of her good looks in the process.
She looks up now with a smile as Honor enters.
"I was just going over to tell you the news, dear. I know you never hear anything at Donaghmore."
"The news!" Honor falters, turning from white to crimson; her first thought being of some new danger threatening Power Magill.
"Oh, it"s nothing very wonderful--perhaps nothing that you will call news after all!" Belle says hurriedly, seeing that swift blush and understanding it. "It is just that Ross Mount is closed, and its mistress has flown away to England. Sure they are saying now that she has a husband over there, alive and well, a farmer somewhere in Devonshire. Maybe she has gone back to him."
"Maybe she has," Honor a.s.sents coldly.
"And they are saying too," Belle goes on more gravely, and looking anxiously at her friend, "that the two men who were with Power Magill have got off to America. I"m sure I hope it is true!"
Honor says not a word. She is thinking of the man who is left a homeless wanderer on his native mountains--an exile within sight of his own walls!
"It"s an awful pity about poor Power, isn"t it, Honor? Sometimes I cry my eyes red thinking of him," Belle goes on in her pretty plaintive voice; "and I often think he must have gone with the rest to Donaghmore to keep them in order. He couldn"t have gone, you know, to--to do any harm!"
Honor looks at her gratefully, and the words linger in her mind and comfort her in some vague way during her long and lonely walk to Donaghmore.