But Darcy"s eyes were fixed on the walls, which were already crowded with the mob, the dark figures looking like spectres as they pa.s.sed and repa.s.sed through the dense canopy of smoke.
"The soldiers! the soldiers!" screamed the populace from below; and at the instant a heavy lumbering sound crept on, and the head of a cavalry squadron wheeled into the square before the jail. The remainder of the troop soon defiled; but instead of advancing, as was expected, they opened their ranks, and displayed the formidable appearance of two eight-pounders, from which the limbers were removed with lightning speed, and their mouths turned full upon the crowd. Meanwhile an infantry force was seen entering the opposite side of the square, thus showing the mob that they were taken in front and rear, no escape being open save by the small alleys which led off from the street before the prison. The military preparations took scarcely more time to effect than we have employed to relate; and now began a scene of tumult and terror the most dreadful to witness. The order to prime and load, followed by the clanking crash of four hundred muskets; the close ranks of the cavalry, as if with difficulty restrained from charging down upon them; and the lighted fuses of the artillery,--all combined to augment the momentary dread, and the shouts of vengeance so lately heard were at once changed into piercing cries for mercy. The blazing houses, from which the red fire shot up unrestrained, no longer attracted notice,--the jail itself had no interest for those whose danger was become so imminent.
An indiscriminate rush was made towards the narrow lanes for escape, and from these arose the most piercing and agonizing cries,--for while pressed down and trampled, many were trodden under foot never again to rise; others were wounded or burned by the falling timbers of the blazing buildings; and the fearful cry of "The soldiers! the soldiers!"
still goaded them on by those behind.
"Look yonder," cried Darcy"s companion, seizing him by the arm,--"look there,--near the corner of the market! See, the troops have not perceived that ladder, and there are two fellows now descending it."
True enough. At a remote angle of the jail, not concealed from view by the smoke, stood the ladder in question.
"How slowly they move!" cried Darcy, his eyes fixed upon the figures with that strange anxiety so inseparable from the fate of all who are engaged in hazardous enterprise. "They will certainly be taken."
"They must be wounded," cried the other; "they seem to creep rather than step--I know the reason, they are in fetters."
Scarcely was the explanation uttered when the ladder was seen to be violently moved as if from above, and the next moment was hurled back from the wall, on which several soldiers were now perceived firing on those below.
"They are lost!" said the Knight; "they are either captured or cut down by this time."
"The square is cleared already," said the other; "how quietly the troops have done their work! And the fire begins to yield to the engines."
The square was indeed cleared; save the groups beside the fire-engines, and here and there a knot gathered around some wounded man, the s.p.a.ce was empty, the troops having drawn off to the sides, around which they stood in double file. A dark cloud rested over the jail itself, but no longer did any smoke issue from the windows; and already the fire, its rage in part expended, in part subdued, showed signs of decline.
"If the wind was from the west," said the landlord, "there "s no saying where that might have stopped this night!"
"It is a strange occurrence altogether," said the Knight, musingly.
"Not a bit strange, sir," replied the other, whose neighborhood made him acquainted with cla.s.ses and varieties of men of whom Darcy knew nothing; "it was an attempt by the prisoners."
"Do you think so?" asked Darcy.
"Ay, to be sure, sir; there"s scarcely a year goes over without one contrivance or another for escape. Last autumn two fellows got away by following the course of the sewers and gaining the Liffey; they must have pa.s.sed two days underground, and up to their necks in water a great part of the time."
"Ay, and besides that," observed another,-for already some ten or twelve persons were a.s.sembled on the roof as well as Darcy and the landlord,--"they had to wade the river at the ebb-tide, when the mud is at least eight or ten feet deep."
"How that was done, I cannot guess," said Darcy.
"A man will do many a thing for liberty, sir," remarked another, who was b.u.t.toned up in a frieze coat, although the night was hot and sultry; "these poor devils there were willing to risk being roasted alive for the chance of it."
"Quite true," said Darcy; "fellows that have a taste for breaking the law need not be supposed desirous of observing it as to their mode of death; and yet they must have been daring rascals to have made such an attempt as this."
"Maybe you know the old song, sir," said the other, laughing,--
"There s many a man no bolts can keep, No chains be made to bind them, And tho" the fetters be heavy, and cells be deep, He "ll fling them far behind them."
"I have heard the ditty," answered the Knight; "and if my memory serves me, the last lines run thus,--
"Though iron bolts may rust and rot, And stone and mortar crumble, Freney, beware! for well I wot Your pride may have a tumble."
"Devil a lie in that, anyhow, sir," said the other, laughing heartily; "and an uglier tumble a man needn"t have than to slip through Tom Galvin"s fingers. But I see the fire is out now; so I "ll be jogging homeward. Good-night, sir."
"Good-night," said Darcy; and then, as the other moved away, turning to the landlord, he asked if he knew the stranger.
"No, sir," was the reply; "he came up with some others to have a look at the fire."
"Well, I "ll to my bed," said Darcy; "let me be awakened at four o"clock. I see I shall have but a short sleep; the day is breaking already."
CHAPTER IX. BOARDING-HOUSE CRITICISM.
It was not until after the lapse of several days that Darcy"s departure was made known to the denizens of Port Ballintray.
If the event was slow of announcement, they endeavored to compensate for the tardiness of the tidings by the freedom of their commentary on all its possible and impossible reasons. There was not a casualty, in the whole catalogue of human vicissitudes, unquoted; deaths, births, and marriages were ransacked in newspapers; all sudden and unexpected turns of fortune were well weighed, accidents and offences scanned with cunning eyes, and the various paragraphs to which editorial mysteriousness gave an equivocal interpretation were commented on with a perseverance and an ingenuity worthy of a higher theme.
It may be remarked that no cla.s.s of persons are viewed more suspiciously, or excite more sharp criticism from their neighbors, than those who, with evidently narrow means, prefer retirement and estrangement from the world to mixing in the small circle of some petty locality. A hundred schemes are put in motion to ascertain by what right such superiority is a.s.serted,--why, and on what grounds, they affect to be better than their neighbors, and so on; the only offence all the while consisting of an isolation which cannot with truth imply any such imputation.
When the Knight of Gwynne found himself by an unexpected turn of fortune condemned to a station so different from his previous life, he addressed himself at once to the difficulties of his lot; and, well aware that all reserve on his part would be set down as the cloak of some deep mystery, he affected an air of easy cordiality with such of the boarding-house party as he ever met, and endeavored, by a tone of well-a.s.sumed familiarity, to avoid all detection of the difference between him and his new a.s.sociates.
It was in this spirit that he admitted Mr. Dempsey to his acquaintance, and even asked him to his cottage. In this diplomacy he met with little a.s.sistance from Lady Eleanor and his daughter; the former, from a natural coldness of manner and an instinctive horror of everything low and underbred. Helen"s perceptions of such things were just as acute, but, inheriting the gay and lively temperament of her father"s house, she better liked to laugh at the absurdities of vulgar people than indulge a mere sense of dislike to their society. Such allies were too dangerous to depend on, and hence the Knight conducted his plans unaided and unsupported.
Whether Mr. Dempsey was bought off by the flattering exception made in his favor, and that he felt an implied superiority on being deemed their advocate, he certainly a.s.sumed that position in the circle of Mrs.
Fumbally"s household, and on the present occasion sustained his part with a certain mysterious demeanor that imposed on many.
"Well, he"s gone, at all events!" said a thin old lady with a green shade over a pair of greener eyes; "that can"t be denied, I hope! Went off like a shot on Tuesday morning. Sandy M"Shane brought him into Coleraine, for the Dublin coach; and, by the same token, it was an outside place he took--"
"I beg your pardon, ma"am," interposed a fat little woman, with a choleric red face and a tremulous underlip,--she was an auth.o.r.ess in the provincial papers, and occasionally invented her English as well as her incidents,--"it was the Derry mail he went by. Archy M"Clure trod on his toe, and asked pardon for it, just to get him into conversation; but he seemed very much dejected, and wouldn"t interlocute."
"Very strange indeed!" rejoined the lady of the shade, "because I had my information from Williams, the guard of the coach."
"And I mine from Archy M"Clure himself."
"And both were wrong," interposed Paul Dempsey, triumphantly.
"It"s not very polite to tell us so, Mr. Dempsey," said the thin old lady, bridling.
"Perhaps the politeness may equal the voracity," said the fat lady, who was almost boiling over with wrath.
"This Gwynne wasn"t all right, depend upon it," interposed a certain little man in powder; "I have my own suspicions about him."
"Well, now, Mr. Dunlop, what"s your opinion? I"d like to hear it."
"What does Mrs. M"Caudlish say?" rejoined the little gentleman, turning to the auth.o.r.ess,--for in the boarding-house they both presided judicially in all domestic inquisitions regarding conduct and character,--"what does Mrs. M"Caudlish say?"
"I prefer letting Mr. Dunlop expose himself before me."
"The case is doubtful--dark--mysterious," said Dunlop, with a solemn pause after each word.
"The more beyond my conjunctions," said the lady. "You remember what the young gentleman says in the Latin poet, "Sum Davy, non sum Euripides.""