The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Northern Iron, by George A. Birmingham This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org Title: The Northern Iron 1907 Author: George A. Birmingham Release Date: January 23, 2008 [EBook #24140] Last Updated: October 4, 2016 Language: English Character set encoding: UTF-8 *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE NORTHERN IRON *** Produced by David Widger THE NORTHERN IRON By George A. Birmingham Dublin: Maunsel & Co., Limited 1907 TO FRANCIS JOSEPH BIGGER, ARDRIGH, BELFAST. My Dear Bigger, This story, as you have already guessed, is the fruit of a recent holiday spent in County Antrim. The writing of it has been a great pleasure, for almost every place mentioned in it recalls the goodness of the friends who received me and made my holiday a happy one. I think of kind people when I write of Dunseveric and Ballintoy—of hours spent in their company among the Runkerry cliffs, the sandhills, the Skerries, and of the morning on which I swam, like Neal and Una, into the Rock Pigeons’ Cave, I remember a time—full of interest and delight—spent with you when I mention Donegore, Antrim, and Temple-Patrick. My mind dwells on an older, a very dear friend and relative, when I tell of Neal’s visit to Belfast. And the book is more than the recollection of a summer holiday. I go back in it to my own country—to places familiar to me in boyhood as the mountains and bays of Mayo are now; to days very long ago, when I caught cuddings and lithe off the Black Rock or Rackle Roy and learned to swim in the Blue Pool at Port Ballintrae. Yet I know that I could not, for all that I remembered of my boyhood or learned during my holiday, have written this story without your help. You told me what I wanted to know, you corrected, patiently, my manuscript, and you have helped me to enter into the spirit of the time. For all this I owe you many thanks, and if I have succeeded in writing a story which interests my readers they, too, will owe you thanks. I have tried to be faithful to the facts of history and to represent the thoughts and feelings of the men who took part in the “Out, unhappy far off things And battles long ago,” of which I chose to write. Most of my characters are purely imaginary. Of the men who really lived and acted in 1798 only one—James Hope—appears prominently in my story. In his case I have taken pains to understand what manner of man he was before I wrote of him, and I believe that, feeble though my presentation of his character may be, you will not find it actually untruthful. I am your friend, GEORGE A. BIRMINGHAM. CONTENTS THE NORTHERN IRON CHAPTER I CHAPTER II CHAPTER III CHAPTER IV CHAPTER V CHAPTER VI CHAPTER VII CHAPTER VIII CHAPTER IX CHAPTER X CHAPTER XI CHAPTER XII CHAPTER XIII CHAPTER XIV CHAPTER XV CHAPTER XVI CHAPTER XVII CHAPTER XVIII CHAPTER XIX CHAPTER XX THE NORTHERN IRON CHAPTER I The road which connects Portrush with Ballycastle skirts, so far as any road can and dare, the sea coast. Sometimes it is driven inland a mile or so by the impossibility of crossing tracts of sandhills. The mounds and hollows of these dunes are for ever shifting and changing. The loose sand is blown into new fantastic heights and valleys by the winter gales. No road could be built on such insecure foundation. Elsewhere the road shrinks back among the shelterless fields for fear of mighty cliffs by which this northern Antrim coast is defended from the Atlantic. No engineer in the eighteenth century, when the road was made, dared lay his metal close to the Causeway cliffs or the awful precipice of Pleaskin Head. Still, now and then, in places where there are no sandhills and the cliffs are not appalling, the road ventures, for a mile or two, to run within a few hundred yards of the sea, before it is swept, like a cord bent by the wind, further inland. Thus, after passing the ruins of Dunseveric Castle, the traveller sees close beneath him the white limestone rocks and broad yellow stretch of Ballintoy Strand. Here, when northerly gales are blowing, he may, if he is not swept off his feet, cling desperately to his garments and watch the great waves curl their feathered crests as they rush shorewards. He may listen, awestruck, to the ocean’s roar of amazement when it batters in vain the hard north coast, the rocks and sand which defy even the strength of the Atlantic. A quarter of a mile back from this piece of road there stood, in 1798, the meeting-house of the Presbyterians and their minister’s manse. The house stands on the site of a bare, shelterless hill. It is three storeys high—a narrow, gaunt building, grey walled, black- slated. Its only entrance is at the back, and on the shoreward side. This house has disdained the shelter which might have been found further inland or among its fellow-houses in the street of Ballintoy. It faces due north, preferring an outlook upon the sea to the warmth and light of a southern aspect. It is bare of all architectural ornament. Its windows are few and small. The rooms within are gloomy, even in early summer. Its architect seems to have feared this gloominess, for he planned great bay windows for three rooms, one above the other. He built the bay. It juts out for the whole height of the house, breaking the flatness of the northern wall. But his heart failed him in the end. He dared not put such a window in the house. He walled up the whole flat front of the bay. Only in its sides did he place windows. Through these there is a side view of the sea and a side view of the main wall of the house. They are comparatively safe. The full force of the tempest does not strike them fair. In one of the gloomy rooms on a bright morning in the middle of May sat the Reverend Micah Ward, the minister. The sun shone outside on the yellow sand, the green water, and the white rocks; but neither sun nor sea had tempted Micah Ward from his books. Great leather-covered folios lay at his elbow on the table. Before him were an open Hebrew Bible, a Septuagint with queer, contracted lettering, and an old yellow-leaved Vulgate. The subject of his studies was the Book of Amos, who was the ruggedest, the fiercest, and the most democratic of the Hebrew prophets. Micah Ward’s face was clean-shaved and marked with heavy lines. Thick, bushy brows hung over eyes which were keen and bright in spite of all his studying. Looking at his face, a man might judge him to be hard, narrow, strong—perhaps fanatical. Near the window:—one of the slanting windows through which it is tantalising to look—sat a young man, tall beyond the common, well knit, strong—Neal Ward, the minister’s son. He had grown hardy in the keen sea air and firm of will under his father’s rigid discipline. He had never known a mother’s care, for Margaret Ward, a bright-faced woman, ill- mated, so they said, with the minister, never recovered strength after her son’s birth. She lingered for a year, and then died. They laid her body in Templeastra Graveyard, near the sea. Over her grave her husband set a stone with an austerely-worded inscription to keep her name in memory:—“The burying-ground of Micah Ward. Margaret Neal, his wife, 1778.” Such inscriptions are to be found in scores in the graveyards of Antrim. The hard, brave men who chose to mark thus the resting-places of their dead disdained parade of their affliction and their heart-break, and held their creed so firmly that they felt no need of any text to remind them of the resurrection of the dead. Neal Ward, like his father, had books and papers before him, but his attention was not fixed on them. Now and then, with spasmodic energy, he copied a passage from the page before him. Then, with a sigh, he laid his pen down and gazed out of the window. His father took no notice of the young man’s want of application. No words passed between the two. Then suddenly the silence was broken by a cry from the field below the house— “Hello! Neal! Neal Ward! Hello! Are you there?” The young man started to his feet and made a step to the window. Then turning, he looked at his father. The frown on Micah Ward’s brow deepened slightly. Otherwise he made no sign of having heard the cry. He went on writing in his careful, deliberate manner. The voice from outside reached the room again. “Neal! Neal Ward! Come out. What right has a man to shut himself indoors on a day like this?” Neal stood irresolute, looking at his father. At last he spoke. “Can I go out, father? I have almost finished the transcription of the passage which you set me.” Micah Ward laid down his pen, sprinkled sand on his paper, and looked up. He gazed steadily at his son. The young man’s eyes dropped. He repeated his question in a voice that was nearly trembling. “Can I go out, father?” “Who is it calls you, Neal?” “It is Maurice St. Clair.” “Maurice St. Clair,” repeated Micah Ward. Then, with a note of deep scorn in his voice, “The Hon. Maurice St. Clair, the son of Lord Dun-severic. Are you to do his bidding, to run like a dog when he calls you?” “He is my friend, father.” “Is he a fit friend for you? Have I not told you that his people and our people are enemies the one to the other? That the oppression wherewith they oppress us—but there. Go, since you want to go. You do not understand as yet. Some day you will understand.” Neal left the room without haste, closing the door quietly. Once free of his father’s presence he seized a cap and ran from the house. Half-way between him and the high road, knee deep in meadow grass, stood Maurice St. Clair. “Come along, come along quick,” he shouted. “I had nearly given up hope of getting you out. We’re off for a day’s fishing to Rackle Roy. We’ll bag a pigeon or two at the mouth of the cave before we land. Brown-Eyes is down on the road waiting for us with rods and guns. We’ve all day before us. My lord is off to Ballymoney, and can’t be back till supper-time.” “What takes Lord Dunseveric to Ballymoney to-day?” asked Neal. “There’s no magistrates’ meeting, is there?” “No. He’s gone to meet our aunt, Madame de Tourneville. She’s been coming these five years, ever since she ran away from Paris at the time of the Terror; but it’s only now she has succeeded in arriving.” Together the two young men crossed the field and vaulted the wall which separated the manse land from the road. The girl whom her brother called Brown-Eyes waited for them. The name suited her well, and came naturally from Maurice. He was tall and fair, yellow-haired, blue-eyed, large limbed, a fine type of Antrim Irishman, the heir of the form and face of generations of St. Clairs of Dunseveric. The girl, Una St. Clair, belonged to a different race—came of her mother’s people. She was small, brown-skinned, brown-eyed, dark-haired. She grew as the years went on more and more like what her mother had been. Lord Dunseveric, watching his daughter pass from childhood to womanhood, saw in her the very image of Marie Dillon, the French-Irish girl who had won his heart a quarter of a century before in Paris. “Take the guns, Neal. Here, Brown-Eyes, give me the rods and the basket. There’s no need for you to break your little back carrying them.” “Why should I when I’ve two big men to carry them for me? Indeed, I’m not sure but one of you ought to carry me, too. You’re big enough and strong enough.” She smiled gaily at Neal as he shouldered the guns. They had built sand castles together when they were little children, and tempted the waves to chase them up the sand, flying barefoot from the pursuing lip of foam. They had climbed and fallen, explored rocky bays, penetrated to the depths of caves as they grew older. Always Una St. Clair had queened it over the boys, teased them, petted them, scolded them. Now, grown to womanhood, she discovered new powers in herself which made Neal at least more than ever her slave. They reached the little bay where the boat lay pulled up among the rocks. Maurice and Neal lifted her stern on to a roller and dragged her towards the sea. Una, running before them, laid other rollers on the pathway of slippery rock till the boat floated. Then she climbed the gunwale and settled herself on the stern seat among the rods and guns. The two young men shoved off into deep water, springing into the boat with dripping feet as she slid out clear of the shore. They placed the heavy oars between the wooden thole pins and steadied the boat while Una shipped the rudder. The wind was off shore and the sea, save for the long heave of the Atlantic, was still. The brown sail was hoisted and stretched with the sprit. Then, sailing and rowing, they swept past Carrighdubh, the Black Rock, which guarded the entrance of the little bay, and passed into the shadow of the mighty cliffs. A silence fell on them. The laughter and gay talk ceased. The sense of holiday joyfulness was overwhelmed by a vague awe of the ocean’s greatness, the oppression of its strength, and the black towering rocks which hung over the boat, casting a gloom across the sea. The feeling of this solemnity abides through life with the men and women who have been bred as children on this north Antrim coast. If they live their lives out among its rugged harbours and stern ways they become, as the fishermen are, people of slow thoughts, long memories, and simple outlook upon life. The fear of the Lord is over their lives. If they wander elsewhere, making homes for themselves among the southern or western Irish, or, further still, to England or America, they may learn to be in appearance as other men are—may lose the harsh northern intonation from their talk, but down in the bottom of their hearts will be an awful affection for their sea, which is like no other sea, and the dark overwhelming cliffs whose shadow never wholly leaves their souls. In times of stress and hours of bitterness they will fall back upon the stark, rigid strength of those who, seeing the mightiest of His works, have learned to fear the Lord. The boat lay off the entrance of the Pigeon Cave. The sportsman’s sense awoke in Maurice. He gave a brief order to Neal, laid his oar across the boat, stood up and took in the sprit, letting the sail hang in loose folds. He unstepped the mast and sat down again. “You may unship the rudder, Brown-Eyes, You had better leave the boat to Neal and me to bring up to the cave. Pass the gun forward to me and the powder horn.” He loaded, ramming the charge down and pressing down the wad. Neal and the girl sat silent. The solemn enchantment of the scene was on them still. Then the two men took the oars again. Very cautiously they rowed along the narrow channel which led to the opening of the cave. The rocks lay low at first on each side of them; brown tangles of weed swayed slowly to and fro with the onward sweep and eddy of the ocean swell. Then, as the boat advanced, the rocks rose higher on each side, sheer shining walls, whose reflection made the clear water almost black. The huge arch of the cave’s entrance faced them. Behind was the dark channel, and beyond it the sunlight on the sea, before them the impenetrable gloom of the cave. The noise of the water dropping from its roof into the sea beneath struck their ears sharply. The hollow roar of the sea far off in the utmost recesses of the cave came to them. The girl leaned forward from her seat and laid her hand on Neal’s arm. He looked at her. Her eyes, the homes of laughter and quick inconsequences, were wide with dread. Neal knew what she felt. It was not fear of any definite danger or any evil actually threatening. It was awe, the feeling of mariners of other days who penetrated to unknown seas, of men in primitive times who knew that fairy powers dwelt in dark lakes and precipitous mountain sides. The bow of the boat touched the huge boulders which formed a bar across the mouth of the cave. Maurice leaped out, gun in hand, and stood knee deep in the water, feeling with his feet for a secure resting-place. “Keep the boat off, Neal, and take your shot if you get a chance.” He shouted—“Hello-lo-oh.” The rocky sides and roof of the cave echoed back his cry a hundred times. Again he shouted, and again, until shouts and echoes meeting clashed with each other, and it seemed as if the tremendous laughter of gleeful giants mocked the solemn booming of the sea. There was a rush of many wings, and a flock of terrified rock pigeons flew from the cave. Maurice fired one barrel after another in quick succession, and two birds dropped dead into the water. Neal, shaking the girl’s hand from his arm, fired, too. From his seat in the swaying boat it was difficult to aim well. He missed once, but killed with his second shot. The boat was borne forward and bumped sharply on the boulders at the cave’s mouth. The laughter of the echo died away. Instead of it came, like angry threats, the repetition of their four shots, multiplied to a fusilade of loud explosions. “Come back, Maurice,” cried Una. “Come back and let us get out of this. I’m frightened. I cannot bear it any longer.” “You shall have all the four wings of my birds to trim your hats with, Brown-Eyes,” said Maurice, as he clambered dripping into the boat. “Neal will stuff his bird for you and perch him on a stone. You shall have him to set on the top of your new bureau, the one Aunt Estelle sent you when she escaped from Paris without having her head chopped off.” They pushed the boat cautiously back along the channel, travelling stern first, for there was little room to turn, and even in calm weather men do not willingly lay a boat across the sea in such a place. “Now for Rackle Roy and a basketful of glashins and lithe,” said Maurice. East a little and out seawards from the mouth of the cave lies a long, flat rock, dry at low water, and even at flood tide in calm weather, swept with desolating surf when the Atlantic swell rolls in or the wind lashes the nearer sea to fury. Right out of the centre of the rock the waves have fashioned a deep bay, curved like a horse-shoe. This is a famous fishing-place. As the tide rises, lithe and glashin, brazers, gurnet, rock codling, and crowds of cuddings come here to feed, and the fisherman, on those rare days, when he can land at all, may count on bringing home with him great bunches of fish strung through the gills. The rock lay far enough from the cliff to be clear of the shadow. The sun shone on its brown weed-clad sides, glistened on black clusters of mussels, glowed on the red seams of the rock where the iron cropped out, and baked the black basalt of the upper surface. The spirits of the party revived when they landed. Una’s gaiety returned to her. “Have you forgotten the bait, Maurice? I’m sure you have. It would be like you to come for a day’s fishing without bait.” “No, then, I haven’t. There are three large crabs in the boat, and even if there wasn’t one at all we could do nicely with limpets. There’s worse bait than a good limpet.” “Well, and if you have the crabs I expect you’ve forgotten the sheep’s wool. What do you think, Neal? Yesterday we were fishing cuddings off the Black Rock and Maurice ran out of wool. The fish simply sucked the bait off our hooks and laughed at us. What did Maurice do but take my hairs. He pulled them out one by one as he wanted them, and wrapped the bait on with them.” “Your wool, Brown-Eyes, doesn’t come up to that of the sheep. It’s not soft enough. But I shan’t want it to-day. I’ve got my pockets half full of the proper sort.” Neal laughed, but he felt that to use Una’s hair as a wrap for the red pulp of a crab’s back or the soft, black belly of a limpet was a kind of profanation. He was a keen fisherman, but he would rather have missed the chance of catching the largest lithe that ever swam than lure it with a bait fastened with Una’s glossy hair. They fished till noon, and the tide rose slowly round their rock. Then Una’s luncheon basket was fetched from the boat, the mooring rope was made secure above high water mark, and the three sat down on the sun-baked rock and ate with keen appetites. Maurice stared seawards. “That brig,” he said, “is lying very close inshore. Look at her, Neal.” “I saw her pass the point of the Skerries an hour ago.” said Neal. “She must have hauled her wind since then to fetch in so close with the tide running against her.” “I wonder why she’s doing it,” said Maurice. “She’ll have to run off again to clear Benmore.” “She looks a big ship,” said Una. “Maybe she’s 250 tons,” said Neal. “She’s about the size of the brig that sailed from Portrush for Boston last summer year with two hundred emigrants in her.” “She’s fetching closer in yet,” said Maurice. “See, she’s hoisted some flag or other, two flags, no, three, from the peak of her spanker. It’s a signal. I wonder what they want. Now they’ve laid her to. She must want a boat out from the shore. Come on, Neal, come on, Brown-Eyes. We’ll go out to her. We’ll be first. There’s no other boat nearer than those at the Port, and we’ve got a long start of them. Never mind the fish. Or wait. Fling them in. I dare say the men on the brig will be glad of them. She must be an American.” In a few minutes the boat was pulled clear of the little bay and out of the shelter of Rackle Roy. The mast was stepped and the sail set. The sheet was slacked out and the boat sped seawards before the wind. Maurice was all impatience. He got out his oar. “It’s no use,” said Neal, “the breeze has freshened since morning. She’ll sail quicker than we could row.” The brig lay little more than a mile from the shore. The boat soon reached her. “Boat, ahoy,” yelled a voice from the deck. “Lower your sail, and come up under my lee.” Maurice and Neal obeyed. The sea was rougher than it had been near the shore. The boat, when Maurice had made fast the rope flung to him, plunged up and down beside the brig, and needed careful handling to prevent her being damaged. The crew looked over the side with eager curiosity. “Say, boys,” said the captain, “what will you take for your fish? I’ll trade with you.” “I don’t want to sell them,” said Maurice. “I’ll give them to you.” His voice and accent, his refusal to barter, betrayed the fact that he was a gentleman. “I guess,” said the captain, “that you’re an aristocrat, a British aristocrat, too proud to take the money of the men who whipped you in the States. That’s so.” “I’m an Irish gentleman,” said Maurice. “Well, Mr. Irish Gentleman, if you’re too darned aristocratic to trade, I’ll give you a present of a case of good Virginia, and you may give me a present of your fish. I’d call it a swap, but if that turns your stomach I’ll let you call it a mutual present, an expression of international goodwill.” “Fling him up the fish, Neal,” said Maurice. Then another man appeared beside the captain on the quarter-deck. He was not a seafaring man. He was lean and yellow, and had keen grey eyes. His face seemed in some way familiar to Neal, though he could not recollect having ever seen the man before. “Yon are the Causeway cliffs,” he said, “and yon’s Pleaskin Head, and the islands we passed are the Skerries?” “You know this coast,” said Neal. “I knew this coast, young man, before your mother had the dandling of you. I know it now, though it’s five and twenty years since I set foot on it. But that’s not the question. What I want to know is this. Can you put me ashore? I could do well if you land me at the Causeway. I’d make shift with my bag if you put me out at Port Ballin-trae. I don’t want to be going on to Glasgow just for the pleasure of coming back again.” “I’ll land you at the Black Rock under Run-kerry,” said Maurice, “if you can pull an oar. The wind’s rising, and I’ve no mind to carry idle passengers.” “I can pull an oar,” said the stranger. “I guess he can pull enough to break your back, young man,” said the captain. “He’s an American citizen, and he’s been engaged in whipping your British army. I guess an American citizen can lick a darned aristocrat at pulling an oar same as he did at shooting off guns.” “Shut your damned mouth,” said Maurice, suddenly angry, “or I’ll leave you to land your passenger yourself and see how you like beating the bottom out of your brig against our rocks. You’ll find an Irish rock harder than your Yankee wood.” The passenger fetched a small hand-bag and lowered it into the boat. Under a shower of jibes from the captain, Maurice and Neal pushed off and started for the row home against the wind. CHAPTER II The passenger took his seat in the bow of the boat and stripped off his coat in readiness to pull an oar. But no oar was offered to him. Maurice St. Clair seemed to have entirely forgotten the stranger’s presence. The remarks of the American captain had angered him, and his mind worked on the insults hurled at him in parting. Neal was angry, too. They pulled viciously at the oars. From time to time Maurice broke out fiercely— “An unmannerly brute! I wish I had him somewhere off the deck of his brig. I’d teach him how to speak to a gentleman. “Is that his filthy tobacco at your feet, Brown-Eyes? Pitch it overboard. “I suppose he’s a specimen of the Republican breed. That’s what comes of liberty and equality and French Jacobinism and Tom Paine and the Rights of Man. Damned insolence I call it.” “I’d like to remind you, young man———.” The words came with a quiet drawl from the passenger in the bow. Maurice stopped rowing, and turned round. “Well, what do you want to say? More insolence? Better be careful unless you want to try what it feels like to swim ashore.” “I’d like to remind you, young man, that Captain Hercules Getty, of the State of Pennsylvania, who commands the brig ‘Saratoga,’ belongs to a nation which has fought for liberty and won it.” “What’s that got to do with his insolence?” “I reckon that an Irishman who hasn’t fought and hasn’t won ought to sing small when he’s dealing with a citizen of the United States of America.” Neal turned in his seat. The stranger’s reproach struck him as being unjust as well as being in bad taste. Maurice St. Clair was the son of a man who had done something for Ireland. “You don’t know who you’re talking to,” he said, “or what you’re talking about. Lord Dunseveric, the father of the man in front of you, commanded the North Antrim Volunteers, and did his part in winning the independence of our Parliament.” The stranger looked steadily at Neal for sometime. Then he said— “Is your name Neal Ward?” “Yes. How do you know me?” “You’re the son of Micah Ward, the Presbyterian minister?” “Yes.” “Well, I just guessed as much when I took a good look at your face. Will you ask your father when you go home whether the Volunteers won liberty for Irishmen, and what he thinks of the independence of an Irish Parliament filled with placemen and the nominees of a corrupt aristocracy?” “Who are you?” asked Neal. “My name’s Donald Ward. I’m your father’s youngest brother. I’m on my way to your father’s house now, or I would be if you two young men would take to your oars again. If you don’t I guess the first land we’ll touch will be Greenland. We’d fetch Runkerry quicker if you’d pass forward the two thole pins I see at your feet and let me get an oar out in the bow. The young lady in the stern can keep us straight with the helm.” “Give him the thole pins, Neal,” said Maurice, “and then pull away.” “Just let me speak a word with you, Mr. St. Clair,” said Donald Ward, as he hammered the thole pins into their holes. “You’re angry with Captain Hercules Getty, and I don’t altogether blame you. The captain’s too fond of brag, and that’s a fact. He can’t hold himself in when he meets a Britisher. He’s so almighty proud of the whipping his people gave the scum. But there’s no need for you to be angry with me. I’m an Irishman myself, and not a Yankee. I fought in North Carolina, under General Nathaniel Greene, but I fought with Irishmen beside me, men from County Antrim and County Down, and they weren’t the worst men in the army either. When I fight again it’ll be in Ireland, and not in America. If I riled you I’m sorry for it, for you’re an Irishman as well as myself.” Maurice’s anger was shortlived. “That’s all right,” he said. “Here, I say, you needn’t pull that oar. Neal and I will put you ashore. We’ll show that much hospitality to a County Antrim man from over the sea.” “Thank you,” said Donald Ward. “Thank you. You mean well, and I take your words in the spirit you speak them; but when I sit in a boat I like to pull my own weight in her.” He shoved out his oar as he spoke, and fell into time with the long, steady stroke which Neal set. Una leaned forward and spoke in a low voice to Neal, timing her words so that they reached him as he bent forward at the beginning of each stroke. “Is’nt it curious, Neal, that Maurice and I are going back to welcome an aunt whom we have never seen, and that you are taking an unknown uncle home with you?” Then, after a pause, she spoke again. “It’s like a kind of fate, Neal, one of the things which happen to people, and alter all their lives, and they can’t do anything to help themselves. I wonder will we ever have good times together again, now that this aunt of mine and this uncle of yours have come?” “Why shouldn’t we?” said Neal. “Oh, I don’t know. But your uncle seems to be one of the people who make a great clatter about liberty and equality and the rights of man. And you know Aunt Estelle belonged to the old aristocracy in France. They wanted to guillotine her in the Terror. I don’t think she will love Republicans.” “I suppose not,” said Neal, gravely. “But that won’t prevent our being friends, Neal?” “Una, my father is always talking about the struggle that’s coming in Ireland. I don’t know much about politics. I think I hate the whole thing. But if there is trouble I suppose that I shall be on one side and you on the other.” “Don’t look so sad, Neal.” Then, as his spirits grew depressed, her’s seemed to rise buoyantly. She raised her voice so that she could be heard in the bow of the boat. “Mr. Donald Ward! Mr. Donald Ward! Your nephew, Neal, is telling me that when we have a reign of terror in Ireland you will make him cut off my head. Please promise me you won’t.” Donald rested on his oar and gazed at the girl as she sat smiling at him in the stern of the boat. “Young lady,” he said, “don’t trouble yourself. We didn’t hurt woman or girl in America. No woman shall die a violent death in Ireland at the hands of the people.” “And no man, either?” cried Una. “Say it again, Mr. Donald Ward. Say ‘And no man, either.’ Can’t we settle everything without killing men?” “Men are different,” said Donald. “It’s right for men to die fighting, or die on the scaffold if need be.” A silence followed Donald Ward’s words. In 1798 talk of death in battle or death on a scaffold moved even the youngest and most careless to serious thought. The world was full then of the kind of ideas for which men are well content to die, for the sake of which also they did not hesitate to shed blood. The Americans had set mankind a headline to copy in their Declaration of Independence. The French wrote Liberty with huge red flourishes which set the heart of Europe beating high. Italians were proclaiming a foreign army the liberators of their country, while Jacobins growled fiercely against the Pope. Kosciusko, in Poland, organised a futile revolution, and fell in the cause of national freedom. Even phlegmatic Englishmen caught the spirit of the times, hated intensely or worshipped enthusiastically that liberty which some saw as an imperial goddess for the sake of whose bare limbs and pale, noble face death might be gladly met; while others beheld in her a blood-spattered strumpet whirling in abandoned dance round gallows-altars which reeked with human sacrifice. Ireland in those days was intellectually and spiritually alive. Men were quick to feel the influence of world-wide ideas, and in Ireland the love of liberty glowed brightly; nowhere more brightly than among the farmers and lower middle classes of the north-eastern counties. The position was a strange one. The landed gentry, who themselves, a few years before, claimed and won from England the independence of their Parliament, grew frightened and drew back from the path of reform on which alone lay security for what they had got. The wealthier merchants and manufacturers, satisfied with the trade freedom which brought them prosperity, were averse to further change. The Presbyterians and the lower classes generally were eager to press forward. They had conceived the idea of a real Irish nation, of Gael and Gall united, of Churchman, Roman Catholic and Dissenter working together for their country’s good under a free constitution. But it soon became apparent that the reforms they demanded would not be won by peaceful means. The natural terror of the classes whose ascendancy or prosperity seemed to be threatened, the bribes and cajoleries of British statesmen, turned the hearts of those who ought to have been leaders from Ireland to England. The relentless logic, the clear-sighted grasp of the inevitable trend of events, and the restless energy of men like Wolfe Tone, changed a party of constitutional reformers into a society of determined revolutionaries. Threats of repression were answered by the formation of secret societies. Acts of tyranny, condoned or approved by terror-stricken magistrates, were silently endured by men filled with a grim hope that the day of reckoning was near at hand. Far-seeing English statesmen hoped to fish out of the troubled waters an act of national surrender from the Irish Parliament, and were not ill-pleased to see the sky grow darker. Everyone else, every Irishman, looked with dread at the gathering storm. One thing only was clear to them. There was coming a period of horror, of outrage and burning, of fighting and hanging, the sowing of an evil crop of fratricidal hatred whose gathering would last for many years. The boat reached the little bay under the Black Rock. There was no need to drag her far up the beach now, for the tide was full. Working in silence, the three men laid her beside the broad-bottomed cobble used for working the salmon-net, and pushed her bow up against the coarse grass which fringed the edge of the rocks. They carried the oars and sails into a fisherman’s shelter perched on a rock beside the bay. Then Donald Ward turned to Maurice and said— “I am going to my brother’s house. I shall walk by the path along the cliffs, and my nephew will go with me. Your way home, unless I have entirely forgotten the roads, is not our way. We part here, therefore. I bid you good night, and thank you heartily.” “We had intended,” said Maurice, “to walk home with Neal. We have time enough.” His sister, quicker than he to take a hint, pulled him by the arm, and whispered to him. Then she spoke aloud. “Good night, Mr. Donald Ward. Good night, Neal. Perhaps we shall see you to-morrow.” The uncle and nephew climbed the hill which led to the top of the cliffs together. For a time neither of them spoke. The elder man seemed to be absorbed in picking out the landmarks which had once been very familiar to him. At last he spoke to Neal. “Does your father wish you to have Lord Dun-severic’s son and daughter for your friends?” Neal hesitated for a moment, and then answered. “He knows that they are my friends.” “It would be better if they were not your friends. I have heard of Lord Dunseveric, a strong man and an able man, a good friend of his own class, not a good friend of the people.” He paused. Neal wished to speak, to say some good of Lord Dunseveric; to declare the strength of his friendship for Maurice. He could not speak as he wished to speak. An unfamiliar feeling of oppression tied his tongue. His uncle’s will dominated his. “What is the girl’s name?” asked Donald. “Una.” “Yes, and what did her brother call her?” “Brown-Eyes.” Neal felt as if the words were dragged from him. “Are you the lover of this Una Brown-Eyes?” Neal flushed. “You have no right to ask any such question,” he said, “and I shall not answer it. I will just say this to you. Do you suppose that Lord Dunseveric would accept me, a penniless man, the son of a Presbyterian minister, a member of a Church he despises, and connected with a party he hates—do you suppose he would accept me as a suitor for his daughter’s hand?” “You have answered my question, though you said you would not answer it. You have told me that you love the girl. I have watched her smile at you, and seen her eyes while she talked to you, and I can tell you something more, something that perhaps you do not know—the girl loves you.” Again Neal flushed. His uncle had put into words what he had never yet dared to think. He loved Una. His uncle had assured him of something else, something so glorious as to be incredible. Una loved him. Then he became conscious that Donald Ward’s eyes were on him—cold, impassive, unpitying; that Donald Ward was waiting till the throbs of joy and excitement calmed in him, waiting to speak again. “Put the thought of the girl from you. She is not for you, nor you for her. Forget her. It will be better for you and for her. You shall have work to do soon. Work is for men. Seeing babies in brown eyes is only for boys.” They left the path which skirted the tops of the cliffs, crossed a field or two, and joined the road which led to Micah Ward’s manse. The sound of the sea died away, though the smell of it and the feeling of its neighbourhood were still with them. The savage grandeur of ocean and cliff no longer oppressed their spirits. It seemed natural to talk of common things and to leave high themes behind them in the lonely places they had left. Donald Ward gazed with interest at the white-walled thatched cottages on the roadside. He commented on the disappearance of some homestead he remembered, or the building of a new one where none had been before. It was evident that, in spite of his twenty-five years’ absence, he cherished a clear and accurate recollection of the district he was passing through. He inquired after the families who had lived in the different houses, naming them. He learned how one or another had disappeared, how old men were gone, and sons reigned in their stead. He even supplied Neal with information now and then about some young man or girl who had gone to America. They arrived at the manse. Neal led his uncle through the yard, meaning to enter as usual by the kitchen door. On the threshold the housekeeper met him. “Is that you, Master Neal? You’re queer and late. You’ve had a brave time gadding with your fine friends and never thinking how you were leaving your old father to eat his dinner his lone. And who’s this you have with you? What sort of behaviour is this, to be coming here bringing a stranger with you to a decent, quiet house, and he maybe——” “Whisht, now, Hannah. Will you hold your whisht (tongue?)?” said Neal. “It’s my uncle I have with me. You ought to be able to remember him.” The old woman came forward to the place where Donald Ward stood, and peered at his face. “Aye, I mind you well, Donald Ward. I mind you well. You hadna’ just too much of the grace of God about you when you went across the sea, and I’m doubting by the looks of you now that you’ve done more fighting than praying where you were.” “Hannah Keady,” said Donald Ward. “Hannah Macaulay,” said the housekeeper, “and forbye the old minister and Master Neal here, they call me Mistress Macaulay that have any talk with me. I’m married and widowed since you crossed the sea.” “Mistress Hannah Macaulay,” said Donald, “you were a slip of a girl with a sharp tongue when I mind you first, and a woman with a sharp tongue when I said good-bye to you. You have lost your bonny looks and your shining red hair; you’ve lost a husband, so you tell me, but you haven’t lost your tongue.” The old woman smiled. The compliment pleased her. “Come in,” she said, “come in. The minister’ll be queer and glad to see you. You know that fine. But have done with your old work. We’ve no more call for Hearts of Oak boys, nor Hearts of Steel boys, nor for burning ricks, nor firing guns.” She led the way through the kitchen, up a narrow flight of stone stairs, and opened the door of the room where the minister sat over his bodes. “Here’s Master Neal home again,” she said, “and he’s brought your brother Donald Ward along with him.” Micah Ward rose to his feet and met his brother with outstretched hands. “Is it you, Donald? Is it you, indeed? I’ve been thinking long for you this many a time, my brother, and wearying for you. We want you, Donald, we need you sore, sore indeed.” “Why, Micah,” said Donald, “you’ve grown into an old man.” The contrast between the two brothers was striking, more striking than the likeness of their faces, though that was obvious. Micah was stooped and pallid. He walked feebly. His limbs were shrunken. His hair was thin and white. Donald stood upright, a well-knit, vigorous man. The point of his beard and the hair over his ears were touched with iron grey, but no one looking at him would have doubted his energy and capacity for physical endurance. “Grey hairs are here and there upon us, and we know it not—Hosea, 7th and 9th,” said the minister. “But there’s fifteen years atween us, Donald. It makes a difference. Fifteen years age a man, but I’m supple and hearty yet.” “Will I cook the salmon for your supper?” said the housekeeper. “You’ll not be contenting yourselves with the stirabout now that you have your brother back again with you.” “Cook the salmon, Hannah; plenty of it, and some of the ham and the eggs. And, Neal, do you take the key of the cellar and get us a bottle of wine and the whisky that old Maconchy brought in from Rathlin last summer. It’s not often I take the like, Donald, but it is meet that we should make merry and be glad.” Mistress Hannah Macaulay was a competent cook and housekeeper. It is noticeable that women with sharp tongues are generally more efficient than their gentler sisters. Solomon, who knew a good many things, seems also to have known this. He was of opinion that a peaceful dinner of herbs is better than a stalled ox and contention therewith. He knew that he could not have both. It is the shrew who succeeds in giving the males dependent on her stalled oxen and such like dainties to eat. The caressing wife and the sweet-tempered cook accomplish no more than dinners of herbs, and generally even they are not particularly appetising. The fact is, that the management of domestic affairs is the most trying of all occupations. Cooking, washing, cleaning, and generally doing for men in a house means continuous irritation and worry. A woman, however sweet-natured originally, who is condemned to such work must either lose her temper over it, in which case she may cook stalled oxen, but will certainly serve them with sauce of contention, or she may give up the struggle and preserve her gentleness. Then she will accomplish no more than dinners of herbs, boiled cabbages, from which tepid water exudes, and dishes of pallid turnips, supposed to be mashed but full of lumps. Solomon preferred, or said he preferred, kisses and cauliflowers. On questions of taste there is no use disputing. Mistress Hannah Macaulay’s salmon steaks came to the table with an appetising steam rising from their dish. Her slices of fried ham formed an attractive nest for the white-skinned poached eggs. She had plates of curly oatcake and powdery farles. She had yellow butter in saucers. She brought the porridge to table in well-scoured wooden bowls with horn spoons in them. “The stirabout is good,” she said. “I thought you’d like to sup them before you ate the meat.” Neal poured the wine into an old cut-glass decanter, and set Maconchy’s bottle of whisky, distilled, no doubt, by Maconchy himself among the Rathlin Hills, beside his father’s plate. Micah Ward said a long grace, in which he thanked the Almighty for the fish, the ham, the eggs, the porridge, and his brother’s return from America. As a kind of supplement, he added a prayer for the peace of his household, in which Hannah Macaulay, appropriately enough under the circumstances, was especially named. After supper the two brothers drew their chairs to the fire. It was late in May, but the air was still chilly in the evenings. Hannah took down from the mantel-piece two well-polished brass candlesticks, fitted them with tall dipt candles, and set them on the table she had cleared of plates and dishes. Donald took a tobacco-box from his pocket, and filled a pipe. “Neal,” said his father, “you may go to your own room and complete the transcription of the passages of Josephus which you left unfinished this morning.” “Let the lad stay,” said Donald. “Neal knows nothing of the matters about which we must talk, brother, nor do I think it well that he should know; not yet, at least.” “Let the lad stay,” repeated Donald. “I’ve seen younger men than he is doing good work. Neal ought to be working, too. We cannot do anything without the young men.” Micah Ward yielded to his brother. “Draw your chair to the fire, Neal,” he said. “You may stay and listen to us.” At first the talk was of old days. An hour went by. Donald filled his pipe more than once, and finished his tumbler of punch. Story followed story of the doings of the Hearts of Steel and Hearts of Oak. Donald, as a boy, had taken his part—and that a daring part— in the fierce struggle by which the northern tenant-farmers gained fuller security and a chance of prospering a whole century before their brethren in the south and west, with the aid of the English Parliament, won the same privileges. Then Donald, speaking oftener and smoking less, told of his own share in the American War of Independence. Neal, listening, was thrilled with the stories of unequal battles between citizen soldiers and trained troops. He glowed with excitement as he came to understand the indomitable courage which faced reverse after reverse and snatched complete victory in the end. Donald dwelt much on the part which Irishmen had taken in the struggle, especially on the work of Ulster men, Antrim men, men of the hard northern breed, of the Presbyterian faith. “There’s no breaking our people, Micah; men of iron, men of steel.” “Shall iron break the northern iron, and the steel?” quoted Micah Ward, and then, with that wonderful Puritan accuracy of reference to the Bible, gave chapter and verse for the words—Jeremiah the 15th and 12th. “And the spirit’s not dead in you at home, is it, Micah? The breed is pure still.” It was Micah’s turn to speak. Neal sat in astonishment while his father told of the wrongs which the northern Presbyterians and the southern Roman Catholics suffered. Never before had he heard his father speak with such passion and fierceness. There was a pause at last, and Donald rose to his feet. He re-filled his glass from the punch-bowl, raised it aloft, and said:— “I give you a toast. Fill your glass, brother. No, that will not do. Fill it full, and fill a glass for Neal. Stand now. I will have this toast drunk standing. ‘Here’s to America and here’s to France, the pioneers of human liberty, and may Ireland soon be as they are now!’” “Amen,” said Mica h Ward solemnly. “Drink, Neal, drink. Drain your glass, boy. I will have it,” said Donald. “The northern iron, the northern iron, and the steel,” muttered Micah. Then the brothers drew their chairs closer together, and Micah, speaking low, as if he dreaded the presence of some unseen listener, began to tell of the plans of the United Irishmen. He mentioned the names of one leader and another; told how the Government, vigilant and alert, had already struck at the organisation; of the general dread of spies and informers. He entered into details; told how the cannon, once given by the Government to the Volunteers, were hidden in one place, how muskets were stored in another, how the smiths in every village were fashioning pike heads, how many men in each locality were sworn, how every male inhabitant of Rathlin Island had taken the oath. Donald interrupted him now and then with sharp questions. The talk went on and on. The tones of the speakers grew lower still. Neal lost much of what was said. His interest slackened. His eyes closed at last, and he fell fast asleep. It was late, close on midnight, when his uncle shook him into consciousness again. The candles were burned down. The fire was out. The atmosphere of the room was heavy with tobacco smoke. The punch-bowl was empty, and the two bottles, empty also, stood beside it. It seemed to Neal that his uncle spoke thickly in bidding him good night, and walked unsteadily across the room. But Micah Ward’s voice was clear and his steps were firm. Only, as Neal thought, his eyes shone more brightly than usual, and he held himself upright. The stoop was gone from his shoulders, and the peering, peaked look from his eyes. CHAPTER III The Lords of Dunseveric once lived in a castle perched on the edge of a cliff, a place inferior to the neighbouring Dunluce as a stronghold, but equally uncomfortable as a residence. The walls were thick, the rooms little larger than prison cells, and the windows very small and narrow, but they were wide enough to let the wind whistle through them and the rain trickle over their sills to the stone floors inside. The doctor of a modern sanatorium for consumptive people would have been well satisfied with the ventilation...