CHAPTEE XXII.

The Squire Comforts Whitecraft in his Affliction.

The old squire and c.u.mmiskey lost little time in getting over the ground to the town of Sligo, and, in order to reach it the more quickly, they took a short cut by the old road which we have described at the beginning of this narrative. On arriving at that part of it from which they could view the spot where Reilly rescued them from the murderous violence of the Red Rapparee, c.u.mmiskey pointed to it.

"Does your honor remember that place, where you see the ould buildin'?"

"Yes, I think so. Is not that the place where the cursed Rapparee attacked us?"

"It is, sir; and where poor Reilly saved both our lives; and yet your honor is goin' to hang him."

"You know nothing about it, you old blockhead. It was all a plan got up by Reilly and the Rapparee for the purpose of getting introduced to my daughter, for his own base and selfish purposes. Yes, I'll hang him certainly--no doubt of that."

"Well, sir," replied c.u.mmiskey, "it's one comfort that he won't hang by himself."

"No," said the other, "he and the Rapparee will stretch the same rope."

"The Rapparee! faith, sir, h.e.l.l have worse company."

"What do you mean, sirra?"

"Why, Sir Robert Whitecraft, sir; he always had gallows written in his face; but, upon my soul, he'll soon have it about his neck, please G.o.d."

"Faith, I'm afraid you are not far from the truth, c.u.mmiskey," replied his master; "however, I am going to make arrangements with him, to see what can be done for the unfortunate man."

"If you'll take my advice, sir, you'll have nothing to do with him. Keep your hand out o' the pot; there's no man can skim boiling lead with his hand and not burn his fingers--but a tinker."

"Don't be saucy, you old dog; but ride on, for I must put Black Tom to his speed."

On arriving at the prison, the squire found Sir Robert pent up in a miserable cell, with a table screwed to the floor, a pallet bed, and a deal form. Perhaps his comfort might have been improved through the medium of his purse, were it not that the Prison Board had held a meeting that very day, subsequent to his committal, in which, with some dissentients, they considered it their duty to warn the jailer against granting him any indulgence beyond what he was ent.i.tled to as a felon, and this under pain of their earnest displeasure.

When the squire entered he found the melancholy baronet and priest-hunter sitting upon the hard form, his head hanging down upon his breast, or, indeed, we might say much farther; for, in consequence of the almost unnatural length of his neck, it appeared on that occasion to be growing out of the middle of his body, or of that fleshless vertebral column which pa.s.sed for one.

"Well, baronet," exclaimed Folliard pretty loudly, "here's an exchange!

from the altar to the halter; from the matrimonial noose to honest Jack Ketch's--and a devilish good escape it would be to many unfortunate wretches in this same world."

"Oh, Mr. Folliard," said the baronet, "is not this miserable? What will become of me?"

"Now, I tell you what, Whitecraft, I am come to speak to you upon your position; but before I go farther, let me say a word or two to make you repent, if possible, for what you have done to others."

"For what I have done, Mr. Folliard! why should I not repent, when I find I am to be hanged for it?"

"Oh, hanged you will be, there is no doubt of that; but now consider a little; here you are with a brown loaf, and--is that water in the jug?"

"It is."

"Very well; here you are, hard and fast, you who were accustomed to luxuries, to the richest meats, and the richest wines--here you are with a brown loaf, a jug of water, and the gallows before you! However, if you wish to repent truly and sincerely, reflect upon the numbers that you and your bloodhounds have consigned to places like this, and sent from this to the gibbet, while you were rioting in luxury and triumph.

Good G.o.d, sir, hold up your head, and be a man. What if you are hanged?

Many a better man was. Hold up your head, I say."

"I can't, my dear Folliard; it won't stay up for me."

"Egad! and you'll soon get a receipt for holding it up. Why the mischief can't you have s.p.u.n.k?"

"s.p.u.n.k; how the deuce could you expect s.p.u.n.k from any man in my condition? It is difficult to understand you, Mr. Folliard; you told me a minute ago to repent, and now you tell me to have s.p.u.n.k; pray what do you mean by that?"

"Why, confound it, I mean that you should repent with s.p.u.n.k. However, let us come to more important matters; what can be done for you?"

"I know not; I am incapable of thinking on any thing but that d.a.m.ned gallows without; yet I should wish to make my will."

"Your will! Why, I think you have lost your senses; don't you know that when you're hanged every shilling and acre you are possessed of will be forfeited to the crown?"

"True," replied the other, "I had forgotten that. Could Hastings be induced to decline prosecuting?"

"What! to compromise a felony, and be transported himself. Thank you for nothing baronet; that's rather a blue look up. No, our only plan is to try and influence the grand jury to throw out the bills; but then, again, there are indictments against you to no end. Hastings' case is only a single one, and, even if he failed, it would not better your condition a whit. Under the late Administration we could have saved you by getting a packed jury; but that's out of the question now. All we can do, I think, is to get up a memorial strongly signed, supplicating the Lord Lieutenant to commute your sentence from hanging to transportation for life. I must confess, however, there is little hope even there. They will come down with their cursed reasoning and tell us that the rank and education of the offender only aggravate the offence; and that, if they allow a man so convicted to escape, in consequence of his high position in life, every humble man found guilty and executed for the same crime--is murdered. They will tell us it would be a prost.i.tution of the prerogative of the Crown to connive at crime in the rich and punish it in the poor. And, again, there's the devil of it; your beggarly want of hospitality in the first place, and the cursed swaggering severity with which you carried out your loyalty, by making unexpected domiciliary visits to the houses of loyal but humane Protestant families, with the expectation of finding a priest or a Papist under their protection: both these, I say, have made you the most unpopular man in the county; and, upon my soul, Sir Robert, I don't think there will be a man upon the grand jury whose family you have not insulted by your inveterate loyalty. No one, I tell! you, likes a persecutor. Still, I say, I'll try what I can do with the grand jury. I'll see my friends and yours--if you have any now; make out a list of them in a day or two--and you may rest a.s.sured that I will leave nothing undone to extricate you."

"Thank you, Mr. Folliard; but do you know why I am here?"

"To be sure I do."

"No, you don't, sir. William Reilly, the Jesuit and Papist, is the cause of it, and will be the cause of my utter ruin and ignominious death."

"How is that? Make it plain to me; only make that plain to me."

"He is the bosom friend of Hastings, and can sway him and move him and manage him as a father would a child, or, rather, as a child would a doting father. Reilly, sir, is at the bottom of this, his great object always having been to prevent a marriage between me and your beautiful daughter; I, who, after all, have done so much for Protestantism, am the victim of that Jesuit and Papist."

This vindictive suggestion took at once, and the impetuous old squire started as if a new light had been let in upon his mind. We call him impetuous, because, if he had reflected only for a moment upon the diabolical persecution, both in person and property, which Reilly had sustained at the baronet's hands, he ought not to have blamed him had!

he shot the scoundrel as if he had been one of the most rabid dogs that ever ran frothing across a country. We say the suggestion, poisoned as it was by the most specious falsehood, failed not to accomplish the villain's object.

Folliard grasped him by the hand. "Never-mind," said he; "keep yourself quiet, and leave Reilly to me; I have him,that's enough."

"No," replied the baronet, "it is not enough, because I know what will happen: Miss Folliard's influence over you is a proverb; now she will cajole and flatter and beguile you until she prevails upon you to let the treacherous Jesuit slip through your fingers, and then he will get off to the Continent, and laugh at you all, after having taken her with him; for there is nothing more certain, if he escapes death through your indulgence, than that you will, in the course of a few years, find yourself grandfather to a brood of young Papists; and when I say Papists, need I add rebels?"

"Come," replied the hot-headed old man, "don't insult me; I am master of my own house, and, well as I love my daughter, I would not for a moment suffer her to interfere in a public matter of this or any other kind.

Now good-by; keep your spirits up, and if you are to die, why die like a man."

They then separated; and as Folliard was pa.s.sing through the hatch, he called the jailer into his own office, and strove to prevail upon him, not ineffectually, to smuggle in some wine and other comforts to the baronet. The man told him that he would with pleasure do so if he dared; but that the caution against it which he had got that very day from the Board rendered the thing impossible. Ere the squire left him, however, his scruples were overcome, and the baronet, before he went to bed that night, had a rost duck for supper, with two bottles of excellent claret to wash it down and lull his conscience into slumber.

"Confound it," the squire soliloquized, on their way home, "I am as stupid as Whitecraft himself, who was never stupid until now; there have I been with him in that cursed dungeon, and neither of us ever thought of taking measures for his defence. Why, he must have the best lawyers at the Bar, and fee them like princes. Gad! I have a great notion to ride back and speak to him on the subject; he's in such a confounded trepidation about his life that he can think of nothing else. No matter, I shall write to him by a special messenger early in the morning.

It would be a cursed slap in the face to have one of our leading men hanged--only, after all, for carrying out the wishes of an anti-Papist Government, who connived at his conduct, and encouraged him in it. I know he expected a coronet, and I have no doubt but he'd have got one had his party remained in; but now all the unfortunate devil is likely to get is a rope--and be hanged to them! However, as to my own case about Reilly--I must secure a strong bar against him; and if we can only prevail upon Helen to state the facts as they occurred, there is little doubt that he shall suffer; for hang he must, in consequence of the disgrace he has brought upon my daughter's name and mine. Whatever I might have forgiven, I will never forgive him that."

He then rode on at a rapid pace, and did not slacken his speed until he reached home. Dinner was ready, and he sat down with none but Helen, who could scarcely touch a morsel. Her father saw at once the state of her mind, and felt that it would be injudicious to introduce any subject that might be calculated to excite her. They accordingly talked upon commonplace topics, and each a.s.sumed as much cheerfulness, and more than they could command. It was a miserable sight, when properly understood, to see the father and daughter forced, by the painful peculiarity of their circ.u.mstances, thus to conceal their natural sentiments from each other. Love, however, is often a disturber of families, as in the case of Reilly and _Cooleen Bawn_; and so is an avaricious ambition, when united to a selfish and a sensual attachment, as in the case of Whitecraft.

It is unnecessary now, and it would be only tedious, to dwell upon the energetic preparations that were made for the three approaching trials.

Public rumor had taken them up and sent them abroad throughout the greater portion of the kingdom. The three culprits were notorious--Sir Robert Whitecraft, the priest-hunter and prosecutor; the notorious Red Rapparee, whose exploits had been commemorated in a thousand ballads; and "w.i.l.l.y Reilly," whose love for the far-famed _Cooleen Bawn_, together with her unconquerable pa.s.sion for him, had been known throughout the empire. In fact, the interest which the public felt in the result of the approaching trials was intense, not only in Ireland, but throughout England and Scotland, where the circ.u.mstances connected with them were borne on the wings of the press. Love, however, especially the romance of it--and here were not only romance but reality enough--love, we say, overcomes all collateral interests--and the history of the loves of w.i.l.l.y Reilly and his "dear _Cooleen Bawn_" even then touched the hearts of thousands, and moistened many a young eye for his calamities and early fate, and the sorrows of his _Cooleen Bawn_.