FullReads

“Murdher!” exclaimed the priest. “What are you doin, Phil?”

“He’s an informer,” sobbed Kate. “He came down here to spy on you, uncle, and to try and show that the blessed miracle was a makeshift. I knew it long before he told me, by his insulting ways. He wanted to make love to me.”

I rose with difficulty from beneath the table where I had lain motionless for a moment.

“Sir,” I said, “I am somewhat dazed by the recent action of Mr. Langan, whom I beg, the next time he converts himself into a fulling-mill, to do so at the expense of a man more nearly his equal in strength than I. What your niece has told you is partly true. I am indeed the Cardinal’s spy; and I have already reported to him that the miracle is a genuine one. A committee of gentlemen will wait on you tomorrow to verify it, at my suggestion. I have thought that the proof might be regarded by them as more complete if you were taken by surprise. Miss Hickey: that I admire all that is admirable in you is but to say that I have a sense of the beautiful. To say that I love you would be mere profanity. Mr. Langan: I have in my pocket a loaded pistol which I carry from a silly English prejudice against your countrymen. Had I been the Hercules of the ploughtail, and you in my place, I should have been a dead man now. Do not redden: you are safe as far as I am concerned.”

“Let me tell you before you leave my house for good,” said Father Hickey, who seemed to have become unreasonably angry, “that you should never have crossed my threshold if I had known you were a spy: no, not if your uncle were his Holiness the Pope himself.”

Here a frightful thing happened to me. I felt giddy, and put my hand on my head. Three warm drops trickled over it. I instantly became murderous. My mouth filled with blood; my eyes were blinded with it. My hand went involuntarily to the pistol. It is my habit to obey my impulses instantaneously. Fortunately the impulse to kill vanished before a sudden perception of how I might miraculously humble the mad vanity in which these foolish people had turned upon me. The blood receded from my ears; and I again heard and saw distinctly.

“And let me tell you,” Langan was saying, “that if you think yourself handier with cold lead than you are with your fists, I’ll exchange shots with you, and welcome, whenever you please. Father Tom’s credit is the same to me as my own; and if you say a word against it, you lie.”

“His credit is in my hands,” I said, “I am the Cardinal’s witness. Do you defy me?”

“There is the door,” said the priest, holding it open before me. “Until you can undo the visible work of God’s hand your testimony can do no harm to me.”

“Father Hickey,” I replied, “before the sun rises again upon Four Mile Water, I will undo the visible work of God’s hand, and bring the pointing finger of the scoffer upon your altar.”

I bowed to Kate, and walked out. It was so dark that I could not at first see the garden gate. Before I found it, I heard through the window Father Hickey’s voice, saying, “I wouldn’t for ten pounds that this had happened, Phil. He’s as mad as a march hare. The Cardinal told me so.”

I returned to my lodging, and took a cold bath to cleanse the blood from my neck and shoulder. The effect of the blow I had received was so severe, that even after the bath and a light meal I felt giddy and languid. There was an alarum-clock on the mantle piece: I wound it; set the alarum for half-past twelve; muffled it so that it should not disturb the people in the adjoining room; and went to bed, where I slept soundly for an hour and a quarter. Then the alarum roused me, and I sprang up before I was thoroughly awake. Had I hesitated, the desire to relapse into perfect sleep would have overpowered me. Although the muscles of my neck were painfully stiff, and my hands unsteady from my nervous disturbance, produced by the interruption of my first slumber, I dressed myself resolutely, and, after taking a draught of cold water, stole out of the house. It was exceedingly dark; and I had some difficulty in finding the cow-house, whence I borrowed a spade, and a truck with wheels, ordinarily used for moving sacks of potatoes. These I carried in my hands until I was beyond earshot of the house, when I put the spade on the truck, and wheeled it along the road to the cemetery. When I approached the water, knowing that no one would dare come thereabout at such an hour I made greater haste, no longer concerning myself about the rattling of the wheels. Looking across to the opposite bank, I could see a phosophorescent glow, marking the lonely grave of Brimstone Billy. This helped me to find the ferry station, where, after wandering a little and stumbling often, I found the boat, and embarked with my implements. Guided by the rope, I crossed the water without difficulty; landed; made fast the boat; dragged the truck up the bank; and sat down to rest on the cairn at the grave. For nearly a quarter of an hour I sat watching the patches of jack-o-lantern fire, and collecting my strength for the work before me. Then the distant bell of the chapel clock tolled one. I arose; took the spade; and in about ten minutes uncovered the coffin, which smelt horribly. Keeping to windward of it, and using the spade as a lever, I contrived with great labor to place it on the truck. I wheeled it without accident to the landing place, where, by placing the shafts of the truck upon the stern of the boat and lifting the foot by main strength, I succeeded in embarking my load after twenty minutes’ toil, during which I got covered with clay and perspiration, and several times all but upset the boat. At the southern bank I had less difficulty in getting the coffin ashore, dragging it up to the graveyard.