A 
 
 7*
 
 a
 
 A GERALDINE
 
 NEW NOVELS AT ALL 
 
 LIBRARIES. 
 
 — 
 
 — :o: 
 
 
 
 Ridge and Furrow. 
 
 By Sir 
 
 Randall 
 
 Roberts. 
 
 2 Vols. 
 
 
 
 
 Life's Tapestry. By 
 
 Car a doc 
 
 Granhim. 
 
 3 Vols. 
 
 Rosamund's Story. 
 
 By Ina Garvey. 2 
 
 Vols. 
 
 Honours Easy. By 
 
 Chas. T. 
 
 C. James. 
 
 3 Vols.
 
 A GERALDINE 
 
 BY 
 
 RICHARD ASHE KING ("BASIL") 
 
 author of 
 
 "love's legacy," "a leal lass," "the wearing of the green,' 
 " a coquette's conquest," etc. 
 
 IN TWO VOLUMES 
 
 VOL. 1 
 
 LONDON 
 
 WARD & DOWNEY 
 
 12 YORK STREET COVENT GARDEN W.C, 
 
 1893
 
 TX3 
 
 ■9 
 
 -^ 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 4 
 
 -t 
 
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 
 
 »'OP 
 
 
 "*V 
 
 
 
 
 
 CHAP 
 
 
 PAGE 
 
 
 I. 
 
 A COURAGEOUS WOMAN 
 
 I 
 
 
 II. 
 
 A WILFUL WOMAN 
 
 25 
 
 
 III. 
 
 " WHO'S THAT FELLOW ; " 
 
 54 
 
 
 IV. 
 
 THE BREACH WIDENS . 
 
 82 
 
 
 V. 
 
 A RELAPSE OF SCORN . 
 
 107 
 
 
 VI. 
 
 '• IN THE QUEEN"S NAME " . 
 
 132 
 
 
 VII. 
 
 MURDER ! . . . 
 
 146 
 
 1 
 
 VIII. 
 
 " WE MUST FIND JTHE MAN " 
 
 179 
 
 
 IX. 
 
 COMMITTED FOR TRIAL 
 
 199 
 
 
 X. 
 
 A CLUE . 
 
 214 
 
 
 XT. 
 
 TOM D'ARCY 
 
 240 

 
 A GERALDINE, 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 A COURAGEOUS WOMAN. 
 
 "What is young D'Arcy always prowling 
 about Dunran Wood for?" asked Ralph 
 Fitzgerald of his son Dick. 
 
 Dick, suspecting the youth's infatuation 
 for his sister Shiela, fancied this the mo- 
 tive of the trespass, but did not think it 
 discreet to suggest it. 
 
 " We're great chums," he answered 
 evasively. 
 
 " But you don't live in the wood ; and 
 he does seemingly. I suspect he has his 
 eye on the Dunboyne Bottoms."
 
 2 A GERALDINF. 
 
 To Dick this suspicion seemed as pre- 
 posterous as Mr. Micawber's running down 
 to have a look at the Medway preparatory 
 to embarking in the coal trade. But his 
 father was at once the most suspicious and 
 the most trustful of men — suspicion follow- 
 ing upon trust as certainly as night upon 
 day. While he was with you he was sin- 
 cerely and effusively cordial, kindly, trustful, 
 and generous ; but he had hardly turned 
 his back upon you than he began to repent 
 of his good nature and to suspect your 
 good faith. Your presence, like a torch 
 put to green wood, produced a loud crack- 
 ling of thorns and a fierce blaze, but the 
 moment it was withdrawn all was smoke 
 and blackness. And the odd thing was 
 that years did not lessen either his trust 
 or his distrust. At fifty he was as con- 
 fiding while with you, and as suspicious 
 behind your back, as he had been at
 
 A GERALDINE. 3 
 
 twenty, with the result that he had come 
 to consider everyone a knave, and that 
 everyone had come to consider him a fool. 
 Perhaps the only person in the world 
 whom he trusted without any afterthought 
 of misgiving was this adored son Dick, 
 who was too weak to be either good or 
 wicked, and was certainly too weak to be 
 trusted. 
 
 Dick, having a present purpose to serve, 
 to which the mention of the Dunboyne 
 Bottoms — mortgaged to " Old Mouser," 
 D'Arcy's father — was the most untoward 
 of introductions, hastened to change the 
 subject. " Have you seen Mick Morony?" 
 he asked. 
 
 "About the colt? He wants ^40 for 
 him ! " 
 
 " Phew!" whistled Dick, surprised out of 
 this expression of surprise ; but, recovering 
 himself quickly, he added — " He's worth
 
 4 A GERALDINE. 
 
 twice the money, but I didn't think the 
 fool knew it." 
 
 " He knows his value to a hair, and 
 has asked ^10 more than it" his father 
 rejoined. 
 
 " Well, I can only tell you Carmody would 
 have offered ^50 for him, if I had not let 
 him think you had bought him." 
 
 M I haven't the money to spare, Dick. I 
 never was so hard up." 
 
 " But he doesn't want cash down. He'd 
 wait till March." 
 
 14 But I don't know that I shall have 
 it in March either. They tell me that 
 infernal scoundrel Claughessy threatens to 
 have me boycotted and put under the 
 ' Plan of Campaign ' if I don't reinstate 
 him. I declare to God, I don't know 
 what the country is coming to — I don't, 
 indeed." 
 
 Here was another rock to steer clear of,
 
 A GERALDINE. 5 
 
 and Dick sheered off at once. " Look 
 here, father ; I am only asking you to 
 make a good investment. D'Arcy, who 
 understands horses if he understands any- 
 thing, says that I'm certain to make ,£40 
 or ^"50 on him if I keep and train him 
 for the August Show at Ballsbridge." 
 
 Though his father knew, of course, that 
 whatever the investment yielded would go 
 into Dick's pocket, while out of his own 
 would come the purchase money, he equally, 
 of course, yielded. 
 
 Dick, though on fire with impatience to 
 close the bargain and fetch the horse 
 home, hurried off first to find his sister 
 Shiela, whom he loved better than anyone 
 in the world. She was so irresistibly 
 lovable that I should hardly have con- 
 sidered Dick's devotion to her much to 
 his credit if it were not that neither her 
 father nor mother shared it. Her father
 
 O A GERALDINE. 
 
 thought girls a mistake altogether ; while 
 her mother thought Shiela a mistake as a 
 girl. Nevertheless, she was not a girl only, 
 but a singularly nice-minded girl — a lady 
 to her finger tips — but, then, her poor 
 mother's ideal of a lady-like girl resembled 
 the close-clipped Dutch ideal of a graceful 
 tree. 
 
 Dick found his sister in her own room, 
 whither she often fled to escape the lone- 
 liness of her father and mother's society. 
 
 "Shiela, you can have Fin now!' he 
 cried eagerly as he entered. 
 
 Fin was his horse. 
 
 Shiela lifted her head from " The Mill 
 on the Floss," tossing back a flood of soft 
 brown hair, which had become dishevelled, 
 and looked up at Dick with great deep 
 violet eyes, which hardly saw him yet ; 
 for she had scarcely waked yet out of the 
 vivid dream of Tom and Maggie.
 
 A GERALDINE. 7 
 
 "Fin?' she repeated perplexedly. 
 
 " Yes, yes ; get on your habit. I'm to 
 
 have Morony's colt and you must take 
 
 F* >» 
 in. 
 
 "Oh, Dick!' she exclaimed in rapture, 
 springing up. 
 
 "He says I may buy him ; and I'm just 
 off to Morony's to close the bargain." 
 
 "Dick, dear!' she cried, putting her arm 
 round his neck and rubbing her cheek 
 against his, for they had not yet given 
 up their childish mode of caressing. " But 
 father wouldn't like it," she added presently 
 and sadly. 
 
 " He needn't know — I mean," he hurried 
 on to say, " I'll only lend him to you, if 
 you like — will that do ? ' 
 
 "Dear old Dick! I'd rather have Fin 
 than anything in the world ! ' 
 
 " I knew you would. Come and have 
 a look at him before I go. I tell you
 
 8 A GERALDINE. 
 
 what, though ; get him saddled and meet 
 me at Enniscorrig in half-an-hour." 
 
 " But you'll want him yourself." 
 
 "No; I'll ride the colt. I'm dying to 
 try him." 
 
 " Is Patsey in ? We can saddle him 
 ourselves if he isn't." 
 
 Shiela was so impatient to see Fin, now 
 that he was to be virtually " her very 
 own," that instead of waiting to don her 
 habit she went first down with Dick to 
 the stables. The two walked together 
 across the bit of carriage drive not com- 
 manded by the windows, with their arms 
 round each other's necks, like two boys of 
 ten, though Shiela was nineteen and Dick 
 a year older ; yet, when they were secure 
 of being unobserved, they would sometimes 
 relapse into such childlike habits ; for while 
 he was, and would continue for life to be, 
 a mere boy, she, in spite of being a year
 
 A GERALDINE. 9 
 
 his junior, regarded him with quite a 
 motherly feeling of protective affection. 
 When they were about to come within 
 sight of the windows they walked apart 
 till they reached the stables, when Dick 
 ordered Patsey to saddle Fin for Miss 
 Shiela. 
 
 " He's a bit fresh, Miss Shiela," Patsey 
 said, touching his cap. 
 
 Nevertheless, Shiela, who was born with- 
 out nerves, seemingly, and who lived such 
 a life as might have strung tense the most 
 flaccid of nerves, entered the loose box 
 and went straight up to Fin's head, un- 
 daunted by the brute's seemingly vicious 
 demonstrations of eye and ear laid back, 
 of lowered crest and switched-in tail. 
 
 Dick watched her with mingled pride 
 and admiration. " There's no fear of a 
 horse when you're not afraid," he said, 
 sententiously.
 
 io A GERALDINE. 
 
 " It's only play," Shiela answered, patting 
 Fin's downstretched neck, to his evident 
 gratification. 
 
 "Begorra! Miss Shiela, ye'd make a lap- 
 dog of a lion ! ! Patsey cried with un- 
 feigned and unexaggerated admiration, 
 which, however, went for nothing, since 
 Patsey would have said precisely the same 
 thing if Shiela had showed abject terror 
 while affecting to appear brave. 
 
 For indeed poor Patsey was like that 
 tailor of Montaigne's " who could hardly 
 bring himself to tell the truth, even when 
 it was to his advantage." His whole and 
 sole consideration when questioned or con- 
 sulted was — what would you wish him to 
 say. If you asked him, " Well, Patsey, 
 are w T e going to have rain to day ? it 
 was your face, and not the sky, he would 
 look to for his answer. Did you want 
 rain, it would rain cats and dogs ; did you
 
 A GERALDINE. II 
 
 not want it, " sorra dhrop'd fall at this 
 side of to-morrow mornin', barrin' the jew.'' 
 For Patsey was particular as a Quaker in 
 his qualifications and exceptions — the sure 
 note of a rigid veracity. However, on 
 this occasion he really meant what he 
 said, for he muttered as he walked away, 
 " There isn't her like in the counthry, 
 man or woman, for pluck ; an' she is but 
 a shlip of a gurl, God bless her ! " 
 
 While he was saddling Fin, and Shiela 
 ran in to don her habit, Dick hurried off 
 to Mick Morony, from whom, after much 
 haggling, he bought the colt for ^40. 
 
 Mick, though he took many an oath 
 that the horse was thoroughly broken in 
 to saddle and harness, demurred to Dick's 
 suggestion that he might ride him home. 
 
 u He's quiet as a lamb, Masther Dick, 
 an' you might bridle him wid a sugan, 
 barrin' he met a philosopher or an ingine,
 
 12 A GERALDINL. 
 
 an' the devil wouldn't hould him thin " — 
 " a philosopher" being County Clare for a 
 velocipede — the old name for a bicycle 
 which is still current in the provinces. 
 
 L' I'm not going to cross the line, and 
 there's no fear of my meeting a bicycle," 
 Dick replied with boyish eagerness. But 
 Mick still hesitated. 
 
 " Let me try him up and down the 
 road a bit, anyway ; ' and to this Mick at 
 last was fain to consent. 
 
 Dick mounted while Mick held the horse 
 by the bridle, which no entreaties of the 
 rider could move him to let go. He ran 
 by the horse's head, which he held close 
 to the bit, to Dick's extreme disgust and 
 humiliation. " Let go, hang it all ! ' he 
 cried, digging his heels into the horse's 
 sides ; thereupon the colt reared so sud- 
 denly that Mick lost his hold of the rein, 
 and in another moment it had bounded
 
 A GERALDINE. 1 3 
 
 forward like an arrow from a bow, out of 
 Dick's control also. In truth, the brute 
 being- virtually unbroken, was in such a 
 mad, blind panic as to have lost all control 
 over itself. 
 
 Now, about four hundred yards straight 
 ahead was the entrance to an old quarry, 
 which had been reopened recently for the 
 building of a new house, or " castle," as 
 the country folk insisted upon calling it, 
 and from this entrance to the abrupt brink 
 of the quarry ran a rough waggon road 
 of another four hundred yards or so in 
 length ; while the high road turned sharply 
 to the right up a fairly steep hill. When 
 Dick had recovered his flurry at the bolt- 
 ing of the colt, he remembered this quarry 
 road, and felt that his sole chance lay in 
 being able to turn the brute to the right 
 at the sudden elbow-like bend up the steep 
 hill of the high road. As he neared the
 
 14 A GERALDINK. 
 
 turn he tore madly at the right rein, with 
 the result of increasing the terror of the 
 colt, without changing its headlong course 
 for the quarry. In another moment it had 
 dashed through the open gateway which 
 led to it, and Dick knew that nothing now 
 could save him except his flinging himself 
 from the saddle. While he was trying to 
 nerve himself to this desperate leap, he 
 heard behind him the headlong gallop of 
 another horse, which would probably 
 trample him to death if he escaped being 
 killed by the fall. So at least he was 
 almost relieved to think as an excuse for 
 not taking the horrible leap — for Dick was 
 too weak and irresolute for such an emer- 
 gencv. In another moment, by the most 
 daring and adroit riding, Shiela shot past 
 him in the narrow road, and, putting Fin 
 to his utmost mettle, gained a sufficient 
 lead of the colt to have time to stop and
 
 A GERALDINE. I 5 
 
 pull Fin round broadside to the road 
 within ten yards of the quarry brink. But 
 only just time. She had hardly blocked 
 the road when the colt thundered against 
 Fin, and Shiela, thrown off by the shock, 
 lighted on her head and became insen- 
 sible. 
 
 One word to explain her opportune ap- 
 pearance. Having reached the Enniscorrig 
 cross-roads, she thought that, as Fin was 
 fresh and restive, she might as well ride on 
 to meet Dick. She came in sight of him 
 just at the moment of his mounting the 
 colt ; and when the brute bolted she was 
 only thirty yards behind. She at once 
 started in pursuit with a vague hope of 
 being able to render help of some kind ; 
 and while the colt stuck to the high road 
 she kept Fin upon its grass margin, in 
 order that the ring of his gallop behind 
 might not heighten the panic of the run-
 
 16 A GERALDINE. 
 
 away. When, however, the colt dashed 
 through the entrance to the quarry, and 
 Shiela saw that the sole hope of saving 
 Dick lay in blocking the narrow road in 
 front of the frightened brute, she put Fin 
 to his utmost speed, and so distanced the 
 colt as to have time to wheel her horse 
 broadside across its path. 
 
 Before Dick, whom also the shock of 
 the collision had flung off head first, could 
 regain his feet, a singularly tall and strong- 
 looking man, with a fine face expressive of 
 extraordinary resolution, who had a minute 
 before climbed up out of the quarry in 
 time to see the race and rescue, had 
 sprung to Shiela's side and bent anxiously 
 over her. 
 
 " Is she — is she — ? ' Dick, shivering as 
 in an ague fit, asked, without trusting him- 
 self to finish the question, or even to look 
 down into his sister's face.
 
 A GERALDINE. IJ 
 
 " No ; she's only stunned," he answered, 
 in a firm, decided voice. " There's a doctor 
 somewhere about, I suppose." 
 
 " Yes — Dr. Cullinan." 
 
 " Fetch him, will you ? You can ride 
 her horse ? ' he asked, with a suspicion 
 of sarcasm in the tone of the question, 
 which Dick was much too agitated to 
 notice. 
 
 Dick mounted Fin, who was standing 
 stockstill, quite uninjured, but apparently 
 bewildered by the whole affair. As for the 
 colt, which also was uninjured, it had 
 galloped back to Mick Morony's in as wild 
 a panic as it had come. As Dick was 
 riding off, the stranger shouted after him 
 in his deep commanding voice, u Fetch 
 him to there," pointing to a small two- 
 storied house which overlooked and almost 
 overhung the quarry ; and the last [ L thing 
 Dick, on looking back, saw was the gigantic
 
 1 8 A GERALDINE. 
 
 stranger with Shiela in his arms striding up 
 the steep side of the hill to this two-storied 
 cottage. Shiela, no doubt, was a light 
 weight enough to carry when conscious, 
 but an insensible person seems almost double 
 his waking weight. 
 
 As the stranger neared the door of the 
 cottage, a shrill, thin, piping voice screamed 
 out the question, " Halloa ! where the h — 
 did you pick that up ? ' in an unmistak- 
 able nasal American accent. He was a 
 little weazened creature, very lame of one 
 foot, who seemed to have stepped off a 
 stage, or out of a fairy tale, to play dwarf 
 to the other's giant. 
 
 " Hush ! ' the other cried peremptorily, 
 as he stooped to enter the doorway, which 
 the little man had just vacated to let him 
 pass through. 
 
 Turning into a room upon the right, 
 Shiela's bearer laid her down gently
 
 A GERALDINE. IQ 
 
 and almost reverently upon an iron bed- 
 stead, which took up a fourth of the 
 space to spare, ordering the little man the 
 while to bring some brandy. When the 
 brandy was brought and poured out into a 
 glass he forced some between Shiela's lips, 
 while the little man exclaimed in a voice 
 subdued almost to a whisper, u By the 
 Lord ! What a beauty ! Did she fall down 
 the quarry ? " 
 
 To this the other answered only, and 
 impatiently, " Fetch some water, will 
 your 
 
 He bathed her face with the water 
 gently and deftly, and tenderly as a woman, 
 saying the while, as much to himself as to 
 the little man, " I never saw a finer thing 
 better done — never ! " 
 
 "What — what did she do?" 
 " Look here, Dunscombe ; there's num- 
 ber three ! ' he said, in a tone of intense
 
 20 A GERALDINE. 
 
 determination, pointing to Shiela as he 
 spoke. 
 
 " You mean to marry her ? " 
 "I do." 
 
 " Then it's done ! ' Dunscombe rejoined 
 in a tone of complete conviction. 
 
 " I don't know that," replied the other, 
 with a sudden misgiving, inspired by the 
 exquisitely refined beauty of the face he 
 was looking down upon. 
 
 11 Of course it is ; and easily done com- 
 pared with the other two. It was a tough 
 job to make your pile in eight years, and 
 nearly as tough to buy a property in this 
 land-grabbing country ; but any man with 
 a pile and a property can have any girl 
 he chooses to fling the handkerchief to. 
 What the blazes did she do, though ? ' 
 
 "Hush!" the other cried angrily. 
 
 " Is she coming to ? " 
 
 " No ; I don't know. Hand me the glass.''
 
 A GERALDINE. 21 
 
 While he was forcing a few more drops 
 of brandy between her lips, Dunscombe 
 asked again, " No, but really what did she 
 do?" 
 
 Then Dundas described with great spirit 
 and enthusiasm what Shiela had done, ex- 
 claiming again at the close, " By George ! 
 I never saw anything finer ! ' 
 
 " It was game enough ; but I say, I 
 guess you're too late." 
 
 " No. He was her brother ; there was 
 a strong likeness, or rather a weak like- 
 ness, to her in his face. I wonder who 
 she is ? " 
 
 " You're safe enough there. She's a 
 thoroughbred, and no mistake." 
 
 " Oh, that ! Of course I wasn't think- 
 ing of that." 
 
 " You really mean to marry her? " Duns- 
 combe exclaimed amazedly. 
 
 " Yes, if it can be done."
 
 22 A GERALDINE. 
 
 " But if this should be — should be se.r - 
 ous — her hurt, I mean. If — Halloa ! ' 
 
 At this exclamation of Dunscombe's, 
 uttered under his breath, Dundas turned 
 sharply round in the direction to which 
 his friend's startled look pointed, to find 
 Shiela's wide, wondering, and wonderful 
 violet eyes fixed upon him. 
 
 " You're better?" he asked eagerly, with 
 an almost tremulous tenderness in his deep 
 voice; for her loveliness, lit up by those lustrous 
 eyes, completed his sudden enchantment. 
 
 11 Where am I ? Dick— ? " 
 
 11 Your brother ? He's all right. He'll 
 be here in a few^minutes." 
 
 She looked still wonderingly, first at him, 
 then at his companion, then round the 
 room, and back; again at Dundas. 
 
 " You were knocked off your horse, and 
 I brought you here while your brother 
 went for a doctor," he explained.
 
 A GERALDINE. 23 
 
 " He's not hurt ? " 
 
 " No ; not in the least ; thanks to you ; 
 you certainly saved his life." 
 
 Shiela still lay with closed eyes, recall- 
 ing slowly and painfully everything that 
 had happened both before and since her 
 state of insensibility. Suddenly a burning 
 blush suffused her face to her forehead, and 
 she raised herself with an effort to a sit- 
 ting posture. " I'm quite well now, thank 
 you," she said formally, with even a freez- 
 ing note of hauteur in her tone. 
 
 " Surely you will wait till your brother 
 comes with the doctor? They will expect 
 to find you here." 
 
 " Thank you, I am really all right," she 
 said, attempting to stand, but a sudden 
 dizziness made her grasp the iron bed-head 
 to steady herself. 
 
 " See ! You're not fit to stir, or to stand 
 even. Do, pray, stay till they come," he
 
 24 A GERALDINE. 
 
 urged imploringly. "We shall go meet 
 and hurry them," he added, imagining that 
 it was their attendance upon her as nurses 
 to which she objected.
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 A WILFUL WOMAN. 
 
 In truth Shiela was yet too faint and 
 dizzy even to stand, and when the two 
 men quitted the room and the cottage she 
 was fain to lie down again. 
 
 " She's rather a snorter, eh ? ' Duns- 
 combe said when they had got outside. 
 
 " Ach ! ' Dundas cried impatiently, for 
 his friend's slang had never before grated 
 so harshly upon him. 
 
 They walked on ibr a little in silence, 
 before Dunscombe, who was limping a 
 little behind, stopped suddenly and ex- 
 claimed — a I say ! Do you think she heard 
 
 it all ? " 
 
 25
 
 26 A GERALDINE. 
 
 " Phew ! ' Dundas cried with a long face 
 of dismay. 
 
 " That last nip of brandy brought her 
 to, you bet ! ' Dunscombe continued, quite 
 proud of his penetration. <; And she heard 
 your highfalutin' account of the affair, and 
 your resolution to go for her, baldheaded!" 
 
 Dundas was struck silent. 
 
 " None of 'em like being told they're to 
 be had for asking," Dunscombe went on 
 complacently. lt And she looks a high- 
 flier." 
 
 " What did I say exactly ? ' Dundas 
 asked perplexedly, after a pause. 
 
 " You said you meant to marry her, and 
 said it as if you meant it too." 
 
 Dundas muttered something strongly 
 condemnatory of his own fatuity, and 
 turned to walk on. Before, however, they 
 had taken half-a-dozen steps, he stopped 
 again, and said, almost as much to him
 
 A GERALDINE. 27 
 
 self as to his companion — " But she didn't 
 seem to have come quite to herself when 
 I spoke to her ? " 
 
 u Her mind hung fire a bit ; it always 
 does when you first come to after a knock 
 like that. You hear all that is said, and 
 only make out what it means afterwards. 
 Don't you remember Fighting Finnerty 
 bidding for his own boots at the auction 
 of his clothes, when we thought him dead ? 
 He'd heard the whole auction from the 
 start, but didn't take it in till we'd got to 
 his boots." 
 
 This revolting comparison of Shiela's 
 case to Fighting Finnerty's was too much 
 for Dundas, who, strange as it may seem, 
 was really, and truly, and hopelessly in love 
 for the first time in his life ! His sudden 
 infatuation would not have been strange 
 in a weaker or more impulsive man ; but 
 in one of his strength and solidity of mind
 
 28 A GERALDINE. 
 
 it was amazing. The firstfruits of his 
 passion was remorse for taking Dunscombe 
 into his confidence in the blunt and almost 
 brutal way he had done in the excitement 
 of his admiration of Shiela's heroism. 
 
 " Oh, well, it doesn't matter ; it was only 
 a bit of brag," he said, with a sudden 
 affectation of unconcern which quite took 
 Dunscombe in. 
 
 " Phew! I thought so ; she's only a school 
 miss after all," he said, much relieved. 
 
 Presently Dundas and Dunscombe met 
 Dick and the doctor hurrying up the steep 
 lane from the main road to the little house 
 above the quarry. 
 
 " She's come to ; but I doubt if she's 
 fit to move," Dundas said, addressing Dick. 
 44 Look here," he added, hurriedly and 
 with some embarrassment, " I should be 
 glad if you'd make the little shanty your 
 own for a day or so till she's right round,
 
 • A GERALDINE. 29 
 
 as I'm off to Limerick. There's an old 
 lady in charge who'll look after her." 
 
 " It's very good of you," replied Dick, 
 " but we live not a mile from here. Cahir- 
 calla," he added, thinking that the name 
 of his father's place must be recognised 
 and respected by everyone. 
 
 " But she mayn't be fit to move to-day," 
 Dundas rejoined, looking almost appeal- 
 ingly to the doctor, who had been eyeing 
 him curiously all this time. 
 Mr. Dundas ? " he asked. 
 Yes." 
 
 " I thought so, sir ; I thought so. The 
 best bit of news for this country, sir, I've 
 heard for many a long day was your re- 
 turn to spend at home the fortune you 
 made in America — the first man that's done 
 it that ever I heard of. We're bled white, 
 sir ; we're bled white. All the youth of 
 the country, its bone and sinew, its energy 
 
 ik 
 
 . .
 
 30 A GERALDINE. 
 
 and enterprise, are drained off to America, 
 and nothing and no one returned to us for 
 it at all." 
 
 As the little doctor stood to deliver him- 
 self vehemently of this national grievance, 
 Dundas said impatiently, " All right, doctor. 
 I've redressed the balance. But we'd 
 better be getting on to your patient." 
 
 The little doctor, however, although he 
 resumed his climb up the steep lane, did 
 not, in spite of his plethoric breathlessness, 
 cease to hold forth on this depletion of the 
 best blood of the country. He jerked 
 out breathless fragments of sentences : — 
 " Talk of balance of trade — imports — ex- 
 ports — manufactures — but all the manhood 
 of a country exported — producers of all 
 products; sowers, reapers, spinners, weavers! 
 Phew ! You should get a lift to your 
 aerie," the little man groaned as he stopped 
 for breath and to mop his steaming forehead.
 
 A GERALDINE 3 1 
 
 " Let me carry you," Dundas suggested, 
 laughing. 
 
 " I believe you could do it," replied the 
 doctor, with an admiring look at his mag- 
 nificent proportions. 
 
 " I should rather think he could," broke 
 in Dunscombe, enthusiastically. " I've seen 
 him carry a calf to its dam up the side 
 of a canon that was like a wall whose 
 stones were always slipping from under 
 you." 
 
 The analogy hardly seemed to gratify 
 the little doctor, since he turned upon 
 Dunscombe a " Who-the-devil-are-you ' kind 
 of glare, and then resumed his climb with- 
 out a word. 
 
 Upon reaching the cottage, Dick and the 
 doctor hastened in to see Shiela, while 
 Dundas and Dunscombe remained in the 
 opposite room. Presently Dundas, who 
 was pacing the room restlessly, heard as
 
 32 A GERALDINE. 
 
 he neared its door the doctor's voice say- 
 ing in the hall with petulant impatience : 
 
 li I shall not take the responsibility ; 
 that's all I can say. I shall not take the 
 responsibility. Anything may happen if 
 you move her to-day." 
 
 " But she's so dead on it," Dick urged. 
 " I never knew her so obstinate about any- 
 thing." 
 
 " Very well ; very well ; very well," re- 
 iterated the peremptory little man with 
 angry vehemence. " Home with her, if you 
 like. Get the man who carried the calf 
 to take her down that precipice and put 
 her in a quarry cart. It's all one to me 
 what you do with her. I've done with the 
 
 case." 
 
 " Hang it all ! That's no way to talk," 
 Dick cried so reasonably that Dr. Cullinan 
 was somewhat ashamed of himself. 
 
 11 But what do you expect me to do,
 
 A GERALDINE. 33 
 
 young gentleman ? Do you expect me to 
 be responsible for a case when you do the 
 direct opposite of what I advise in a very 
 serious matter ? for it is serious," he added, 
 with an emphatic nod. 
 
 Dick, without replying, turned and re- 
 entered the room in which Shiela was 
 lying, while the doctor stepped out into the 
 little garden before the door. 
 
 " Shiela," Dick said, appealingly, as he 
 bent over her, " do consent to stay here 
 till to-morrow." 
 
 " But why ? " she asked irritably. "There's 
 nothing really the matter with me but a bad 
 headache. There isn't indeed, Dick." 
 
 " I know there isn't, but the moving 
 might bring on brain fever or something. 
 It's the deuce and all of a place to get up 
 or down. ' 
 
 Shiela half rose into a sitting posture, 
 
 only to sink back faint and dizzy. " How 
 
 c
 
 34 A GERALDINF. 
 
 did I get here ? ' she asked eagerly, in 
 spite of her prostration. 
 
 n That big fellow — did you see him ? — 
 Dundas — the chap that owns the house — 
 carried you up." 
 
 u Oh ! " groaned Shiela. 
 
 "Are you in great pain?" 
 
 " Yes — no — I am only dizzy. Dick, 1 
 could walk down the steep a bit, with you 
 and the doctor to help me, and then you 
 could drive me home." 
 
 " But even if you could, you might be 
 ill for weeks and weeks from it. Why 
 can't you stay here till to-morrow, any- 
 way ? He says he's off to Limerick, and 
 we may stay here till you're better. He 
 seems a very decent fellow."' 
 
 u He's — " Shiela began impetuously, but 
 stopped suddenly, replacing the head she 
 had abruptly raised from the pillow. Pre- 
 sently she said eagerly — "Dick, there's
 
 A GERALDINE. 35 
 
 the hammock! Patsey and Ned Dogherty 
 could carry me down in it with poles, you 
 know, if he won't let me walk. Do get 
 him to consent to this." 
 
 " He's such a wax ! ' Dick grumbled, as 
 he went upon this mission. 
 
 He found the doctor in the little garden 
 talking to Dundas, who had joined him 
 there to hear his report of his patient. 
 
 " It's some girl's nonsense, I fancy," 
 the doctor was saying as Dick appeared. 
 "Well?' he said, turning to Dick. 
 
 <c Couldn't she be carried down in a net 
 hammock by a couple of our men, doctor?" 
 Dick suggested persuasively. 
 
 " You mean she's bent upon going home 
 at all risks ? " 
 
 " If you'd let her," Dick urged diplo- 
 matically. 
 
 The doctor made an impatient gesture, but 
 was conciliated by Dick's submissive manner,
 
 36 A GERALDINE. 
 
 "A hammock! You might as well have 
 her taken down in a wheelbarrow as in 
 a hammock carried by clod-hoppers," he 
 growled. 
 
 " If nothing will induce her to stay, per- 
 haps she might permit trie to carry her 
 down," Dundas suggested timidly with a 
 positive blush. 
 
 u Not half a bad idea ! ' cried the 
 doctor, eyeing him admiringly. " I be- 
 lieve you could carry her, bed and all." 
 
 u I think I could carry her without jolt- 
 ing her in the least. 
 
 " Eh ? What do you say to that ? ' the 
 doctor said, turning to Dick. " If she'll 
 let him take her down and me drive her 
 home, it might be managed without ex- 
 cessive risk." 
 
 " I'll ask her," s;iid Dick, doubtfullv. 
 
 Upon re-entering the room he said to 
 Shiela — " He thinks those fellows would
 
 A GERALDINE. 37 
 
 jolt you to pieces in a hammock ; but if 
 you wouldn't mind being carried down, 
 he'd take you home in his carriage." 
 
 "I shouldn't mind it at all," she answered 
 in a tone of great relief. 
 
 " All right," Dick cried, equally relieved 
 and turned to quit the room. 
 
 a But who's to carry me?' she asked 
 with sudden misgiving. 
 
 " That big fellow who carried you up. 
 I declare he walked up the side of that 
 quarry with you like a fly up a wall!" 
 
 u Dick ! Stop ; wait a minute ! " she 
 cried, sitting up in bed. " Come here and 
 help me," she added, as she slipped off 
 the bed and stood on the floor. Dick 
 hurried to her help, and put his arm round 
 her waist. 
 
 " I'm just a little dizzy, but it will pass 
 off in a minute," she said, holding by the 
 foot rail of the bed. " Now ! ' she said
 
 3§ A GERALDINK. 
 
 presently, "let us walk up and down till 
 I find my feet." 
 
 "Shiela, I say you mustn't, really." 
 
 " Nonsense ! Dick, I'm all right ; I am 
 indeed ; and I'm not going to be carried." 
 
 And indeed she did seem all right 
 through sheer force of will. After they 
 had walked a few times to and fro in the 
 little room, she said — "Come along now, 
 and we'll show them I can walk down 
 quite well." 
 
 " He'll not like it ; I can tell you." 
 
 " Who ? " she asked sharply. 
 
 " The doctor." 
 
 "Oh! I'll coax him. I'll make it all 
 right, you'll see." As she did. 
 
 "Hulloa!" cried the doctor when they 
 appeared together outside. 
 
 "I wish you wouldn't set Dick to frighten 
 me, doctor. I can walk quite well. Give 
 me your arm and you'll see."
 
 A GERALDINE. 39 
 
 " But you don't mean ? " — the doctor 
 began in a tone of amazed remonstrance. 
 
 " Yes, I do, if you'll give me your arm," 
 she interrupted him to say. "There, don't 
 be cross, because I'm not so much hurt as 
 you thought. I'm not ; I only take your 
 arm just to please you." 
 
 " But if you would only allow this gentle- 
 man to carry you down ? " 
 
 " Thank you, no ; I could not think of 
 troubling him," she said quickly and de- 
 cidedly. "You don't mind my leaning on 
 you ? ' she asked, with an appeal in her 
 wistful eyes that no man could have with- 
 stood. Besides, the doctor himself was 
 taken in by her show of resolution, which 
 he took for a show of strength. 
 
 " A wilful woman will have her own 
 way," he said, as he gave her his arm, 
 while Dick supported her upon the other 
 side.
 
 40 A GERALDINE. 
 
 "We'd better thank him," Dick whis- 
 pered. 
 
 " You can," she whispered back. 
 
 Dick thought this ungracious of her and 
 unlike her, but he accounted for it by the 
 frightful headache she must be enduring. 
 So he turned his head and made his ac- 
 knowledgments to Dundas for his timely 
 help and for his generous offer of the 
 house. Then he again whispered to 
 Shiela — 
 
 "Say 'good-bye,' anyway." 
 
 So she turned her head to say curtly. 
 " Good-bye, and thank you," like a bone 
 flunQf over one's shoulder to a troublesome 
 dog. 
 
 <c Well, good morning," the doctor said 
 cheerily. " Mean soon to call on you — 
 quite disinterestedly, as there's no hope of 
 your ever being ill." 
 
 " Perhaps you'd allow me to see you to
 
 A GERALDINE. 41 
 
 your carriage ? " Dundas replied with a 
 timidity which sat oddly upon him. 
 
 " I wish you would ; we may want you 
 yet," the doctor said, glancing significantly 
 at Shiela — a speech which prevented the 
 contingency it foreboded by bracing up 
 Shiela's resolution. She even half with- 
 drew her arm from the doctor's with an 
 impatient movement which made him say, 
 soothingly, as though to a child — " We shall 
 get down all right without help, never fear." 
 
 Dundas understood the tone of this speech, 
 as he had seen the movement to which it 
 was an answer. Indeed, no look or emotion 
 of Shiela's escaped him. 
 
 " So you're off to Limerick?" the doctor 
 said as they began the descent. 
 
 " Limerick ? ' Dundas answered, rousing 
 himself out of a dream. 
 
 "I thought you said you were going there 
 for a day or two ? "
 
 42 A GERALDINE. 
 
 " Oh, yes. I thought of it ; but I don't 
 know that I shall go just yet." 
 
 " You were only going in order to leave 
 your cottage to this self-willed young lady, 
 eh?" 
 
 " I meant to go sometime ; it didn't 
 matter to me when," he replied, in some 
 confusion. 
 
 " I suppose you came down to superin- 
 tend the building? ' 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 ''You've got a very pretty site, and a 
 very pretty quarrel thrown in." 
 
 " It's no quarrel of mine." 
 
 " It's as much yours now as the site 
 itself; you've bought the boycott with the 
 property, my dear sir." 
 
 " Yes, it's as much mine to deal as I like 
 with as the property, and I mean to cave 
 
 in. 
 
 "What! To reinstate Claughessy?
 
 A GERALDINE. 43 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 " By Jove ! ' There was some moments' 
 silence, during which the doctor was try- 
 ing not to think Dundas a coward, while 
 Dundas's thoughts had flown at once away 
 from so relatively insignificant a subject. 
 
 " But you'll not escape a boycott even 
 then. You're between the hammer and 
 the anvil — between the devil and the deep 
 sea, my dear sir. You'll be cut by the 
 county ! " 
 
 "Yes," Dundas answered inattentively, 
 and then roused himself to add, <c I wasn't 
 thinking of that." 
 
 "Well, I should strongly advise you to 
 think of it before you reinstate the man ; I 
 should indeed," the doctor urged earnestly. 
 
 " I mean it wasn't the thing to consider 
 whether I should be boycotted by the 
 county or by the country, but whether the 
 man had any right to be reinstated. I
 
 44 A GERALDINK. 
 
 looked into the matter, and found he had 
 been hardly used, and so I decided to put 
 him back." 
 
 " That would be all right if you 
 were the Chief Secretary and lived in 
 London ; but when you're making a 
 bed you have to lie on yourself you 
 mustn't think only of making it 'a bed 
 of justice ' — not in this country, any- 
 way." 
 
 " Claughessy is one of the biggest 
 blackguards in the country," broke in 
 Dick, indignantly. 
 
 "He is?' asked Dundas in a tone of 
 great surprise. 
 
 u Why, he's secretary to the Brians- 
 bridge Branch of the League ! ' Dick re- 
 plied, as though this were decisive of 
 Claughessy's rascality. 
 
 " But that seems rather to his credit, 
 doesn't it?' rejoined Dundas, with a smile.
 
 A GERALDINE. 45 
 
 "If those who knew him best put him in 
 post of trust." 
 
 " Oh, of course, if you're a Nationalist," 
 Dick said, sulkily. 
 
 u I don't know that I am a Nationalist 
 in your sense ; but I should be a Nation- 
 alist if I were Claughessy — that is, if I 
 weren't an out-and-out Fenian." 
 
 Dick, choosing to understand this to 
 mean that Dundas was a Nationalist, if 
 not a Fenian, at heart, remained scorn- 
 fully silent in exceeding disgust, and the 
 doctor took up the running. 
 
 " Of course a hare sympathises with a 
 hare, and a hound with a hound ; but if a 
 hound takes to siding with a hare, he'll 
 have a nasty time of it with the rest of 
 the pack — take my word for it, an uncom- 
 monly nasty time." 
 
 " That feudal and infernal hare-and-hound 
 system has lasted quite long enough'
 
 46 A GERALDINE. 
 
 Dundas said with a sudden animation 
 which contrasted strongly with the half- 
 hearted interest he had hitherto shown in 
 the discussion. " Do you remember what 
 Richard Rumbold said from the scaffold 
 two centuries since : — ' I never could be- 
 lieve that Providence had sent a few 
 men into the world, ready booted and 
 spurred to ride, and millions ready saddled 
 and bridled to be ridden ' ? " 
 
 " I don't know what Providence sent or 
 meant, but that's just what has gone on 
 under its eyes in all ages and countries, 
 and here more than in most places." 
 
 " They've got done with it in the States, 
 
 anyway, and you'll have to follow suit in 
 
 Europe, I guess, before long." 
 
 " Well, my dear sir, all I can say is this : If 
 
 you've come back like a second St. Patrick, to 
 
 propagate practically the new faith in Ireland, 
 
 you have your work cut out for you.''
 
 A GERALDINE. 47 
 
 " I mean to sweep before my own door, 
 that's all," Dundas replied. 
 
 "To set your own heather on fire, 
 you mean — Proximus ardet Cf Callaghan ' 
 (a punning allusion to a neighbouring land- 
 lord which was lost on Dundas). "If you 
 make it hot for the landlords, they'll make 
 it hot for you — you may take your oath 
 on that, sir." 
 
 " I don't care a red cent for the land- 
 lords," Dundas answered impatiently, for 
 he had had already an unpleasant experi- 
 ence of the silly superciliousness of one of 
 these local magnates. 
 
 To all this outrageous treason Dick 
 hearkened with a hot heart. Well, indeed, 
 was it that Shiela had declined to stay a 
 moment longer than she could help under 
 the roof of this low Fenian agitator! It 
 was sufficiently humiliating that she should 
 have been indebted to him for such assist-
 
 48 A GERALDINE. 
 
 ance and shelter as he had already given ; 
 and this sense of humiliation, we need not 
 say, only intensified Dick's disgust with 
 Dundas. He was not, however, forced 
 to hear any further sentiments of so atro- 
 cious a character, as they had now reached 
 the road where the doctor's carriage awaited 
 him, and Dundas sprang forward to open 
 its door. Dick, having helped in Shiela, at 
 once mounted Fin, which the doctor's 
 coachman had held for him, and rode off 
 home without a w T ord to anyone. His ill- 
 temper was not softened by the sense of 
 the awkward figure he cut on Shiela s side- 
 saddle ; though neither this nor his sullen 
 and unceremonious departure was noticed 
 by Dundas. 
 
 Shiela had no sooner been seated in the 
 carriage than she lay back, white as 
 marble, seemingly in a dead faint, and 
 Dundas cried out in a tone of startled
 
 A GERALDINE. 49 
 
 concern to the doctor (who was engaged in 
 giving his man some instructions) — 
 
 " She's fainted!" 
 
 " What ! ' cried the doctor, hurrying to 
 the carriage door to find Shiela, with her 
 eyes open, smiling up at him a forced, 
 wan smile. 
 
 "I was right after all,", the doctor said, 
 more to himself than to Dundas. "It was 
 her courage, not her strength, that helped 
 her down." 
 
 " Do you think it will be serious?' 
 Dundas asked in a low tone. 
 
 " Can't tell till to-morrow," the doctor 
 answered curtly and gloomily. He was 
 so much annoyed at having been taken in 
 by Shiela's assumption of strength that 
 he was getting into the carriage without a 
 word to Dundas, when he recollected him- 
 self and stepped back to say — 
 
 " I wish you'd come dine with me some
 
 50 A GERALDINE. 
 
 evening — to-morrow, say, at 6.30 — as I 
 want to talk out that hare-and-hound 
 subject. You can't think how refreshing 
 it is to me to find a man in your posi- 
 tion with your views." 
 
 " I shall be very glad," Dundas answered, 
 promptly, glad of this prospect of hearing 
 the, doctor's views of Shiela's case. 
 
 " Six-thirty to-morrow evening, then ; 
 shoulder of mutton and J. J." 
 
 " Thank you," Dundas answered, ab- 
 sently, his eyes being fixed upon Shiela, 
 who seemed now to have certainly fainted, 
 so statuesquely white and still did she 
 look. 
 
 u What is the name?' he asked in a 
 low voice, nodding towards the girl. 
 
 " Fitzgerald — Miss Shiela Fitzgerald, 
 Cahircalla," the doctor answered in a 
 whisper. 
 
 " I wanted to call to ask how she was
 
 A GERALDINE. 5 I 
 
 doing," Dundas said, confusedly, fearing 
 that the doctor was reading his heart. 
 
 " Ah, yes, to be sure. By the way, her 
 father evicted that man, Claughessy, from 
 a small farm he held under him ; so you'd 
 better be guarded in your talk — eh ? — 
 verb, sap.'' nodding significantly. 
 
 " I meant merely to call to inquire." 
 
 " Oh, he's a genial old boy enough, 
 and will be glad to see you, if you keep 
 the cloven hoof hid ; but he'd as soon 
 welcome the devil as a Nationalist. Well, 
 au revoir — 6.30 to-morrow evening." 
 And the doctor entered the carriage and 
 drove away. 
 
 As Dundas made his way back up the 
 steep lane, which resembled more the dry 
 bed of a torrent than a path, he used 
 mentally very strong language against 
 himself — the usual relief of weak men, and 
 most unusual therefore in him. u And to 
 
 U. OF 1 
 
 I
 
 52 A GERALDINE. 
 
 hat scalawag of a Dunscombc too ! ' he 
 muttered, feeling that his making such a 
 man the confidant of his boast to marry 
 Shiela must have intensified a hundredfold 
 its offensiveness in her eyes. For he had 
 little doubt that she had overheard his 
 outrageous boast, and that to this were 
 due her curt manner to him and her re- 
 solute refusal to stay another moment 
 under his roof. But difficilia qua pulchra, 
 and to a man of Dundas's resolution and 
 resource the difficulty itself was an added 
 charm. Besides, he really was as deeply 
 and desperately in love with Shiela as it 
 was possible for a man who loves at first 
 sight to be. 
 
 Intense, therefore, was his self-disgust, 
 and also his disgust with Dunscombe for 
 having made this offensive boast to him, 
 and thereby aggravated so its offensiveness 
 in Shiela s eyes.
 
 A GERALDINE. 53 
 
 It's as natural as it is irrational for a man 
 who knocks his head against a doorpost to 
 curse rather the block than the blockhead 
 who ran against it ; and Dundas's rage 
 with Dunscombe was not the less furious 
 because it was unreasonable. In truth, 
 it brought to a head his growing impatience 
 with a man whose coarseness, which had 
 hardly grated at all on him in the back- 
 woods of America, jarred horribly upon 
 him here at home — just as the savage skirl 
 of the bagpipes, endurable, if not enjoyable, 
 in a wild Highland glen, would make night 
 hideous in a ball-room.
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 "who's that fellow?" 
 
 Be it recorded to Dick's credit that he gave 
 Shiela all her due at home for her heroism, 
 even though he felt how sorry a figure he 
 must have cut himself in his candid report 
 of the affair to his father : — 
 
 11 There was no other way to save my 
 neck ; but how she thought of it all in a 
 moment, how she managed to pull up in the 
 nick of time, and at a safe distance from 
 that infernal quarry, I can't imagine. It 
 was just touch-and-go — as near a thing and 
 as fine a thing as ever you saw ! " 
 
 " She's a Fitzgerald," his father answered, 
 thus crediting the exploit to the family ac- 
 count. 
 
 54
 
 A GERALDINE. 55 
 
 " And her pluck in leaving that cad's 
 house, though the doctor said it might kill 
 her!' cried Dick, enthusiastically. "And 
 the beggar then wanted to carry her down 
 to the carriage ! " 
 
 " Who is this Dundas ? I thought Kerin 
 lived in Quarry Cottage ? " 
 
 " Kerin's gone to America, and this fellow, 
 who has just come back from America, has 
 bought the whole place, I believe." 
 " Luke Kean's place ? ' 
 -Yes." 
 
 " I thought a man named Dunscombe had 
 bought it." 
 
 " Cullinan called him ' Dundas.' He's a 
 cad, and cur, and Nationalist, whatever his 
 name is, and means to put Claughessy 
 back." 
 
 " What ! " exclaimed his father, aghast 
 with indignant amazement. 
 
 " He says because Claughessy was very
 
 56 A GERALDINE. 
 
 badly treated ; but he's really afraid of being 
 boycotted." 
 
 " If he puts that ruffian back — Do you 
 mean on his own terms ? " 
 
 " On any terms, I fancy. He's in a blue 
 funk ; and, beside, he's himself a Fenian, 
 and says every tenant in Ireland ought to 
 belong to the League, at least." 
 
 " It's those scoundrels that come back 
 from America who make all the mischief in 
 this country. There ought to be a law 
 against allowing them to return. If America 
 won't take in our paupers, why should we 
 take in her infernal filibusters, Fenians, and 
 Dynamiters ? To have such a fellow as 
 that settled down beside you as a landlord 
 is a thousand times worse than letting the 
 cattle-plague loose! He'll just infect the 
 whole county, till every tenant will expect 
 to have the land at his own terms." 
 
 " That's just what he's come for. He 
 
 o
 
 A GERALDINE. 57 
 
 says he means to put an end to the landlord 
 and tenant system altogether, as the tenants 
 have been ridden, beaten, and spurred like 
 brutes long enough." 
 
 "He said this to you ! ' 
 
 " He said it to Cullinan and me as we 
 were helping Shiela down Quarry Lane." 
 
 " Did he know who you were ? " 
 
 " I suppose he did ; but he wouldn't care 
 who he said it to. When Cullinan told him 
 that the landlords could make it hotter for 
 him than he could make it for them, he 
 said, ' the landlords might go all to the 
 devil together ! ' 
 
 The father stared with a kind of incredu- 
 lous fury at the son for a little before he 
 said — 
 
 " I wish, Dick, you hadn't put yourself 
 under a compliment to a fellow like that." 
 
 "How could I know what kind of fellow 
 he was ? You wouldn't have me leave
 
 58 A GERALDINE. 
 
 Shiela lying on the waggon road while I 
 went for Cullinan, I suppose ? ' Dick re- 
 torted sulkily. 
 
 11 Well, of course, you couldn't help your- 
 self," his father hastened to say in a con- 
 ciliatory tone. " But it was very unfortun- 
 ate. 
 
 " I don't see what compliment there was 
 in a man giving a girl who'd met with such 
 an accident an hour's shelter. Any savage 
 would have done it for a tramp." 
 
 " He'll make the most of it, you'll find, 
 and will probably try to scrape acquaintance 
 with us on the strength of it. Cads like 
 that, who are always abusing their betters, 
 are always the most anxious to rub skirts 
 with them." 
 
 " Oh, if he's that sort, we must just ask 
 him to send in his bill. We certainly can't 
 afford to pay him by knowing him." 
 
 tl Did he know I had evicted Claughessy
 
 A GERALDINE. 59 
 
 when he talked of him to you like that ? ' 
 his father asked, harking back to this mon- 
 strous offence. 
 
 " He didn't say, and I really don't think 
 he cared. He's going fn, 1 fancy, for 
 patriotism and Parliaments, and that kind 
 of thing ; and it wouldn't pay him to get 
 into our set, even if he could have worked 
 
 it. 
 
 " It's sour grapes, you may depend upon 
 it ; it's sour grapes, and nothing else," re- 
 plied his father with a sagacious shake of 
 the head. "If he had any hope or chance 
 of getting in with county people, he 
 wouldn't talk of them like that to you ; and 
 he wouldn't put that scoundrel Claughessy 
 back either," he added, returning once more 
 to this treacherous and mortal stab to the 
 landlords generally, and to himself in par- 
 ticular. He hated this man Claughessy 
 with an extraordinary bitterness, because
 
 60 A GERALDINE. 
 
 the provocation of eviction had let loose the 
 tenant's sarcastic tongue upon his landlord's 
 faults and foibles. That such people should 
 dare even to notice weaknesses of the kind 
 was almost as surprising to him as though 
 the horse he drove should have noticed 
 them ; but that they should express their 
 criticism in the most caustic and cutting 
 terms was such a shock to him as Baalam 
 must have felt upon being remonstrated 
 with by his ass. Now this Claughessy had 
 not only told him some home truths pri- 
 vately, but in a public and reported speech 
 had likened him to Ned Donegan's donkey, 
 which was mild as a lamb when you were 
 
 face to face with it, but kicked out viciously 
 at you with both feet when you got behind 
 it. 
 
 And this ruffian was to be reinstated in 
 a farm which adjoined that from which he, 
 Ralph Fitzgerald, had evicted him ! It was
 
 A GERALDINE. 6l 
 
 comparatively a small thing that his next 
 neighbourhood to Ralph's farm would ensure 
 that being left derelict ; but to have such 
 an insolent scoundrel as Claughessy under 
 his very nose, always on the look-out for an 
 opportunity of malicious injury -or insult, 
 and also for an occasion of exciting disaffec- 
 tion among his tenants and labourers — this 
 was insupportable. 
 
 Ralph, after his manner, brooded upon 
 this grievance till he came to think Dun- 
 das's reinstatement of Claughessy a designed 
 affront to himself. At least the man must 
 have taken into consideration, when deciding 
 upon reinstating this scoundrel, the injury 
 and the insult of the step to him — Ralph 
 Fitzgerald, Esq., J. P., of Cahircalla. It 
 would not be credible to Ralph that Dundas 
 had never heard of his name in this or any 
 other connection. Did he not belong to 
 one of the oldest of the county families ?
 
 62 A GERALDINE. 
 
 And there was, besides (though he did not 
 dwell so much on this), the notoriety into 
 which he had been dragged by that very 
 matter of his eviction of Claughessy. Why, 
 every newspaper in the country had taken 
 notice of it, favourable or unfavourable ; 
 while that scoundrel's scurrilous attack upon 
 him had appeared prominently in every 
 Nationalist journal, and must, therefore, 
 have been read by this Irish- American 
 Fenian. It was, then, inconceivable that 
 Dundas knew nothing of his eviction of 
 Claughessy, and not more conceivable that, 
 knowing all about it, he had determined to 
 reinstate the man without intending any in- 
 sult or injury to Ralph. 
 
 Now Ralph was a man who brooded upon 
 a fancied grievance till it grew certain, solid, 
 and monstrous — as this imagined offence 
 of Dundas\s did within an hour from Dick's 
 sue^estino: it to him. He tried to" think
 
 A GERALDINE. 63 
 
 of some .effective retribution for such a man 
 and such an act ; but none occurred to him 
 beyond the boycotting of the fellow by all 
 the landlords of the county. This would 
 come of itself ; but to make assurance 
 doubly sure, and also to give his feelings 
 the relief of immediate action, he hurried off 
 to the Ennis Club to warn its habituds of 
 the character and conduct of the man, who, 
 by buying poor Luke Kean's property, 
 had joined the ranks of the landlords with 
 the sole object of betraying them. 
 
 He had the horse put at once to the dog- 
 cart and started off without waiting for the 
 doctor's report of Shiela — indeed without 
 any thought of Shiela at all. He started 
 at such a gallop that Patsey had some diffi- 
 culty in scrambling up behind, where he sat 
 quaking with the certainty that as something 
 was wrong with the master, everything 
 would be wrong in the man. Patsey, who
 
 64 A GERALDINE. 
 
 had a quick eye for the weather aspect and 
 prospect in his master's face, seeing it was 
 not trouble, but fury, which agitated him, 
 knew that something besides the accident 
 to Miss Shiela had occurred to disquiet him. 
 Presently, they heard in the distance the 
 blare of a very brassy brass band letting 
 oft " God Save Ireland' at a tremendous 
 pressure to the square inch. 
 
 " What's up now ? ' asked Ralph, turning 
 sharply upon Patsey, who, of course, was 
 a Nationalist at heart and knew pretty 
 well all that was stirring on that side. 
 
 u It's the Militia/' began Patsey, too 
 much flurried to think of a plausible lie. 
 
 u Playing that infernal tune?' 
 
 "Oh, begorra! I forgot. It's them hurl- 
 ers from Limerick, surr — the Faugh -a- 
 Ballaghs — that wor bate to bits on Lady 
 Day, comin' to play the return match. 
 We'd better go round by the Inch road,
 
 A GERALDINE. 65 
 
 yer honour, for he can't shtand that big 
 dhrum." 
 
 " He'll have to stand it," Ralph replied, 
 giving the horse a sharp cut with the whip, 
 and promising himself the pleasure of driv- 
 ing through this insolent Limerick band. 
 
 " Murder an' ages ! We're in for it 
 now ! " muttered Patsey to himself. 
 
 Just then the band ceased, and they 
 could hear the stentorian voice of Father 
 MacMahon beginning — 
 
 " Men of Clare — This is a great day for 
 our county and our country, when Ireland, 
 the mother of exiles, sees her children come 
 home to comfort and to strengthen her, 
 and to raise her from the dust of her de- 
 gradation and from under the feet of her 
 brutal oppressors. For years and for cen- 
 turies she has sent her sons and daughters, 
 exiles and outcasts, broken in body, and in 
 spirit, and in heart, stripped to their shiver- 
 
 E
 
 G r ) A GERALDINE. 
 
 ing and cowering souls of everything but 
 hope, across the Atlantic to America. And 
 from across that wide ocean and from that 
 distant land, for years and for centuries, 
 they have sent back to us love from full 
 and overflowing hearts and help from full 
 and overflowing hands, yet themselves they 
 have never given back to us. But, men of 
 Clare, now is the dawn of a new day for 
 your county and for your country, when 
 those who left our shores years since in 
 want and in sorrow return themselves to 
 gladden and bless, to enrich and to rejoice 
 the place of their birth — even as the grey 
 marsh mist that rises up to heaven in gloom 
 and sadness returns in showers that refresh 
 and fertilise the earth, giving new life to the 
 parched and dying seed and new strength 
 to the drooping herb, and raising up what 
 had been trodden down in the dust and 
 into mire, and under the tread and tramp
 
 A GERALDINE. 67 
 
 of brutal feet. Men of Clare, this is what 
 we have come together to-day to celebrate 
 and to rejoice over. This, and nothing less 
 than this. For Mr. Redmond Dundas ' 
 (loud and prolonged cheers) — "for Mr. Red- 
 mond Dundas, in coming back to us, to 
 live amongst us, to spend his hard-earned 
 wealth amongst us, and to use it, as he 
 has used it to-day, in withstanding oppres- 
 sion and righting wrong, by putting back 
 our respected fellow-townsman, Mr. Michael 
 Claughessy "- (cheers), "upon the farm of 
 which he was robbed — Mr. Redmond 
 Dundas, say" (loud and heart-shaking 
 groans, which confounded the speaker, until 
 Claughessy explained their meaning by 
 pointing out to him Ralph's trap that had 
 just rounded the turn of the road). 
 
 For some time the reverend orator was 
 unable to proceed owing to . hoots, groans, 
 cries of " Ned Donegan's Donkey," and ear-
 
 68 A GERALDINE. 
 
 piercing imitations of that animal's bray. 
 These were succeeded by a tremendous 
 and prolonged roar of triumph, mingled 
 with shouts of mocking laughter, when 
 Ralph suddenly turned the horse and rode 
 back the way he had come. The band- 
 master, with much presence of mind, gave 
 orders to the band to play " See, the Con- 
 quering Hero Comes," at once in honour 
 of Claughessy and in sarcastic celebration 
 of his landlord's ignominious flight ; for no 
 one in the crowd had a doubt that Ralph's 
 retreat was due to panic. But it was really 
 due, not to panic, but to fury ; since he 
 had turned to make at racing speed for the 
 nearest police barracks. In the intervals 
 between flogging the horse with his whip. 
 he lashed Patsev with his tongue — 
 
 " You were in this ; you were in this, 
 you scoundrel I ' he cried, beside himself 
 with rage.
 
 A GERALDINE. 69 
 
 "I, yer honour! Begorra, I knew no 
 more about it nor yourself." 
 
 "Militia! Limerick hurlers ! And you 
 knowing as well as that blackguard Claug- 
 hessy himself what that band was there 
 for ! ' Ralph continued, without heeding 
 Patsey's ingenuous declaration of innocent 
 
 ignorance. 
 
 " Sure, an' didn't I ax yer honour to go 
 by the Inch road?' Patsey urged, throw- 
 ing over his defence of innocent ignorance 
 without the slightest scruple or embarrass- 
 ment. 
 
 " You did know all about it then ? ' 
 asked Ralph, pulled suddenly up by this 
 right-about-face movement of Patsey's. 
 
 " Sure, I hear the boys afther mass 
 sayin' Mick Claughessy was to be put back 
 with the band, an' all the honours, an' Father 
 MacMahon in the chair, an' that American 
 gintleman, Misther Dundas, to shpake."
 
 70 A GERALDINE. 
 
 u And why the devil didn't you tell 
 me ? " 
 
 " Deed, thin, yer honour, I was in dhread 
 to throuble ye with it in regard to yer 
 havin' put Mick Claughessy out on the 
 road." 
 
 "Was he there?" 
 
 " Mick ? He was, sur." 
 
 u Dundas, I mean ? " 
 
 " 'Twas him wor standin' on the churn, 
 I'm thinkin'. They say he's a powerful 
 big- man, six fut two in his shtockin' feet, 
 shtraight as a rush, and shtrong as a 
 bull," Patsey cried, with ill-judged enthusi- 
 asm, for the moment forgetful of his prin- 
 ciple to say always what his interlocutor 
 wished him to say. 
 
 " He's a ," began Ralph, and then 
 
 added, after a slight pause — " I'll make 
 them smart for this. They'll get a month 
 each, priest and all, if they get a day."
 
 A GERALDINE. J I 
 
 But when Ralph reached the police bar- 
 racks he was amazed and enraged to hear 
 that as the meeting was not one of the 
 National League and was not proclaimed, 
 it could not lawfully be interfered with. 
 It seemed to him monstrously inequitable 
 that, whereas booing or laughing at a police- 
 man was punishable with a month's im- 
 prisonment, he, a county magistrate, might 
 be hooted with impunity ! However, he 
 had some hope that his return with twenty 
 policemen and a Government note-taker 
 might occasion a row, in which the rank 
 and file of the mob might be batoned, and 
 its ringleaders arrested. 
 
 Meanwhile Dundas had casually joined 
 the crowd of sympathisers with Claughessy. 
 Patsey's report that he was to be one of the 
 speakers at the meeting was so far from 
 the truth that he had not even been in- 
 formed of its convention. The first inti-
 
 72 A GERALDINE. 
 
 mation he had of it, indeed, was the sound 
 of the roars of ridicule, execration, and 
 triumph which had greeted Ralph's appear- 
 ance upon the scene. 
 
 In order to escape from Dunscombe, 
 w T hose society in his present mood was in- 
 supportable to him, he had, instead of re- 
 entering the cottage, strolled up to the 
 house he was having built. He mooned 
 around it for some time, noticing nothing, 
 while affecting a minute inspection of the 
 work in progress. From it he wandered 
 about the grounds of his newly bought 
 estate, wondering from time to time in 
 what direction Cahircalla lay ; and it was 
 from speculations about it and its tenants 
 that he was roused by the roar of the 
 crowd. He made for the direction of the 
 sound, having no doubt that a secret meet- 
 ing of the suppressed National League was 
 in progress ; and he was much surprised to
 
 A GERALDINE. 73 
 
 find, when he came presently within sight 
 of the crowd, that the meeting — whatever 
 its object — was being held upon his own 
 property. 
 
 As he drew nearer he could hear dis- 
 tinctly the w^ords of the speech which was 
 being delivered by a man standing upon a 
 barrel, whom in another minute he recog- 
 nised as Claughessy. 
 
 " I tell you," he was saying with extra- 
 ordinary vehemence, " I tell you land- 
 lordism in this country is dead, dead — 
 dead ! It doesn't know it ; it won't know 
 it ; it must be made to know it. We must 
 4 insinse it into the crature,' like Barney 
 O'Brien and the snake he killed in America. 
 Barney struck off its head, but, as its tail 
 still writhed and wriggled, he kept on 
 leathering away at it. ' Yerra, what are 
 ye doin', Barney ? ' cried his friend. ' Sure, 
 it's dead it is.' c Sure, I know it's dead it
 
 74 A GERALDINE. 
 
 is,' answered Barney, ' but I want to make 
 the crature sinsible of its misfortune.' 
 (Laughter.) " Aye, boys, that's what we've 
 got to do with landlordism. It's as dead 
 as Barney O'Brien's snake, but it doesn't 
 know it ; and we'll have to keep pegging 
 away at it * to make the crature sinsible 
 of its misfortune.'' (Cheers.) "We have 
 made Luke Kean sinsible of it ; and we 
 shall insinse it yet into ' Ned Donegan's 
 Donkey.' Mark my words, boys, he, too, 
 will have to turn tail as he turned tail just 
 now T , and show as clean a pair of heels to 
 the countv. He'll be following Luke Kean 
 to England before long, I'm thinking, to 
 blackguard there his countrymen ; or, may- 
 be, it's to Canada he'll go to join Lord 
 Lansdowne : ' Birds of a feather (lock to- 
 gether,' and especially those dirty birds 
 that foul their own nest. I can't tell vou 
 
 
 
 where he will go, but I can tell you where
 
 A GERALDINE. 75 
 
 he ought to go. He ought to go to 
 America, where he has sent and shot as 
 rubbish and as refuse so many better men 
 than himself. There's where he ought to 
 go — there's where he'd learn that slavery 
 is abolished — white slavery as well as black 
 slavery. There's where he'd learn that men 
 are not as the sheep in his pen, or the ox 
 in his stall, or the mud and dirt and dung 
 under his feet. There's where he'd learn 
 that a man, as a man, had his feelings and 
 had his rights, which poverty could not rob 
 him of, and which wealth dare not trample 
 upon. There's where he'd learn maybe — 
 there's no knowing — they tell me that birds 
 grow out of serpents in course of time, in 
 a million or so of years, and maybe in 
 about that time ' Ned Donegan's Donkey ' 
 nwht learn in America and from America 
 to become — a Redmond Dundas ! ' 
 
 When the cheers which had greeted this
 
 76 A GERALDINE. 
 
 sally had subsided, a man, who a minute 
 before had descried and recognised Dundas, 
 shouted — " An' here's himself, boys, to 
 spake for himself; three cheers for Mr. 
 Dundas ! " 
 
 When these cheers, again and again 
 given with ringing heartiness, had sub- 
 sided, Father MacMahon shouted across to 
 Dundas — " Perhaps, sir, as you are here, 
 you will do us the honour of joining our 
 meeting, and giving our people in words 
 the encouragement you have so generously 
 given them in act by reinstating here in 
 this house the victim of an unrighteous 
 eviction." 
 
 " Really, sir," Dundas began, deprecat- 
 ingly, when the reverend chairman cried : 
 
 " Make way, boys, for Mr. Dundas to 
 come on the platform." 
 
 As the crowd at once parted in two to 
 give him passage, Dundas thought it would
 
 A GERALDINE. 77 
 
 be ungracious and gauche to hold back. 
 Accordingly, he made quite a triumphal 
 progress through the cheering crowd to the 
 " platform," which consisted of two planks 
 resting on barrels, with a wooden chair at 
 one end to mount it by. When he had 
 mounted this primitive platform a flattering 
 but disconcerting stillness fell upon the 
 crowd, which evidently awaited a political 
 declaration of a pronouncedly popular kind, 
 and was plainly disappointed when he 
 began, hesitatively : 
 
 u Really, Mr. Chairman, I am not much 
 of a speaker, and still less of a politician, 
 and have no claim or qualification to ad- 
 dress you, unless to endorse what Mr. 
 Claughessy has just said about America. 
 It is certainly the best school in the world 
 to go to for a lesson of self-respect, and 
 also for a lesson of respect for others ; and 
 I think from what I remember of Ireland
 
 7 8 A GERALDINE. 
 
 we need both these lessons here in this 
 country. One set of Irishmen have so 
 much respect for themselves as to have 
 none to spare to others ; and the other 
 class have so much respect for others as to 
 have none to spare to themselves. But 
 from what I can learn and from what I 
 have seen since my return to this coun- 
 try, I think things are righting them- 
 selves : the rich are learning to respect 
 the poor more, and the poor are learning 
 more to respect themselves. So I hope 
 Irishmen need not quit their own country 
 to learn these lessons — or rather this lesson 
 — for, after all, true self-respect is the 
 source and secret of respect for others, and 
 is the source and secret also of success and 
 prosperity. For self-respect is the seed of 
 self-reliance, and the fruit of self-reliance is 
 success and prosperity ; and no people which 
 lacks — "
 
 A GERALDINE. ;q 
 
 At this point of his homily — which fell 
 flat as ditch-water upon his audience — the 
 police, headed by Ralph, appeared, and pro- 
 ceeded to force their way with unnecessary 
 and provocative violence through the crowd. 
 <c Is this an illegal meeting?' Dunclas 
 asked the priest. 
 " Certainly not." 
 
 " It's not proclaimed, nor a meeting of 
 the suppressed National League ? ' 
 
 u No ; it is simply a private parochial 
 meeting of Mr. Claughessy's friends and 
 neighbours, assembled to celebrate his re- 
 instatement in his farm." 
 
 Hereupon Dundas sprang from the plat- 
 form and made his way through the yield- 
 ing crowd to Ralph. 
 
 " Do you want to create a riot, sir ? " he 
 asked. 
 
 " Arrest that man ! ' Ralph cried, furi- 
 ously.
 
 So A GERALDINE. 
 
 4t Try it," Dundas replied with a mock- 
 ing calmness which awed the police. 
 
 " The Royal Irish ' are fine men, but 
 beside Dundas the most stalwart of the 
 body which accompanied Ralph looked 
 small. Besides, they knew well they had 
 no legal right to break up the meeting. 
 
 li This is a perfectly legal and peaceful 
 meeting, and you have no right to interfere 
 with it," Dundas said with judicial coolness. 
 " You can attend it, and report it, and 
 take up any position you choose near the 
 platform ; but you shall not charge through 
 it as you are doing." 
 
 "We shall not take orders from you," 
 Ralph retorted. 
 
 " Very well ; I shall stand here ; if any 
 man attempts to hustle me out of the way, 
 I shall knock him down, and if more than 
 one set on me, I shall shoot them." 
 
 The dead calmness with which he uttered
 
 A GERALDINE. 8 1 
 
 this threat left no one in doubt that he 
 meant it. 
 
 The sub-inspector in charge having whis- 
 pered something to Ralph, said sulkily that 
 he was not charging the crowd, only mak- 
 ing his way to the platform ; and if there 
 was a way round to it, he was perfectly 
 willing to take it. 
 
 As the police retreated to take this clear 
 way round, Ralph asked the sub-inspector : 
 
 " Who's that fellow ? " 
 
 "A Mr. Dundas — an American citizen, 
 I think." 
 
 Y
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 THE BREACH WIDENS. 
 
 It had not occurred to Dundas to ask 
 u Who's that fellow ? ' concerning Ralph, 
 and so it happened that he called upon 
 the evening of the day of the meeting 
 (which closed peacefully) at Cahircalla ! 
 Returning after a long walk in the country, 
 during which Shiela filled his thoughts and 
 inspired his day-dreams, he asked a stone- 
 breaker whose was the large, odd-looking 
 house, half stone and half brick, on the 
 right hand side of the road. 
 
 " Mister Fitzgerald's, surr." 
 
 " Cahircalla ? " 
 
 "Yes, surr." 
 
 He really longed to hear how Shiela had 
 
 82
 
 A GERALDINE. 83 
 
 borne her journey home, and he saw no 
 reason against calling to inquire for her 
 to-ni^ht as well as to-morrow. 
 
 Accordingly he entered the front gate, 
 and walked up the dead straight avenue 
 to the house. It was so straight that 
 everyone approaching was under view 
 of the front windows of the house from 
 the moment he entered the gate till he 
 reached the hall door. Thus it happened 
 that Ralph, who had been in a white-hot 
 fury since he returned from the meeting, 
 saw from the library window the man to 
 whom he believed were due all the insults 
 heaped upon him — the ringleader of those 
 village ruffians — sauntering coolly up his 
 avenue ! Was he coming to call him to 
 account for to-day's police proceedings — 
 coming with that six-shooter in his pocket? 
 Ralph, though no coward, felt anything but 
 comfortable at the prospect of this man,
 
 84 A GERALDINE. 
 
 who had learned recklessness in American 
 bars or backwoods, and who, as likely as 
 not, had already killed men in sudden 
 quarrels, coming to demand explanation, 
 satisfaction, or apology. He rang the bell 
 sharply and gave orders that Patsey should 
 at once ride off to the barracks for a 
 couple of the constabulary. This done, 
 he waited until Dundas was well within 
 hearing, when he threw up the library 
 window and shouted, " Do you know that 
 you're trespassing, sir ? I've sent for the 
 police, and if you're on my grounds when 
 they arrive, I shall give you in charge." 
 So shouting he banged down the window 
 and retired to a safe distance to watch 
 the effect of his threat. He saw Dundas 
 stand still for a moment, staring at the 
 window in evident amazement and confu- 
 sion, and then turn to walk back quietly as 
 he had advanced. Hereupon Ralph coun-
 
 A GERALDINE. 85 
 
 termanded his orders to Patsey, and con- 
 gratulated himself upon having got out of 
 an ugly-looking business at once with 
 adroitness and with dignity. 
 
 "That's a dangerous man," he muttered, 
 "and either he must be disarmed or I 
 must have a police escort. He has, pro- 
 bably, no license to carry arms ; and if he 
 has, it must forthwith be revoked. No 
 one is safe with such a fellow exciting the 
 people and defying the police with revolv- 
 ers in his pockets." 
 
 Ralph would have been yet more elated 
 by the success of his strategy if he could have 
 seen its effect upon Dundas. He walked 
 away utterly and abjectly crestfallen. This 
 brute and bully Shiela's father ! What hope 
 had he of winning a word with her ever 
 again if he was to be thus hunted, like 
 a tramp or thief, out of their grounds ? 
 And yet — and yet — he would win a word
 
 86 A GERALDINE. 
 
 with her — ay ! and win herself. He had 
 never yet failed in anything he had set 
 his heart on, and he had never set his 
 heart so upon anything as he had upon 
 this. No doubt his unshakable confidence 
 in the power of an iron resolution may 
 seem overweening, arrogant, and insolent; 
 but it had the warrant of a wonderful 
 success in the past. Some of his wild 
 American mates used to say that if Dun- 
 das was bent on a smoke, he'd fetch a 
 coal from hell to light his pipe, if no 
 nearer Vesuvian was to be had. And 
 this fearlessness and resoluteness seemed to 
 fascinate Fortune herself, since everything 
 he had made his mind up to do or be he 
 had achieved or become within the time 
 he had prescribed to himself for reaching 
 the goal. Perhaps, however, he did not 
 take sufficient account of the difference be- 
 tween winning wealth, position, and popu-
 
 A GERALDINE. Sy 
 
 larity, and winning anything so wayward 
 and unconformable as a young girl's fancy. 
 More than once, as he walked home, this 
 misgiving crossed his mind, and more than 
 once also a yet more probable fear that 
 Shiela's heart had been already given away. 
 She was very young, no doubt, and could 
 have seen but little of her small provincial 
 world, and it but little of her ; still such a 
 girl had but to be looked upon once to be 
 worshipped, as he had himself found. On 
 the whole, therefore, he was singularly 
 crestfallen and dispirited when he returned 
 home, and found for the first time little 
 comfort and courage in forming with set 
 teeth one of his iron resolutions. He lay 
 awake for a good part of the night think- 
 ing of Shiela, going over and over again 
 in his mind the scene of her heroic rescue 
 of her brother, seeing vividly in the dark- 
 ness the cold disdain in her wonderful eyes
 
 $8 A GERALDINE. 
 
 as she refused his help, and cursing the 
 fatuity of his braggart boast to his coarse 
 chum, which, he had no doubt, was the 
 provocation of that disdain. And, as though 
 this was not sufficient discouragement for 
 one day, there came close upon it the en- 
 counter at the Cloneen meeting with her 
 father, and his ignominious ejection of him 
 from Cahircalla under threat of giving him 
 in charge to the police ! In the blackness 
 of the niofht the odds against him looked 
 simply overwhelming. Nor did the cheer- 
 ful day bring much comfort or encourage- 
 ment, since Dundas awoke to find himself 
 famous. Loud and disproportionate was 
 the exultation of the National Press over 
 this small Cloneen incident, and over 
 Dundas's share in the triumph of yester- 
 day.
 
 A GERALDINE, 89 
 
 ANOTHER MITCHELSTOWN 
 MASSACRE AVERTED. 
 
 Intervention of an American Citizen. 
 Ignominious Flight of a County 
 Magistrate. 
 
 Retreat of the " Royal Irish." 
 
 In fact, Dundas's successful stand against 
 the constabulary made so great an im- 
 pression upon the people (who were used 
 to being bullied and batoned by them for 
 a cheer or a groan for the wrong person), 
 that he carried away all the honours of 
 yesterday. To read the papers, either 
 National or Tory, you would imagine that 
 it was Dundas w T ho had organised the 
 Cloneen meeting as a protest against land- 
 lordism in general, and against Luke Kean 
 and Ralph Fitzgerald in particular. Even 
 his mild homily, which had fallen so dead
 
 CO A GERALDINE. 
 
 upon the meeting, was spoken of in the 
 papers as a stirring harangue to the 
 people, urging them to stand up like men 
 to the landlords, and not lie down in the 
 mud, and be trampled under their feet. 
 Only self-respect could win them equality, 
 and only self-reliance could win them 
 liberty ; and it was about time that Irish- 
 men should experience the blessings of 
 liberty and equality at home, instead of 
 havincr to seek for them across the At- 
 lantic in the States. Such was the Free- 
 maris epitome of his speech. The Irish 
 Times, which Ralph read, said that "a 
 rowdy American Irishman named Dundas, 
 who had made money, no one knew how, 
 in the States, was expending it in this 
 country probably quite as respectably as 
 he had acquired it. Having bought the 
 property of Mr. Luke Kean, he proceed- 
 ed to purchase a little popularity — with a
 
 A GERALDINE. 9 1 
 
 view, no doubt, to a seat in Parliament — 
 by reinstating defaulting tenants ; and, 
 among them the notorious president of 
 the local branch of the National League, 
 Mr. Michael Claughessy. To give the 
 widest publicity to this disinterested trans- 
 action and extort the uttermost farthing 
 of popular recognition and applause, this 
 Mr. Dundas convenes a meeting (for the 
 public reinstatement of Claughessy), to be 
 addressed by the parish priest, a brass band, 
 and the returned patriot himself. Un- 
 fortunately, there was no reporter present 
 — police notetaker or other — to record the 
 very remarkable speech of this gentleman ; 
 but the vehemence and virulence of its tone 
 against the landlords generally and especi- 
 ally against those who had evicted Mr. 
 Michael Claughessy, may be inferred from 
 the frenzied violence of the speaker's con- 
 duct upon the approach of the police. Leap-
 
 92 A GERALDINE. 
 
 ing from the platform, he rushed through 
 the crowd, brandishing a revolver and 
 threatening to shoot Mr. Ralph Fitzgerald, 
 J. P., if he ventured to advance another step 
 in his direction! Mr. Fitzgerald, we ought 
 to say, was the other evicting landlord — 
 the accomplice of Mr. Luke Kean, in the 
 atrocious crime of demanding arrears of 
 rent from Mr. Michael Claughessy. It 
 would seem, however, that this gentleman 
 and J. P. had used up his total stock of 
 courage in that daring deed ; for, at sight 
 of the rowdy Irish- American's revolver, both 
 he and the police he had brought upon 
 the scene beat an ignominious retreat ! 
 We fancy that the Lord Chancellor will 
 have something to say to this doughty 
 justice of the peace, and the officer in 
 charge of the constabulary will be read 
 such a lesson — pour encourager Ics autres — 
 as he will not be likely to forget for some
 
 A GERALDINE. 93 
 
 time. As for Mr. Dundas, it is high time 
 to teach such returned Irish- American row- 
 dies as he that Texas Lynch law has not 
 yet at least superseded in Ireland the law 
 of the United Kingdom. By the way, it 
 would be interesting and instructive to learn 
 if this man is licensed to carry revolvers 
 about to give practical point and emphasis 
 to his incendiary speeches." 
 
 Dundas cared less than most men — than 
 any man in Ireland — what the papers said of 
 him, or what Tory or Nationalist thought of 
 him ; and his chief and almost sole concern, 
 therefore, upon reading these veracious re- 
 ports, arose from remembering that the Fitz- 
 geralds would read them also. How would 
 they intensify Shiela's disgust with him 
 and the hostility to him of her father ! 
 He could picture the supreme disdain in 
 her eyes, when — but she might be too ill to 
 be troubled with such matters — any matters.
 
 94 A GERALDINE. 
 
 She might even be unconscious or delir- 
 ious. He must see the little doctor, on 
 some pretence or other, and discover from 
 him how she did to-day, without allowing 
 him to suspect the nature or depth of his 
 interest in the lady. He could not wait 
 until to-night, when he was to dine there. 
 Accordingly, he walked off after breakfast 
 to Killeen, and soon found Dr. Cullinan's 
 modest old quarters. His housekeeper, an 
 affable and plausible old lady, whose one 
 object in life was to find out what was the 
 matter with her master's patients, opened 
 the door for him. 
 
 " Is the doctor in ? ' 
 
 " He is not, sir. He has gone to Cahir- 
 calla." 
 
 "When will he be back ? " 
 
 "'Deed, thin, I'm expectin' him back 
 ivery moment. You'll come in, sir, and sit 
 down ? "
 
 A GERALDINE. 95 
 
 " Thank you/' Dundas replied, entering 
 the little hall, which he seemed to fill alto- 
 gether, and the housekeeper having ushered 
 him into the doctor's consulting-room, re- 
 mained there herself, under the pretence of 
 setting the chamber to rights. 
 
 " It's a mortial sick saison ; it is so." 
 
 " Yes," he answered, absently. 
 
 " Ay ; he's kep' busy, up and down, in 
 an' out, by the bed to-day and the grave 
 
 to-morrow." 
 
 As Dundas made no remark upon this 
 speedy result of the doctor's skill, she said, 
 presently, to counteract the depression she 
 feared her gloomy description of the district 
 had caused — 
 
 " But there's nothin' like takin' it in time, 
 especially when it's the liver it is," she said, 
 with a sharp glance at him, which he noticed. 
 
 ''You're half a doctor yourself?' he said, 
 smilingly.
 
 96 A GERALDINE. 
 
 " That's what the masther says, for many's 
 the time he axes me me opinion. ' Will 
 he come round, Nancy, do you think ? ' 
 he says. 'Ay, the long round,' I says" — 
 [in allusion to a funeral, always taking the 
 longest way round to the graveyard]. 
 
 " But how did you know, Nancy, that 
 it was my liver that was wrong ? ' 
 
 " Livers is always low ; lungs is cheerful, 
 but livers is low. Hearts, now, is low enough 
 at times, and so is kidneys ; but there's a 
 bit of sperit about 'em, an' they'll go off 
 like the crack of a gun if you cross em' ; 
 but livers hasn't got no sperit for nothin'." 
 
 This diagnosis of his case showed him 
 his gloom as in a glass ; and, as no man 
 hated more to wear his heart on his sleeve, 
 he was disgusted with himself and his 
 
 feebleness, and with this garrulous old goose 
 
 ■ 
 
 of whom he despaired of getting rid. As 
 he remained silent — probably, she thought,
 
 A GERALDINE. 97 
 
 to digest her wisdom — she proceeded to pre- 
 scribe for him. 
 
 " What ye want now is to have yere 
 liver well shook up every mornin', like a 
 feather bed. It's got down, an' dead-like, 
 with no spring in it, an' a good shake up 
 of a mornin' — " 
 
 " I think I shall go meet the doctor," he 
 said impatiently, as he rose and made for 
 the door. As he reached the hall he heard 
 her mutter — " It's the heart after all, I'm 
 thinkin' ; thim tanthrums looks like it." 
 
 Dundas, making towards Cahircalla with 
 his swift, swinging stride, met the doctor's 
 carriage, which he signalled to stand. The 
 man pulled up accordingly, to the surprise 
 of the doctor, who put his head out of the 
 window, and made an odd grimace upon 
 recognising Dundas. 
 
 " Did you want me ? " he asked. 
 
 "Yes; I've been — " but here he stopped
 
 98 A GERALDIXE. 
 
 upon perceiving in the carriage Ralph Fitz- 
 gerald, whom the doctor was taking to the 
 railway station. The humour of the situa- 
 tion tickled the doctor, who had heard 
 nothing but furious denunciations of Dundas 
 from Ralph for the last half hour. 
 
 " Would you mind getting up beside the 
 man, as we must catch the 10.40 ? It would 
 be rather hot inside for three," he added, 
 with a wink, which, of course, Ralph couldn't 
 see. 
 
 " All right," Dundas replied with an in- 
 telligent nod and smile. He had hardly 
 seated himself beside the driver when the 
 full horror of the situation broke upon 
 Ralph. To be driven through Killeen with 
 that man on the box ! What would be 
 thought and said by everyone, and even, 
 perhaps, by those infernal newspapers ? 
 
 li Stop ! ' he cried to the doctor. u I shall 
 Cfet out. I — I have forgotten something."
 
 A GERALDINE. 99 
 
 " Hold on ! ' the doctor shouted to the 
 driver ; and then he turned to suggest to 
 Ralph, " He'll drive you to the station, and 
 Jonah and I can walk." 
 
 " No, thank you,'"' Ralph rejoined stiffly, 
 perhaps even more offended by the doctor's 
 mocking allusion to this man as "Jonah' 
 than by his giving him a seat. 
 
 "Very sorry," the doctor murmured, as 
 Ralph made haste out of the carriage ; "but 
 couldn't afford to lose a patient, you know." 
 
 " So I should have thought," Ralph 
 muttered furiously, and then flung back a 
 " good morning " at the doctor. 
 
 " You may come in now," the doctor said 
 lugubriously to Dundas, as Ralph strode 
 away. " I hope you are a patient," he 
 added, as Dundas stepped into the carriage. 
 
 " No, thank you." 
 
 " Well, it can't be helped. ' A plague 
 o' both your houses ! ' that's all."
 
 100 A GERALDINE. 
 
 " I'm very sorry ; but I had no idea he 
 was with you when I stopped the carriage. 
 I oughtn't to have accepted your offer of a 
 seat though, when I saw him." 
 
 Here the doctor burst out laughing. " By 
 George, it's just a thousand pities you two 
 weren't seen with me driving together to 
 the station. It would have been all over 
 the place that you were off to Belgium to 
 fight a duel in peace and quietness, taking 
 me with you as doctor ! What a telling 
 par. for to-morrow's papers ! Did you see 
 to-day's, by the way ? " 
 
 " Yes ; a pack of foolish lies ! " 
 
 " But you did frighten the whole posse 
 with your revolver." 
 
 " They were charging through the crowd, 
 and I got in their way and told them they 
 must go round quietly to the platform, as it 
 was a perfectly legal meeting ; otherwise I 
 should knock down any man that jostled me,
 
 A GERALDINE. IOI 
 
 and use my six-shooter if they set upon me 
 together." 
 
 " Yes, yes ; they'll listen to reason," the 
 doctor replied gleefully. " But why did you 
 pursue the foe to his entrenchments, eh ? I 
 suggested that you were merely about to 
 inquire for Miss Shiela," putting his hand 
 for a moment on Dundas's knee to empha- 
 sise this excellent joke. 
 
 " So I was." 
 
 "Eh?" 
 
 "So I was — I heid no idea that he was 
 her father." 
 
 " Phew ! " half whistled the doctor. " I 
 thought it the most facetious suggestion in 
 the world ! " 
 
 "How is she?' Dundas asked as un- 
 concernedly as he could. 
 
 " Oh, I don't know what to make of her ; 
 she's a very trying case," the doctor answer- 
 ed, with a suspicion of annoyance in his tone.
 
 102 A GERALDINE. 
 
 "Is she worse?' asked Dundas, with an 
 anxiety now undisguised. 
 
 "No; but she ought to be — that's where 
 it is. She ought to be very much worse. 
 I promised her a long and dangerous 
 illness if she stirred from your place 
 yesterday, and she's nearly all right to-day. 
 Well, there's nothing like youth and a fine 
 head of hair, with a thick Fitzgerald skull 
 underneath." 
 
 Dundas began to think the doctor a 
 coarse little man, but his news made up for 
 everything. 
 
 11 She came down on the sod," he said 
 almost indignantly ; but the significance of 
 the protest escaped the doctor. 
 
 " She's a fine girl though," he went on, as 
 if setting her character off against her con- 
 duct. "She almost apologised for her interfer- 
 ence with her brother's noble horsemanship, 
 because it seemed a sore point with him."
 
 A GERALDINE. 103 
 
 " I never saw anything like it in my 
 life, and I've seen a good many plucky 
 things done out there ; but anything so 
 quick, cool, and courageous I never saw ! ' 
 Dundas exclaimed. 
 
 " Yes, she's a fine girl, and no one seems 
 to know it, which is a good thing, and 
 perhaps accounts for it. If she'd been 
 cockered up, and kept in cotton wool, she 
 might have been as missy as the rest of 
 them ; but she's of no more account than 
 a cat in that house." 
 
 " I should have thought she'd have been 
 spoiled outside — by admiration," Dundas 
 said tentatively, to sound the doctor as to 
 any engagement, or the likelihood of any. 
 
 " I don't think the. golden youth about 
 have much of that to spare from them- 
 selves," the doctor answered cynically. 
 " There is, however, a young fellow named 
 D'Arcy — a curious customer in many ways
 
 104 A GERALDINK. 
 
 — who seems hard hit there, but I don't 
 know how his suit — if it is a suit — prospers. 
 But you wanted to see me ? ' he asked with 
 livelier interest. 
 
 " I wanted you to set me right with her 
 — with them — about that affair of yesterday. 
 I knew no more about that meeting than 
 they did ; but, happening to hear some 
 cheers, groans, and a band that seemed to 
 have got its brass from Phalaris' brazen 
 bull, I walked over to see what it was all 
 about, and was asked by the priest to say 
 a few words of encouragement. I said a 
 few milk-and-water words about self-respect, 
 self-reliance, and that sort of thing, without 
 the slightest reference to either Kean, Fitz- 
 gerald, or Claughessy, when the police came 
 up and set to to provoke a riot, which I 
 prevented. That's my whole and sole con- 
 nection with the matter." 
 
 " H'm," grunted the doctor. " Why, Fitz-
 
 A GERALDINE. 105 
 
 gerald believes that you organised the 
 meeting and were the fugleman who set them 
 groaning, hooting, braying, and shouting after 
 him ' Donegan's Donkey,' w T hen he went for 
 the police." 
 
 " I wasn't there then, nor did I know who 
 ' Donegan's Donkey ' was till now, or who 
 the magistrate with the police was, until I 
 called at Cahircalla in the evening." 
 
 " Oh, well, he's put the whole bill down to 
 you." 
 
 u I wish you'd explain," Dundas urged, 
 with an earnestness that surprised the doctor. 
 
 " To tell you the truth, I don't think I 
 shall have the chance." 
 
 " Do you mean that he's quarrelled with 
 you r 
 
 " He's done with me as a doctor, anyway." 
 
 " Because you gave me a seat ? ' 
 
 " Oh, he'll come all right again ; but mean- 
 while I can't clear up the misunderstanding
 
 106 A GERALDINE. 
 
 between you. Why not write to the news- 
 papers ? . Write a letter to the Irish Times, 
 which he takes, explaining how casual were 
 your connections with the meeting." 
 
 rt I suppose I'd better." 
 
 " Of course you had better in any case. 
 There's no use in making a false start here, 
 to say nothing of making a plank bed for 
 yourself in Tullamore Jail. Here we are. 
 Won't you come in ? No ? Well, this even- 
 ing at 6.30."
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 A RELAPSE OF SCORN. 
 
 Shiela, in spite of (or because of) the 
 discontinuance of the doctor's visits, was 
 down in a couple of days, and out and 
 about before the end of a week. Dr. 
 Cullinan would certainly not have counten- 
 anced such rashness ; but the doctor, 
 as he had foreseen, received his congk from 
 the enraged Ralph. His dismissal affected 
 himself less injuriously than it did Dundas, 
 who had occasioned it ; since there was no 
 one now to explain to Ralph how casual and 
 innocent was the part Dundas had taken in 
 the Cloneen meeting. It is true that Dundas 
 
 had sent such an explanation to the Irish 
 
 107
 
 108 A GERALDINE. 
 
 Times (which printed it, much curtailed, in 
 an obscure corner of the paper) ; but the last 
 number of the Irish Times Ralph had seen, 
 or ever would see, was that which had im- 
 puted to him cowardice and magisterial 
 feebleness in this very Cloneen affair. 
 
 Thus it happened that Ralph's conviction 
 of Dundas's venomous hatred of the landlords 
 generally, and of his special spite against 
 himself, remained unshaken. He raged and 
 raved daily against this Irish- American rowdy 
 and rebel, being vigorously seconded in his 
 abuse by Dick, and supported by the approval 
 of Mrs. Fitzgerald, and seemingly of Shiela 
 also. Shiela had her own reason for detest- 
 ing Dundas, and she therefore believed that 
 she did detest him ; but somehow after the 
 first day or so she never endorsed Dick's 
 abuse of him, if she never demurred to it. 
 Perhaps the extreme violence of this abuse 
 defeated itself : while Dick's constantly
 
 A GERALDINE. IOQ 
 
 recurring description of Dundas as " a 
 low blackguard, cad, and cur," was evi- 
 dently and grossly unjust. Shiela, though 
 she could not account to herself for 
 Dundas's intimacy with such a man as 
 Dunscombe, was convinced of his being 
 a gentleman. How, she could not tell. 
 Something in the expression of his fine face, 
 something in his manly way of carrying him- 
 self, and something in his manner, at once so 
 self-respecting and respectful, had left this 
 ineffaceable impression upon her. Never- 
 theless, she detested him (or believed she 
 did) with all her heart. True, her father's 
 and brother's outrageous abuse of him grated 
 upon her and sometimes even revolted her ; 
 but this was, she believed, because of its 
 extravagance. Certainly if they had taken 
 the man up and made much of him, she 
 would have come nearer hating him as 
 heartily as she wished to do. But if a girl
 
 110 A GERALDINE. 
 
 doesn't know what is going on in her own 
 heart, is it to be wondered at that it should 
 be inscrutable to outsiders ? Here's an odd 
 and noteworthy thing in Shiela — up to this 
 her social and political " principles' were 
 nothing but her father's and brother's ex- 
 treme Tory prejudices "writ large." Now, 
 however, she had continually in her mind, 
 as the text of a new social and political faith, 
 the striking sentence — " I never could be- 
 lieve that Providence had sent a few men 
 into the world ready booted and spurred to 
 ride, and millions ready saddled and bridled 
 to be ridden." She had the strangest and 
 strongest longing to learn something about 
 the man, who, she understood, had died 
 in and for this faith upon the scaffold ! 
 But his name she had forgotten, and even 
 if she had remembered it, the sorry library 
 at Cahircalla was little likely to contain a 
 book recording his martyrdom.
 
 A GERALDINE. Ill 
 
 Now Killeen was blessed with a clergy- 
 man who had carried everything in his day 
 before him in Trinity, and was always spoken 
 of as " a most able and distinguished 
 divine." He was perhaps the poorest of 
 all those poor creatures who hoard up 
 knowledge as a miser hoards up gold, 
 without a notion of benefiting with it either 
 himself or others. He not merely bought 
 nothing with it, but he never even, so to say, 
 changed it — never put it into other shape 
 in his mind to realise its meaning and 
 value — but locked it up uselessly in his 
 memory in the precise form in which he 
 had found it in some book. If you asked 
 him, for instance, for this passage in 
 Epictetus, he would find or repeat it for 
 you in the Greek, perhaps, without the 
 faintest notion of its applicability to him- 
 self: — " For the sheep do not manifest to the 
 shepherds how much they have eaten by
 
 112 A GERALDINE. 
 
 producing fodder ; but inwardly digesting 
 their food, they produce outwardly wool and 
 milk." He assimilated nothing of all he 
 had read, but reproduced it as he had 
 swallowed it — whole, without having chewed, 
 or ruminated, or digested it. I do not 
 mean merely that all this learning left him 
 to seek in the practical affairs of life and in 
 the ways of the world ; but that it did not 
 broaden by a nail's breadth his mind, his 
 views, or his principles. The most ignor- 
 ant lout in the parish was not narrower 
 in his views of God, of man, of Nature, 
 and of life than the Rev. Dr. John 
 Medge. 
 
 It was on the occasion of this gentleman's 
 dining, as he sometimes did, at Cahircalla, 
 that Shiela for the first time quoted her 
 text with startling effect. During dinner 
 the conversation had turned upon the change 
 in the manners of the peasantry observable
 
 A GERALDINE. 113 
 
 of late, and attributable, according to Dr. 
 Medge, to such returned Irish- Americans as 
 Mr. Dundas. As this gentleman, though a 
 nominal Protestant, did not attend Dr. 
 Medge's church, the vicar was as hearty 
 in his abuse of him as Ralph and Dick 
 themselves, his attacks being, of course, 
 directed against Dundas's " Atheism and 
 Socialism," while theirs were levelled against 
 his " Fenianism and Land Leagueism." 
 Both, however, agreed that the change in 
 the manner of the peasantry, of whom they 
 spoke precisely as an Anglo-Indian speaks 
 of "the natives," was due to the demoralisa- 
 tion of the precept and example of such 
 returned Irish- Americans as Dundas. Pre- 
 sently it appeared that when they spoke of 
 "civility' they meant lt servility," and that 
 the good old times they deplored were those 
 in which the wretched peasantry cowered, 
 cringed, and crawled at the feet of men who, 
 
 H
 
 114 A GERALDINE. 
 
 virtually, as landlords, held their lives in 
 their hands. 
 
 " You take my house when you do take the prop 
 That doth sustain my house ; you take my life 
 When you do take the means whereby I live." 
 
 While, however, Ralph recalled chiefly the 
 days when no tenant ever dreamed of voting 
 otherwise than as he was bid by his land- 
 lord, Dr. Medge dwelt upon the enormity 
 of "the Papists," not only building a chapel 
 opposite, or nearly opposite his church, but 
 absolutely calling it "a church!' Why, 
 ten years ago they would no more think of 
 calling a "chapel' a "church* than they 
 would think of calling a " cabin " a " palace! ' 
 They had altogether forgotten " their place ; ' 
 and their proper place, according to this 
 worthy divine, seemed to be much that of 
 a spaniel sent to heel with a kick by his 
 master. This talk of the peasantry as
 
 A GERALDINE. 1 1 5 
 
 " aborigines," who seemed of late to have 
 forgotten that they lived only on the suffer- 
 ance of "the settlers," grated intolerably 
 upon Shiela, who, however, as she was not 
 addressed by the speakers, kept silence for 
 some time even from good words. She 
 never did take part in her father's presence 
 in any conversation of the kind, except she 
 was directly appealed to. She was so 
 appealed to presently by Dr. Medge, when 
 he could get no other auditor — Ralph and 
 Dick absorbed in controversy as to the date 
 of the rejection by the constituency of 
 Maloney, of Aherbeg. 
 
 " Haven't you noticed a marked difference 
 in their manner of late, Miss Shiela ? ' 
 
 "No; I have always found them exceed- 
 ingly civil," she answered decisively, to his 
 amazement. 
 
 " Civil ? Well, yes, they're civil in a 
 way, but not in the old way ; not as if they
 
 Il6 A GERALDINE. 
 
 remembered their position and your posi- 
 tion. 
 
 Shiela glanced over at Dick to be quite 
 sure that he was not listening, before she 
 asked in a low voice and with a violent 
 blush, fl Who is it says ' I never could 
 believe that Providence sent a few men 
 into the world ready booted and spurred to 
 ride, and millions ready saddled and bridled 
 to be ridden ' ? " 
 
 Dr. Medge stared at her as though she 
 had blasphemed. He had not the least 
 idea who had said it ; but since he posed 
 in the parish as an encyclopaedia, he was 
 not going to confess his ignorance. He 
 proceeded to conceal it by a long lecture 
 to Shiela upon order and subordination, and 
 the passive obedience inculcated by St. 
 Paul. " I only wanted to know who said 
 it," Shiela ventured to say in a low tone, 
 which the vicar took to indicate an abashed
 
 A GERALDINE. WJ 
 
 admission of the heinousness of the senti- 
 ment. 
 
 ''But why should you want to know? 
 His works would certainly not profit you. 
 May I ask where you read or heard that 
 silly clap-trap ? " 
 
 This was unconsciously carrying the war 
 into the enemy's camp with a vengeance. 
 Shiela blushed up to the eyes and murmured 
 only, ' I heard someone quote it, and 
 wondered who had said it." 
 
 "You may take my word for it," said the 
 oracle pompously, " his works are not fit 
 reading for a young lady — anything but that 
 — anything but that." 
 
 When, however, the oracle, upon return- 
 ing home, consulted his Familiar Quotations, 
 and discovered that the speaker of the 
 words was Richard Rumbold, who had 
 guarded the scaffold on which Charles I. 
 was executed, and had owned the house
 
 Il8 A GERALDINE. 
 
 in which the Rye House plot was hatched, 
 he was mortified beyond measure. For, 
 in the first place, Rumbold, of whose 
 ' c works ' he had spoken to Shiela, had 
 never written a line ; and, in the second 
 place, this " miscreant Cromwellian, regicide 
 and assassin," could have been held up with 
 ereat effect to her as the kind of character 
 above all others from whom such a senti- 
 ment might have been expected. The re- 
 morse of this riposte oT escalicr, to use the 
 happy French phrase for a hang-fire retort 
 of this kind, riveted the conversation with 
 Shiela in his memory. But what had 
 riveted the quotation in Shiela's memory ? 
 That is the interesting question which we 
 wished to surest to the reader by record- 
 inor ncr conversation with the vicar. Was 
 it solely the intrinsic truth and justice of the 
 sentiment that had fixed it ineffaceably in 
 her remembrance ? It could have been
 
 A GERALDINE. 119 
 
 nothing else, since she told herself many 
 times a day that she detested the man who 
 had quoted it, assuring herself of this in the 
 most perfect good faith. Still there is, per- 
 haps, just some faint hope for a man whom 
 a girl tells herself many times a day, with 
 an energetic stamp of her small foot even, 
 that she detests. Even if she should think 
 of him all day long with emphatic detesta- 
 tion, let him not utterly despair. But 
 detestation, however hearty, needs new fuel 
 to keep it aglow, and Shiela, on the day 
 following her conversation with the vicar, 
 seemed in search of it. She was taking 
 some wool to a crippled lad who supported 
 himself by knitting socks and stockings 
 (which he could do more deftly than most 
 women), when she saw Dunscombe limping 
 before her into his cabin. In spite of her 
 horror of this vulgar little wretch, she 
 followed, wondering. As she reached the
 
 120 A GERALDINE. 
 
 door, she heard the shrill, thin voice of the 
 little man saying — " I've a game leg of my 
 own, sonny ; two bullets in it ; and I should 
 have had a handful more here," striking his 
 chest, "but for that thundering fine fellow 
 Dundas. There's a man for you, sonny ! 
 Seen him ? No ? Six feet two in his socks ; 
 you must make him a pair of socks, sonny — 
 least you can do, eh ? " 
 
 " I will, yer honour, an' a dozen pair. 
 God in heaven bless him ! " 
 
 " Ay, send the bill up there — you Irish 
 fly your kites high — fly 'em up to heaven. 
 Such folk for blessings I never heard — well, 
 it's a cheap way to pay your debts, anyhow." 
 
 Here, seeing the boy's large eyes, hollow 
 with privation and illness, fixed on the 
 doorway, Dunscombe looked round and per- 
 ceived Shiela. 
 
 " Halloa ! I beg your pardon, Miss — Miss 
 — Very glad to see you all right again."
 
 A GERALDINE. 121 
 
 he cried, starting up ; then limping towards 
 her with the chair on which he had been 
 seated — the sole chair in the cabin — he 
 added, " Sit down, miss." 
 
 But Shiela, having just overheard how 
 he had been lamed, felt, for some reason, 
 more pity than before for his infirmity. 
 
 " No, no, you sit, please," she replied, 
 with an involuntary glance at his lame foot ; 
 " I shall not stay long." 
 
 " I couldn't think, miss — " 
 
 " Do, pray, sit," she urged. 
 
 "Well, miss, since you are so con — sider- 
 ate, I'll just sit beside my mate here — fellow- 
 cripples, miss, fellow-cripples," taking his 
 seat on the side of the bed. 
 
 " Mr. Dundas has sent me this, Miss 
 Shiela," the boy said, holding out a sover- 
 eign. 
 
 "Very kind, I'm sure," she murmured 
 stiffly.
 
 122 A GERALDINE. 
 
 " You see, miss," sneered Dunscombe in 
 his piping, piercing voice, " he wants to 
 become an M.P., or a J. P., or a P.P., that's 
 what he's up to," a sudden recollection of 
 the furious newspaper onslaughts upon his 
 patron, and their suggestions of all kinds 
 of corrupt or small motives for his gener- 
 osity occurring to him upon his noticing 
 Shiela's cutting tone. 
 
 11 Ay, that's what he's going for/' he 
 continued ; " he never does nothing for 
 nothing, you bet. I found out that when 
 he stood up to them fellows that 'ud have 
 shot me down like a dog — one agin three, 
 he stood up to them. What for ? He 
 never seen me before he seen me down 
 with a bullet theer, that's theer yet,'' clasp- 
 ing his left leo: above the ankle with his 
 right hand. u But ye see, miss, he wanted 
 to nurse me till the wound was well, and 
 to support me ever since — that's what
 
 A GERALDINE. 1 23 
 
 he wanted. Always up to something, he 
 
 is. 
 
 Shiela, at the close of this outburst, rose 
 to make a stately exit, but remained stand- 
 ing nervously by the bed-head, even after 
 she had given the wool to the boy. ''I'm 
 glad you've found so good a friend, Brian," 
 she said gently, in significant contrast to 
 her former tone. 
 
 " Hope I haven't offended you, miss," 
 Dunscombe hastened to say in a kind of 
 apologetic acknowledgment of her change 
 of tone. 
 
 "Me? Oh, no ; not at all." 
 
 "Thim newspapers is enough to make St. 
 Peter sit up and snort ; with their lies an' 
 their libels drivin' a man out of the country 
 who came back to spend his money among 
 'em. More nor this man 'ill miss him 
 when he's gone, you bet ; an' more nor 
 me 'ill rejice to have him back in Texas."
 
 124 A GERALDINI . 
 
 There was a moment or two's dead 
 silence, and then Shiela said — 
 
 " I must get back, Brian, but I hope to 
 come soon again to see you. Good morn- 
 
 55 
 
 ing. 
 
 d 
 
 'Good morning, Miss Shiela, an' thank 
 ye kindly, miss." 
 
 " Good morning," she turned to say ner- 
 vously to Dunscombe. 
 
 " Good mornin' to you, miss ; an' I hope 
 you'll forgive my speakin' up for the best 
 friend ever a man had." 
 
 " Of course ; there was nothing to for- 
 give," she murmured in a low and hurried 
 tone, as she quitted the cabin. 
 
 Instead of returning home, as she had 
 suggested to Brian she was about to do, 
 she walked towards a wood that divided in 
 two her father's property, in which she 
 sometimes took a solitary ramble. 
 
 So he was going back for good to
 
 A GERALDINE. 1 25 
 
 America — driven there by all this baseless 
 abuse. She had no doubt at all that it 
 was baseless. He had come back to Ire- 
 land with all kinds of good intentions, 
 which were misunderstood and misrepre- 
 sented on every side, until he was thor- 
 oughly sick of the country and of the 
 people. It was curious how absolutely con- 
 vinced Shiela had become of the disinter- 
 ested beneficence of Dundas, now that she 
 knew he was quitting the country forever ; 
 but there is this at least to be said for her 
 conviction — that the cynical and sour-look- 
 ing little man, Dunscombe, was not of the 
 worshipping sort. His dog-like devotion to 
 one whom he knew so intimately as Dun- 
 das was therefore a strong testimony to 
 his patron's fine qualities. However, Shiela 
 would certainly not have acknowledged this 
 to herself if Dundas were going to stay in 
 the country. She could even acknowledge
 
 126 A GERALDINE. 
 
 now to herself that in her inmost heart she 
 did not really detest him as much as she had 
 imagined and as he had deserved. H 
 would be as irrevocably removed from her 
 by a final return to Texas as by death ; and 
 she felt as free, therefore, to forgive him, 
 and more than forgive him, as though he 
 had died. A crood deal more than forgive 
 him ! Strange what a void the disappear- 
 ance of this ''detestation" feeling left in her 
 heart ! How empty life also had suddenly 
 become! She walked aimlessly through the 
 wood, strangely dejected and wretched, till 
 she came in sight of the high road and 
 of Dr. Cullman, who for a wonder was 
 walking. 
 
 "Halloa, Miss Shiela ! ' he cried cheerily 
 at sight of her. "You'll not cut me, I 
 know, since you have punished me enough 
 already." 
 
 "How?' she asked, as she shook hands
 
 A GERALDINE. \2J 
 
 most cordially with him across the low 
 railing which separated the wood from the 
 road. 
 
 "How? By getting well at once without 
 me, and even against my most solemn pro- 
 mise to you of a long illness." 
 
 " On condition that you attended me,' 
 she answered readily and archly. "I'm sure 
 you'd have kept your promise if you could." 
 
 " 'Pon my word ! So you voted for my 
 dismissal ? " 
 
 " No," she answered with sudden serious- 
 ness and with an emphatic shake of the 
 head. " I was very sorry indeed ; but 
 father was a good deal put out by the news- 
 papers and — and other things." 
 
 " I assure you, Miss Shiela," the doctor 
 urged ardently, " your father is utterly mis- 
 taken about Dundas — utterly mistaken. 
 He doesn't care two straws for politics, and 
 is no more a Land Leaguer than he is a
 
 128 A GERALDINE. 
 
 Tory. He thought that fellow Claughessy 
 ill-used — and I'm not sure myself that he 
 wasn't — and being a Don Quixote kind of 
 man, nothing would deter him from righting 
 a wrong at any cost to himself That's just 
 the whole truth of the matter ; and it's a 
 pity your father can't be made to see it, for 
 he would find Dundas the pleasantest of 
 neighbours." 
 
 " But he is going back to America," she 
 said nervously. 
 
 " Going back to America ! Nothing of 
 the sort. Where did you hear that ? " 
 
 11 I've just heard it from his companion, 
 who was with Brian Hurley when I 
 called." 
 
 " What ! From Dunscombe ? Very good 
 authority; but I've better. It's not an hour 
 since I had a long talk with Dundas himself, 
 when he was showing me over the fine house 
 he is building. I was chaffing him about
 
 A GERALDINE. 1 29 
 
 being lost in it as a bachelor, when he said 
 he had no intention of remaining a bachelor, 
 and indeed, spoke so certainly of being mar- 
 ried to an Irish girl, that I have no doubt at 
 all of his being engaged to one. I wonder 
 who she is," the doctor added reflectively, 
 more to himself than to Shiela. 
 
 She tried to think of something — anything 
 — to say ; but she could not, and her grow- 
 ing embarrassment was not lessened by her 
 consciousness of a crimson face. 
 
 However, to her immense relief, the 
 doctor, noticing neither her silence nor her 
 colour, went on with his speculation : " She's 
 someone in the immediate neighbourhood, 
 I'm certain from something he said," look- 
 ing, as Shiela thought, with a significant 
 and odious archness at her. This man 
 had absolutely bragged to the doctor also 
 that he meant to marry her ! She was 
 
 perfectly furious, and in the reaction from her 
 
 1
 
 [30 A GERALDINE. 
 
 relenting mood of a few minutes since, 
 she now really detested Dundas with her 
 whole heart. But the doctor intended 
 whatever archness his look expressed to 
 mean that Dundas's resolve to mate at 
 home gave a chance to the girls in the 
 neighbourhood, including Shiela ; and the 
 (t something he (Dundas) had said," was 
 simply a Cheshire proverb which the doctor 
 thought too homely to quote to Shiela. 
 Dundas, in repudiating the doctors sug- 
 gestion that he was going to follow the 
 fashion of the dukes and import an American 
 bride, had quoted : u Better wed over the 
 mixen than over the moor " — a proverb 
 current among Cheshire farmers — " the 
 mixen ' being the dung-heap at their door, 
 and "the moor' being the fens of Stafford- 
 shire, through which ran the road to 
 London. Nevertheless it was natural, and 
 even inevitable, that Shiela should construe
 
 A GERALDINE. 131 
 
 the archness of the doctor's glance to mean 
 that Dundas had made the same insolent 
 boast about her to him that he had made 
 to Dunscombe. Being a girl of a singularly 
 high spirit, she now scorned Dundas all 
 the more because she had found herself 
 a few minutes since relenting towards him 
 so dangerously.
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 IN THE QUEEN'S NAME. 
 
 Dundas had certainly said under excessive 
 provocation that he would quit this police- 
 ridden country and return to the States ; but 
 he had reconsidered the resolve on reflection 
 — the chief subject and substance of this re- 
 flection being - Shiela. But what was the 
 provocation to his original resolve ? As our 
 story hinges upon it, we must explain it at 
 some length. 
 
 The day after the appearance in the 
 Unionist newspapers of the articles de- 
 manding indignantly what the authorities 
 meant by licensing this returned Irish-
 
 A GERALDINE. 1 33 
 
 American rowdy to carry arms, or in allow- 
 ing him to carry them unlicensed, no less 
 than four of the stalwart Royal Irish Con- 
 stabulary, armed with revolvers, were de- 
 spatched to Quarry Cottage. Now, Dundas, 
 disliking and despising the force as hectoring 
 mercenaries, who showed the ferocity of 
 renegades towards the peasantry from whom 
 they were recruited, was in no mood of meek 
 submission when the sergeant and three con- 
 stables set about bullying him. 
 
 11 What do you want ? ' he asked sharply, 
 when he had opened the door in answer to a 
 thundering knock. 
 
 "We demand admittance in the Oueen's 
 name," the sergeant answered pompously. 
 
 " If you demanded it in the devil's name 
 you wouldn't get it till I knew your busi- 
 ness," Dundas answered, proceeding to shut 
 the door in their faces. But the sergeant, 
 stepping quickly forward, interposed his
 
 134 A GERALDINE. 
 
 body to prevent the door being closed, and 
 said insolently — 
 
 " Come, my man. this won't do." 
 
 Dundas being himself a man of immense 
 strength, could have — and would have — 
 ejected the sergeant, if two of the constables 
 had not together flung their weight against 
 the door and burst it open. Dundas kept 
 his hold upon the sergeant, whom he had 
 seized by the shoulders, and just as the two 
 constables burst headlong into the cottage, 
 he shot the sergeant out into the little 
 garden in front, and then turned upon the 
 two invaders. Before, however, he could 
 re-enter the cottage, he was pinned and 
 pinioned from behind by the sergeant and 
 the other constable. 
 
 " Search him ! ' cried the sergeant, beside 
 himself with fury. 
 
 Dundas struggled desperately, but in vain, 
 for a third constable now had hold of him.
 
 A GERALDINE. 1 35 
 
 Dundas ceased to struggle, and turning 
 upon the sergeant a face rigid and white as 
 death with suppressed rage, he asked in a 
 voice as quiet and ominous as his face — 
 
 " What does this mean ? " 
 
 The sergeant, awed by the expression of 
 his face and by the tone of his voice, an- 
 swered sullenly, " We've got a warrant to 
 search both your house and your person for 
 
 arms." 
 
 " Have you a warrant to break into my 
 house without a word of explanation ? " 
 
 " We told you we had a search-warrant," 
 the sergeant answered, looking to his men 
 for confirmation of this audacious falsehood, 
 which two of the constables gave by an as- 
 senting murmur. 
 
 " You told me you had a search-war- 
 rant?" Dundas said, pronouncing each word 
 separately with staccato distinctness. 
 
 "Certainly," replied the sergeant. " Here
 
 136 A GERALDINE. 
 
 it is," unfolding the documents. Then he 
 turned to one of the men to say — " Dog- 
 herty, search him." 
 
 Dogherty proceeded about the business 
 with all the skill, and at the same time with 
 all the mechanical deliberation of an expert, 
 while Dundas submitted without a word or 
 movement of remonstrance. No arms hav- 
 ing been found upon him, they released him ; 
 but the set, white determination in his face 
 so awed and unnerved the sergeant that he 
 ordered Dogherty to search the house, while 
 he himself and the other three constables 
 surrounded Dundas. In truth, the sergeant 
 feared that Dundas would make a dash for 
 his revolver and revenge the humiliation, 
 which he plainly felt so savagely, by shoot- 
 ing down as many as possible of the enemy 
 before they could put a bullet through him. 
 
 However, Dogherty's search, which was 
 certainly sufficiently exhaustive, for he tried
 
 A GERALDINE. 137 
 
 up the chimneys and sounded the boards 
 and walls, was rewarded only by the dis- 
 covery in a drawer of a box half full of re- 
 volver cartridges, which the sergeant im- 
 pounded. Where was the revolver they 
 fitted ? Dundas had certainly had it when 
 he threatened on Wednesday to shoot the 
 man who would venture to lay a hand upon 
 him. What had since become of it ? Had 
 he hidden it elsewhere upon reading the 
 angry articles in the papers urging the 
 authorities to disarm him ? Or had that 
 little chum of his, Dunscombe, taken it out 
 with him ? At this moment Dunscombe 
 himself appeared in the doorway, looking 
 with amazement at the invasion. 
 
 " Halloa ! " he cried. " What's up ? Get- 
 ting up an outrage, eh ? " 
 
 11 We shall have to search you for arms," 
 the sergeant cried. " Dogherty — " 
 
 "Hold!' Dundas cried in a cool, com-
 
 I38 A GERALDTNE. 
 
 manding tone. " Have you a warrant to 
 search this gentleman ? " 
 
 As the sergeant remained silent, Dundas 
 continued — 
 
 " If you attempt to search him without a 
 warrant, he will have an action against you 
 for assault, and he'll take it." 
 
 This made the sergeant pause for a mo- 
 ment ; but, recovering himself presently, he 
 ordered the constables outside, and held 
 there a whispered conference with them. 
 Its result was the despatch of two of them 
 for a warrant to search Dunscombe, while 
 the sergeant and the other constable re- 
 mained behind to keep him in sight. 
 
 Dundas, taking in the situation at a 
 glance, motioned Dunscombe to follow him; 
 and the two strode together up the hill to- 
 wards Duhdas's new house. When they 
 had entered the crate leading into the lawn 
 which surrounded the house, Dundas turned
 
 A GERALDINE. 139 
 
 and shut and locked it in the face of the two 
 constables. 
 
 4C Will you go up and see how they are 
 getting on ? " he said quietly to Dunscombe, 
 pointing over his shoulder to the house. 
 
 ''All right," Dunscombe answered cheer- 
 ily, and walked off, whistling as he went, 
 " Harvey Duff" — a tune that infuriates the 
 Royal Irish to madness. 
 
 " We demand admittance," the sergeant 
 cried furiously. 
 
 "On what ground? You've no warrant, 
 and therefore no more right in my lawn than 
 any other trespasser. Attempt to break in 
 and I shall know how to deal with you." 
 
 There was a fell intensity in Dundas's 
 tone which suggested to the sergeant that 
 Dunscombe had passed the revolver to his 
 chum while the constabulary were in con- 
 sultation outside Quarry Cottage. If Dun- 
 das had it, reflected the sergeant, he would
 
 140 A GERALDINE. 
 
 use it without hesitation or scruple in his 
 present mood of deadly rage with the man 
 who had ordered him to be pinioned and 
 searched like the vilest felon. Therefore, 
 after a moment's pause, the sergeant said 
 with a sardonic grin — 
 
 " Very well ; we shall only have to search 
 you again to-morrow." 
 
 As he and the constable turned away, 
 Dundas said, quietly and slowly — 
 
 " If ever you lay a finger on me again, I 
 shall shoot you like a dog." A memorable 
 threat. 
 
 Dundas was not searched a^ain. Both he 
 and Dunscombe would to a certainty have 
 been so searched within a few days but for 
 an event of which we shall presently speak. 
 The search was put off for these few days 
 owing to pressure of police work in other 
 directions ; in spite of the sergeant's repeated 
 declarations that he went in fear of his life
 
 A GERALDINE. HI 
 
 while this Irish- American rowdy was allowed 
 to retain his revolver. Had Dundas not 
 threatened " to shoot him down like a dog ? ' 
 More than once the sergeant, too, had said 
 both to his men and to his officer, that " if 
 ever he saw murder in a man's eye, he saw it 
 in Dundas's." Nevertheless, as we have 
 said, Dundas was not troubled by a second 
 police visit immediately, because at this time 
 the Royal Irish had other hares to hunt. 
 There was, in fact, a virulent outbreak of 
 moonlighting in the neighbourhood — to 
 Dundas's perplexity, because as far as he 
 could see there was no respect paid either 
 to persons or to politics in these random 
 raids. 
 
 " What the devil does it all mean?' he 
 asked the doctor. " Is it patriotism, or 
 Land Leagueism, or Fenianism ? ' 
 
 " Blackguardism, my dear sir, blackguard- 
 ism, pure and simple."
 
 142 A GERALDINE. 
 
 " Do you mean that it has nothing what- 
 ever to do with either the land question or 
 the Home Rule question ? ' 
 
 " Nothing now with either. The original 
 Kerry Moonlighters were, I believe, evicted 
 tenants — outcasts and* virtual outlaws — who 
 had some provocation, and sometimes savage 
 provocation, for their murderous reprisals ; 
 but they were only the light that set the 
 heather on fire." 
 
 "It must have been dry as tinder, 
 then." 
 
 " So it was. It was a case in Kerry of 
 another king arising who knew not Joseph, 
 and who put upon the people heavier burdens 
 than they could bear. The old landlord and 
 agent were easy-going and popular ; but the 
 new man. having married into a big and 
 ambitious English family, must needs build a 
 palace for his bride at a cost of ,£80,000. 
 This must be squeezed out of the tenants ;
 
 A GERALDINE. 143 
 
 and the squeeze came from a harsh agent 
 and in a very bad season — Hinc illce 
 lachrymcz." 
 
 " But surely Kerry is not owned by a 
 single landlord ? " 
 
 ''' No; but some of the other landlords — 
 or their agents, anyway — were harsher still. 
 I knew an agent who extorted upon each 
 lease j^io glove-money to his wife ; and who, 
 when he brought down some friends to shoot 
 in the season, thrust the schoolmaster and 
 his children out of the shooting lodge into 
 the stables, and threatened to thrust them 
 out of the stables into the road because the 
 cries of the shivering children disturbed his 
 horses at night." 
 
 "Good Lord!" 
 
 " Yes, that is absolutely true ; and under 
 another agent a wretched boy was thrust out 
 of a house on a bitter winter's night to die of 
 exposure on the roadside, because no tenant
 
 144 A GERALDINE. 
 
 was allowed to take in a lodger upon pain of 
 eviction." 
 
 " But why in the name of the devil don't 
 they shoot the right men ? Look at that 
 shocking Curtin case ! ' 
 
 "The Curtin case was a family quarrel, pure 
 and simple, and Irish family feuds are fero- 
 cious. Family feuds were always and every- 
 where ferocious in the good old times, and 
 Ireland hasn't emerged from the good old 
 times yet. There was plenty of moonlight- 
 ing in the good old times in England, only 
 they called it then • taking to the road ! ' 
 
 " Do you mean that moonlighting is mere 
 robbery ? " 
 
 " I think it has come clown to that now. 
 A lot of blackguards take advantage of the 
 perfectly natural and justifiable hatred the 
 peasantry have of the law to commit these 
 outrages with impunity." 
 
 " The people won't help the police ? '
 
 A GERALDINE. 145 
 
 ''They wouldn't help the police even to 
 come to their own help. They hate so much 
 the whole system of law and police, as an 
 organised and authorised system of brigand- 
 age, that they wouldn't stir foot or finger to 
 help them to put down these unauthorised 
 brigands." 
 
 " Surely the people who are moonlighted 
 wouldn't be so particular about the stick 
 with which to beat the dog ? " 
 
 " They're between the devil and the deep 
 sea. The law and police are so unpopular 
 that they daren't have them on their side ; 
 and this those moonlighting corner-boys take 
 advantage of. I fancy that for one moon- 
 lighting outrage you hear of there are three 
 committed without extorting an audible cry 
 or groan from the victims. It's a horrible 
 state of things ; but only those who have 
 made law and order detestable are answer- 
 able for it." 
 
 K
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 MURDER ! 
 
 Siiiela and Dick, returning home through 
 the skirts of Dunran Wood at dusk one 
 evening, were talking together of the moon- 
 lighting outrages, now of almost weekly 
 recurrence, when Dick exclaimed, " Halloa ! 
 What are those fellows up to ? ' 
 
 " Where ? " 
 
 " There ! " pointing to a group of four or 
 five men who were making their way cau- 
 tiously through the wood. 
 
 "They're only taking a short cut," Shiela 
 
 suggested, through fear of Dick dogging 
 
 them. 
 
 146
 
 A GERALDINE. 147 
 
 "They've no business in our place," Dick 
 exclaimed excitedly, as he proceeded to pur- 
 sue them. 
 
 A Oh, Dick, don't, don't ; pray don't ! ' 
 Shiela urged, seizing him by the arm. 
 
 "Nonsense, Shiela: there's nothing to 
 fear." 
 
 " They're Moonlighters ! You mustn't 
 go, Dick ; you mustrit ! ' Shiela cried, 
 very much more unnerved than she would 
 have been before her accident. 
 
 " I shall not interfere with them, only see 
 what they're up to. Let go, Shiela ! ' 
 
 u Then, I'll go with you," she said de- 
 cidedly. 
 
 " Oh, nonsense ! " 
 
 However, as she was as resolute to ac- 
 company him as he was to pursue the men, 
 he had to give way upon this point. 
 
 When they had got deep into the wood 
 they could hardly at first see a step before
 
 I4S A GERALDINE. 
 
 them ) and even after their eyes had grown 
 more accustomed to the darkness, they lost 
 the path and stumbled about over fallen 
 logs and tangled brushwood. Presently 
 Dick whispered, u Hush ! Here they are!' 
 and then he added, as one of the men 
 struck a match and showed a blackened 
 face and muffled form, a They are Moon- 
 lighters ! " 
 
 They stood quite still, while the men 
 passed within a few feet of them, Shiela 
 clinging convulsively to Dick, more in fear 
 of his interfering with these desperadoes 
 than in terror for herself. 
 
 But her fears found another channel when 
 Dick said suddenly, " They're making for 
 our house! We must hurry back." 
 
 "But it's not the way," faltered Shiela. 
 " It's the way they would take, and 
 there's no other house in this direction." 
 After stumbling and straying a little.
 
 A GERALDINE. 149 
 
 Shiela recognised a giant elm they fell 
 against, from which a short direct path 
 would lead them out of the wood on the 
 far side from their house, and a longer and 
 more tortuous path would lead them out 
 of it towards Cahircalla. 
 
 u Shiela, you must go for the police," 
 Dick said excitedly. " You're not a- 
 fraid ? " 
 
 " No, but you — " 
 
 " I must get to the house before them. 
 There's not a moment to lose. You get 
 out that way. It's not more than a mile 
 to the barracks. I'll hurry home this way 
 and have the house barricaded." 
 
 u Oh, but, Dick, if they should — " 
 
 "There isn't a moment to lose!' he 
 cried, with a stamp of his foot. " Every-' 
 thing depends upon your hurrying up the 
 police." And then, after she had run a 
 dozen paces, he cried out to her, * Stay at
 
 150 A GERALDINE. 
 
 the barracks ; you can do no good, and will 
 only be in the way." 
 
 This unfortunate exhortation was shouted 
 loud enough to be heard by a man who had 
 been set as a sentinel at this end and exit 
 of the wood. He crouched down to let 
 Shiela pass him and get into the high road, 
 and then he followed her stealthily for some 
 three hundred yards before he ventured to 
 overtake and intercept her, fearing that her 
 screams might recall her brother. 
 
 u Hould an ! ' he cried, seizing her by 
 the arm. " Where are ye aff to in such a 
 hurry ? " 
 
 " Let me go ! How dare you ? ' Shiela 
 cried breathlessly, her anger at the brute's 
 brutality overpowering her fear. 
 
 " Look at here, now, miss ; if ye shtir a 
 fut ; or let a shcream out of ye. by God ! 
 I'll brain ye ! ' 
 
 " Help ! Help ! ' screamed Shiela at the
 
 A GERALDINE. I 5 I 
 
 top of her voice, and as the ruffian let go 
 her arm to club his gun to strike her down, 
 she fled with the wings of terror almost into 
 the arms of Dundas. He had just set out 
 upon his usual nightly stroll towards Cahir- 
 calla to smoke a cigar and to indulge in 
 day-dreams of Shiela. Dark as it now was 
 she knew at once it was he, and felt sud- 
 denly and utterly secure. He put her 
 gently behind him with one hand, while 
 with the other, tightly clenched, he struck 
 the man, who had too much way on to 
 stop, a blow that felled him with the double 
 force of Dundas's arm and of the impetus 
 of his own speed. 
 
 "The infernal scoundrel!' he cried with 
 an uncontrollable fury surprising in him, as 
 he spurned the fellow's carcase with his 
 foot. Then, with a sudden change to yearn- 
 ing tenderness in his tone, he turned to ask 
 Shiela, "You're not hurt?"
 
 152 A CERALDIN1 . 
 
 li No, thank you. Thank you so much. 
 He tried to stop me. I was going for the 
 police," Shiela gasped breathlessly. 
 
 " For the police ?' 
 
 " Yes ; the Moonlighters are at our 
 house." 
 
 " But how did you — there's not a 
 moment to lose, though — you must stay in 
 my cottage, while I send Dunscombe for 
 the police. I suppose this is loaded," he 
 added, stooping to pick up the gun which 
 had dropped from the man's hands as he 
 fell. 4t When I have seen you to the 
 cottage, I shall hurry to your house," he 
 said, when he had picked up the gun. 
 Then he turned to hasten back to the 
 cottage. 
 
 " Would you mind taking my arm ? ' he 
 asked presently, and with an almost tremu- 
 lous timidity. " You must be quite ex- 
 hausted."
 
 A GERALDINE. 153 
 
 d Oh, no ; I am all right, thank you," 
 she answered, taking his arm neverthe- 
 less. 
 
 " But how did you get through them ? ' 
 he asked, being quite prepared to hear of 
 another heroic exploit of hers. 
 
 " My brother and I followed them into 
 Dunian Wood, thinking them poachers ; 
 and when we saw they were Moonlighters 
 going to our house, he hurried home, and 
 I went for the police. That man must 
 have seen and heard us, and then followed 
 to stop me." 
 
 " Did the scoundrel touch you ? " 
 
 11 He caught me by the arm, but let 
 me go, when I screamed, to club his 
 gun." 
 
 Dundas ground an imprecation between 
 his teeth. 
 
 Presently she suggested timidly, as they 
 neared the cottage, " Don't you think it
 
 154 A OERALDINE. 
 
 would be better if you went with the 
 police ? " 
 
 " Why ? It might be too late. There 
 isn't a moment to lose." 
 
 She made no further suggestion or re- 
 monstrance, as they had now reached the 
 cottage. Dundas, having despatched Duns- 
 combe for the police, and consigned Shiela 
 to the care of his housekeeper, made all 
 haste himself to Cahircalla. When he 
 reached the spot where the insensible body 
 of the man had lain, there was no trace of 
 it ! Whether he had so far come to him- 
 self as to be able to crawl away into the 
 next field in spite of a blow that might 
 have stunned an ox ; or whether some 
 sympathising neighbours had conveyed 
 him away — he was gone ! Dundas, how- 
 ever, did not waste any time or thought 
 upon the fellow as he ran at his utmost 
 speed towards Cahircalla.
 
 A GERALDINE. 155 
 
 When he reached the house, he stole 
 round it to reconnoitre, and, if possible, to 
 take the Moonlighters in the rear ; in which 
 case, he flattered himself that he could dis- 
 pose of two, if not three of them, with the 
 gun clubbed. But there was not the slightest 
 sound, or sign, or trace of their presence. 
 The house was buried in profound stillness, 
 while through one of the upper windows he 
 could see a housemaid going tranquilly 
 about her work. Beyond a doubt the 
 attack had not been made yet. As, how- 
 ever, Dick was sure to have reached home 
 by this, Dundas felt that he would be spared 
 the unpleasantness of a long explanation 
 with his violent-tempered and pig-headed 
 parent. Accordingly, he rang the bell, and 
 asked the servant, who appeared promptly 
 and primly, without the slightest sign of 
 excitement, if Mr. Richard Fitzgerald were 
 at home.
 
 156 A GERALDINE. 
 
 " I'll see, sir," she said. " Would you 
 walk in ? " 
 
 He was shown into the empty drawing- 
 room, where the maid almost immediately 
 reappeared to say : " He's not at home, sir ; 
 but we expect him and Miss Shiela directly ; 
 if you would wait — " 
 
 " Not at home ! Could I see Mr. Fitz- 
 gerald for a moment — on very pressing 
 business." 
 
 " I'll see, sir. What name did you 
 say ? " 
 
 He had not given his name, and he 
 thought it would save time to remain still 
 anonymous. 
 
 11 Say a messenger from Miss Fitzgerald." 
 
 "Miss Shiela, sir! there's nothing — " 
 
 " No, no ; she's quite safe ; but I must 
 see her father at once," Dundas replied im- 
 patiently. 
 
 In another minute Ralph Fitzgerald
 
 A GERALDINE. 157 
 
 hurried into the room, only to be brought 
 up abruptly at sight of Dundas. 
 
 " Mr. Dundas ! " he exclaimed in a tone 
 of by no means joyous surprise. 
 
 lC Your son has not returned ? ' Dundas 
 asked with an anxiety which alarmed Ralph 
 out of all thought of the unwelcomeness of 
 his visitor. 
 
 1 No ; has — has anything happened ? ' 
 
 he stammered. 
 
 Dundas explained matters in as few 
 words as possible. 
 
 " Good God ! they have murdered him ! '•' 
 Ralph exclaimed, plainly without having given 
 Shiela's danger and escape a single thought. 
 
 " No, no ; why should they ? They 
 would gain nothing by that. He has pro- 
 bably found that they were making for some 
 other house and has followed them there. 
 If they were making for this, they would 
 have been here long since."
 
 15?' A GERALDINE. 
 
 "What's to be clone? What's to be 
 done?" reiterated Ralph, distractedly. 
 
 " It is possible," said Dundas, after a 
 moment's thought, " that he has stolen upon 
 them while in consultation and has waited to 
 overhear their plans. If so, he'll be here 
 
 soon." 
 
 " But if they caught him?" 
 
 " If they had, they'd have been here by 
 this," Dundas answered not very logi- 
 cally. " I mean they'd have been certain to 
 come then, when the house was defence- 
 less. 
 
 il I don't know what to do," Ralph cried 
 helplessly. 
 
 "If you will barricade the house till the 
 police come, I shall search the wood," Dun- 
 das suggested. 
 
 " I shall go with you," Ralph exclaimed 
 eagerly. 
 
 "No, no; there's Mrs. Fitzgerald to pro-
 
 A GERALDINE. 159 
 
 tect, and the house to make secure. Have 
 you got a dark lantern ? " 
 
 u Yes, I think so. There's Patsey ; you 
 might take Patsey ; he knows every inch 
 of the wood — only, it's as likely as not, he's 
 in with the scoundrels." 
 
 " In that case, you'd best post Patsey in 
 the coal-cellar and lock him in. Can I have 
 the lantern ? " 
 
 Dundas's cool, commanding manner had 
 a mesmeric effect upon Ralph, as, indeed, it 
 usually had in hours of danger upon every- 
 one brought under its influence. Ralph, for 
 instance, after he had procured the lantern, 
 took his orders from him about the barri- 
 cading of the house with childlike docility. 
 
 c< You'll come back here?' he asked ap- 
 pealingly, when Dundas had concluded his 
 tactical lecture. 
 
 "Yes; when I have thoroughly searched 
 the wood," he answered as he tried the light
 
 I CO A GERALDINI.. 
 
 of the lantern by flashing it down the dark 
 passage leading from the hall to the top of 
 the kitchen stairs. Darkening it again, he 
 set out upon a quest from which he did not 
 hope very much more than that it would 
 tranquillise Shiela's father's doting anxiety 
 about his son. However, he feared as little 
 as he hoped from it, though he had left the 
 captured gun behind him, because Ralph 
 had only two light fowling-pieces, and be- 
 cause the clumsy weapon would but impede 
 his progress and his search through the 
 wood. 
 
 A few minutes later, our friend, the ser- 
 geant, accompanied by a single constable, 
 arrived. By an odd coincidence this was 
 the third moonlighting alarm the police had 
 had that night, and, therefore, no greater 
 force could be spared to Cahircalla from the 
 barracks than these two. When Sergeant 
 Casey — a mule-headed officer with a good
 
 A GERALDINE. l6l 
 
 deal of that sordid and short-sighted clever- 
 ness which is the whole stock-in-trade of 
 second-class attorneys and detectives — heard 
 of Dundas's amateur policemanship, he shook 
 his sage head. 
 
 ' c He's mixed up with them himself and 
 has just gone to warn 'em. Isn't he hand 
 and glove with Claughessy and his like ? 
 He's just gone to give 'em ' the office,' and 
 nothing else/' he pronounced dogmatically. 
 He would then have proceeded to give for 
 the hundredth time, his indignant and de- 
 tailed account of Dundas's rebellious con- 
 tempt for law and order as impersonated by 
 him — the sergeant — when Ralph interrupted 
 him to urge that either he or the constable, or 
 both, should hurry to his son's rescue. 
 
 " He's unarmed," he pleaded, referring 
 to Dundas, " he left that fellow's gun with 
 
 me. 
 
 " I thought so," rejoined the sergeant 
 
 L
 
 1 62 A GERALDIXE. 
 
 triumphantly. '' Hes nothing to fear from 
 them." 
 
 Perhaps the knowledge that this murder- 
 ous American rowdy was unarmed had 
 something to do with the sergeant's offer 
 to search the wood, which he felt sure would, 
 before this, have been vacated by the Moon- 
 lighters. Certainly, the dread that Dundas's 
 courage and promptitude would be con- 
 trasted by the papers, and perhaps by his 
 officers, with his own secure supineness (it 
 he stayed to garrison Cahircalla), had a good 
 deal to do with his volunteering to go alone 
 on this search expedition, leaving the other 
 constable to guard the house. ■ 
 
 Let us now return for a moment to Dick. 
 Having despatched Shiela for the police, 
 he stole along the narrow and tortuous path 
 towards Cahircalla, stopping to listen when 
 he had stumbled or had crunched a dead 
 stick under his foot. When he was about
 
 A GERALDINE. 1 63 
 
 half way through the wood he so stopped, 
 after a stumble which had flung him head- 
 long with a crash into some brushwood, and 
 he then thought he heard a voice whisper 
 — " Whisht ! ' He stood stockstill, after he 
 had recovered himself, to listen with sus- 
 pended breath for nearly a minute. But 
 there was no stir or sound of any kind to 
 break the profound stillness. As he could 
 not persuade himself that he had merely 
 imagined this whispered " Whisht! " he pro- 
 ceeded with redoubled stealth and caution — 
 an unfortunate mistake. If he had made 
 boldly through the wood the men would 
 not have meddled with him. They could 
 not have recognised him, and they would 
 not, therefore, have suspected of espionage 
 an unknown man who was forcing his way 
 carelessly and noisily through the under- 
 wood. Now, however, Dick's extreme care 
 and caution in stealing his way left men
 
 164 A GERALDINE. 
 
 with a guilty conscience in no doubt what- 
 ever that he was dogging them clown. Ac- 
 cordingly they waited until he had crept a 
 few paces farther, which brought him within 
 arm's length of the leader of the band, who 
 dealt him a crushing blow with a bludgeon 
 on the back of the head. Dick dropped 
 like a stone. 
 
 " Begorra, Mick, you've finished him ! ' 
 cried one of the men in a horrified tone. 
 
 " Is it a peeler ?' whispered another. 
 
 Mick made no answer for a moment or 
 two, as he had knelt down beside Dick to 
 feel if his heart beat. '' He's all right," he 
 said then in a tone of great relief. " He's 
 not goin' yet — I've only given him a sleepin' 
 dose that'll keep him quiet a bit." 
 
 " Is it a peeler?' again asked the other 
 man. 
 
 " No ; it's only young Fitzgerald, I'm 
 thinkinV
 
 A GERALDINE. 165 
 
 The first speaker made a sucking noise 
 with his tongue against the roof of his 
 mouth, expressive of shocked dismay. 
 
 ''There'll be the clivil an' all to pay ! ' he 
 said. 
 
 " We're not goin' to pay it anyway," Mick 
 answered philosophically. " Come on, boys, 
 out of this." 
 
 Accordingly they hurried away, leaving 
 Dick to take his own time — a good long 
 time — to recover from his u sleeping dose." 
 When he did at last come to, it was so 
 slowly that fully five minutes elapsed before 
 he could confusedly recall where he was and 
 what had happened. He then sat up with 
 extreme caution, in part, because at the 
 slightest movement a tossing sea of pain 
 seemed to surge up on all sides in his brain ; 
 and in part because he feared that his assail- 
 ants might still be near. Having no idea 
 that he had been nearly an hour insensible,
 
 1 66 A GERALD1NE. 
 
 or indeed more than a few moments, he 
 dreaded to recall, by the least movement or 
 sound, the Moonlighters to finish their work 
 upon him. Having sat up thus for a little, 
 listening, as far as the stupefying throbbing 
 of his brain would allow him, for the slight- 
 est sound, he lay down again for relief and 
 rest, closed his eyes, and sank half way 
 back into insensibility. Out of this semi- 
 conscious state he was thoroughly roused 
 by three sharp revolver reports fired almost 
 like a volley, which seemed in the stillness 
 of the night to have been discharged at his 
 very ear. He sprang up again into a sit- 
 ting posture to listen, but the most profound 
 silence had closed over the reports. Hav- 
 ing sat thus listening breathlessly for a few 
 minutes without hearing another sound of 
 any sort, he struggled to his feet, and 
 staggered unsteadily, groping his way from 
 tree to tree, as noiselessly as he could.
 
 A GERALDINE. 167 
 
 Presently he saw a light in the distance, 
 towards which he made with increased cau- 
 tion. When at last he had crept so near it 
 that no tree obstructed his view, he saw a 
 man kneeling beside the prostrate body of 
 a policeman, busy opening his tunic, vest 
 and shirt, evidently to examine a wound. 
 Having examined it carefully by the light 
 of a lamp he held in his hand, he rose to his 
 feet, disclosing to Dick the face of Dundas. 
 Dick, being of his father's suspicious tempera- 
 ment, detesting Dundas, and remembering 
 his recent relations with the police, felt a 
 sudden conviction that he had murdered the 
 man at his feet. If he had, what scruple 
 would he feel in murdering him — Dick — 
 also, as the sole witness that could be pro- 
 duced against him ? Dick was thoroughly 
 unnerved, as well he might be, by the blow 
 which had knocked him insensible, but in 
 his stoutest moments he would have thought
 
 1 68 A GERALD1NB. 
 
 once, twice, or thrice before running a risk of 
 this kind. As the thought of it occurred to 
 him, he shrank back behind the nearest tree, 
 and watched Dundas's movements from this 
 covert. He saw him stoop to pick up a 
 revolver which lay at his feet, put it in his 
 pocket, throw the light of the lantern all 
 round to search with his keen eye every inch 
 of the ground, and then turn in a direction 
 at right angles to Dick's road home. Hav- 
 ing given him time to get well out of his 
 way, Dick made all the haste home he could. 
 As he w r ent he wondered whether it could 
 have been Dundas who had dealt him that 
 treacherous blow, but this idea he presently 
 put aside as incredible, and in discarding it 
 he was led for a moment to doubt Dundas's 
 murder of the policeman. Was it not more 
 probable that the murderer was the man 
 who had bludgeoned him, and that Dundas 
 had been, like himself, attracted to the spot
 
 A GERALDINE. 1 69 
 
 by the report of the revolver ? But, again, 
 what had brought the police into the wood ? 
 Had Shiela had time to send them? If so, 
 Dick must have been so long insensible that 
 the ruffian who had bludgeoned him would 
 certainly not have been found still in the 
 wood. By the time Dick had reached this 
 point in his slowly worked out reasonings he 
 found himself in sight of the house, which, 
 with all its windows barred and barricaded, 
 looked ominously black. Had the Moon- 
 lighters already visited it and perhaps 
 slaughtered the whole household ? Even 
 this wholesale horror seemed possible to 
 Dick in his unnerved state. On approach- 
 ing the house cautiously, however, he was 
 reassured by seeing here and there lights 
 filtered through gaps or slits of the shutters, 
 and when he reached the door the unmis- 
 takable policeman's tramp back and forwards 
 in the hall emboldened him to knock loudly.
 
 170 A GERALDINE. 
 
 Before the constable could challenge Dick, 
 his father, recognising his knock, had rushed 
 to the door, which he unbarred and unlocked 
 with tremulous hands. 
 
 " Dick, what has happened ? he ex- 
 claimed at sight of Dick's deadly white 
 face. 
 
 " I got a knock on the head," Dick an- 
 swered, as he seated himself upon the near- 
 est hall chair. " Get me a drop of whisky. 
 Has Shiela returned ? " 
 
 " No ; she's had a narrow escape of being 
 brained, too, and is at that man Dundas's 
 house. Didn't you — " 
 
 " Dundas ! I say," Dick cried turning to 
 the constable, " there's one of your men 
 murdered in the wood." 
 
 " Sergeant Casey ! ' exclaimed the con- 
 stable. 
 
 " I don't know who it is. I heard a shot. 
 and made for the place it came from, and
 
 A GERALDINE. 171 
 
 saw Dundas kneeling beside the body ex- 
 amining the wound." 
 
 " By God ! he has murdered him ! ' cried 
 the constable. 
 
 " Someone has murdered him anyway. 
 When I've got myself together I'll show 
 you where he lies." 
 
 " You're not fit to go back," his father 
 urged timorously. 
 
 " Oh, I'll be all right when I've had a 
 drop of whisky." 
 
 When his father had hurried away to 
 get some whisky, Dick asked the con- 
 stable — " Those scoundrels haven't been 
 here ? " 
 
 " No, sir, nor won't come now, I'm 
 thinkin'. I suppose he's dead intirely, sir ? ' 
 
 " I'm afraid so." 
 
 " Think of that now ; he seen it comin', 
 he did so." 
 
 " Mother, I wish you'd send at once for
 
 172 A GERALDINE. 
 
 Shiela," Dick cried as Mrs. Fitzgerald 
 hurried towards him. 
 
 " Yes, yes, dear. Where was it ? Was 
 it a blow or — or a wound ? ' she asked, for 
 she could not bring herself to say a bullet 
 wound. 
 
 "It was a blow from behind. There, that 
 will do, mother. Patsey could bring her 
 home in the brougham." 
 
 "Yes, dear; he can call for her coming 
 back from the doctor's. We must have Dr. 
 Cullinan, Ralph," she said almost defiantly 
 to her husband, who had returned with some 
 whisky and water. 
 
 "Very well, very well," he answered im- 
 patiently ; though in his heart he was glad 
 of her determination to send for the offend- 
 ing doctor. Dick also was glad of it, for 
 upon drinking the spirits and water, the in- 
 tolerable pain in the head, which his ex- 
 citement about the sergeant's murder had
 
 A GERALDINE. 173 
 
 abated, returned in redoubled force and 
 fierceness. As, however, he adhered, in 
 spite of the remonstrances of both parents, 
 to his resolve to show the constable where 
 the sergeant's body lay, the three set out 
 together, for Mr. Fitzgerald would not allow 
 Dick in his present state out of his sight for 
 a moment. They might have had some 
 scruple in leaving the house defenceless if 
 Dick had not discovered, to his own great 
 astonishment, that it was now more than an 
 hour and a half since he had been felled in 
 the wood. 
 
 " By Jove," he cried, " I was a whole hour 
 at least lying like a log there ! They must 
 have thought they'd done for me and bolted 
 at once." 
 
 " Then who shot the sergeant ? ' asked 
 his father. 
 
 " It wasn't thim," the constable answered, 
 grimly and significantly.
 
 1/4 A GERALDINE. 
 
 u It couldn't have been," said Dick. 
 " They'd not wait an hour loafing about 
 the wood after a job like that." 
 
 " It wasn't thim" reiterated Brady, with 
 vindictive emphasis. 
 
 There followed a significant silence, which 
 was unbroken till they neared the spot where 
 the murdered man lay. 
 
 ''There's a light!' exclaimed the con- 
 stable, instantaneously darkening his own 
 lantern. All three instinctively stopped, 
 and then crept onwards with extreme cau- 
 tion. When they came in sight of the 
 murdered man they saw Dun das by the 
 light of the lantern, which was set upon 
 the ground, draw out the sergeant's revolver 
 from his belt and deliberately discharge it 
 twice into the air. 
 
 "That's his defince ! ' Brady whispered 
 hoarsely, " that the sergeant fired first. 
 That's his game ! Ye seen it for yerselves."
 
 A GERALDIXE. 175 
 
 Certainly it looked like it. Having dis- 
 charged the revolver, he looked searchingly 
 all around, as though to make sure that he 
 was unobserved, and then he perceived 
 Ralph, Dick, and Brady advancing together 
 towards him. 
 
 " Halloa!" he cried, without seeming to be 
 in the least disconcerted. " The sergeant 
 has been murdered." 
 
 " Ay, he's been murthered, and who's 
 done it ? ' Brady growled savagely. 
 
 Dundas turned upon him a look that 
 cowed him. " You've been drinking, my 
 man, instead of attending to your duty, 
 which might have prevented this." 
 
 u He was on duty in my house, and is 
 perfectly sober," Ralph cried defiantly. 
 
 " Oh, it's from you he's taken his tone," 
 Dundas answered, looking down upon Ralph 
 with surprised scorn. 
 
 "He wants to know, as I want to know,
 
 176 A GERALDINE. 
 
 who has done this deed ? ' Ralph retorted, in 
 a tone which charged Dundas with the 
 murder. 
 
 Dundas looked from one to the other with 
 such supreme scorn in his expression that 
 only the stolid constable was unshaken in 
 his suspicion by it. 
 
 " I shall leave you to find it out for your 
 selves, then," he said, turning to walk away 
 quietly. 
 
 " Halloa, stop ! ' cried the constable. 
 
 " Yes," Dundas answered, turning round 
 so sharply and fiercely upon him, that 
 Brady, instead of arresting him upon the 
 charge as he had intended, stammered 
 only — 
 
 " You've got the sergeant's revolver." 
 
 Dundas, who had forgotten that he still 
 held it in his hand, tossed it to the man's 
 feet, and without another word stalked 
 away.
 
 A GERALDINE. 1 77 
 
 " I was thinkin' I ought to wait for a 
 warrant from your worship," the constable 
 said apologetically, turning to Ralph as a 
 magistrate, for he feared he had shown the 
 white feather too plainly. 
 
 " I don't know what to think," Ralph re- 
 plied doubtfully. 
 
 Dick, who had meanwhile picked up and 
 examined the sergeant's revolver, observed 
 significantly — 
 
 "There are only the two chambers dis- 
 charged." 
 
 "He didn't give him a chance — not 
 the ghosht of a chance," Brady said, 
 looking down upon the dead sergeant 
 pitifully. " But he'd have shtood to it 
 that it was a fair fight in self-defince if 
 we hadn't seen him fire that off twice 
 himself." 
 
 " I tell you what," cried Dick, " his own 
 revolver must have been an American six- 
 
 M
 
 178 A GERALDINE. 
 
 shooter, and if the bullets in the body fit 
 it the case is proved." 
 
 c< Ah, if Misther Tamplin had only al- 
 lowed poor Casey to take it aff him, he'd 
 be livin' yet. It was it that made thim 
 holes in him, as he knew well it would. 
 He says to me wan day, whin he was 
 showin' me thim quare kind of American 
 carthridges he found in his house, he 
 says — " 
 
 a You've got the cartridges ! ' Dick ex- 
 claimed. tl That will settle it one way or 
 the other."
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 WE MUST FIND THE MAN. 
 
 So absorbed was Mrs. Fitzgerald in thought 
 and care of her idolised son, that she ab- 
 solutely forgot to bid Patsey call for her un- 
 regarded daughter on his way back from the 
 doctor's. Accordingly, Dundas found Shiela 
 still in Ouarry Cottage on his return from 
 Cahircalla. During those two hours of 
 agonised suspense, Shiela had never ceased 
 to reproach herself for not having returned 
 home to share the dangers of the household 
 and to be of what service or comfort she 
 could to her people. 
 
 On Dundas's appearance she sprang up 
 
 179
 
 180 A GERALDINE. 
 
 eagerly to look the questions she dared not 
 ask. 
 
 a They're all right," he hastened to say 
 with a reassuring smile. "Your house was 
 not attacked at all." 
 
 " There's something wrong?" she insisted, 
 for she had read this in his clouded face be- 
 fore he had smiled to reassure her. 
 
 " A police-sergeant has been murdered 
 in the wood," he answered gravely. 
 
 " Oh ! " she exclaimed in a long breath of 
 horror. "Is Dick — my brother — did you 
 see him ? ' 
 
 "Yes ; he's quite safe." 
 
 Shiela drew a long breath of relief. " It 
 must have been those men," she said pre- 
 sently. 
 
 " You wouldn't suspect me of it ? ' he 
 asked, smiling down upon her with a wistful 
 and almost yearning look in his grey eyes, 
 which haunted her afterwards for many a day.
 
 A GERALDINE. l8l 
 
 " You ! " she exclaimed. 
 
 " Yes ; your father and brother do." 
 
 " Suspect you of murder ! ' 
 
 He nodded lightly enough, but his eyes 
 searched her face appealingly. 
 
 " There's some mistake," she stammered. 
 
 " Not about their suspecting me. Your 
 father charged me with it almost expressly." 
 
 <c He couldn't have meant it. You must 
 be mistaken," she said, with a vehemence 
 which really indicated that she was trying to 
 convince herself quite as much as Dundas 
 that her father was incapable of so monstrous 
 a suspicion. 
 
 " Yes, he meant it ; but I don't want you 
 to believe it." Nothing could be more 
 commonplace than the words, but the ac- 
 companying tone and look said as plainly as 
 words, "only that matters." 
 
 In answer she only shook her head de- 
 cidedly, with lowered eyes and blushing face.
 
 182 A GERALDINE. 
 
 '' May I see you home ? ' he asked after a 
 slight pause. "It sounds inhospitable ; but 
 they will be more anxious now than ever to 
 have you safe back." 
 
 " I owe it to you — my safety and my life 
 to you," she murmured. " I cannot but 
 think you have misjudged my father." 
 
 " Well, you'll soon know who has been 
 misjudged," he answered with a sigh, as they 
 quitted the cottage together. 
 
 After a silence of some seconds he began 
 with the courage of the darkness : 
 
 "I do not know when I may see you 
 again — or at least be allowed to speak to you 
 — and this must be my excuse for apologis- 
 ing now for my — my insolent presumption 
 that day — I mean after your accident — when 
 I said — " here he paused for a moment, and 
 then corrected himself — " when I orteredfto 
 carry you down to the carriage." 
 
 u I was quite well able to walk." she said
 
 A GERALDINE. 183 
 
 in a low voice which told him that she knew 
 for what he was really apologising. 
 
 " I had been living like a savage among 
 savages for years, and had got into their 
 brutal ways, I did not know how deeply un- 
 til that day. But I have expiated it since, I 
 assure you. I never regretted anything so 
 bitterly." 
 
 From another this would have sounded 
 an absurdly and insincerely disproportionate 
 apology ; but his quiet, strong, intense way 
 of speaking left Shiela in no doubt that he 
 meant rather more than less than he said. 
 
 As she made no immediate answer, he 
 added — 
 
 " I know I ought to apologise even for my 
 apology ; but I could not bear you to go on 
 thinking me so foolishly and insolently pre- 
 sumptuous, and this was my only chance to 
 say that you could not have been more dis- 
 gusted with me than I was with myself. I
 
 1 84 A GERALDINE. 
 
 shall not now be allowed another chance," he 
 added tremulously. 
 
 Here Shiela stumbled over a stone in the 
 steep and rugged path and in the black dark- 
 ness. 
 
 " Will you take my arm ? ' he asked in a 
 tone of diffident entreaty. 
 
 She took it at once, and he could 
 feel the hand she laid within his arm 
 tremble. 
 
 " My father cannot go on thinking this 
 horrible thing, even if he thinks it now," she 
 said. 
 
 " But he could not think it now, if he was 
 not so desperately prejudiced against me 
 politically ; and that prejudice will remain. 
 I declare I should not have had the heart to 
 come back, if I had had an idea of the em- 
 bittered state of this country ; and I should 
 return to-morrow to the States but for — " 
 
 Here he paused upon the very brink — as
 
 A GERALDINE. 1 85 
 
 he considered it — of repeating the presump- 
 tion for which he had just apologised. 
 
 Perhaps Shiela understood him, for she 
 made all haste away from the subject. 
 
 " Did they take that man up ? " she asked, 
 pertinently enough ; for they were now at 
 the spot where her assailant had been 
 knocked down by Dundas. 
 
 " He took himself up ; or someone shovel- 
 led him out of the road ; for he was gone 
 when I passed here on the way to your 
 house. The other side will put him down to 
 my account — fairly enough, though." 
 
 fi Do you mean — do you think," Shiela 
 cried, half stopping in her excitement, " that 
 they will try to shoot you for that ? " 
 
 " Pooh ! no ; not they — I never thought 
 of such a thing." 
 
 But the idea so took hold of her ima^ina- 
 tion that she quickened her pace uncon- 
 sciously, glancing fearfully as she did so at
 
 1 86 A GERALDINE. 
 
 each side of the road — though she could not 
 see a foot before her. 
 
 u You'll have to come back this way 
 alone," she said. 
 
 The anxiety in her tone thrilled him 
 through. As he knew that she was not at 
 all given to foolish fears, or to the foolish ex- 
 pression of them, he could set down the 
 terror of her tone only to an interest in him 
 that he had not dared to hope for. 
 
 " There's not the very slightest fear of 
 anything of the sort — not the very slightest, 
 really," he reiterated earnestly. 
 
 Whereupon she became ashamed of her 
 betrayal of anxiety, as though it were a be- 
 trayal of herself. " I'm afraid my nerves 
 have got rather a shake to-night," she said in 
 her usual tone, " but it is a lonely road." 
 
 11 I've £ot used to it. I've smoked my 
 evening cigar along it every night since — 
 since I called that evening of the accident to
 
 A GERALDINK. 1 87 
 
 ask how you were, and was threatened by 
 your father to be given in charge for trespas- 
 sing ! " he said, laughing. 
 
 " Was it for that you came?' Shiela 
 asked nervously. 
 
 " Yes, and I've never missed an evening 
 since, though I dared not trespass again," he 
 said with a laugh, followed by a sigh. As 
 she remained silent — not certainly from any 
 sense of offence — he ventured to add — " It 
 was w r ell worth while for to-night's sake." 
 
 " I have not even thanked you," she said. 
 
 " Well worth while for me, I meant, of 
 course," he hastened to explain. " Anyone 
 who had the good fortune to meet you at the 
 moment would have been of the same ser- 
 vice. You cannot fancy anyone not doing 
 it ; can you ? That will show you how small 
 and commonplace a thing it was to do." 
 
 "At least I can fancy many who couldn't 
 do it. He was a very powerful man," Shiela
 
 1 88 A GERALDINE. 
 
 answered, for no one could appreciate more 
 highly than she Dundas's iron strength and 
 nerve. 
 
 " He knocked himself down really by the 
 force of his rush against my fist. Xo ; it 
 was a piece of great good fortune for me ; 
 and I wanted it. I was beginning to de- 
 spair of seeing you ; and even if I had seen 
 you under other circumstances, you would 
 have cut me." 
 
 As she could not deny that she would at 
 least have been inclined to cut him, she re- 
 mained silent — an instance of honesty which 
 deeply intensified his admiration. 
 
 " When you cut me in future — as you must 
 — I shall know that it is not because you 
 misjudge me." 
 
 " They cannot ask me. I owe you too 
 much. I cannot do it," she stammered in 
 great agitation. 
 
 tc Do not put it on that ground," he
 
 A GERALDINE. 1 89 
 
 pleaded earnestly. " You owe me nothing — 
 nothing really — except to believe that I have 
 never done anything to deserve your con- 
 tempt." 
 
 " Oh ! " she exclaimed in a tone which ex- 
 pressed that to think otherwise was not now 
 possible to her. 
 
 " I never did, even before I knew you ; 
 and I never could since," he said with a 
 deliberate earnestness which showed that he 
 was speaking the mere and bare truth — in 
 spite of the hollow ring of compliment which 
 the words, otherwise uttered, would have 
 suggested. 
 
 In truth, it seemed to him — and to her 
 also, I must confess — that they had known 
 each other for a very long time ! 
 
 "We live in deeds, not years ; in thoughts, not breaths ; 
 In feelings, not in figures on a dial, 
 We should count time by heart-throbs."
 
 190 A SERALDINE. 
 
 There was some moments' silence before 
 he said in a quiet tone of resolution and of 
 confidence — u I shall live all this senseless 
 prejudice down ; ' and then, after a slight 
 pause, he asked, in a low voice thrilling with 
 feeling — " We shall be friends till then ? " 
 taking her hand in his. 
 
 " Yes," she answered, tremulously, slightly 
 returning the pressure. 
 
 At this moment the lights of a carriage 
 came in sight, and as it neared them Shiela 
 cried — " It is ours ! There's something 
 the matter ! " 
 
 " No, no ; they've only sent it for you," 
 he answered, reassuringly, for in her un- 
 nerved state she was quick to fancy all kinds 
 of disasters. He hailed the driver (who 
 was the lodge-keeper, Patsey being otherwise 
 engaged), and he pulled up on recognising 
 Shiela, while at the same moment the doctor 
 put his head out of the carriage window.
 
 A GERALDINE. I9 1 
 
 " Halloa ! I thought you were in jail ! ' 
 he cried to Dundas. " Has an angel bailed 
 you out, like St. Peter ? " glancing at 
 Shiela. " I was just going to fetch you, 
 Miss Shiela. Come in, both of ye. Come 
 along," he said to Dundas, who hesitated. 
 " I shall have the carriage disinfected to- 
 morrow after you — not with sulphur, 
 though — that would be homeopathic." 
 
 When they had got in, the doctor shouted 
 to the driver — "Take your time goinof 
 back." 
 
 " I will, surr ; I will," and he certainly 
 did. 
 
 "Well, so you murdered the sergeant?' 
 the doctor said, when he had drawn in his 
 head after having given the driver this 
 direction. " By the way, your brother will 
 be all right in a week, Miss Shiela." 
 
 " Dick ! " she cried, glancing almost re- 
 proachfully at Dundas.
 
 192 A GERALDINE. 
 
 ''Didn't he tell you?" asked the doctor, 
 whose quick eye had noticed her look. 
 " Perhaps it was he who had knocked him 
 on the head, as he seems to have been 
 running a-muck to-night." 
 
 " Is he much hurt ? ' Shiela asked 
 anxiously. 
 
 " He got a very hard knock, but on a 
 very hard head — the blow of a ram on a 
 ram's skull. He'll be all right in a few 
 days." 
 
 ''They attacked the house after all?' 
 asked Dundas. 
 
 " Not they. He got it three hours ago 
 in the wood, and lay there insensible for 
 an hour or more ; but he woke up in time 
 to see you make sure that you had done 
 for the sergeant. I declare the police and 
 magistrates of this country would believe 
 anything of anyone who was not a Coer- 
 cionist ! " the doctor exclaimed indignantly.
 
 A GERALDINE. 193 
 
 "What kept them all that time in the 
 wood? Poaching?" Dundas asked per- 
 plexedly. 
 
 <c No ; there's nothing there to poach — 
 not a rabbit, even. Besides, they'd certainly 
 bolt after knocking him on the head, 
 whether they thought they'd murdered him 
 or only stunned him. They'd be afraid of 
 a hue and cry in the one case, and of himself 
 coming to and giving the alarm in the 
 other. I can't make it out. You saw no 
 signs of them ? " 
 
 " I heard the revolver shots and hurried 
 
 in their direction as quickly as I could 
 
 through the underwood, but only found the 
 
 dead body of the sergeant with my own 
 
 six-shooter within a few feet of him on the 
 
 ground." 
 
 "What!' cried the doctor in a startled 
 
 tone. 
 
 "It was stolen from me (by one of those 
 
 tn
 
 194 A GERALDINE. 
 
 quarrymen, I guess) the day before the 
 police came with that search-warrant." 
 
 " By the Lord ! " cried the doctor in 
 irrepressible alarm. 
 
 " You mean it will make against me ? ' 
 Dundas asked in his usual cool tone. 
 
 11 Did you tell them it was stolen from 
 you ? 
 
 " The police ? No. They were so out- 
 rageously insolent that I gave them all 
 the trouble I could." 
 
 " Did you tell anyone ? ' 
 
 " Only Dunscombe." 
 
 There was silence for some moments 
 while the doctor meditated gloomily upon 
 the situation. 
 
 "Why do you suspect a quarryman ? " he 
 asked presently, in the hope of seeing light 
 from this side. 
 
 " I took off my coat in the quarry to 
 show the men how to lift a stone on to the
 
 A GERALDINE. 1 95 
 
 trolly, which two of them were boggling 
 over, and I think it must have been taken 
 out of my pocket then." 
 
 " Then you asked them about it ? ' 
 
 " No ; I didn't miss it for hours after, and 
 I couldn't be sure it was one of them stole 
 it. I might have dropped it out of my 
 pocket when I took off my coat : though 
 I don't think I did." 
 
 u Nor I," ^rejoined the doctor, dryly. 
 "Well, there's Dunscombe anyway," he 
 added, in an " I-like-not-the-security " tone. 
 
 " You don't think his word will go for 
 much ? ' asked Dundas, rather humorously 
 than anxiously. 
 
 " Not in this country. In this country 
 you can get any kind of affidavit, oath, or 
 alibi you need — against the Crown — as 
 cheap as a moonlighter's mask." 
 
 " By George ! It looks serious ! ' Dun- 
 das said, after a pause.
 
 196 A GERALDINE. 
 
 " We must find the man who did it," the 
 doctor pronounced decisively. " The police 
 won't. They never do, to begin with. 
 They find the men who didn't do it every 
 other day ; but the real culprit, hardly ever. 
 In fact, they are only soldiers in green, and 
 are as fit for running down a criminal as a 
 bulldog is fit for running down a fox. But, 
 besides, in your case they won't want to find 
 anyone else," 
 
 -What!" 
 
 " Oh, well, I don't mean that they would 
 hold on to you, if they knew you to be the 
 wrong man ; but, of course, the wish is 
 father to the thought with them as with 
 most people ; and you've got rather deep 
 into their black books." 
 
 "So that they'll not even try to find the 
 man ! " 
 
 " They'll want a bit of driving in that 
 direction — and they'll get it."
 
 A GERALDIXE. 1 97 
 
 " It's a very ugly business," Dundas said, 
 after a silence of some moments. " I hadn't 
 the least idea how serious it was." 
 
 "It will give you a lot of trouble and 
 annoyance ; but it will come right in the 
 end, never fear. Now, there's — " 
 
 " I declare," broke in Dundas, who had 
 not been listening to the doctor's cold com- 
 fort — " I declare I can hardly blame them 
 myself; for it's about as strong a circum- 
 stantial case against me as my worst enemy 
 could wish for ! " 
 
 "We must find the right man," reiterated 
 the doctor. 
 
 Here the carriage pulled up at the avenue 
 gate, and Dundas got out. 
 
 " Walk slowly ; I shall overtake you in 
 two minutes, when I have delivered Miss 
 Shiela safe and sound." 
 
 Shiela, who had also come to realise 
 Dundas's terrible position, kept the hand he
 
 IQ& A GERALDINE. 
 
 held out to her for an appreciable time, and 
 gave it an appreciable pressure. Her whole 
 heart went out to the man in his great 
 trouble.
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 COMMITTED FOR TRIAL. 
 
 The doctor did not overtake Dundas, as 
 he had promised and intended. When he 
 reached the house he found that the body of 
 the murdered sergeant had just been brought 
 into it upon a shutter by four men, and he 
 had to go through the form of examining it 
 to make sure that not a spark of life was 
 unextinguished. 
 
 " Death was instantaneous," he pronounced 
 after this examination, " and would have 
 been instantaneous if he had had a dozen 
 lives. Almost a volley of bullets has been 
 
 fired point blank into his heart." 
 
 199
 
 200 A GERALDINE. 
 
 " The bullets are there ?' asked Ralph. 
 
 " Yes ; there's not much doubt about that." 
 
 " They 11 hang him," growled Brady. 
 
 " They'll not help you much, as the re- 
 volver was stolen and was left on the 
 ground," the doctor said, quietly. 
 
 "How do you know?' asked Ralph, 
 sharply. 
 
 11 From Mr. Dundas. He picked it up 
 and found it to be one that was stolen from 
 him some days since." 
 
 " That bates all ! ' cried Brady, slapping 
 his thigh with his hand ; while Ralph was 
 not less scornfully impressed by the puerility 
 and transparency of this preposterous 
 story. 
 
 " I'll make out a warrant for his immedi- 
 ate arrest," he said, decidedly. " Tell 
 Patsey not to unharness the horse," he cried 
 to a maid in the background, who was 
 crossing herself and muttering pious ejacula-
 
 A GERALDINE. 201 
 
 tions at sight of the corpse. Turning then 
 to Brady, he said — " He'll drive you to the 
 barracks, where you can get a couple of 
 men to make an immediate arrest. There's 
 not a moment to be lost with a man like 
 that — not a moment ! " 
 
 Thus the result of the doctor's well-in- 
 tentioned intervention was Dundas's immedi- 
 ate arrest and lodgment for the night in 
 the police barracks. 
 
 Next morning the case looked blacker 
 still against the prisoner ; for information 
 reached the barracks of a Moonlighters' raid 
 the night before on a house which could 
 be reached most conveniently through Dun- 
 ran Wood, and which was, it appeared, 
 reached in or about the time that the ser- 
 geant was murdered. There could be no 
 reasonable doubt, upon a comparison of the 
 hours and of the scenes of the different out- 
 rages, that these Moonlighters were Dick's
 
 202 A GERALDINE. 
 
 assailants, but were not the murderers of 
 Sergeant Casey. 
 
 It was not to be wondered at, therefore, 
 that when Dundas was brought before the 
 magistrates, and was remanded for a week 
 for Dick's appearance, bail w T as decidedly 
 refused. Indeed, the only result of applying 
 for it was the dismissal of the doctor 
 (because he had offered bail for Dundas to 
 any amount within his means) for the second 
 time by the enraged Ralph. This dismissal 
 was a very much less serious matter to the 
 doctor than it was to Shiela, who was thus 
 left without anyone to whom she could 
 speak, or from whom she could hear about 
 a man whose ereat and undeserved trouble 
 had done more for him in her heart than 
 any of the qualities for which she ad- 
 mired him. Here is a striking remark 
 of Heine's, which to me seems even 
 nearer the truth than Southerne's " Pity's
 
 A GERALDINE. 203 
 
 akin to love," or Beaumont and Flet- 
 cher's — 
 
 " Of all the paths that lead to woman's love, 
 Pity's the straightest ; " 
 
 or Shakespeare's — 
 
 " Violet — ' I pity you.' 
 Olivia — 'That's a degree to Love.' " 
 
 " To be wholly loved with the whole heart," says 
 Heine, "one must be suffering. Pity is the last con- 
 secration of Love, is perhaps Love itself." 
 
 Certainly, in the case of so proud a girl 
 as Shiela, pity was much nearer love than 
 admiration ; while, besides, only pity could 
 have perfectly effaced with her the first im- 
 pression of presumption which Dundas had 
 given her. 
 
 Another thing which did Dundas signal 
 service with her was the extreme violence 
 with which not only her father and mother,
 
 204 A OERALDINi:. 
 
 but Dick also, spoke of him. To her 
 parents' diatribes she never ventured a reply, 
 knowing" of how small account she was with 
 them, and what construction they would at 
 once put upon anything she might say in 
 Dundas's defence. But she did venture 
 upon a remonstrance with Dick, when he 
 was holding forth furiously upon this " Irish- 
 American Invincible." 
 
 "You cant believe he did it, Dick," she- 
 said, as she sat by his bed upon the morning 
 after the murder. 
 
 Dick turned his head upon the pillow 
 to stare at her, as though she had suddenly 
 gone mad. 
 
 " What do you mean ? ' he asked. 
 
 " He's the very last kind of man to 
 commit a murder." 
 
 "What do you know about him?' Dick 
 asked, half raising himself in bed, but sink- 
 ing back again.
 
 A GERALDINE. 205 
 
 '' He saved my life last night," Shiela 
 urged rather illogically. 
 
 " Really, Shiela, that's the most ridi- 
 culous thing I ever heard of! Because 
 he didn't stand by and see you murdered — 
 which no man not a dastardly moonlighter 
 could have done — he is incapable of murder- 
 ing a policeman whom he threatened to do 
 for! Don't you believe that he threatened 
 to shoot him like a dog ? Do you think 
 the police invented that ? Or do you think 
 that I invented my story, that I didn't 
 almost see him murder the man ? ' 
 
 11 You only saw him doing what you 
 would have done yourself, if you had been 
 before him — stooping down to see if the 
 sergeant was dead, or only wounded." 
 
 " Didn't I see him take up his own re- 
 volver — it was his own revolver — and make 
 off? Didn't we all see him come back to 
 fire off the sergeant's revolver to make it
 
 206 A GERALDINE. 
 
 appear that the sergeant had fired 
 first ? " 
 
 11 He probably thought there were other 
 policemen in the wood, and he wanted to 
 call their attention." 
 
 " Is that his story to you?" Dick asked, 
 looking sharply at her. 
 
 " No ; he said nothing to me about 
 it. 
 
 " I hardly thought he could have said 
 that, anyway ; it would be too idiotic. 
 Why didn't he fire off his own revolver, 
 if that was what he wanted ? There were 
 three chambers still charged. Whv didn't 
 he fire off two of them, instead of two 
 shots from the sergeant's ? " 
 
 " They might not have been charged and 
 they probably were not. The revolver was 
 stolen from him — " 
 
 " Oh, well, if you believe that audacious 
 cock-and-bull story, you'll believe anything:.
 
 A GERALDINE. 207 
 
 and there's no good talking to you at all," 
 Dick said, with supreme scorn. 
 
 " I oughtn't to talk to you at all, Dick, 
 dear," she said, remorsefully, laying her 
 soft, cool hand soothingly upon his fevered 
 forehead. " I know you've a frightful head- 
 ache." 
 
 Dick lay still and silent for a little, with 
 closed eyes ; but just as Shiela began to 
 hope he was going to sleep, he suddenly ex- 
 ploded with — 
 
 " Stolen from him, and then found by him 
 beside the body! It's the rottenest make-up 
 I ever heard. Maybe the sergeant stole it to 
 commit suicide with it, that Dundas might 
 be hanged for his murder ! Hanged he'll be, 
 unless they shut him up in an idiot asylum." 
 
 The bitterness of Dick and his father 
 towards Dundas was really surprising ; but 
 nothing could convince either of them that 
 his v reinstatement of Claughessy was not
 
 208 A GERALDINE. 
 
 meant as a personal affront to them ! 
 Indeed his supposed Nationalist politics 
 were considered as a personal affront by 
 everyone in the opposite camp, and not 
 least by Ralph and Dick Fitzgerald. It 
 never seems to have occurred to these 
 furious partisans that as, after all — assum- 
 ing Dundas to be a Nationalist — they 
 differed from him in politics as far as he 
 differed from them, the offence or affront 
 was mutual, and might therefore be can- 
 celled at once from the debit and credit 
 side of the account. But no ; if Dundas 
 had resented their politics as a personal 
 offence to himself, they would have con- 
 sidered him insane. 
 
 But the two Fitzgeralds were particularly 
 embittered against him, because he had not 
 only reinstated Claughessy, but had taken 
 part in that celebration of his reinstatement, 
 which was the occasion of much scurrilous
 
 A GERALDINE. 200 
 
 abuse being spat out upon " Ned Donegan's 
 Donkey." His rescue of Shiela might have 
 been reckoned as some set-off against his 
 offences, if she had counted for much with 
 her father, or if her rescue had counted for 
 much with her brother. But Ralph almost 
 ignored his daughter's existence, and Dick 
 thought and made as little of her rescue as 
 Dundas himself had. It was a piece of mere 
 good fortune that anyone should have met 
 her at that moment ; but whoever had 
 happened to meet her there and then could 
 have done no less than Dundas. His 
 rescue of her was therefore a happy accident, 
 and nothing more. 
 
 This way of looking at the matter relieved 
 Dick of any compunction in deluging Dun- 
 das with savage abuse privately, and in 
 colouring his evidence against him in the 
 witness-box with his own black suspicions — 
 
 that is, he described Dundas's appearance 
 
 o
 
 210 A GERALDINE. 
 
 and bearing on the night and scene of the 
 murder as those of a man confused by guilt ! 
 But indeed it needed not Dick's black 
 brush to make the case against Dundas look 
 ugly. The evidence given to criminate him, 
 when he was brought up at the week's end 
 upon remand, was nothing less than over- 
 whelming. First came the evidence of the 
 police who had heard the prisoner threaten 
 to shoot the sergeant like a dog, and who 
 had heard the sergeant more than once say 
 that the man, if not disarmed, would carry 
 out his threat. The prisoner was not dis- 
 armed because he had passed his revolver to 
 his chum, whom the police had no warrant 
 to search. Before they could get search 
 warrants against both, the murder had hap- 
 pened. It was committed with the prison- 
 er's revolver ; for the bullets extracted from 
 the body fitted its chambers, and were, 
 indeed, of the same size, shape, and peculiar
 
 A GERALDINE. 211 
 
 American make of the bullets in the cart- 
 ridges which they had found in the prisoner's 
 house. And that it was the prisoner himself 
 who committed the crime with this revolver 
 was proved by the evidence of Mr. Richard 
 Fitzgerald, who saw him a few minutes 
 after the murder, first examining the wounds 
 of the deceased, to make sure of his death, 
 and then hurrying away from the scene 
 with every sign of trepidation and guilt. 
 Nevertheless, he had returned to it on 
 second thoughts (as was proved by the 
 evidence of the two Messrs. Fitzgerald and 
 Constable Brady) in order to discharge a 
 couple of chambers of the sergeant's re- 
 volver, and so give the impression that the 
 murder was at most a manslaughter com- 
 mitted upon provocation, or in self-defence. 
 Here was a strong case, which appeared 
 even stronger in the light of the grotesque 
 defence offered by the prisoner's counsel —
 
 212 A GERALDIN& 
 
 that the revolver had been stolen from the 
 prisoner a few days before the murder, and 
 was found by him beside the sergeant's 
 corpse, and that the sergeant's revolver was 
 discharged by him (since all the chambers 
 of his own weapon were emptied) to call 
 to the spot the other policemen who were 
 probably searching the wood. There was 
 also, indeed, the feeble suggestion faintly 
 made by the prisoner's counsel that the 
 sergeant's murderer belonged to the same 
 gang as the men who had assaulted Miss 
 Fitzgerald and struck down her brother. 
 But, as there was no attempt to account for 
 the infatuation which must have kept this 
 gang in the wood inviting detection and 
 capture for a whole hour after they had 
 struck down young Mr. Fitzgerald almost 
 at his own door, and as there was conclusive 
 proof that at the moment of the murder this 
 very gang were raiding for arms a house
 
 A GERALDINE. 213 
 
 three miles away, this weak suggestion was 
 considered to be in perfect keeping with the 
 rest of the foolish defence made for the 
 prisoner. 
 
 As, however, it was the only defence that 
 could be offered, it is not to be wondered 
 at that he was committed unhesitatingly for 
 trial on a charge of " Wilful Murder."
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 A CLUE. 
 
 When Shiela read Dick's evidence next 
 morning in the newspaper she was indignant 
 — indignant with Dick ! Waiting her op- 
 portunity, she got him to herself and at once 
 
 attacked him : — 
 
 " Dick, you couldn't have said what they 
 
 make you say here ? ' producing the news- 
 paper. 
 
 "What?' he asked in perplexity. 
 
 " This ; that man asked you " (referring to 
 the newspaper from which she read out) — 
 
 " ' Did he seem terrified ? ' 
 
 " c Yes.' 
 
 214
 
 A GERALDINE. 21 5 
 
 '"He looked all round furtively as if he 
 feared he was being watched ? ' 
 
 " ' Yes.' 
 
 " ' And then slunk away ? ' . 
 
 " < Yes.' 
 
 u ' He had so much the appearance of a 
 desperate man who had just done a desper- 
 ate deed that you dared not approach 
 him ? ' 
 
 " ' I was unarmed and so dizzy that I 
 could hardly walk.' 
 
 " c Of course ; I was not impugning your 
 courage ; but he wasn't the kind of man or 
 in the kind of mood from his appearance 
 that an unarmed person could safely ap- 
 proach him ? ' 
 
 a 'No."' 
 
 Here were leading questions with a ven- 
 geance ! But indeed Dick had needed no 
 leading. 
 
 " Well ? he asked when Shiela had
 
 2l6 A GERALDINK. 
 
 looked up questioningly at him from the 
 newspaper. 
 
 " Why, I heard you say yourself that you 
 never saw anyone in all your life so cool ! ' 
 
 " That was when we found him firing off 
 the sergeant's revolver." 
 
 " When he knew he was watched he was 
 cool ; but when he only feared he might be 
 watched he was terrified and looked round 
 furtively and slunk away ! ' Shiela cried 
 with much warmth, and such a suspicion of 
 scorn in her voice as amazed and annoyed 
 
 Dick. 
 
 " Do you mean that I perjured myself? ' 
 he asked sharply. 
 
 " No, Dick, I don't ; of course I don't. 
 But I think you imagined him feeling and 
 looking like that because you imagined he 
 had committed murder." 
 
 u Imagined it! Is there any doubt at all 
 about it ? '
 
 A GERALDINE. 21 f 
 
 " I have no doubt at all about it. He 
 never did it — never ! " 
 
 " Really, Shiela — " but here he hesitated 
 to make an imputation which she could not 
 easily forgive and would never forget. 
 Perhaps she guessed what it was, for she 
 coloured to the roots of her hair. 
 
 " A man who could face and defy the 
 police in a body is not the kind of man who 
 would murder one of them without giving 
 him a chance to defend himself," she 
 hastened to say in some confusion. This 
 was not a happy allusion, as she would 
 have felt if she had not been hurried into 
 making it. 
 
 u . I suppose you mean when he faced and 
 defied father at that meeting ? ' Dick asked 
 angrily. 
 
 "He didn't know it was father," rejoined 
 Shiela, rather feebly ; adding, u and he 
 didn't know that that meeting had , any-
 
 2l8 A GERALDINE. 
 
 thing to do with father ; he joined it by 
 accident." 
 
 u I suppose you got all this on the 
 best authority," sneered Dick. 
 
 " Yes ; from Dr. Cullinan," she answered 
 defiantly. 
 
 " It w T as quite time we had done with 
 that — that go-between ! ' Dick cried with 
 an irrepressible fury which he regretted in- 
 stantly and bitterly. 
 
 Shiela rose in a stately way, her face all 
 scorn, and quitted the room. 
 
 The only outward and visible result of 
 this quarrel was that Dundas's name was 
 never afterwards mentioned between brother 
 and sister ; yet henceforth each was con- 
 scious of an estranging barrier, slight and 
 
 intangible as a mist, but not less chilling 
 and " amoving." 
 
 Now, this estrangement, though it embit- 
 tered poignantly Shiela's present wretched-
 
 A GERALDINE. 219 
 
 ness, was in one respect a relief to her. She 
 had not forgotten the doctor's pronounce- 
 ment that Dundas could be exculpated only 
 by "finding the right man," and to this 
 discovery she had resolved to devote herself! 
 It was a strange task for a young girl to set 
 herself; but there was no one else to 
 attempt it ; and if it were not attempted it 
 was absolutely certain that Dundas would be 
 executed for a crime which he had not 
 committed, which he, of all men (to her 
 thinking), could not have committed. Now, 
 if she and Dick had been on their old terms 
 of childlike interconfession and intercom- 
 munion, she could not have kept this resolve 
 of hers from him, even though she knew 
 how it would enrage and disgust him. It 
 was therefore a relief to her to feel, now 
 that the subject was tabooed between them, 
 that without any breach of the implicit 
 covenant of an implicit mutual confidence,
 
 220 A GERALDINE. 
 
 she need not invite his scornful criticism 
 and vehement opposition. 
 
 So far, then, her quarrel with Dick had 
 cleared her way a little — but how little ! 
 Certainly a girl of less nerve, resolve, and 
 courage than Shiela would have made the 
 forlorn hopelessness of her enterprise an 
 excuse to herself for abandoning: it. She 
 had virtually the whole country against her 
 — the magistrates and police, who would 
 resent and resist any attempt to exculpate 
 so exemplary lt a criminal ' as Dundas ; and 
 the people, who w T ould resent and resist any 
 attempt to inculpate a Moonlighter. But 
 Shiela was not a girl to be daunted by 
 difficulties when there was a principle to 
 obey, a duty to do, or a debt to pay, and 
 here she felt there were all three. Feeling 
 this, she felt also that she must succeed. 
 She had a belief — how come by I cannot 
 imagine, for she had lived all her life in
 
 A GERALDINE. 221 
 
 Clare — that justice was clone always in the 
 end even on earth : 
 
 " I'm armed with more than complete steel, 
 The justice of my quarrel — " 
 
 a line in an old play of Day and Dekker's 
 (which, by the way, one might imagine to 
 have been the original of Shakespeare's 
 line — 
 
 " Thrice is he armed that hath his quarrel just") ; 
 
 and this was Shiela's firm and fortifying 
 faith. 
 
 From such high ground down to Patsey 
 is a descent I admit ; yet it was from Patsey 
 Shiela first tried to get some serviceable 
 clue. Now, truth lay in Patsey' s face as 
 in a well — wherein, when you looked, you 
 saw only your own reflection. What you 
 wished him to say that only would this 
 faithful soul say.
 
 2 22 A GERALDINE. 
 
 tl Did you hear or see anything of those 
 men on Thursday night, Patsey ? ' Shiela 
 asked when she had found Patsey at last, 
 sitting at ease in the brougham in the 
 coach-house smoking. 
 
 " Yes, miss; no, miss," Patsey cried, jump- 
 ing from the carriage in a confusion from 
 which he instantly recovered. " I was 
 kill in' thim moths, miss, wid a w r hifT of baccy. 
 Look at here, miss ! ' showing a moth- 
 eaten hole in the cloth of the cushion 
 opposite that he had been sitting upon. 
 
 11 It ought to be dead by this," Shiela 
 answered as well as she could for coughing, 
 for the smoke was dense and pungent. 
 
 11 Oh, begorra, miss, I've thried iverything 
 wid em." Patsey answered in a heartbroken 
 tone, il till I wor dhruv at lasht to smokin 
 'em out." 
 
 tk You'll smoke yourself out, Patsey, if 
 my father notices the smell. Did you
 
 A GERALDINE. 223 
 
 hear or see anything of those men that 
 night ? " 
 
 " Which men, miss ? ' Patsey asked in 
 perplexity, while his mind, like a fox in a 
 covert, was running about actively and 
 cunningly to discover the direction in w^hich 
 it would be safest to " go away." 
 
 " The men who attacked Mr. Dick." 
 
 " Is it thim, miss ? Sorra a see ive I 
 seen 'em, the blaaoaiards ! " 
 
 " Do you think it was they that broke 
 into Clancy's house ? " 
 
 4 ' I wouldn't put nothin' pasht 'em — 
 nothin','' Patsey replied oracularly, for he 
 could not yet see what Miss Shiela wished 
 him to say. 
 
 " They would have had time to get there, 
 you think ? ' 
 
 "Sure, they v\or on the run, miss, after 
 they darkened Misther Dick." 
 
 "You mean you don't think they'd dare
 
 224 A GERALDINE. 
 
 to commit another outrage on the same 
 night ? " 
 
 " Begorra ! they would so, miss ; an' 
 tin other." 
 
 " But did they, do you think ? ' 
 
 " Is it the sergeant, miss ?' Patsey asked, 
 with a swift, keen, and cunning glance at 
 her to find his bearings. 
 
 " Do you think they did that ? ' Shiela 
 asked eagerly. 
 
 Then did the docile Patsey see the path 
 of duty straight before him. Had not the 
 American gent saved Miss Shiela that night? 
 Had they not walked and driven together 
 to Cahircalla "as close as fclover'7 — to quote 
 the lodge-keeper's report to Patsey. And 
 had not the good-natured doctor bidden 
 the lodge-keeper to drive home as slowly 
 as possible for their sakes ? 
 
 "Who else done it, miss?' he asked, 
 with sudden heat. u Sure it isn't that
 
 A GERALDINE. 225 
 
 American gintleman — who is a gintleman, 
 ivery inch of him — who'd clhirty powder 
 wid that sergeant?" 
 
 "You think it was the Moonlighters?' 
 asked Shiela, in a tone which showed Patsey 
 her whole hand. As, however, it would 
 not do to be quoted as having attributed 
 the murder to the Moonlighters, Patsey 
 discreetly replied, 
 
 " I know it warn't him annyways, miss." 
 
 " How do you know?" she asked, breath- 
 lessly. 
 
 "Ah, thin, Miss Shiela," Patsey replied, 
 remonstratively, as though she were arguing 
 that Dundas must have been the murderer 
 — "Ah, thin, Miss Shiela, sure it isn't the 
 likes of him that 'ud shoot a man widout 
 givin' him a chance. That's a cat's courage, 
 to spring on ye behind in the dark ; but 
 sorra a morsel of a cat there's in him, miss." 
 
 " But who did it, then, Patsey ? '
 
 226 A GERALDINE. 
 
 Patsey looked cautiously round, as though 
 he feared the moths in the cushions might 
 be listening, before he ventured to whisper — 
 
 lt Thim that shtole his pishtil, miss." 
 
 " Yes, but who ? Who stole it ? ' she 
 asked, eagerly. 
 
 "Thim that shot him, miss; thim that 
 shot him," he replied, mysteriously and 
 emphatically. 
 
 "Oh!", she exclaimed, so impatiently 
 that Patsey, perceiving he was overdoing 
 his diplomacy of infantile simplicity, hastened 
 to add, in a yet lower tone, a suggestion 
 which he really did think of vital value — 
 
 " If ye could be afther provin' an alibi 
 ■ — an alibi for the pishtil, I mane — ye'd 
 bate 'em, miss! By God! ye would so!' 
 he said, in a hoarse whisper, with unfeigned 
 earnestness. 
 
 11 I don't understand," she replied, in be- 
 wilderment.
 
 A GERALDINE. 22? 
 
 Patsey again looked all round — this time 
 with genuine dread of an eavesdropper — 
 before he explained himself in a whisper — 
 
 11 Maybe he tould ye, miss, that the 
 pishtil was shtole ? " 
 
 " Told me ! " 
 
 " He might be afther say in' to ye that 
 night whin he darkined the man that wor 
 huntin' ye — ' If I'd me pishtil,' he says to 
 you, says he, 4 I'd have shot the blaa- 
 guard,' he says, says he, * but w r an of 
 thim quarry chaps,' says he, 'shtole it aff 
 me yestherday,' says he." 
 
 " But he never said anything of the sort," 
 Shiela cried, in complete bewilderment, for 
 it could not occur to her that Patsey was 
 putting a pretty and picturesque piece of 
 perjury into her mouth. 
 
 u But, sure, Miss Shiela, if he had said 
 it, it 'ud have been the Goshpel thruth. 
 There's where it is ! An' it's hangin' him
 
 228 A GERALDINE. 
 
 they'll be wid a rope of lies round his neck, 
 because no wan 'ill shtan' up for him in 
 the box to spake the thruth ! I'd do it, 
 meself, Miss Shiela, an' welcome — an' wel- 
 come — only sorra a worrd a poor man 
 shwears they'll lishten to at all, at all — if it 
 wor thrue as the Thrinity." 
 
 " Do you mean that you'd swear he said 
 to you what he never did say ? ' 
 
 " Begorra, I would, miss, if it wor thrue.' 1 
 "Patsey!" 
 
 "Ah, thin, why wouldn't I, Miss 
 Shiela ? ' Patsey cried, transported out of 
 his usual " assentator ' style by his ardent 
 zeal in the sacred cause of truth ; " sorrv 
 I'd be to see an innocent man hanged by 
 lies for want of a worrd in the witness- 
 box wid thruth in the hearrt of it. Sure, 
 Miss Shiela, a sound pratey wid a rotten 
 shkin is betther nor a rotten pratey wid 
 a shkin like an onion."
 
 A GERALDINE. 229 
 
 " Lying can never be right, Patsey," 
 Shiela answered, severely. 
 
 " To be sure it can't, miss ; an' there 
 niver wor a blacker lie nor thim peelers 
 shwore that he murdered the sergeant. 
 That's why I make so bould as to say, 
 miss," Patsey added, with lowered tone 
 and another searching look all round, " that 
 there's thim as ought to be got to tell the 
 thruth in the box, that his pishtil wor stole 
 aff him — not the likes of me, Miss Shiela ; 
 for thim lawyers thinks that sich as me 
 can niver tell the thruth," he said, in an 
 aside of some bitterness; "but wan of the 
 quality — or the docther, maybe ? ' looking 
 up into her face with a sly interrogativeness. 
 
 Shiela was thoroughly and doubly dis- 
 gusted with Patsey, and with herself for 
 having condescended to consult him. 
 
 " I don't think you know what lying is, 
 Patsey."
 
 230 A GERALDINE. 
 
 ''Me, miss! Begor, I do, an' well, too!' 
 he cried, with a vehemence which made 
 Shiela smile in spite of herself at certainly 
 the biggest truth Patsey had ever told. 
 
 (i Don't you know, then, that it would 
 be a lie and a perjury for me, or the doctor, 
 or anyone, to swear that Mr. Dundas told 
 us before that night that his revolver was 
 stolen, when he had said nothing at all 
 to us about it ? " 
 
 Then did Patsey, perceiving that Miss 
 Shiela was incorrigibly dense, or particular, 
 veer round like a weathercock moved by 
 her breath. 
 
 " Oh, if he'd niver said nothin' — of coorse, 
 if he'd niver said nothin', miss. But, sure, 
 if it wor shtole, he'd say it wor shtole ; 
 an' me manin', miss, is that thim he said 
 it to should come forard an' shwear it. 
 Sorra a worrd of a lie there'd be in that, 
 I'm thinkin' ?' he suggested, interrogatively,
 
 A GERALDINE. 23 I 
 
 as though Shiela might hold this to be flat 
 perjury. 
 
 " Not in that ; but I hardly understood 
 you to mean merely that, Patsey." 
 
 " Ah, thin, what would ye be afther 
 thinkin' I'd be manin', Miss Shiela? ' Patsey 
 asked, in an injured tone. " Is it that the 
 likes of ye'd kiss the book to a lie ! Sure, 
 I wouldn't do it meself, miss — poor as I 
 am, an', God knows, I'm poor enough — 
 let alone to ax ye to do it. But here's 
 where it is, Miss Shiela — if Mr. Dundas 
 had said to ye that night: 'It's well for 
 that big blaaguard that me pishtil wor 
 shtole aff me,' ye might shtep up into the 
 box an' shwear to that widout a worrd of 
 lie — ye might so, Miss Shiela," he cried, 
 with an emphatic firmness which expressed 
 that nothing she could say would shake 
 his conviction that this was morally de- 
 fensible
 
 232 A GERALDINE. 
 
 u I suppose I might," she replied, im- 
 patiently, for it was not pleasant to be 
 taken by Patsey for a perfect idiot. " But 
 what did you mean by saying that c a good 
 potato with a bad skin was better than a 
 . bad potato with a good skin ? ' 
 
 " Sure, that wor only a way of shpakin', 
 
 miss. 
 
 " But what did you mean ? ' 
 
 " Mane, miss ? It wor this way it wor, 
 miss ; I wor shpakin' of thim police shwearin' 
 together agin' an innocent man that hadn't 
 no wan to shwear for him ; because thim 
 that knew the differ were in dhread to come 
 forard in regard to their being sinsible that 
 their Bible oath wouldn't be tuk agin' a 
 policeman's worrd — that wor the way of it, 
 miss," Patsey cried, triumphantly. He had 
 begun his explanation slowly, like a dog 
 that hesitates about the scent to follow ; 
 but, this once found, the dog is away like
 
 A GERALDINE. 233 
 
 the wind — as was Patsey ; for he raced 
 through the latter part of his explanation 
 with breathless volubility. 
 
 In spite of her keen sense of humour, 
 Shiela's disgust with Patsey's glib and 
 adroit lying was but very slightly tempered 
 with amusement. It could never have 
 occurred to her to make for him the allow- 
 ance that this mendacity was the natural 
 and almost necessary consequence of genera- 
 tions of abject serfdom. " To lie is to 
 fear man, but to defy God," is a fine saying 
 of Lysander's, which Bacon attributes to 
 Montaigne, who but quoted it from Plutarch ; 
 and at least nine-tenths of all the lying in 
 the world is due directly to either physical 
 or moral cowardice. Now, as poor Patsey's 
 forebears for many generations had to cower 
 and cringe, and creep, and crawl, and abase 
 themselves to the ' very dust of the road 
 and dung of the field before insolent
 
 234 A GERALDTXI.. 
 
 agents or landlords, in order to keep the 
 thatch of their dog-hutches of cabins over 
 the heads of their little children, Patsey 
 himself had hereditarily the instincts and 
 the faculties of a hunted creature. He 
 was furtive, tricky, alert, and adroit. But 
 he was loyal withal to kindly masters — 
 so far as a weak and shifty nature can 
 be loyal — and he worshipped Miss Shiela 
 as much for her pluck as for her good- 
 ness and graciousness. 
 
 He was quick to perceive her disgust, 
 as she turned impatiently away. 
 
 " Miss Shiela!' he cried, in a tone 
 that suggested a coming communication of 
 immense mystery and importance. 
 
 "Yes? she answered, turning quickly 
 round. 
 
 "Is he a great friend of yours, miss ? 
 
 " Who— Mr. Dundas? ' 
 Yes, miss.
 
 A GERALDINE. 235 
 
 Shiela hesitated for a moment before 
 she answered with a blush, which did not 
 escape the observant Patsey, " Yes," for she 
 saw that Patsey had something of extraordin- 
 ary consequence to Dundas to communicate. 
 
 Patsey, having looked all round the coach- 
 house, proceeded on tip-toe to a corner 
 where there was a ladder-staircase leading 
 up to a loft, into which he climbed to 
 make absolutely sure there was no eaves- 
 droppers. Presently descending again, he 
 approached Shiela, still on tip-toe, and with 
 the air of a Guy Fawkes about to apply 
 the match. 
 
 " Miss Shiela, ye'll not tell no wan — no 
 wan in the wide worruld, miss? ' 
 
 " What ? What is it, Patsey ? " 
 
 " Whisht, miss. It's me life, it is, if 
 ye tell man, woman, or mortial.' 
 
 "I'll not tell — of course not," she said 
 breathlessly.
 
 236 A GERALDINE. 
 
 " Look at here, miss ; I'm as dead as the 
 sergeant if ye shplit an me ! ' 
 
 " But you know I won't, Patsey," she 
 answered, wrought up to a fever of suspense 
 and expectancy. He looked well round 
 first, and then beckoned Shiela to that part 
 of the coach-house which was farthest from 
 the door. When she had followed him 
 thither he said in a hoarse whisper — 
 
 " I helped to carry the man to the 
 house." 
 
 " The sergeant ? " 
 
 41 Yes, miss ; an' I helped to lift him on 
 the shutter, an' had a holt of him by the 
 collar an' by the right hand, an' it wor 
 clinched, Miss Shiela, wid — wid a morsel of 
 cloth in it — " sinking his voice still lower. 
 Here he paused for a moment or two before 
 he added — " I got it open, miss, widout 
 their noticin' nothin', an' kep the bit of cloth. 
 It wor a bit of a coat collar he'd orabbed
 
 A GERALDINE. 237 
 
 holt of, an' him that wore it wrinched 
 himself loose an' shot him." 
 
 u Oh, Patsey ! If you'd only left it where 
 
 it was ! 
 
 " Sure, I couldn't tell thin, miss, that 
 they'd be puttin' it an to Misther Dundas ; 
 an' I worn't goin' to have wan of the 
 boys hanged for a peeler." 
 
 " Have you got it ?' 
 
 " I have, Miss Shiela ; but if I give 
 it to ye, miss, it's me life I'm givin' into 
 your keepin'." 
 
 " But what can I do with it, Patsey, 
 if I'm to say nothing about it ? she 
 
 asked distractedly. 
 
 " Look at here, miss," he answered 
 with subdued excitement. " Look at 
 here, miss ; ye could find it yerself on 
 the shpot where he wor found." 
 
 "Patsey! I couldn't. You can't un- 
 derstand ! "
 
 238 A GERALDINE. 
 
 And he couldn't. Why on earth could 
 not Miss Shiela say it was found where 
 it was found ? Who found it had nothing 
 in life to do with the truth or import of 
 the evidence. In this way Patsey rea- 
 soned out Miss Shiela's unreasonableness. 
 
 <; But it wor found there, miss," he 
 urged in a surprised tone. 
 
 " I know ; but I didn't find it there, 
 and I could not say I did. Patsey, 
 couldn't you come forward ? ' she said ap- 
 pealingly. 
 
 " 'Deed, thin, I could, miss ; an' I 
 could lep aff the cliffs of Moher," he 
 rejoined in a tone of intensely bitter 
 sarcasm. 
 
 " Where is it ? she asked, after a 
 pause of distressing" and distracting 
 thought. 
 
 '' Miss Shiela, you'll not te no wan ? ' 
 Patsey cried in agitation,
 
 A GERALDINE. 239 
 
 " No ; I've promised — unless you let 
 
 •a 
 me. 
 
 '. 1 n 
 
 "I daren't, miss. I daren't. I daren't! 
 he reiterated excitedly. 
 
 " I shall tell no one unless you let me, 
 Patsey," she repeated, and upon securing 
 this assurance he produced from his pocket 
 the piece of frieze, wrapped up in an old 
 rag of chamois leather.
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 TOM D'ARCY. 
 
 Dick's estrangement from Shiela occurred 
 at a critical time for the lad. There was 
 a young gentleman named Tom D'Arcy — 
 the same that the doctor had described to 
 Dundas as "a curious customer, and as a 
 suitor of Shiela's " — who had gained already 
 great influence over Dick. He was a 
 singular mixture of youth and age, for, 
 while he had all a wild young man's 
 lust of pleasure, of excitement, and of 
 admiration, he had all an evil old man's 
 cold, calculating cunning, suspicion, and 
 unscrupulousness. For him Dick had an 
 
 extravagant admiration, because D'Arcy 
 
 240
 
 A GERALDINE. 241 
 
 seemed to be " in the know," and " in 
 the swim " of all the pursuits and plea- 
 sures dear to Dick's heart. D'Arcy, on his 
 side, having an equally extravagant ad- 
 miration for Dick's sister, was exceedingly 
 gracious to that flattered young gentle- 
 man. He had again and again taken 
 Dick to Limerick, and had there initiated 
 him into all the mysteries of ''pleasure." 
 Dick, on his part, had done what he could 
 for his friend with Shiela ; who, how- 
 ever, was so little amenable in this 
 matter to her brother's influence, as to 
 maintain unshaken and undiminished her 
 rooted repugnance to Mr. D'Arcy. 
 
 " He's not a gentleman, Dick," she 
 said decidedly. 
 
 " Not a gentleman ! ' gasped her breath- 
 less brother ; " why, he's hand and glove 
 with Sir Geoffrey Jackson and was at Lord 
 
 Kiltannan's wedding ! " 
 
 Q
 
 242 A GERALDINE. 
 
 11 But they may not be gentlemen, 
 either," Shiela retorted, mischievously and 
 rebelliously, for it humiliated her to hear 
 Dick echoing her mother's servile adora- 
 tion of rank. However, her retort took 
 no effect upon Dick, since he could not 
 conceive it to be seriously meant. Ireland 
 is at least a hundred years behind even 
 England in its silly and superstitious 
 worship of rank, and both Dick and his 
 mother were more belated and benighted 
 still in their snobbery. 
 
 " It's no good talking like that, Shiela ; 
 you know very well he's a gentleman, 
 and goes everywhere," he replied, in an 
 aggrieved tone. 
 
 She shook her head positively in reply. 
 
 " I don't know what you want," cried 
 Dick. 
 
 " I want yo?t } Dick." she had answered 
 lovingly, putting her arm round his reck.
 
 A GERALDINE. 243 
 
 " You are always with him somewhere 
 
 now." 
 
 " If you mean Kilran races, of course 
 I went. I always go, and should have 
 gone whether he went or not." 
 
 " I didn't mean the races merely ; but 
 you're always with him everywhere : and 
 I'm quite sure, Dick, he's a bad com- 
 panion," Shiela said emphatically, in her 
 maternal manner. 
 
 il Hang it ! Shiela, I'm not a boy, or 
 a girl ; and I'm quite well able to take 
 care of myself, even if he was what you 
 think him ; but he isn't at all. He's a 
 downright good fellow, and — and he's al- 
 ways talking about you." 
 
 "About me," cried Shiela, flushing, but 
 not with pride or pleasure. ll Then, Dick, 
 you shouldn't let him. I hate the way 
 he looks at me. He's not a gentleman!" 
 she repeated with excessive warmth.
 
 241- A GERALDINE. 
 
 " He's not a gentleman ! He's not a 
 gentleman ! ' echoed Dick, mimicking her. 
 " What do you know about him ? You 
 know just nothing at all. Because he 
 looks at you, if you please ! Why should- 
 n't he look at you, if he likes ? A cat 
 can look at a king, I suppose : and he 
 can't help his looks," Dick cried in a 
 boyish and incoherent rage. 
 
 11 And I can't help not liking him." 
 
 " Did he ask you to like him ? Who 
 wants you to like him ? ' Dick cried, still 
 in a white heat. 
 
 11 I thought you did, Dick ; but if you 
 don't, he's not worth quarrelling about ; 
 is he? " 
 
 "Who began the quarrel?' growled 
 Dick, who, when in a rage, relapsed al- 
 ways into schoolboyhood, as a provincial 
 orator in a rage relapses into his native 
 Doric. "To tell a fellow that his friend
 
 A GERALDINE. 245 
 
 isn't a gentleman, is like saying that he 
 isn't a gentleman himself." 
 
 " Dick, it's just because you are not in 
 the least like him that I cannot bear you 
 to be so much with him." 
 
 " Pooh ! What do girls know about it ? ' 
 This " what-do-girls-know-about-it ' tone 
 was a recent assumption of Dick's in his 
 talks with Shiela, and, as he had only 
 taken it since his intimacy with Mr. Tom 
 D'Arcy, she naturally put it down to that 
 gentleman's account. Something of her re- 
 pugnance to Mr. D'Arcy was, no doubt, 
 due to her sense that she owed to him 
 her recent appreciable loss of influence 
 with her brother, since there's a deal of 
 human nature even in a heroine. But, 
 besides and above this, an unerring femi- 
 nine instinct repelled her from a man so 
 gross in all his thoughts, and especially in 
 all his thoughts about women.
 
 246 A GERALDINE. 
 
 And yet Mr. Tom D'Arcy had been 
 as respectful as he knew how to be to- 
 wards Shiela, whom he worshipped with 
 such adoration as his nature was capable 
 of. Her grace and beauty appealed to 
 his senses — his most susceptible part — 
 while her skill and daring as a horsewoman 
 completed the conquest of what he was 
 pleased to call his heart. He was himself 
 besotted on horses, which he bought and 
 sold and betted upon, with, according to 
 his own account, unvarying advantage to 
 himself. Other experts, indeed, in horse- 
 flesh, or on racecourses, asserted that 
 D'Arcy was often and heavily ''bitten" in 
 spite of his admitted horsecraft and other 
 craft ; but he himself recounted only his 
 successes, and backed up his boasts by 
 the evidence of a full purse. As his father 
 was a notorious screw, Tom could not 
 resort to him for the refilling of a deplet-
 
 A GERALDINE. 247 
 
 ed purse, which therefore must have been 
 replenished only by his successful horse- 
 flesh bets and bargains ; for Tom had no 
 other ostensible mode of money making. 
 And money he certainly made. When, 
 for instance, he had heard of Shiela's hero- 
 ism in saving Dick's life, he was moved 
 to so much admiration that he sounded 
 Dick upon the possibility of persuading her 
 to accept from him a very valuable filly ! 
 Even Dick, who was by no means sen- 
 sitively strung, was staggered by the 
 suggestion. As, however, he had always 
 implicitly or evasively given D'Arcy to 
 understand that Shiela appreciated, if she 
 did not quite return, his admiration, Dick 
 had to lend a grateful ear to the offer. 
 Besides, he coveted the filly with his 
 whole soul, and longed to see some plaus- 
 ible way of transferring the beautiful 
 creature to Cahircalla stables.
 
 248 A GERALDINE. 
 
 " She wouldn't accept her," he said 
 regretfully to D'Arcy. u It's awfully good 
 of you, old man ; but she wouldn't — " 
 
 u Not directly from me, of course," 
 D'Arcy said with that increase in his 
 slight obliquity of vision which expressed 
 what a blush usually expresses in ingenuous 
 youth. u But I might give her to you, 
 you know ; for her — I mean," he hasten- 
 ed to add in his dread of being done out 
 of the filly by Dick, without getting from 
 Shiela the credit of the gift. ' ; I mean 
 you might tell her that I intended the 
 filly for her, but that I hadn't the courage 
 to give it to her from myself.'' 
 
 Dick shook his head sorrowfully with 
 unfeigned regret. " She wouldn't take her. 
 How could she ? ' 
 
 " Sound her about it, anyway, and see 
 what she says," urged D'Arcy. who, in- 
 deed, would . have rejoiced exceedingly to
 
 A GERALDINE. 249 
 
 get from Shiela the credit of the offer, 
 without having to part with the filly — to 
 carry off at once the corn in the sack and 
 the cup in the sack's mouth. 
 
 " Oh, I know what she'll say," Dick re- 
 joined despondently. " She wouldn't hear 
 of it ; no girl would, and Shiela least of 
 all." 
 
 " But if I give the filly to you for her," 
 persisted D'Arcy. " You could tell her, 
 you know, in confidence, that she was 
 really for her." 
 
 " Do you mean me," cried Dick with 
 sudden and dishonest hope — " Do you 
 mean me to tell her that I promised you 
 to pretend to her the filly was for me ? ' 
 
 As Dick's eagerness convinced his crafty 
 
 •friend that he would never risk the return 
 
 of the filly by saying a word of this to 
 
 Shiela, D'Arcy demurred at once to the 
 
 suggestion.
 
 250 A GERALDINE. 
 
 " Look here, Fitzgerald, I shall send her 
 for your sister to try, and when she has 
 tried her a bit you might ask her to accept 
 it from me." 
 
 " Oh, of course, if you like," Dick said 
 somewhat sullenly. Though D'Arcy was 
 sufficiently coarse-grained, he did not now 
 really expect Shiela to accept the filly, 
 however much she might have been 
 charmed with the animal on trial ; but 
 at least he thought the generosity of the 
 offer would tell in his favour. In fact, he 
 stood, as he thought, to win in any event. 
 If she accepted the filly she must accept 
 the giver of so valuable a present ; if, on 
 the 'Other hand, she declined its acceptance, 
 D'Arcy would have with her the credit, 
 without the cost, of the gift. It never did, 
 or could, occur to him that she might 
 resent the offer as an unwarrantable piece 
 of impertinence. As, however, Dick, in
 
 A GERALDINE. 25 I 
 
 spite of his thickness of skull and skin, 
 had a shrewd suspicion of this, he resolved 
 to go warily about the negotiation. Accord- 
 ingly, no sooner was the filly stabled at 
 Cahircalla (on the day before the murder 
 of the sergeant), than Dick hurried off to 
 find Shiela to break the business to her 
 diplomatically. 
 
 He found her in her own room reading a 
 newspaper (an unusual occupation with her) 
 which she put hastily away upon hearing his 
 knock. In truth, she had been reading 
 with an interest, whose source was uncertain 
 even to herself, a furious Tory leader upon 
 the futile police attempt to find firearms 
 on Dunclas's person or premises. 
 
 " Do come out, Shiela. D'Arcy has sent 
 over the bay filly for my opinion of her." 
 
 "He wants you to buy her ? ' 
 
 %t Buy her ! She's worth eighty guineas 
 if she's worth a farthing. He knows very
 
 252 A GERALD1NE. 
 
 well that I couldn't buy her, even if he 
 meant to sell her, which he doesn't." 
 
 '* What has he sent her here for, then ? ' 
 
 " For my opinion of her, I tell you," 
 Dick said, impatiently. " So come ; put on 
 your habit, and we'll have a canter to 
 Carrigglass." 
 
 " But — very well," she corrected herself 
 to say, after a moment's pause. 
 
 When she had donned her habit and come 
 out, she found the side saddle on the bay 
 filly, which she at once, and most decidedly, 
 declined to ride. 
 
 " He doesn't want my opinion of her, 
 Dick." 
 
 "Oh, but he does; he does really. He 
 wanted you to try her, as she's for a lady," 
 Dick answered, with undiplomatic eager- 
 ness. 
 
 " You know as well as I do, Dick, that 
 Mr. D'Arcy doesn't want either of our
 
 A GERALDINE. 253 
 
 opinions about a horse which he is not try- 
 ing to sell us." 
 
 " Why should he send her over then ? " 
 Dick asked, with the petulance of defeat. 
 
 "I'm sure I don't know; but I'm not 
 going to ride her," she added, with a posi- 
 tiveness which seemed to Dick to contradict 
 the first part of her reply. 
 
 " Well, don't if you don't like," cried 
 Dick, with his usual relapse, when in a 
 temper, into schoolboyishness. a It really 
 doesn't matter very much, to him or me, 
 whether you try her or not." 
 
 The diplomatic Dick, having shown by his 
 manner how very much it mattered, both to 
 him and to D'Arcy, sent back both horses 
 to the stable, and gave up the expedition 
 altogether in a huff. In fact, if he had con- 
 fessed to Shiela in so many words his in- 
 tention to trap her into using, if not into 
 accepting, D'Arcy's horse, he could hardly
 
 254 A GERALDINE. 
 
 have shown her his hand more plainly. As 
 the horses were being led back to the 
 stables, Ralph appeared at the hall door, 
 from which Shiela had by this disappeared 
 upstairs to change her habit. On seeing 
 the filly, side-saddled, pass the library 
 window, Ralph,, being naturally curious 
 about her, had come out to question Dick. 
 
 " Halloa, Dick ! " he called after his son, 
 who turned and came slowly back to the 
 steps, " whose is the mare?" 
 
 u Tom D'Arcy's." 
 
 " What brings her here ? ' Dick, on the 
 spur of the moment, resolved to take his 
 father into the alliance. 
 
 " He wanted Shiela to try her ! ' 
 
 "Shiela! What! Do you mean that 
 she asked him for her ? ' cried Ralph, 
 sharply. 
 
 " It's just the other way about,' 1 Dick 
 replied aggrievedly. " He's bent upon her
 
 A GERALDINE. 255 
 
 trying her, and keeping her, for that matter ; 
 while she won't even ride her, only because 
 she's his." 
 
 " Phew ! ' cried Ralph. And then, after 
 a pause, he added — (K Why, how long has 
 this been going on ? " 
 
 " There's nothing going 'on ; but he's 
 very hard hit, while she dislikes him for 
 some reason or other." 
 
 " Do you mean that he's — that he's pro- 
 posed for her ? " gasped Ralph, who so 
 little regarded Shiela as grown up, that he 
 almost resented her being let out of the 
 nursery. 
 
 " No ; but he would if he dared. He's 
 dead gone on her." 
 
 " Well ! ' cried Ralph, completely bewil- 
 dered by this astonishing state of things. 
 " But why does she dislike him ? ' he asked 
 presently, after a pause. 
 
 " I don't know, but she does. I wish
 
 256 A GERALDINE. 
 
 she didn't, for he's an awfully good 
 fellow." 
 
 " She's getting to give herself great airs," 
 her father said in his usual censorious tone 
 when speaking of Shiela. " She ought to 
 be packed off to school," he added, as 
 though the ofirl were encouraging, instead 
 of discouraging addresses. Then did Dick 
 feel remorseful for his betrayal of Shiela. 
 
 " After all, she can't help her likes or dis- 
 likes," he pleaded apologetically. 
 
 " I don't know what she has to do with 
 likes or dislikes at her age," cried her father, 
 with outrageous unreasonableness. " She'll 
 be packed off to school if she doesn't take 
 care, and so you may tell her." 
 
 "You talk as if she had encouraged him, 
 but that is just what she hasn't done at all," 
 Dick retorted irritably, thus driving his 
 father upon another tack. 
 
 " I don't know that she hasn't encouraged
 
 A GERALDINE. 257 
 
 him. She must have given him some en- 
 couragement, or he wouldn't have sent over 
 that mare." 
 
 " But he didn't ; he sent her over to 
 me, hoping that I might get Shiela to try 
 her at least. But she refused, merely be- 
 cause the mare was his." 
 
 " Hoity-toity ! she's lost her head alto- 
 gether at the first attention shown her. 
 At the same time, Dick, I don't think it 
 was a right thing of D'Arcy to do, if, as 
 you say, she gave him no encouragement.' 
 
 " Oh ! he's off his head about her, and 
 he bothered me so to get her to try the 
 filly that I couldn't refuse. After all, if 
 she had tried her, he'd have taken it as 
 encouragement, so that I don't see what 
 else she could have done but refuse," Dick 
 said, feeling more and more remorseful as 
 
 his own temper cooled, and his fathers 
 warmed. 
 
 VOL. J. 11
 
 2 5<S A GERALDINK. 
 
 However, the mischief was now done 
 irreparably, since Ralph, of course, dis- 
 closed the affair to his wife ; and both, 
 upon consultation, decided that Mr. Tom 
 D'Arcy would be a most excellent match 
 for Shiela. Mrs. Fitzgerald had been 
 fascinated by the off-hand way in which 
 Mr. Tom D'Arcy had habitually spoken 
 of Sir Geoffrey Jackson. Lord Kiltannan, 
 Hardress Westropp (the master of the 
 hounds), and General George Goold-Mor- 
 oney, as though they were as easy-fitting 
 and familiar to him as his gloves ; while 
 Ralph saw in the match the cancelling of 
 a heavy mortgage, which Tom's father, a 
 miser and usurer, held on his property. 
 Heskles, he was greatly taken with the 
 wonderful shrewdness whereby Tom seemed 
 to make money out of the most slippery of 
 all trades— that of horseflesh. " He's the 
 cleverest young fellow in the country," he
 
 A GERALDINE. 259 
 
 pronounced decidedly. " I don't care what 
 they say about his having- been bitten 
 here, and let in there, and dropped a heap 
 of money on this and that racecourse. 
 It's all jealousy, for where does the money 
 come from ? Not from ' Old Mouser ' 
 (a nickname of Tom's worthy father), 
 " for even Tom, with all his cleverness, 
 couldn't screw sixpence out of that old 
 skinflint. If he drops money everywhere, 
 .how is it that he has always money to 
 drop? It's just jealousy, and nothing else, 
 for there isn't another young fellow in 
 Munster with so old a head on his 
 shoulders as Tom D'Arcy : not another." 
 
 Ralph, it will be seen, did not look at 
 things from a high moral standpoint ; 
 nevertheless, such were the encomiums 
 upon Tom wilh which her father hoped to 
 impress Shiela in his favour ! In truth, he 
 understood better what was passing in the
 
 260 A GERALDINE. 
 
 mind of the clog at his heels, or the horse 
 in his dogcart, than he did the character of 
 his own daughter. Love is the only pass- 
 key to character, and even that will not 
 always unlock its innermost chambers. 
 Without it we can see little of another's 
 heart, and that little as through a glass, 
 darkly, and from the outside. 
 
 END OF VOL. I. 
 
 Printed by Cowan d; Co., LmiOrl, Perth,
 
 W'