the cause of the king. That cause with our own lives we are bound to maintain; and why not, if need be, at the cost of the lives of others? No good can come of sparing this fellow—at the best, no advantage to the cause: and, on the other hand, should he prove a traitor, a spy, or even an idle babbler, the heaviest damage may befall us. Tush, tush, gentlemen, it is ill straining at gnats in such times. We are here a court-martial, or no court at all. If I find that such dangerous vacillation as this carries it in your councils, I shall, for one, henceforward hang my sword over the mantel-piece, and obey the new laws. What! one life against such a risk—one execution, to save the cause and secure us all. To us, who have served in the king's wars, and hanged rebels by the round dozen—even on suspicion of being so—such indecision seems incredible. There ought not to be two words about the matter. Put him to death."
Having thus acquitted himself, this somewhat unattractive personage applied himself, with much industry and absorption, to the task of chopping, shredding, rolling up, and otherwise preparing a piece of tobacco for the bowl of his pipe.
"I confess," said someone whom O'Connor could not see, "that in pleading what may be said on behalf of this young man, I have no ground to go upon beyond a mere instinctive belief in the poor fellow's honesty, and in the truth of his story."
"Pardon me, sir," replied one in whose voice O'Connor thought he recognized that of the priest, "if I say, that to act upon such fanciful impressions, as if they were grounded upon evidence, were, in nine cases out of every ten, the most transcendent and mischievous folly. I repeat my own conviction, upon something like satisfactory evidence, that he is not honest. I talked with the fellow this evening—perhaps a little too freely—but in that conference, if he lied not, I learned that he belonged to that most dangerous class—the worst with whom we have to contend—the lukewarm, professing, passive Catholics—the very stuff of which the worst kind of spies and informers are made. He, no doubt, guessed, from what I said—for, to be plain with you, I spoke too freely by a great deal, in the belief, I know not how assumed, that he was one of ourselves—he guessed, I say, something of the nature of my mission, and tracked me hither—at all events, by some strange coincidence, hither he came. It is for you to weigh the question of probabilities."
"It matters not, in my mind, why or how he came hither," observed the ill-favoured gentleman, who sate at the head of the table; "he is here, and he hath seen our meeting, and could identify many of us. This is too large a confidence to repose in a stranger, and I for one do not like it, and therefore I say let him be killed without any more parley or debate."
The old man paused, and a silence followed. With an agonized attention, O'Connor listened for one word or movement of dissent; it came not.
"All agreed?" said the bearded hero, preparing to light his tobacco pipe at the candle. "Well, so I expected."
The little man who had spoken before him knocked sharply with the butt of a pistol upon the table, and O'Connor heard the door of the room open. The same person beckoned with his hand, and one of the stalwart men who had assisted in securing him, advanced to the foot of the board.
"Let a grave be digged in the orchard," said he, "and when it is ready, bring the prisoner out and despatch him, Let it be all done and the grave closed in half an hour."
The man made a rude obeisance, and left the room in silence.
Bound as he was, O'Connor traced the four walls of the room, in the vague hope that he might discover some other outlet from the chamber than that which he had just entered. But in vain; nothing encountered him but the hard, cold wall; and even had it been otherwise, thus helplessly manacled, what would it have availed him? He passed into the room into which he had been first thrust by the two guards, and in a state little short of frenzy, he cast himself upon the floor.
"Oh God!" said he, "it is terrible to see death thus creeping toward me, and not to have the power to help myself. I am doomed—my life already devoted, and before another hour I shall lie under the clay, a corpse. Is there nothing to be done—no hope, no chance? Oh, God! nothing!"
As he lay in this strong agony, he heard, or thought he heard, the clank of the spade upon the stony soil without. The work was begun—the grave was opened. Madly he strained at the cords—he tugged with more than human might—but all in vain. Still with horrible monotony he heard the clank of the iron mattock tinkling and clanking in the gravelly soil. Oh! that he could have stopped his ears to exclude the maddening sound. The pulses smote upon his brain like floods of fire. With closed eyes, and teeth set, and hands desperately clenched, he drew himself together, in the awful spasms of uncontrollable horror. Suddenly this fearful paroxysm departed, and a kind of awful calm supervened. It was no dull insensibility to his real situation, but a certain collectedness and calm self-possession, which enabled him to behold the grim adversary of human kind, even arrayed in all the terrors of his nearest approach, with a steady eye.
"After all, when all's done, what have I to lose? Life had no more joys for me—happy I could never more have been. Why should the miserable dread death, and cling to life like cowards? What is it? A brief struggle—the agony of a few minutes—the instinctive yearnings of our nature after life; and this over, comes rest—eternal quiet."
He then endeavoured, in prayer, earnestly to commend his spirit to its Maker. While thus employed he heard steps upon the hard tiles of the passage. His heart swelled as though it would burst. He rightly guessed their mission. The bolt was slowly drawn; the dusky light of a lantern streamed into the room, and revealed upon the threshold the forms of three tall men.
"Lift him up—rise him, boys," said he who carried the lantern.
"You must come with us," said one of the two who advanced to O'Connor.
Resistance was fruitless, and he offered none. A cold, sick, overwhelming horror unstrung his joints and dimmed his sight. He suffered them to lead him passively from the room.
Chapter XLV.
The Man in the Cloak—And His Bed-Chamber
As O'Connor approached the outer door through which he was to pass to certain and speedy death, it were not easy to describe or analyze his sensations; every object he beheld in the brief glance he cast around him as he passed along the hall appeared invested with a strangely sharp and vivid intensity of distinctness, and had in its aspect something indefinably spectral and ghastly—like things beheld under the terrific spell of a waking nightmare. His tremendous situation seemed to him something unreal, incredible; he walked in an appalling dream; in vain he strove to fix his thoughts myriads and myriads of scenes and incidents, never remembered since childhood's days, now with strange distinctness and wild rapidity whirled through his brain. The hall-door stood half open, and the fellow who led the way had almost reached it, when it was on a sudden thrown wide, and a figure, muffled in a cloak, confronted the funeral procession.
The foremost man raised the ponderous weapon which he carried, and held it poised in the air, ready to shiver the head of the intruder should he venture to advance—the two guards who held O'Connor halted at the same time.
"How's this, Cormack!" said the stranger. "Do you lift your weapon against the life of a friend?—rub your eyes and waken—how is it you cannot know me?—you've been drinking, sirrah."
At the sound of the speaker's voice the man at once lowered his hatchet and withdrew, a little sulkily, like a rebuked mastiff.
"What means all this?" continued he in the cloak, looking searchingly at the party in the rear; "whom have we got here?—where made you this prisoner? So, so—this must be looked to. How were you about to deal with him, fellow?" he added, addressing himself to him whom he had first encountered.
"According to orders, captain," replied the man, doggedly.
"And how may that have been?" interrogated the gentleman in the cloak.
"End him," replied he, sulkily.
"Has he been before the council in the great parlour?" inquired