The O'Donoghue: Tale of Ireland Fifty Years Ago. Lever Charles James

to be sure,” replied the youth; “they have no better hereabouts.”

      “What poverty – what dreadful misery is this!” said she, as the great tears gushed forth, and stole heavily down her face.

      “They are not so poor,” answered the young man, in a voice of almost reproof. “The cattle along that mountain all belong to these people – the goats you see in that glen are theirs also.”

      “And whose estate may this be?” said the old man.

      Either the questioner or his question seemed to have called up again the youth’s former resentment, for he fixed his eyes steadily on him for some time without a word, and then slowly added —

      “This belongs to an Englishman – a certain Sir Marmaduke Travers – It is the estate of O’Donoghue.”

      “Was, you mean, once,” answered the old man quickly.

      “I mean what I say,” replied the other rudely. “Confiscation cannot take away a right, it can at most – ”

      This speech was fortunately not destined to be finished, for while he was speaking, his quick glance detected a dark object soaring above his head. In a second he had seized his gun, and taking a steady aim, he fired. The loud report was heard repeated in many a far-off glen, and ere its last echo died away, a heavy object fell upon the road not many yards from where they stood.

      “This fellow,” said the youth, as he lifted the body of a large black eagle from the ground – “This fellow was a confiscator too, and see what he has come to. You’d not tell me that our lambs were his, would you?”

      The roll of wheels happily drowned these words, for by this time the postillions had reached the place, the four post-horses labouring under the heavy-laden travelling carriage, with its innumerable boxes and imperials.

      The post boys saluted the young man with marked deference, to which he scarcely deigned an acknowledgment, as he replaced his shot-pouch, and seemed to prepare for the road once more.

      Meanwhile the old gentleman had assisted his daughter to the carriage, and was about to follow, when he turned around suddenly and said —

      “If your road lies this way, may I offer you a seat with us?”

      The youth stared as if he did not well comprehend the offer, and his cheek flushed, as he answered coldly —

      “I thank you; but my path is across the mountain.”

      Both parties saluted distantly, the door of the carriage closed, and the word to move on was given, when the young man, taking two dark feathers from the eagle’s wing, approached the window.

      “I was forgetting,” said he, in a voice of hesitation and diffidence, “perhaps you would accept these feathers.”

      The young girl smiled, and half blushing, muttered some words in reply, as she took the offered present. The horses sprung forward the next instant, and a few minutes after, the road was as silent and deserted as before; and save the retiring sound of the wheels, nothing broke the stillness.

      CHAPTER II. THE WAYSIDE INN

      As the glen continues to wind between the mountains, it gradually becomes narrower, and at last contracts to a mere cleft, flanked on either side by two precipitous walls of rock, which rise to the height of several hundred feet above the road; this is the pass of Keim-an-eigh, one of the wildest and most romantic ravines of the scenery of the south.

      At the entrance to this pass there stood, at the time we speak of, a small wayside inn, or shebeen-house, whose greatest recommendation was in the feet, that it was the only place where shelter and refreshment could be obtained for miles on either side. An humble thatched cabin abutting against the granite rock of the glen, and decorated with an almost effaced sign of St. Finbar converting a very unprepossessing heathen, over the door, showed where Mary M’Kelly dispensed “enthertainment for man and baste.”

      A chance traveller, bestowing a passing glance upon this modest edifice, might deem that an inn in such a dreary and unfrequented valley, must prove a very profitless speculation – few, very few travelled the road – fewer still would halt to bait within ten miles of Bantry. Report, however, said differently; the impression in the country was, that “Mary’s” – as it was briefly styled – had a readier share of business than many a more promising and pretentious hotel; in fact, it was generally believed to be the resort of all the smugglers of the coast; and the market, where the shopkeepers of the interior repaired in secret to purchase the contraband wares and “run goods,” which poured into the country from the shores of France and Holland.

      Vast storehouses and caves were said to exist in the rock behind the house, to store away the valuable goods, which from time to time arrived; and it was currently believed that the cargo of an Indiaman might have been concealed within these secret recesses, and never a cask left in view to attract suspicion.

      It is not into these gloomy receptacles of contraband that we would now conduct our reader, but into a far more cheerful and more comfortable locality – the spacious kitchen of the cabin, or, in fact, the apartment which served for the double purpose of cooking and eating – the common room of the inn, where around a blazing fire of black turf was seated a party of three persons.

      At one side sat the fat and somewhat comely figure of Mary herself, a woman of some five-and-forty years, with that expression of rough and ready temperament, the habits of a wayside inn will teach. She had a clear, full eye – a wide, but not unpleasant mouth – and a voice that suited well the mellifluous intonation of a Kerry accent. Opposite to her were two thin, attenuated old men, who, for dress, look, age, voice, and manner, it would have been almost impossible to distinguish from each other; for while the same weather-beaten, shrivelled expression was common to both, their jackets of blue cloth, leather breeches, and top boots, were so precisely alike, that they seemed the very Dromios brought back to life, to perform as postillions. Such they were – such they had been for above fifty years. They had travelled the country from the time they were boys – they entered the career together, and together they were jogging onward to the last stage of all, the only one where they hoped to be at rest! Joe and Jim Daly were two names no one ever heard disunited; they were regarded as but one corporeally, and although they affected at times to make distinctions themselves, the world never gave them credit for any consciousness of separate identity. These were the postillions of the travelling carriage, which having left at its destination, about two miles distant, they were now regaling themselves at Mary’s, where the horses were to rest for the night.

      “Faix, ma’am, and it’s driving ye may call it,” said one of the pair, as he sipped a very smoking compound the hostess had just mixed, “a hard gallop every step of the way, barrin’ the bit of a hill at Carrignacurra.”

      “Well, I hope ye had the decent hansel for it, any how, Jim?”

      “I’m Joe, ma’am, av its plazing to ye; Jim is the pole-end boy; he rides the layders. And it’s true for ye – they behaved dacent.”

      “A goold guinea, divil a less” – said the other, “there’s no use in denying it. Begorra, it was all natural, them’s as rich as Crasis; sure didn’t I see the young lady herself throwing out the tenpenny bits to the gossoons, as we went by, as if it was dirt; bad luck to me, but I was going to throw down the Bishop of Cloyne.”

      “Throw down who?” said the hostess.

      “The near wheeler, ma’am; he’s a broken-kneed ould divil, we bought from the bishop, and called him after him; and as I was saying, I was going to cross them on the pole, and get a fall, just to have a scramble for the money, with the gaffers.”

      “‘They look so poor,’ says she. God help her – it’s little poverty she saw – there isn’t one of them crayters hasn’t a sack of potatoes.”

      “Ay – more of them a pig.”

      “And hens,” chimed in the first speaker, with a horror at the imposition of people so comfortably endowed, affecting to feel any pressure or poverty.

      “And what’s bringing them here at all?”