having left the castle, bernard walked briskly away across the open square, past the quay and along the curling stretch of sands which led to the path under the cliffs. he had taken the hammer from his pocket and swung it as he strode onward, whistling as he went.
a mile or so along the strand, he turned off at a footway leading up the rocks, and climbed this nimbly to the top, gaining which, he began to scan closely the broad expanse of dun-colored bog-plain which dipped gradually toward mount gabriel. his search was not protracted. he had made out the figures he sought, and straightway set out over the bog, with a light, springing step, still timed to a whistled marching tune, toward them.
“well, i’ve treed the coon!” was his remark when he had joined jerry and linsky. “it was worth waiting for a week just to catch him like that, with his guard down. wait a minute, then i can be sure of what i’m talking about.”
the others had not invited this adjuration by any overt display of impatience, and they watched the young man now take an envelope from his pocket and work out a sum on its back with a pencil in placid if open-eyed contentment. they both studied him, in fact, much as their grandfathers might have gazed at the learned pig at a fair—as a being with resources and accomplishments quite beyond the laborious necessity of comprehension.
he finished his ciphering, and gave them, in terse summary, the benefit of it.
“the way i figure the thing,” he said, with his eye on the envelope, “is this: the mines were going all right when your man went away, twelve years ago. the output then was worth, say, eight thousand pounds sterling a year. since then it has once or twice gone as high at twenty thousand pounds, and once it’s been down to eleven thousand pouunds. from all i can gather the average ought to have been, say, fourteen thousand pounds. the mining tenants hold on the usual thirty-one-year lease, paying fifty pounds a year to begin with, and then one-sixteenth on the gross sales. there is a provision of a maximum surface-drainage charge of two pounds an acre, but there’s nothing in that. on my average, the whole royalties would be nine hundred and twenty-five pounds a year. that, in twelve years, would be eleven thousand pounds. i think, myself, that it’s a good deal more; but that’ll do as a starter. and you say o’daly’s been sending the boss two hundred pounds a year?”
“at laste for tin years—not for the last two,” said jerry.
“very well, then; you’ve got nine thousand pounds. the interest on that for two years alone would make up all he sent away.”
“an’ ’t is your idea that o’daly has putt by all that money?”
“and half as much more; and not a cent of it all belongs to him.”
“thrue for you; ’t is miss katie’s money,” mourned jerry, shaking his curly red head and disturbing his fat breast with a prolonged sigh. “but she’ll never lay finger to anny of it. oh, cormac, you’re the divil!”
the young man sniffed impatiently.
“that’s the worst of you fellows,” he said, sharply. “you take fright like a flock of sheep. what the deuce are you afraid of? no wonder ireland isn’t free, with men who have got to sit down and cry every few minutes!” then the spectacle of pained surprise on jerry’s fat face drove away his mood of criticism. “or no; i don’t mean that,” he hastened to add; “but really, there’s no earthly reason why o’daly shouldn’t be brought to book. there’s law here for that sort of thing as much as there is anywhere else.”
“’t was miss katie’s own words that i’d be a fool to thry to putt the law on cormac o’daly, an’ him an attorney,” explained jerry, in defiant self-defense.
“perhaps that’s true about your putting the law on him,” bernard permitted himself to say. “but you’re a trustee, you tell me, as much as he is, and others can act for you and force him to give his accounts. that can be done upon your trust-deed.”
“me paper, is it?”
“yes, the one the boss gave you.”
“egor! o’daly has it. he begged me for it, to keep ’em together. if i’d ask him for it, belike he’d refuse me. you’ve no knowledge of the characther of that same o’daly.”
for just a moment the young man turned away, his face clouded with the shadows of a baffled mind. then he looked jerry straight in the eye.
“see here,” he said, “you trust me, don’t you? you believe that i want to act square by you and help you in this thing?”
“i do, sir,” said jerry, simply.
“well, then, i tell you that o’daly can be made to show up, and the whole affair can be set straight, and the young lady—my cousin—can be put into her own again. only i can’t work in the dark. i can’t play with a partner that ‘finesses’ against me, as a whist-player would say. now, who is this man here? i know he isn’t your cousin any more than he is mine. what’s his game?”
linsky took the words out of his puzzled companion’s mouth.
“’t is a long story, sir,” he said, “an’ you’d be no wiser if you were told it. some time, plase god, you’ll know it all. just now’t is enough that i’m bound to this man and to the o’mahony, who’s away, an’ perhaps dead an’ buried, an’ i’m heart an’ sowl for doin’ whatever i can to help the young lady. only, if you’ll not moind me sayin’ so, she’s her own worst inemy. if she takes the bit in her mouth this way, an’ will go into the convint, how, in the name of glory, are we to stop her or do anything else?”
“there are more than fifteen hundred ways of working that” replied the young man from houghton county, simulating a confidence he did not wholly feel. “but let’s get along down toward the village.”
they entered muirisc through the ancient convent churchyard, and at his door-way jerry, as the visible result of much cogitation, asked the twain in. after offering them glasses of whiskey and water and lighting a pipe, jerry suddenly resolved upon a further extension of confidence. to linsky’s astonishment, he took the lantern down from the wall, lighted it, and opened the door at the back of the bed.
“if you’ll come along wid us, sir,” he said to bernard, “we’ll show you something.”
“there, here we can talk at our aise,” he remarked again, when finally the three men were in the subterranean chamber, with the door closed behind them. “have you anything like this in ameriky?”
bernard was not so greatly impressed as they expected him to be. he stolled about the vault-like room, sounding the walls with his boot, pulling-aside the bed-curtains and investigating the drain.
“curious old place,” he said, at last. “what’s the idea?”
“sure, ’t is a sacret place intoirely,” explained jerry. “besides us three, there’s not a man aloive who knows of it, exceptin’ the o’mahony, if be god’s grace he’s aloive. ’t was he discovered it. he’d the eyes of a him-harrier for anny mark or sign in a wall. well do i remimber our coming here first. he lukked it all over, as you’re doing.
“‘egor!’ says he, ‘it may come in handy for o’daly some day.’ there was a dead man there on the bed, that dry ye c’u’d ’a’ loighted him wid a match.”
“’t is a part of the convint,” linsky took up the explanation, “an’ the chest, there, was full of deeds an’ riccorcls of the convint for manny cinturies. ‘t was me work for years to decipher an’ thranslate thim, unbeknownst to every soul in muirisc. they were all in irish.”
“yes, it’s a queer sort of hole,” said bernard, musingly, walking over to the table and holding up one of the ancient manuscripts to the lamplight for investigation. “why, this isn’t irish, is it?” he asked, after a moment’s scrutiny. “this is latin.”
“’t is wan of half a dozen ye see there on the table that i couldn’t make out,” said linsky. “i’m no latin scholar meself. ’t was me intintion to foind some one outside who c’u’d thranslate thim.” bernard had kept his eyes on the faded parchment.
“odd!” he said. “it’s from a bishop—matthew o’finn seems to be the name—”
“he was bishop of ross in the early part of the fourteenth cintury,” put in linsky.
“and this thing is a warning to the nuns here to close up their convent and take in no more novices, because the church can’t recognize them or their order. it’s queer old latin, but that’s what i make it out to be.”
“’t is an illegant scholar ye are, sir!” exclaimed jerry, in honest admiration.
“no,” said bernard; “only they started me in for a priest, and i got to know latin as well as i did english, or almost. but my godliness wasn’t anywhere near high-water mark, and so i got switched off into engineering. i dare say the change was a good thing all around. if it’s all the same to you,” he added, turning to linsky, “i’ll put this parchment in my pocket for the time being, i want to look it over again more carefully. you shall have it back.”
the two irishmen assented as a matter of course. this active-minded and capable young man, who had mining figures at his finger’s ends, and could read latin, and talked lightly of fifteen hundred ways to outwit o’daly, was obviously one to be obeyed without questions. they sat now and watched him with rapt eyes and acquiescent nods as he, seated on the table with foot on knee, recounted to them the more salient points of his interview with o’daly.
“he was a dacent ould man when i knew him first,” mused jerry, in comment, “an’ as full of praises for the o’mahonys as an egg is of mate. ’t is the money that althered him; an’ thin that brat of a bye of his! ’t is since thin that he behaved like a nagur. an ’t is my belafe, sir, that only for him miss katie’d never have dr’amed of interin’ that thunderin’ old convint. the very last toime i was wid him, egor, he druv us both from the house. ’t was the nuns made miss katie return to him next day. ’t is just that, sir, that she’s no one else bechune thim nuns an’ o’daly, an’ they do be tossin’ her from wan to the other of ’em like a blessid ball.”
“the wonder is to me she’s stood it for a minute,” said bernard; “a proud girl like her.”
“ah, sir,” said jerry, “it isn’t like in ameriky, where every wan’s free to do what phases him. what was the girl to do? where was she to go if she defied thim that was in authority over her? ’t is aisy to talk, as manny’s the toime she’s said that same to me; but ’t is another matther to do!”
“there’s the whole trouble in a nutshell,” said bernard. “everybody talks and nobody does anything.”
“there’s truth in that sir,” put in linsky; “but what are you proposin’ to do? there were fifteen hundred ways, you said. what’s wan of ’em?”
“oh, there are fifteen hundred and two now,” responded bernard, with a smile. “you’ve helped me to two more since i’ve been down here—or, rather, this missing o’mahony of yours has helped me to one, and i helped myself to the other.”
the two stared in helpless bewilderment at the young man.
“that o’mahony seems to have been a right smart chap,” bernard continued. “no wonder he made things hum here in muirisc. and a prophet too. why, the very first time he ever laid eyes on this cave here, by your own telling, he saw just what it was going to be good for.”
“i don’t folly ye,” said the puzzled jerry.
“why, to put o’daly in, of course,” answered the young man, lightly. “that’s as plain as the nose on your face.”
“egor! ’t is a grand idea that same!” exclaimed jerry, slapping his thigh. “only,” he added, with a sinking enthusiasm, “suppose he wouldn’t come?”
bernard laughed outright.
“that’ll be easy enough. all you have to do is to send word you want to see him in your place up stairs; when he comes, tell him there’s a strange discovery you’ve made. bring him down here, let him in, and while he’s looking around him just slip out and shut the door on him. i notice it’s got a spring-lock from the outside. a thoughtful man, that o’mahony! of course, you’ll want to bring down enough food and water to last a week or so, first; perhaps a little whiskey, too. and i’d carry up all these papers, moreover, and put ’em in your room above. until the old man got quieted down, he might feel disposed to tear things.”
“egor! i’ll do it!” cried jerry, with sparkling eyes and a grin on his broad face. “oh, the art of man!”
the pallid and near-sighted linsky was less alive to the value of this bold plan.
“an’ what’ll ye do nixt?” he asked, doubtfully.
“i’ve got a scheme which i’ll carry out to-morrow, by myself,” said bernard. “it’ll take me all day; and by the time i turn up the day after, you must have o’daly safely bottled up down here. then i’ll be in a position to read the riot act to everybody. first we’ll stand the convent on its head, and then i’ll come down here and have a little confidential talk with o’daly about going to prison as a fraudulent trustee.”
“sir, you’re well-named ‘o’mahony,’” said jerry, with beaming earnestness, “i do be almost believin’ ye’re his son!”
bernard chuckled as he sprang off the table to his feet.
“there might be even stranger things than that,” he said, and laughed again.
