Roland Cashel Volume Ii Part 54

"Your daring to use a threat to me!" said Linton, sternly. "There never was the man that tried that game--and there have been some just as clever fellows as Tom Keane who did try it--who did n't find that they met their match."

"I only ax what's right and fair," said the other, abashed by the daring effrontery of Linton's air.

"And you shall have it, and more. You shall either have enough to settle in America, or, if you prefer it, to live abroad."

"And why not stay at home here?" said Tom, doggedly.

"To blurt out your secret in some drunken moment, and be hanged at last!" said Linton, with a cutting irony.

"An', maybe, tell how one Misther Linton put the wickedness first in my head," added Tom, as if finishing the sentence.

Linton bit his lip, and turned angrily away to conceal the mortification the speech had caused him. "My good friend," said he, in a deliberate voice, "you think that whenever you upset the boat you will drown _me_; and I have half a mind to dare you to it, just to show you the shortness of your calculation. Trust me"--there was a terrible distinctness in his utterance of these words--"trust me, that in all my dealings with the world, I have left very little at the discretion of what are called men of honor. I leave nothing, absolutely nothing, in the power of such as you."

At last did Linton strike the right chord of the fellow's nature; and in his subdued and crestfallen countenance might be read the signs of his prostration.

"Hear me now attentively, Keane, and let my words rest well in your memory. The trial comes on on the 15th; your evidence will be the most important of all; but give it with the reluctance of a man who shrinks from bringing his landlord to the scaffold. You understand me? Let everything you say show the desire to screen Mr. Cashel. Another point: affect not to know anything save what you actually saw. You never can repeat too often the words, 'I did n't see it.' This scrupulous reliance on eyesight imposes well upon a jury. These are the only cautions I have to give you. Your own natural intelligence will supply the rest. When all is finished you will come up to Dublin, and call at a certain address which will be given you hereafter. And now we part. It is your own fault if you lose a friend who never deserted the man that stood by him."

"An' are you going back to Dublin now, sir?" asked Keane, over whose mind Linton's influence had become dominant, and who actually dreaded to be left alone, and without his guidance.

Linton nodded an a.s.sent.

"But you 'll be down here at the trial, sir?" asked Tom, eagerly.

"I suspect not," said Linton. "If not summoned as a witness, I'll a.s.suredly not come."

"Oh, murther!" exclaimed Tom. "I thought I 'd have you in the 'Coort,'

just to look up at you from time to time, to give me courage and make me feel bowld; for it does give me courage when I see you so calm and so azy, without as much as a tremble in your voice."

"It is not likely that I shall be there," rejoined Linton; "but mind, if I be, that you do _not_ direct your eyes towards me. Remember, that every look you give, every gesture you make, will be watched and noted."

"I wondher how I'll get through it!" exclaimed the other, sorrowfully.

"You'll get through it admirably, man, if you'll only think that you are not the person in peril. It is your conscience alone can bring you into any danger."

"Well, I hope so! with the help of--" The fellow stopped short, and a red flush of shame spread itself over features which in a whole life long had never felt a blush.

"I 'd like to be able to give you something better than this, Tom," said Linton, as he placed a handful of loose silver in the other's palm, "but it is safer for the present that you should not be seen with much money."

"I owe more than this at Mark Shea's 'public,'" said Tom, looking discontentedly at the money.

"And why should you owe it?" said Linton, bitterly. "What is there in your circ.u.mstances to warrant debts of this kind?"

"Did n't I earn it--tell me that?" asked the ruffian, with a savage earnestness.

"I see that you are hopeless," said Linton, turning away in disgust.

"Take your own course, and see where it will lead you."

"No--you mean where it will lead us," said the fellow, insolently.

"What! do you dare to threaten me? Now, once for all, let this have an end. I have hitherto treated you with candor and with kindness. If you fancy that my hate can be more profitable than my friendship, say so, and before one hour pa.s.ses over your head I 'll have you committed to prison as an accessory to the murder."

"I ax your pardon humbly--I did n't mean to anger yer Honer," said the other, in a servile tone. "I'll do everything you bid me--and sure you know best what ought to be done."

"Then let us part good friends," said Linton, holding out his hand towards him. "I see a boat coming over the lake which will drop me at Killaloe; we must not be seen together--so good-bye, Tom, good-bye."

"Good-bye, and a safe journey to yer Honer," said Tom, as, touching his hat respectfully, he retired into the wood.

The boat which Linton descried was still above a mile from the sh.o.r.e, and he sat down upon a stone to await its coming. Beautiful as that placid lake was, with its background of bold mountains, its scattered islands, and its jutting promontories, he had no eye for these, but followed with a peering glance the direction in which Tom Keane had departed.

"There are occasions," muttered he to himself, "when the boldest courses are the safest. Is this one of these? Dare I trust that fellow, or would this be better?" And, as if mechanically, he drew forth a double-barrelled pistol from his breast, and looked fixedly at it.

He arose from his seat, and sat down again--his mind seemed beset with hesitation and doubt; but the conflict did not last long, for he replaced the weapon, and walking down to the lake, dipped his fingers in the water and bathed his temples, saying to himself,--

"Better as it is: over-caution is as great an error as foolhardiness."

With a dexterity acquired by long practice, he now disguised his features so perfectly that none could have recognized him; and by the addition of a wig and whiskers of bushy red hair, totally changed the character of his appearance. This he did, that at any future period he might not be recognized by the boatmen, who, in answer to his signal, now pulled vigorously towards the sh.o.r.e.

He soon bargained with them to leave him at Killaloe, and as they rowed along engaged them to talk about the country, in which he affected to be a tourist. Of course the late murder was the theme uppermost in every mind, and Linton marked with satisfaction how decisively the current of popular belief ran in attributing the guilt to Cashel.

With a perversity peculiar to the peasant, the agent whom they had so often inveighed against for cruelty in his lifetime, they now discovered to have been the type of all that was kind-hearted and benevolent; and had no hesitation in attributing his unhappy fate to an altercation in which he, with too rash a zeal, was the "poor man's advocate."

The last words he was heard to utter on leaving Tub-bermore were quoted, as implying a condemnation on Cashel's wasteful extravagance, at a time when the poor around were "perishing of hunger." Even to Linton, whose mind was but too conversant with the sad truths of the story, these narratives a.s.sumed the strongest form of consistency and likelihood; and he saw how effectually circ.u.mstantial evidence can convict a man in public estimation, long before a jury are sworn to try him.

Crimes of this nature, now, had not been unfrequent in that district; and the country people felt a species of savage vengeance in urging their accusations against a "gentleman," who had not what they reckoned as the extenuating circ.u.mstances to diminish or explain away his guilt.

"He was n't turned out of his little place to die on the roadside,"

muttered one. "He wasn't threatened, like poor Tom Keane, to be 'starminated,'" cried another.

"And who is Tom Keane?" asked Linton.

"The gatekeeper up at the big house yonder, sir; one that's lived man and boy nigh fifty years there; and Mr. Cashel swore he 'd root him out, for all that!"

"Ay!" chimed in another, in a moralizing whine, "an' see where he is himself, now!"

"I wondher now if they'd hang him, sir?" asked one.

"Why not," asked Linton, "if he should be found guilty?"

"They say, sir, the gentlemen can always pay for another man to be hanged instead of them. Musha, maybe 'tis n't true," added he, diffidently, as he saw the smile on Linton's face.

"I think you 'll find that the right man will suffer in this case," said Linton; and a gleam of malignant pa.s.sion shot from his dark eyes as he spoke.

CHAPTER XXIX. THE TRIAL--THE PROSECUTION

As I listened I thought myself guilty.