The Black Prophet Part 57

There is little now to be added. "Time, the consoler," pa.s.ses not in vain even over the abodes of wretchedness and misery. The sufferings of that year of famine we have endeavored to bring before those who may have the power in their hands of a.s.suaging the similar horrors which are likely to visit this. The pictures we have given are not exaggerated, but drawn from memory and the terrible realities of 1817.

It is unnecessary to add, that when sickness and the severity of winter pa.s.sed away, our lovers, Mave and young Condy Dalton, were happily married, as they deserved to be, and occupied the farm from which the good old man had been so unjustly expelled.

It was on the first social evening that the two families, now so happily reconciled, spent together subsequent to the trial, that Bartle Sullivan gratified them with the following account of his history:

"I remimber fightin'," he proceeded, "wid Condy on that night, an' the devil's own _bulliah battha_ he was. We went into a corner of the field near the Grey Stone to decide it. All at wanst I forgot what happened, till I found myself lyin' upon a car wid the M'Mahons of Edinburg, that lived ten or twelve miles beyant the mountains, at the foot of Carnmore.

They knew me, and good right they had, for I had been spakin' to their sister Shibby, but she wasn't for me at the time, although I was ready to kick my own shadow about her, G.o.d knows. Well, you see, I felt disgraced at bein' beaten by Con Dalton, an I was fond of her, so what 'ud you have of us but off we went together to America, for you see she promised to marry me if I'd go.

"They had taken me up on one of their carts, thinkin' I was dhrunk, to lave me for safety in the next neighbor's house we came to. Well, she an' I married when we got to Boston; but G.o.d never blessed us wid a family; and Toddy here, who tuk the life of a pedlar, came back afther many a long year, with a good purse, and lived with us. At last I began to long for home, and so we all came together. The Prophet's wife was wid us, an' another pa.s.senger tould me that Con here had been suspected of murdherin' me. I got unwell in Liverpool, but I sent Toddy on before me to make their minds aisy. As we wor talkin' over these matthers, I happened to mention to the woman what I had seen the night the carman was murdhered, and I wondhered at the way she looked on hearin' it. She went on, but afther a time came back to Liverpool for me, an' took the typhus on her way home, but thank G.o.d, we were all in time to clear the innocent and punish the guilty; ay, an' reward the good, too, eh, Toddy?'"

"I'll give Mave away," replied Toddy, "if there wasn't another man in Europe; an' when I'm puttin' your hand into Con's, Mave, it won't be an empty one. Ay, an' if your friend Sarah, the wild girl, had lived--but it can't be helped--death takes the young as well as the ould; and may G.o.d prepare us all to meet Him!"

Young Richard Henderson's antic.i.p.ations were, unfortunately, too true.

On leaving Mr. Travers' office, he returned home, took his bed, and; in the course of one short week, had paid, by a kind of judicial punishment, the fatal penalty of his contemplated profligacy. His father survived him only a few months, so that there is not at this moment, one of the name or blood of Henderson in the Grange. The old man died of a quarrel with Jemmy Branigan, to whom he left a pension of fifty pounds a year; and truly the grief of this aged servant after him was unique and original.

"What's to come o' me?" said Jemmy, with tears in his eye; "I have nothing to do, n.o.body to attend to, n.o.body to fight with, nothing to disturb me or put me out of timper; I knew, however, that he would stick to his wickedness to the last--an' so he did, for the devil tempted him, out of sheer malice, when he could get at me no way else, to lave me fifty pounds a year, to kape me aisy! Sich revenge and villany, by a dyin' man, was never heard of. G.o.d help me, what am I to do now, or what hand will I turn to? What is there before me but peace and quietness for the remainder of my life?--but I won't stand that long--an' to lave me fifty pounds a year, to kape me aisy! G.o.d forgive him!"

The Prophet suffered the sentence of the law, but refused all religious consolation. Whether his daughter's message ever reached him or not, we have had no means of ascertaining. He died, however, as she wished, firmly, but sullenly, and as if he despised and defied the world and its laws. He neither admitted his guilt, nor attempted to maintain his innocence, but pa.s.sed out of existence like a man who was already wearied with its cares, and who now felt satisfied, when it was too late, that contempt for the laws of G.o.d and man, never leads to safety, much loss to happiness. His only observation was the following--

"When I dreamt that young Dalton drove a nail in my coffin, little I thought it would end this way."

We have simply to conclude by saying that Rody Duncan was transported for perjury; and that Nelly became a devotee, or voteen, and, as far as one could judge, exhibited something like repentance for the sinful life she had led with the Prophet.