The Northern Iron Part 32

"I am not sure of that. If it is discovered that he let you go last night he will surely suffer for it. They have hanged men for less, and imprisoned or exiled others."

"Oh," said Neal, "I could find it in my heart to wish they would hang Maurice. Hope, you know many men and many things, but you don't know Lord Dunseveric. Why, man, if they hanged Maurice the old lord would hang them--he would hang them in batches of a score at a time. If any escaped him he would wait for them till the resurrection morning. He would meet them as they stepped out of their graves and hang them then.

He would hang them if there wasn't another tree in the whole universe to put the rope round except the tree of life which stands by the river in the New Jerusalem."

He laughed exultingly. Hope looked at him with pitying tenderness. He understood the hysterical pa.s.sion which had dragged such words from him.

"I am glad," he said, "that your friend is in no great danger, but that does not alter the truth of what I say. You are his prisoner, released on your parole, and you must present yourself to him when he calls for you at Dunseveric. Besides, Neal, you owe a duty to your father and to those at home who love you. For their sakes you must not throw your life away."

The anger died out of Neal's heart. This last appeal left him with no feeling but tenderness. He thought of his father, a lone man, waiting for news of him, of Donald, of the battle, and the cause. He thought of Una St. Clair and the ever-new marvel of the love that she had confessed to him. Still he hesitated. Brought up in the stern faith of the Puritans, he believed that because a thing offered a prospect of great delight it must somehow be wrong. The longing to see Una again came on him, sweeping over all other thought and emotion as the flowing spring-tide in late September sweeps over the broad sands of the northern coast. To see her, to hear her, to touch her, perhaps to kiss her again, was the one thing supremely desirable in life. Therefore, he felt instinctively that it must be a tempter's voice which showed him the way to the fulfilment of such desire.

"Are you sure," he asked, "that you are not, out of love for me, advising me to do wrong?"

"I am sure," said Hope.

Afterwards they talked of how Neal might best accomplish his journey to Dunseveric. It was clear to Hope, as it had been to Maurice St. Clair, that the main roads must be avoided, and that all travelling must be done by night; but it was not very easy to go through an unknown country by night, and until Neal got as far as Ballymoney he could not be sure of being able to find his way.

"I might manage it," he said, "if I could keep to the main road. I have travelled it once and I think I should not miss it even at night, but how am I to get along lanes and across fields which I have never seen without losing myself?"

"Ah," said Hope, "that is a difficulty, and yet there is a way out of it. Phelim, the blind piper, is with us here. G.o.d knows how he got safe from the battle yesterday, and found his way to us. He will be no use to us any more, only a hindrance. We shall not march to battle again with our pipes playing and our colours flying. I think I shall be able to persuade him to act as your guide. The blind leading the ignorant, eh, Neal? But Phelim knows every lane and path in the country. How he does I don't know. Perhaps some new sense is developed in the blind.

Anyway, night and day are alike to him. If he takes you as far as the neighbourhood of Ballymoney you'll be able to find the rest of the way afterwards yourself."

That night, while M'Cracken marched the remnant of his army to Slievemis, Neal and blind Phelim set off on their journey north. They travelled safely in the rear of the yeomen who were searching the country side. Neal lay hid all one day in a little wood while Phelim, who seemed to want little rest and no sleep, wandered in the neighbourhood and brought back tidings of the doings of the yeomen who had pa.s.sed. Before daybreak the next morning Neal left his guide behind him and made his way to the sandhills near Port Ballin-trae. He lay in a hollow near the mouth of the river Bush. He understood from what Phelim had told him that Captain Twinely and his men had pushed northwards in pursuit of him, and that he had followed in their tracks. He realised that there must be a large force gathered in Bushmills and Ballintoy, and that the whole country would be scoured to find him. Therefore, though he was within a few miles of his home, he dare not stir in the daytime. He lay in his sandy hollow through the long hot day, with the sound of the sea in his ears. He slept for an hour or two now and then.

Once he crept among the dunes to a place where a little stream trickled down, in order to get a drink, but he did not venture to stay beside the stream. For some time he amused himself by plaiting the spiked gra.s.s into stiff green rods, and then, from a razor sh.e.l.l which he found in his hollow, he fashioned pike heads for the ends of the rods. Afterwards he picked all the yellow crow-toes within reach, and the broad mauve flowers of the wild convolvulus. He set them out in gay beds, like flowers growing in gardens, and edged them round with borders of wild thyme. Then, with great labour, he collected forty or fifty snail sh.e.l.ls and laid them in rows, making each row consist only of those like each other in colouring. He had lines of dark brown sh.e.l.ls, of pale yellow, and of striped sh.e.l.ls. These again he subdivided according to the width and number of their stripes. Once he ventured to creep to a place from which he could watch the sea. He saw that the tide was flowing. Below him on the strand were a number of seagulls, strutting, fluttering, shrieking, splashing with wing-tips and feet in the oncoming waves. He supposed that the young fry of some fish must have drifted sh.o.r.ewards, and that the birds were feasting on them. Then', at the far end of the bay, he saw men's figures moving, near the Black Rock, among the boats hauled up on the sh.o.r.e in the creek from which he and Maurice and Una had set out to fish on Rackle Roy. A dread seized him that these might be yeomen. Since he had come within reach of home, since he had seen and heard the sea, since he had breathed the familiar salt-laden air, his courage had left him. He felt a very coward, desperately anxious not to be caught and dragged back again to the horror of death. He wanted to live now that he was back at home and almost within reach of Una.

He eyed the distant figures anxiously, and then crept back and lay trembling in his hollow among his ordered snail-sh.e.l.ls and the flowers, already withered, which he had plucked and planted in the sand.

At last the sun set. Neal waited for an hour while the June twilight slowly faded. He watched the sandhills round his lair turn from bright yellow to grey, watched them while they seemed in the fading light to grow loftier, and a.s.sume a weird majesty which was not their's in the daytime. The objects near at hand, the faded flowers, and the snail-sh.e.l.ls, and the rods of woven bent, lost their bright colours and became almost invisible. The eternal roaring of the sea seemed to be subdued, as if even it felt awed by the stillness of the June night.

The sand on which he lay was damped with dew. Only the sharp cry of the corncrake broke the solemnity of the night.

He rose, and, peering anxiously before him as each fresh stretch of his way became visible, crossed the sandhills. Avoiding the stepping-stones and the regular crossing-place, he waded through the brook which ran gurgling between the sandhills and the rough track beyond them. He crossed it, and, skirting the rear of a cottage, reached the top of the Runkerry cliffs. Far below him the sea rushed, white-lipped, against the rocks. The tide was almost full. The scene was as it had been ten days ago, ten years ago, a whole lifetime ago, when he walked this same way with Donald Ward. Still keeping close to the sea, he avoided the high road near the Causeway, plodded along the stony track past the Rocking Stone and the Wishing Well, climbed the Shepherd's Path, and once more walked along the verge of the cliff above Port na Spaniard and the Horse Shoe Bay and Pleaskin Head. He reached Port Moon, and saw far below him the glimmer of a light in the rude shelter where fishermen lodge in summer time. Avoiding the farmhouse near him on his right, and the lane which led past it to the high road, he went on, clinging close to the sea as if for safety. He rested a while in the shelter of the ruins of Dun-severic Castle, and then went on till his feet were stumbling among the graves of Templeastra, where the dust of his mother lay. It was dark now. He guessed that he must have been an hour and a half on his way. He came close to the manse--his home. Below him lay Ballintoy Strand, with its sentinel white rocks which keep eternal watch against invading seas.

Between him and his home there was the road to cross and the meadow to wade through. It must, as he guessed, be eleven o'clock. His father and Hannah Macaulay would be in bed. He would have to rouse them with cautious tapping upon window panes.

He reached the back of the house at last, and saw, to his amazement, that a light burned in the kitchen, and that the door stood wide open.

A dread seized him. Perhaps the house was occupied by soldiers. For a moment he thought of turning back again to the sea and the cliffs. But he wanted food, and it was absolutely necessary for him to communicate with some one. His plan was to lie hid in the Pigeon Cave, but he must have food brought to him day by day, and he must let his father or Hannah know where he was going.

Very cautiously he crept forward and peered through the window. There was a candle in its tall iron stand on the floor, and the peat fire burned brightly on the hearth. A row of bra.s.s candlesticks were on the mantel-board. Hannah Macaulay sat on a chair near the door knitting. The room, he saw, was neat and orderly as ever.

The lids of the pots and the metal dish-covers gleamed from the nails on which they hung round the walls. The pewter plates, bronze jugs, and upturned noggins stood in shining rows on the dresser shelves. Neal waited. Not a sound reached him from the house. He took courage and slipped through the open door.

"Is that you yoursel', Master Neal?" said Hannah, quietly, "I ha' your supper ready for ye. I was sitting up for you. You're late the night."

She rose from her seat and, without a sign of surprise or excitement, closed the door and bolted it.

"Hannah, how is it that you are expecting me? You can't have known that I was coming. How did you know?"

Hannah took plates from the dresser and food from the cupboard while she answered him.

"Master Maurice's groom, the lad they call James, rode in from Antrim the day afore yesterday with a note for Miss Una ower by. She tellt me that you'd be coming and that it was more nor like you'd travel by night. I've had your supper ready, and I've sat waiting for you these two nights, I knew rightly that it was here you'd come first."

"Where is my father?"

"He's gone, Master Neal. The sojers came and took him, but he bid me tell you not to be afeard or taking on about him. He was thinking they'd send him across the sea, maybe to Scotland, he said, but they wouldna hurt him. So eat your bit and take your sup, my bairn. You must be sore troubled with the hunger. How ever did ye thole?"

"I have your bed ready for you," she said as Neal ate, "and it's in it you ought to be by right. I'm thinking it's more than yin night since ye hae lain atween the sheets, judging by the looks of ye."

"It's five, Hannah, and it will be twice five more before I sleep in a bed again. I dare not stay here."

"Thon's what Miss Una said. But, faith, if it's the yeomen you're afeard of, I'll no let them near you."

"I daren't, Hannah; I daren't do it. I must away to-night and lie in the Pigeon Cave. I'll be safe there, and you must manage somehow to get food to me."

"Is it me that you look to be climbing down them sliddery rocks and swimming intil the cold sea among your caves and hiding holes? I'm too old for the like, but there's a la.s.sie with bonny brown eyes that'll do that and more for ye. Don't you be afeard, Master Neal. She'd climb the Causey chimney pots and take the silver sixpence off the top if she thought you were wanting it. Ay, or swim intil them caves, that G.o.d Almighty never meant for man nor maid to enter, and if were waiting for her at the hinder end of one of them. She's been here an odd time or twa since ever she got the letter that the groom lad fetched. I've seen the glint in her eyes at the sound o' your name, and the red go out of her cheek at word of them dratted yeos, bad scran to them! I'm no so old yet, but I mind weel how a young la.s.sie feels for the lad she's after.

Ay, my bairn, it's all yin, gentle or simple, lord's daughter or beggar's wench, when the love of a lad has got the grip o' them. And there was yin with her--the foreign lady with the lang name. For all that she mocks and fleers as if there was nothing in the wide world but play-actin' and gagin' about. Faith, she's an artist, but she might be more help than Miss Una herself if it came to a pinch. She's a cunning one, that. I'm thinking that she's no unlike the serpent that's more subtle than any beast of the field. She has a way of glowerin' a body and giving a bit of a girn to her mouth. Man or woman or red-coated sojer itself, they'd need to be up gey an' early that would get the better o' her. A bird might be lang afore it could find time to build a nest in her ear, so it might. Eh! but, my poor lad, it's a sorry thing to think of ye lyin' the night through among the hard stones and me in my warm bed. Eh! but it grieves me sore---- whisht, boy, what's thon?"

Hannah started to her feet. Hand to ear, lips parted, with eager eyes and head bent forward she listened.

"It's the tread of horses; they're coming up the loany."

"I must run for it," said Neal, "let me out of the door, Hannah."

"Bide now, bide a wee, they'd see you if you went through the door."

She put out the lamp as she spoke.

"Do you slip through to the master's room and open the window. Go canny now, and make no noise. Get through and off with ye into your cave as hard as ever you can lift a foot, I'll cap them at the door, lad. I'm the woman can do it. Faith and I'll sort them, be they who it may, so as they'll no be in too great a hurry to come ridin' to this house again, the black-hearted villains. But I'll learn them manners or I'm done wi'

them else my name's no Hannah Macaulay."

Neal, as he slipped silently from the room, was aware that Hannah meditated a vigorous attack upon her midnight visitors. She took the long kitchen poker in her hand, shook it with a grim smile, and thrust the end of it into the heart of the fire.

There was a knock at the door. Hannah, standing in a corner of the room, and hidden from any one looking in through the window, neither spoke nor stirred. The knocking was repeated, and again repeated. Hannah remained silent.

"Open the door," shouted a voice from without, "open the door at once."

Still there was no reply.

"We know you're within, Hannah Macaulay, we saw the light before you put it out. Open to us, or we'll batter in the door, and then it will be the worse for you."

"And who may be you that come knocking and banging the door of a dacent house at this time o' night, making a hullabaloo fit for to wake the dead; and it the blessed Sabbath too?"

"Sabbath be d.a.m.ned; it's Thursday night."

"Is it, then, is it? There's them that wouldn't know if it was Monday nor Tuesday, nor yet Wednesday, nor the blessed Sabbath day itself, and, what's more, wouldn't care if they did know. That just shows what like lads you are. Away home out o' this to your beds, if so be that you have any beds to go to."

In fact the men outside were perfectly right. The day was Thursday, though it neared Friday. The Sabbath was a long way off yet, as Hannah knew quite well.

"You doited old hag, open the door."

"I'm a lone widow woman," said Hannah, plaintively, "I canna be letting the likes of ye in and me in my bed. It wouldna be dacent if I did.

Where'd my good name be if I did the like and me not know ye?"