The World's Greatest Books - Volume 2 Part 29

"Who is that?" Sarah asked, starting a little. "I never had anyone to take care o' me--nor a mother; many a time--often--often--the whole world--some one to love me. Oh, a dhrink! Is there no one to give me a dhrink? I'm burning, I'm burning! Mave Sullivan, have pity on me--I heard some one name her--I'll die without you give me a dhrink!"

Mave hastily fetched some water, and in the course of two or three days Sarah's situation, thanks to the attention of Mave and her neighbours, was changed for the better, and she was conveyed home to the Prophet's cabin on a litter--only to die in a few days.

It was the knowledge of what she owed Mave that forced Sarah to frustrate her father's plot for Mave's ruin.

The robbery was no more successful than the abduction, for Roddy Duncan withdrew from it, and Donnel M'Gowan learnt that the house to be plundered was well guarded.

_IV.--An Amazing Witness_

The court was crowded when Cornelius Dalton was put to the bar charged with the wilful murder of Bartholomew Sullivan, by striking him on the head with a walking stick, and when the old man stood up all eyes were turned on him. It was clear that there was an admission of guilt in his face, for instead of appearing erect and independent, he looked around with an expression of remorse and sorrow, and it was with difficulty that he was prevailed upon to plead "not guilty."

The first witness called was Jeremiah Sullivan, who deposed that at one of the Christmas markets in 1798 he was present when an altercation took place between his late brother Bartle and the prisoner. They were both drinking, and their friends separated them. He never saw his brother alive afterwards. He then deposed to the finding of his brother's coat and hat, crushed and torn.

The next witness was Roddy Duncan, who deposed that on the night in question he was pa.s.sing on a car and saw a man drag something heavy, like a sack. He then called out was that Condy Dalton? And the reply was, "It is, unfortunately!" upon which he wished him good-night.

Next came the Prophet. He said he was on his way through Glendhu, when he came to a lonely spot where he found the body of Bartholomew Sullivan, and beside it a grave dug two feet deep. He then caught a glimpse of the prisoner, Condy Dalton, among the bushes, with a spade in his hand. He shouted out and, getting no answer, was glad to get off safe.

On the cross-examination, he said "the reason why he let the matter rest until now was that he did not wish to be the means of bringin' a fellow-creature to an untimely death. His conscience, however, always kept him uneasy, and many a time of late the murdhered man appeared to him, and threatened him for not disclosing what he knew."

"You say the murdered man appeared to you. Which of them?"

"Peter Magennis--what am I sayin'? I mean Bartle Sullivan."

The counsel for the defence requested the judge and jury to make a note of Peter Magennis, and then asked the Prophet what kind of a man Bartle Sullivan was.

"He was a very remarkable man in appearance; stout, with a long face, and a scar on his chin."

"And you saw that man murdered?"

"I seen him dead after havin' been murdhered."

"Do you think, now, if he were to rise again from the grave that you would know him?"

Then the counsel turned round, spoke to some person behind, and a stranger advanced and mounted a table confronting the Black Prophet.

"Whether you seen me dead or buried is best known to yourself," said the stranger. "All I can say is that here I am, Bartle Sullivan, alive an'

well."

Hearing the name, crowds pressed forward, recognising Bartle Sullivan, and testifying their recognition by a general cheer.

There were two persons present, however, Condy Dalton and the Prophet, on whom Sullivan's appearance produced very opposite effects.

Old Dalton at first imagined himself in a dream, and it was only when Sullivan, promising to explain all, came over and shook hands with him, and asked his pardon, that the old man understood he was innocent.

The Prophet looked with mortification rather than wonder at Sullivan; then a shadow settled on his countenance, and he muttered to himself, "I am doomed! Something drove me to this."

The trial was quickly ended. Sullivan's brother and several jurors established his ident.i.ty, and Condy Dalton was discharged.

The judge then ordered the Prophet and Roddy Duncan to be taken into custody, and an indictment of perjury to be prepared at once. The graver charge of murder was, however, brought against M'Gowan, the murder of a carman named Peter Magennis, and the following day he found himself in the very dock where Dalton had stood.

_V.--Fate: the Discoverer_

The trial of Donnel M'Gowan brought several strange things to light. It was proved that the Prophet's real name was McIvor, that he had a wife living, and that this wife was a sister to the murdered carman, Peter Magennis. After the murder, McIvor fled to America with his daughter, and his wife lost sight of him. She had only returned to these parts recently, and she identified the skeleton of her brother because of a certain malformation of the foot.

Then a pedlar, known in the neighbourhood as Toddy Mack, deposed that he had given Magennis a steel tobacco-box with the letters "P. M." punched on it.

It was Roddy Duncan who had seen this tobacco-box put under the thatch, and he, knowing nothing of its history, had given it to Sarah M'Gowan, who equally ignorant, had given it to a young man who called himself Hanlon, but was in fact the son of Magennis.

On the night of the murder the unhappy woman, whom Sarah called stepmother, and who lived with the Black Prophet, saw the tobacco-box in M'Gowan's hands, and it contained a roll of bank-notes. When she asked how he came by it, he gave her a note, and said, "There's all the explanation you can want."

The chain of circ.u.mstantial evidence was sufficient to establish the Prophet's guilt, and the judge pa.s.sed the capital sentence.

The Prophet heard his doom without flinching, and only turned to the gaoler to say, "Now that everything is over, the sooner I get to my cell the betther. I have despised the world too long to care a single curse what it says or thinks about me."

Sarah, who heard of her father's fate while she lay dying, tended by Mave Sullivan and her newly-discovered mother, sent the condemned man a last message. "Say that his daughter, if she was able, would be with him through shame, an' disgrace, an' death; that she'd scorn the world for him; an' that because he said once in his life that he loved her, she'd forgive him all a thousand times, an' would lay down her life for him."

The acquittal of old Condy Dalton, who for years had tortured himself with remorse, believing he had killed Sullivan, and never understanding the disappearance of the body, and the resurrection of honest Bartle Sullivan, filled all the countryside with delight.

Thanks to the money of his friend, Toddy Mack, Dalton was once more re-established in a farm that he had been compelled to relinquish, and when sickness and the severity of winter pa.s.sed away Mave and young Condy Dalton were happily married.

Roddy Duncan was transported for perjury. Bartle Sullivan, on the first social evening that the two families, the Sullivans and the Daltons, spent together after the trial, cleared up the mystery of his disappearance.

"I remimber fightin'," he said, "wid Condy on that night, and the devil's own battle it 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 McMahons that lived ten or twelve miles beyond the mountains. Well, I felt disgraced at bein' beaten by Con Dalton, and as I was fond of McMahon's sister, what 'ud you have us but off we went together to America, for, you see, she promised to marry me if I'd go. Well, she an' I married when we got to Boston, and Toddy here, who took to the life of a pedlar, came back with a good purse and lived wid us. At last I began to long for home, and so we all came together. An', 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?"

LEWIS CARROLL

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

The proper name of Lewis Carroll was Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, and he was born at Daresbury, England, on January 27, 1832. Educated at Rugby and at Christchurch, Oxford, he specialised in mathematical subjects. Elected a student of his college, he became a mathematical lecturer in 1855, continuing in that occupation until 1881. His fame rests on the children's cla.s.sic, "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland," issued in 1865, which has been translated into many languages. No modern fairy-tale has approached it in popularity. The charms of the book are its unstrained humour and its childlike fancy, held in check by the discretion of a particularly clear and a.n.a.lytical mind. Though it seems strange that an authority on Euclid and logic should have been the inventor of so diverting and irresponsible a tale, if we examine his story critically we shall see that only a logical mind could have derived so much genuine humour from a deliberate attack on reason, in which a considerable element of fun arises from efforts to reconcile the irreconcilable. The book has probably been read as much by grown-ups as by young people, and no work of humour is more heartily to be commended as a banisher of care. The original ill.u.s.trations by Sir John Tenniel are almost as famous as the book itself.

_I.--What Happened Down the Rabbit-Hole_

Alice was beginning to get very tired of sitting by her sister on the bank, and of having nothing to do; once or twice she had peeped into the book her sister was reading, but it had no pictures or conversations in it, "and what is the use of a book," thought Alice, "without pictures or conversations?"

So she was considering in her own mind (as well as she could, for the hot day made her feel very sleepy and stupid) whether the pleasure of making a daisy-chain would be worth the trouble of getting up and picking the daisies, when suddenly a White Rabbit with pink eyes ran close by her.

There was nothing so _very_ remarkable in that; nor did Alice think it so very much out of the way to hear the Rabbit say to himself: "Oh, dear! Oh, dear! I shall be too late!" But when the Rabbit actually _took a watch out of his waistcoat pocket_, and looked at it, and then hurried on, Alice started to her feet, for it flashed across her mind that she had never before seen a rabbit with either a waistcoat pocket or a watch to take out of it, and, burning with curiosity, she ran across the field after him, and was just in time to see him pop down a large rabbit-hole under the hedge.