WEEDS:

Observer, Volume 6, Issue 155, 1 September 1883, Page 10

WEEDS :

r •■.-.*. stqry-of^he ieish iNyiNpttftfiES:. !tHB 'potter "of 1 -- AssAssiisrATid^. fi' : "•■;". '"• CHAPTER 111. W;s , '

?;: TSS BXG&BX $QOIBTY. , : . ... \pc, wa| dkrfc wneii .Ro^he got out df the bfireen Ott'^.thp. high-road, j there was a chill iq. the air altje^ttte of tHe day, and <W was d^BCeiading in a thick; sdft shower. -Every blade of grass was loaded already, and the harvest, moon, seen through the mists that overhung the valley, looked like an enormous copper shield set in the sky. He had advanced about twenty paces, when a voice hailed him out of the darkness : "Roche, hey— Tom Roche!" " Charley, were you waiting on me ?" A tall slim figure rose from the hedge-side and approached him. • I was waiting for ye — who will be in it to- ' night ?" I "Below at Bruff's ? there'll be the town men i and a good few from the neighbourhood. Charley," and Roche swung something closer to the jouhger man — " say nothin', do ye hear me ? ' Fenton and Hynes will both be there, an' I warn ye 'tis dangerous." . " I tell you, Tom," replied he in a dogged undertone, "I'll have no drawing nor casting; j 'tis my affair to shoot that — ■ — , and no one shall interfere." " Whist, ye young fool ! That's all well enough, .but do you want to be taken, eh ? Let the drawings purceed even as usual, and leave the rest to me', and Bruff and O'Connor. Don't let Hynes or Fenton know, anyway, who it is to do the job. We'll settle all that." "There'll be an after meeting then?" said Clifford. " All I can say is, before the week is out " He hdted suddenly, and without finishing his sentence took off his hat, and with his hand put back his thick dark hair from his forehead. Roche stopped also, and glanced at him. He could see that his face was livid in colour, and his eyes seemed to burn under the marked brows. " Keep quiet, Charley — keep quiet," urged he ; " you can have all you want. Where's the good of bringing trouble on yourself ? . • I don't see why not let any of the others take their chance as well as you. Sure they have all a good cause equally with yourself. Look at the Connors to be put out, and Heffernans." " Ah, whist, Roche ! what's that to me ? Have they the cause I have ?" Roche made no answer, and .they held on their way down hill |n \ silence. Before long they reached their destination; a' thatched cabin by the roadside. It was a licensed house of entertainment. Peter Bruffy the -owner, possessed an unimpeachable character, and had a brother in I the constabulary, yet it was currently supposed that no fewer than eight agrarian murders had been planned in. the cross-road tavern. Roche and Charles Clifford were the last arrivals.' The shop was thronged with men, many of them farmers' sons, well dressed and. well todo ; some were labourers, or small farmers almost of that class. These had been harvesting all day, for it was the busy time of the year, and could with difficulty keep their eyes open. There were at least fifty present ; some of them were smoking, and only that the windows were open, the place would have been intolerable. The place was dimly illuminated by a couple of little oil lamps, which added their quota to the evil odours of whisky, tobacco, and turf-smoke which already pervaded the atmosphere, and threw a einster light upon the cro»vd. One man was sitting at a small deal table, engaged in entering in a book the numbers, not the names, of those who were present. He was the secretary of the Secret Society. This ceremony over, he rose, and, taking the slip of paper in his hands, began to call over the numbers ; each man answering to his number. Roche and Connor sat down by the table, Clifford hung his head And into a corner. They, with Bruff, the^tavern-keeper, and the secretary, who was a shop -boy from Gralteetown, were" the leading spirits of the society. " Since our last meeting," began the secretary, " the sum of thirty«five shillings has been paid in by number thirty-eight, and in accordance with the new rules, three parts of that sum have been remitted to Dublin. Two new members have been enrolled." " Ah ! whist ! curse you !" interpolated Charles Clifford, pushing forward from his recess, " who for your rules? mark them read, and come on and let us see that gun you were to bring up." " Now, Charley Clifford, be easy," said Roche, taking the pipe out of bis mouth and shaking his hand at the young man in warning ; " don't interrupt, let business purceed orderly." " The gun is here, if Puck isn't," said a man, vising to his feet in a far corner. " Who's goin' to tuke charge of it, I want to know now. lam after spending the best part of the day upon it, dug it up, begorra, and cleaned it." He advanced to the table, and laid the gun upon it. It was an Enfield rifle. The stock had been cut in two for facility of packing and carriage, but it had been artistically done, and the ring covered the cut perfectly. It was reeking with grease, which had been; liberally plastered „.ott r the|wood and metal alike. Every eye in the Toottt,wift3 fixed upon the gun, as if fascinated. Roche stretched put his hand, and was about to touch it half timidly, when young Clifford step-: peel out, r!udely pushing him aside, and snatched it up. Every eye in the room was turned upon him at once. He stooped toward the lamp, and the light fell on his face, showing a very handsome boyish countenance? his cheeks and lips were pale under the. sunburn, and his dark eyes. had, a wild, sullen look in them. ! ".Is .Puck coming ?" asked some one behind. " I don't know, Fenton," replied the secretary in a loud voice. "I heard to-day from Blaney, f hat 'brings the fish from Waterford, that he's off 'ap'by way of Charleville." • v l Puck wUß»the3»o»» degutrreM a man whojfasi. known to have shot a landlord in Cork, and^wasj auapeotedrwith some good.reasQn. vi, having fired \ at another not quite so effectually about a year; slier .t»he "first offence,. Ife' w|s \ good aim, too, {

and it was thought he was .making a profession ofit. There was a fyrcfthou'saad poi&ds/ offered for such information as would lead to his arrest. The money had been accumulating for five years up to the present date, and there was every likelihood. of its remaining unclaimed for an indefinite period to come. His wife and family lived at G-alteetown, in a lane behind the Courthouse ; he visited them frequently, in broad daylight sometimes, it is said, but it must be allowed that he came and went from one place to another invariably on foot, and that he also invariably chose the shelter of the ditches and the unfrequented field paths in preference to the highways. „ Theisecretary exchanged a look with Bruff. and. Roche 1 on hearing the question put by Fenton/ whom they knew to be a spy. He must be put on a wrong scent, and without delay. Clifford received with a scowl a warning kick from his friend Roche. " The rules will be adhered to," replied th,e, secretary coldly ; " draw lots." " Put in Tom Heffernan's name", he'll. be home next week, and won't like >to be left out of the job," suggested some thoughtful friend in the background. At least twenty absent members were at once suggested. The secretary set himself to write out the numbers on slip 9of paper, and conversation became general. " Is this true what I heard to-day ?" asked a voice with an American twang in it ; "be the same token, that he is to revalue the whole estate against next year, when my lord's eldest son is coming of age, to break the entail ?" , ' . " I know what that means — revalue for selling," said Roche, getting up. "Do ye mind how it was fifteen or sixteen years ago with the Gortscreeii property, before he sold that, the lord had it all raised? He told the tenants it meant nothing ; he'd never ask them for it." He sold it in the Estates Court in. Dublin to that Englishman the very same autumn, and raised those rents were then in earnest. Oh, bedad, boys, he must be stopped at that game !" "Bruff," said the secretary, " will you give me some porter ?" "In a minute," replied the landlord, who was busy serving the other customers. " Heffernan's son is coming back, ye say, next week," said a young man who had not spoken yet ; " can get no work in England at all. The wife is at service down at Captain Crawford's. They are noticed, and so are a couple or more of the mountain people. How the divil can they pay ?" "Pay?" echoed the secrctai-y ; "those mountain people are all in debt. Coolan, below in the town, is to take decrees out against twelve of them next sessions ; up to eighty pounds they owe him ; and they most of them owe us for seed potatoes and oats too. What can ye do ? Sure they haven't the money, and where are they to get it ?" "You bet, and a man is to be put out if he gets behind ; given no time nor chance, but heaved out," remarked the Atnevican-sounding voice. Its owner advanced to the front now ; he was a young fellow of twenty-eight or so, called ■Cassidy. .. .. . . ....... Cassidy had been in America, and was a leading spirit among the young men — a Jacobin to the core; and, as he said of himself, " very advanced.' He had all the cant of the advanced school ; never spoke of poor people save by the term " proletariat." Capital and labour, solidarity and monopoly, were words forever in his mouth. He ostentatiously kept away from mass, and inveigled against the " black brigade," " priestly influence," and " sacerdotalism," so bitterly, that had it not been for his Yankee accent he might have been mistaken for a Connaught Souper. The young fellows listened to him as if he spoke with the tongue- of an angel. They did not remark, as more than one of the old men did, that their apostle had a remarkly soft, white pair of hands. The real secret of his influence with them was that, over and above his command of language, ho was strictly sober; ho never tasted whisky ; wine he did not despise when it was to be had for nothing. Cassidy was ambitious ; he had taught himself shorthand, and meant to be a journalist. He concocted and sent paragraphs to the Press Association ; and ho knew that he could not afford to destroy his brain with the fiery stuff which the young farmers consumed in such qualtities. He had that sort of readiness of speech which unthinking people believe to be in a way the birthright of the Celt. It is a great mistake. The talent for explanations, as some one has defined oratory,is rare enough among the Irish ; they can feel and know, both perhaps, passionately, but these thick-tongued, slow minded creatures are always carried away with gratitude to any one who, while feeling with them, possesses in addition tho gift of putting their common thought into articulated form. Cassidy could not only do this, but he had a store of quotations as well. He had read, not without profit, the national poets, and could introduce with effect sundry telling lines from Clarence Mangan, from Moore or Davis in a way that reminded the older men of the hedge schools of their youth, and the traditions of culture, now long lost and vanished, of which they had once upon atime had a glimpse. Cassidy had an influence, which was daily growing. His sobriety was to some a proof of his disinterestedness, while to others it was in itself suspicious. A teetotaler is, in the farming mind, a sort of monster. It was a critical time, and Cassidy saw the advantage it gave him, and was not slow to seize it. Everybody was in debt. Money was not to be got without huge interest. Every one had a greivance, and liked to hear it put into form and talked of. The secretary of the meeting was, as has been said, a shopman in the town, and his master ient money to the country people. He held I. O. U.s to an enormous amount, and i of course his clients were forced to deal at his shop. Bruff, their host, lent money to the neighbours at something like forty per cent. As Cassidy had told them at a previous meeting, their necks were all in the collar together. How affairs were to be approved by murdering Lord G-alteemore's agent they never stopped to ask. It was their time-honoured method of protesting against injustice, taking revenge and gratifying the. instinct of nationality at the same time, a method at once barbarous and brutal, the outcome of the mental condition 'which/ in modern times, produces Lynch law and Franc-tireurs, and by which the archetypal murderer may have been influenced. ,-

f La\fde| been shot before jfchis? $Je^UßeieteryJnigii'B business is no man's 1 work, as the old men would have said. Cassidy would have laid it to the account of a " fatal I slavish want of initiation." Now that Charles Clifford had determined to avenge his sister's ruin, everybody came forward with a grievance, calling equally for a bloody revenge. There was a cowardly motive underneath this sudden access of homicidal mania. Lawder must be' stopped i by aome one; and, Clifford was the right man to do it, so they were all encouraging him in the, i undertaking, and stimulating themselves in so doing by recounting their individual grievances. " Ireland fo?: the Irish !" continued Ca,ssidy, whose grandmother was Scotch. " " Get rid of I English thieves, taxing the world to live in idle- | ness. Look at the money the people are earning in New York, in California, everywhere in, , America — taxed and sent over here to pay rent. Heffernan's daughters in New York paying the rent for the old people ever since they left this ! ;I'd like to put Lawder on Heffernan's farm, and bid him tfaise a crop on it, and pay the rent, and make a margin to live on. That's the way to j talk. Agents and lords, ay, and kings and queens I and emperors, I'd just like to set 'em all in a' hundred-acre lot and let 'em scratch round for a living, make 'em raise Indian corn, and put in a fellow with a good goad to poke 'em up now and i agaiti." " Ay, let them earn an honest living," put in Fenton. He seemed to be the most attentive and appreciative of all Cassidy's forty hearers. Hynes, the other informer, was already half drunk ; he had insisted upon treating three or four men who, he fancied, looked coldly ' at him. Not one of those present cared in the slightest degree what the informers chose to report. Let them tell the resident magistrate or the sub-inspector of the .constabularly that so and so had been told off to kill such a one, who was the worse off for that ? Could the police prevent it ? And when the thing was done, let them prove it if they could. Let them, give evidence. " Bruff, who was always in a i tremor about his license, also gave information to the police now and again, invariably with the connivance and approbation of the society. i Though it was not generally 'suspected by that body at large, this affair was one with which the society had really no business. The heads, Roche, | Bruff, Connor and the secretary, chose to bring it I under their jurisdiction for the sake of helping j Clifford and protecting him. The charges brought I against Lawder were all produced purposely, and had been carefully arranged beforehand. For example, the item of revaluation, Lawder knew nothing o£ this project of Lord Q-alteem ore's. A footman in the Porfcman Square house had overheard a private conversation, and had faithfully writtten home every word of it to his own people jin the town. In the same way it was that Lady Galteemove's sentiments had become well known to the tenantry, " Agitators ought to be hanged ; ! seditious speaking did all the mischief." Her I ladyship's sentiments regarding the bonnets and dresses of her tenantry were well known to Galteetowh and its environs. But all these' evils, rebellion, and aping the fashions, had come from teaching the common people to read and write. When Mrs Roche heard for the first time this sumptuary law laid down by her landlord's wife, she laughed scornfully, and remarked that people that could pay had a right to wear what they liked. She never wore a bonnet save on Sundays, but she determined that her daughters should wear them daily when they came home from J school. And she administered a tremendous flogging to her eldest boy for " miching " from I school. j The daughters of the other tenants merely re- ! marked that in America every one dressed alike, and thought in their own minds that her ladyship must be behind the time. Their own servants for as a matter of course they had servants, gave the same reason to their mistress for wearing no caps or praskeens. In America, that land of promise, their was neither ma'am nor mißs, and caps > and aprons were never asked for. Probably this fact was to them quite as great an attractive force thitherward as the prepaid passage and promised high wages. " The papers are ready," announced the secretary. He swept as he spoke a pile of cut and folded papers into a hat ; each paper had a number written upon it. After every man had taken one, Roche was deputed to draw for the absent members, and after a moment announced that he had drawn the fatal lot, with the red cross to it, number sixtytwo. It was Heffernan's. Clifford rested his elbow on his knee and covered his face with his hand. A great sigh of relief seemed to agitate the air, and after that yawning became general. " He'll be here on Monday or Tuesday," said Roche, standing up. " Now, boys, this day week if you don't get word to the contrary, and there'll be news for you. Go home now, boys, and Go' bless ye." There was a hint in this valediction which the initiated all understood. Cassidy got up and stretched his legs. "Give me another bottle of ginger-beer," he said to the landlord. " Jemmy Hynes," this to the man whom they suspected of being a spy, " don't start for one minute, and I'll be with you down the hill. Larry and O'Hea, hold on for us " — this meant really come along with vs — " George and Mick, wait for the rest of us." The ruse succeeded. The suspected parties went off unwillingly under a strong escort, Cassidv brought up the rear, singing with a mellow barytone that had a mocking echo in it : " Though sweet are oar friendships, Our hopes, our affections, Revenge ou a tyrant is sweeter than all," " Ay." gx-owled Fenton, " bring the patrol on us, do." , Bruff held the door open, and watched them ! down the hill. Tke echo of the voice died away in the distance, and the heavy feet of the weary matte but little sound in the dust. " Now," said Connor, when the door was once more shut, " that's done, Charley. There'll be no ' meeting here this night week." I " There's the packet of cartridges, Cliflord," said the seeretai-y hurriedly. " Let me run after | the boys, it's safest ; and there's an oilskin cover I got for the gun, too. I'm off now, boys. Good night to ye!" '• ' ' ; ' ..'^;|... £ I Heifianded over, a parcel of cartridges, and a gun cafe of dark oiled leather; and then took to ■

Ms heels and ran as ,-f ast as he. could after men who had gone out. . . ■..-? .'y >< Charley," said.Bruff, "this .night- Jhe confessions, for men will be heard" at Gortsc^eea chapel. Lawder oomes otto to smoke every night after his dinner in the garden at the back. You. know the ditch that runs .between the-endi of the garden and the potato-field, eh? right in the middle of it is a good open up to the hall. door. Every night regular he comes out with his cigarsJudy, my cousin, is at service there — and he never does it later than a quarter to seven.. Well, if, you can make your dart to the river, you know th& ford there, where we were gettiri' eels in the autumn, not twenty yards from where .yo'tt. come out of the Long Meadow, ay ? Well, pelt straight up hill ; once get over, and there'll be twenty,, of us to say ye war at your duty. What need you care ? you'll meet no one but friends," " Aye," said Roche, " I know the sunk fence at the foot of the garden has a good cover to it, and evergreens between you and the windows. 'Tis seven miles of a run to the chapel, Cha'rlejf; and mind," with a significant look at a bottle standing near, " don't touch that. If you look out at the ford there'll be a man waitin' for you there, with something to help to carry you up the hill." , Cliffords grasping the-gun in "both his 'hands, listened to them in silence; he was taking.in every word with" grim attention. The lamps had gone out, and one dip candle barely made the darkness visible ; the air of the room was indescribably fetid; Roche was half tipsy, and was filling himself out whisky from a bottle. " Don't be seen wid that gun," said Roche suddenly, nodding at it. « What will Ido with it ?" burst out Clifford angrily. "Leave it here with me,*' said Bruff, "case and all ; you may keep the cartridges. I'll hide it in the dry ditch against you want it." " If you fail me with that now," said Cliflord distrustfully, loosing his grasp of the gun. "No fears," returnnd Brufl. He mounted a chair, and thrust the gun into the thatch behind a rafter. "Now," he said, apostrophizing the

weapon, " lie here till you're wanted."

(To be continued.) ' |