CHARMS AND SPELLS. AN ULSTER EPISODE.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XIV, Issue 39, 21 January 1887, Page 3

CHARMS AND SPELLS. AN ULSTER EPISODE.

( By Hose Kavanagh in the Dublin Telegraph.)

( Concluded.)

It was only the merest sickle of a young moon that hung high up in the greenish blue spring sky, but it was not quite dark yet, 60 that you could see plainly enough the round broom knowe above the Sthrool, where Mary Kelly stood talking to her lover. The simple truth is, Patrick Mabon had no signs whatever of the broken down gentlemen about him ; his frank eager face and stalwart figure were rather suggestive of the well-to-do peasant, as by right they should, if a couple of generations of his farming ancestors counted for much. He was speaking very rapidly, now and again with sudden emphasis, which was instantaneously reflected in the girl's face. " It was bad enough before, Mary, but since I parted with Mr. Kingdale, it is all up for me. I cannot stay on doing nothing you know. It will be hard on my mother to let me go, and then yon, Mary "' he stopped quite suddenly at that ; he was a very undemonstrative young man, and he was very deeplyjin love with the silent, brown-haired girl beside him. He did not break into any passionate protestations of the pain it would be to part with his sweetheart, he only lifted one of her hands and laid his cheek upon it, and he looked straight into her eyes. But the look said a great deal, for it made Mary's face flash and pale, and her lips tremble, and soon the clear, sunny eyes were all moist, and she had to turn away her head. " There is nothing for it but to face our fate," he remarked after awhile. " After all, dear, it is not such a terrible one. We are young and strong and have faith and hope, and love enough to last longer lives than ever ours could be. Don't you think so, Mary 1 A.h, my darling, there is many a rich man and woman in the world who might envy us to-night!" " If you could only stay at home, or if I could go with you," she exclaimed lifting her streaming face. '• Think, oh do — do think mightn't you try at least to live with old Martin 1 I know well how unjust is his dislike to you, but I think he would wear out of it ; or else, Patrick, couldn't I go too to America, or wherever it is you mean to try and make money V " No," he said quickly, "Martin and I could not sail smoothly. Martin will permit salvation to no one who is not rich." " As if it were sot a shame and a disgrace almost to be rich in Ireland," she broke in vehemently. " who could be rich in it I wonder but the sneaks and cowards and poltroons who grabbed up every inch of land they could lay hold of. I would rather be evicted like your father, Patrick, than have poor people's land— like John Molloy for example. Oh ! no, you don't find any really fine fellow rich in Ireland — why, if it never was anything else how could one hold and board up money with all the distress there is about every year. I thought this spring, when I heard about them digging up the seed potatoes again to eat in Gweedore, that my heart would break because I was able to give them so little help. "But why couldn't I go away with you, Patrick, and then, sure, we could could come back when we had made our fortune ? And don't I want to help you to make the fortune, too !" " Don't be tempting me, now, with plans like that," he said quickly, '• I will do the roughing alone, please God, and there's no lear of my failure with you behind— such a stake in the country, as they say at the elections. That promise to your mother that you would never give up the land is a sacred thing also. But I declare, Mary, you have never yet once asked me how it was Mr. Kingdale sent me away." "Ho : but tell me." " Well, it happened in the simplest way," he returned, with such a light-hearted smile that his grave face looked suddenly boyish, " My work for the day was done, and I had written a letter to Mr. Gl adstone ' ' "Mr. Gladstone, Patrick 1 " " Yes ; nearly everybody is writing to him now, if you notice, and I thought I might as well have my say as the rest. It was in the first flush of enthusiasm after reading his great speech— everybody about the mills was abusing him, however, and that warmed up my feelings to the boiling point— here is the document," he went on ; "of course I never meant to send it." She began to read between smiles and tears. " Sir, — I am only the son of an evicted farmer, but I belong to the land you have tried to obtain justice for, and I wish to say straight out to yourself how much we in Ireland love, and bless, and venerate the very sound of your name. And even supposing that you do not succeed, and that we must bear our wrongs yet longer, or else make a desperate struggle to get rid of them, we will remain as intensely grateful to you as we were the first night you lifted up your voice in the Commons for our cause." " Mr. Ringdale read that precious effusion over my shoulder, without as much as saying by your leave. Oh, Mary" — the young man was laughing heartily now — " I wish to Heavens you had seen his face. He looked as if he had swallowed a serpent. Gladstone homage was bad enough, but when he laid down his nail on the last sentence — ' the desperate struggle,' I thought it would be the death of me." " ' That means armed rebellion,' said he, hoarsely. " ' You think— you honestly think— the rebellions of '98, '48, '67 right, Mr. Mahon ? " " ' Magnificently right,' I answered, and then, Mary, we parted for good and all. My poor old employer 1 "he added gently. " From my heart I can wish him well. His fine old high-and-dry Conservatism received rather a rude shock, though ; but I could not help being amused at the moment." Old Martin Kelly was in unquestionably good spirits that eveoj ing. With reference to young Mahon 's dismissal, which the labourer*

discussed at sapper-time, he observed tranquilly, " that people mostly got their desarvin' in this world." " Misther Mahon lost his place in the wrong time," one of the men remarked, "if it was thrue that a company from Dublin was goin' t' buy the mills and machinery, hell t' fear, but he's got a higher post undher them.,' Martin seemed to labour under the delusion that it was his duty to cheer up his step-daughter at this juncture in her affairs. And his consolations sometimes took rather extraordinary forms, " Shure it's not him alone a girl id be marryin', but his oul' mother a<i well. She'l be wherever he'll be— she has no other prop t' hang by 1 " " And why wouldn't she be with him," exclaimed Mary, warmly, " them that cared for him would care for her too. But she's worthy of love on her own account, any way. How often did I hear— ay, ever since I was a child, that all her long life through Mrs. Mahon bad the good will of the rich and the blessing of the poor." Then, after a moment's hesitation, and with a vivid flush on her face, she read from a little thin volume of poems on the table, some lines that Bimply sent a succession of cynical grins over Martin's countenance. Must a man, because he marries, Cease to love and venerate In his heart the dear old mother, Sitting sad and desolate ? Trust me, friend, the better husband Always was the better son. Heaven protect the maiden from him Who for mother love has none I f After this evening Martin determined to leave his step-daughter alone. * • • * * "I don't deny your power, Peggy, an' I never tried to make little iv it, but 1 think I paid you well for what is past, an' I think you mightn't be so near about doin' another little turn." This was part of old Martin's pleading one evening, about a week later, to an individual who did not seem at all open to the force of his eloquence. She was very old, and a very small woman, who lived alone in a hut half way up the mountain, behind Kelly's house •Peggy Dhall was the name she was best known by— she was blind of an eye hence the Dhall, I believe. For many a day in that district Peggy's name was a power in itself. She had a charm for the toothache, she could take a mote out of your eye, and show it floating in a basin of water, she measured for the heart fever, for the spool of your breast being down, for headache with a green ribbon that instantly closed up the fissures in your skull which caused the pain ; she rubbed for the sprain, but perhaps her most famous achievements were in the domain of butter. She could both take it from the cows and give it ; or if any other person had much success " in milking the tether " she could show the shape of that person in the salt. There were " back going " children who throve after going under her hand ; and again, some were pointed out who had withered under her ill-will. Her ill-will was rather dreaded indeed by both old and young. She raked up the back of a live sod with her pipe before answering Martin, and then she said coolly — " You had an enemy, an' with the help iv them that's wiser than you or me your enemy was wakened." " He was dismissed, but shure he's in the country yet, bad luck't him." "Don't curse. Ye gave me a pound note for what's past. Give me two more, an' if it's agreeable to them that's wise will thry to put him out iv yer road for ever." Martin believed in his secret soul that the " if it's agreeable " was a little matter of judicious politeness in alluding to Peggy's fairy friends. Two pounds was a lot of money certainly, still, but the upshot of it all was that he was to pay one in hand now, the other when bis enemy should have been disposed of. " Take that wee wooden noggin " she said at parting, " it is made iv rowan-three, watch till he crosses a north runnin 1 sthrame, go in till the middle iv it, an 1 throw three noggins iv wather again the sthrame, saying each time after his name. " Spirits of air an' fire and water, Fall on my foe, I pray foi his slaughter." Martin turned somewhat white at the naked murder contemplated here ; but what could be do ? The time had come, his chance was at hand. The Bthrool ran due north to Derry, he saw Patrick Mahon crossing the footstick not half an hour before, the moon was quite bright ; he knew Mahon had not yet returned. He was in the middle of the river on a rock, over which the river brawls loudly towards a deep turnpool below. The first couplet of his incantation was repeated . . . when, whether it was the rock or his foot slipped he never knew, but Martin was suddenly hurled into the deep, seething pool, and the last thing he remembered was fancying he saw Patrick Mahon's face beside him ; and the last words \ c spoke were—" I'm lost for all eternity. Lord have mercy on me a Binner I" ' But he wasn't— at least just then. A week later he recovered his semes in Mahon's bouse. "Where's Mary Kelly," he asked, and Mary came, and then the priest came, and there was a day of explanations. " I will save my p.or oul' sowl ; I was spared to save it" Martin (who never was, nor never will be, a pattern of unselfishness") averred stoutly. J " Patrick Mahon saved your poor old body, at any rate," said the priest. "He risked his life for you ; don't you know that ? He was half over the footstick when be saw you drowning, and he leaped in "

" He may marry Mary in the morning, and I'll sign him over my share of the place. I don't care if he hasn't twopence ; for the time to come I'll make my pace with God and mind me cowl." " Young Mahon wants no gifts from you," said the priest. " The mills have changed hands, and he id appointed manager— that is, he says he wants no gifts except Mary, and I don't think we could keep her from him, Martin, my boy." THE END.