initial commit of ebook 6295HEADmain

2 files changed, 9356 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/old/gp12210.txt b/old/gp12210.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1f654a2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/old/gp12210.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,9356 @@
+The Project Gutenberg EBook No Defense, by Gilbert Parker, Complete
+#122 in our series by Gilbert Parker
+
+Copyright laws are changing all over the world. Be sure to check the
+copyright laws for your country before downloading or redistributing
+this or any other Project Gutenberg eBook.
+
+This header should be the first thing seen when viewing this Project
+Gutenberg file.  Please do not remove it.  Do not change or edit the
+header without written permission.
+                    
+Please read the "legal small print," and other information about the
+eBook and Project Gutenberg at the bottom of this file.  Included is
+important information about your specific rights and restrictions in
+how the file may be used.  You can also find out about how to make a
+donation to Project Gutenberg, and how to get involved.
+
+
+**Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts**
+
+**EBooks Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since 1971**
+
+*****These EBooks Were Prepared By Thousands of Volunteers*****
+
+
+Title: No Defense, Complete
+
+Author: Gilbert Parker
+
+Release Date: August, 2004  [EBook #6295]
+[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
+[This file was first posted on December 12, 2002]
+
+Edition: 10
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+
+
+
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK NO DEFENSE, BY PARKER, ENTIRE ***
+
+
+
+This eBook was produced by David Widger <widger@cecomet.net>
+
+
+
+
+
+NO DEFENSE
+
+By Gilbert Parker
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+BOOK I.
+I.        THE TWO MEET
+II.       THE COMING OF A MESSENGER
+III.      THE QUARREL
+IV.       THE DUEL
+V.        THE KILLING OF ERRIS BOYNE
+VI.       DYCK IN PRISON
+VII.      MOTHER AND DAUGHTER
+VIII.     DYCK'S FATHER VISITS HIM
+IX.       A LETTER FROM SHEILA
+
+BOOK II
+X.        DYCK CALHOUN ENTERS THE WORLD AGAIN
+XI.       WHITHER NOW?
+XII.      THE HOUR BEFORE THE MUTINY
+XIII.     TO THE WEST INDIES
+XIV.      IN THE NICK OF TIME
+XV.       THE ADMIRAL HAS HIS SAY
+
+BOOK III
+XVI.      A LETTER
+XVII.     STRANGERS ARRIVE
+XVIII.    AT SALEM
+XIX.      LORD MALLOW INTERVENES
+XX.       OUT OF THE HANDS OF THE PHILISTINES
+XXI.      THE CLASH OF RACE
+XXII.     SHEILA HAS HER SAY
+XXIII.    THE COMING OF NOREEN
+XXIV.     WITH THE GOVERNOR
+XXV.      THEN WHAT HAPPENED
+
+
+
+
+BOOK I
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+THE TWO MEET
+
+"Well, good-bye, Dyck.  I'll meet you at the sessions, or before that at
+the assizes."
+
+It was only the impulsive, cheery, warning exclamation of a wild young
+Irish spirit to his friend Dyck Calhoun, but it had behind it the humour
+and incongruity of Irish life.
+
+The man, Dyck Calhoun, after whom were sent the daring words about the
+sessions and the assizes, was a year or two older than his friend, and,
+as Michael Clones, his servant and friend, said, "the worst and best
+scamp of them all"--just up to any harmless deviltry.
+
+Influenced by no traditions or customs, under control of no stern records
+of society, Calhoun had caused some trouble in his time by the harmless
+deeds of a scapegrace, but morally--that is, in all relations of life
+affected by the ten commandments--he was above reproach.  Yet he was of
+the sort who, in days of agitation, then common in Ireland, might
+possibly commit some act which would bring him to the sessions or the
+assizes.  There never was in Ireland a cheerier, braver, handsomer
+fellow, nor one with such variety of mind and complexity of purpose.
+
+He was the only child of a high-placed gentleman; he spent all the money
+that came his way, and occasionally loaded himself with debt, which his
+angry father paid.  Yet there never was a gayer heart, a more generous
+spirit, nor an easier-tempered man; though, after all, he was only
+twenty-five when the words with which the tale opens were said to him.
+
+He had been successful--yet none too successful--at school and Trinity
+College, Dublin.  He had taken a pass degree, when he might have captured
+the highest honours.  He had interested people of place in the country,
+but he never used promptly the interest he excited.  A pretty face, a
+fishing or a shooting expedition, a carouse in some secluded tavern, were
+parts of his daily life.
+
+At the time the story opens he was a figure of note among those who
+spent their time in criticizing the government and damning the Irish
+Parliament.  He even became a friend of some young hare-brained rebels of
+the time; yet no one suspected him of anything except irresponsibility.
+His record was clean; Dublin Castle was not after him.
+
+When his young friend made the remark about the sessions and assizes,
+Calhoun was making his way up the rocky hillside to take the homeward
+path to his father's place, Playmore.  With the challenge and the
+monstrous good-bye, a stone came flying up the hill after him and stopped
+almost at his feet.  He made no reply, however, but waved a hand
+downhill, and in his heart said:
+
+"Well, maybe he's right.  I'm a damned dangerous fellow, there's no doubt
+about that.  Perhaps I'll kill a rebel some day, and then they'll take me
+to the sessions and the assizes.  Well, well, there's many a worse fate
+than that, so there is."
+
+After a minute he added:
+
+"So there is, dear lad, so there is.  But if I ever kill, I'd like it to
+be in open fight on the hills like this--like this, under the bright sun,
+in the soft morning, with all the moor and valleys still, and the larks
+singing--the larks singing!  Hooray, but it's a fine day, one of the best
+that ever was!"
+
+He laughed, and patted his gun gently.
+
+"Not a feather, not a bird killed, not a shot fired; but the looking was
+the thing--stalking the things that never turned up, the white heels we
+never saw, for I'm not killing larks, God love you!"
+
+He raised his head, looking up into the sky at some larks singing above
+him in the heavens.
+
+"Lord love you, little dears," he added aloud.  "I wish I might die with
+your singing in my ears, but do you know what makes Ireland what it is?
+Look at it now.  Years ago, just when the cotton-mills and the linen-
+mills were doing well, they came over with their English legislation, and
+made it hard going.  When we begin to get something, over the English
+come and take the something away.  What have we done, we Irish people,
+that we shouldn't have a chance in our own country?  Lord knows, we
+deserve a chance, for it's hard paying the duties these days.  What with
+France in revolution and reaching out her hand to Ireland to coax her
+into rebellion; what with defeat in America and drink in Scotland; what
+with Fox and Pitt at each other's throats, and the lord-lieutenant a
+danger to the peace; what with poverty, and the cow and children and
+father and mother living all in one room, with the chickens roosting in
+the rafters; what with pointing the potato at the dried fish and gulping
+it down as if it was fish itself; what with the smell and the dirt and
+the poverty of Dublin and Derry, Limerick and Cork--ah, well!"  He threw
+his eyes up again.
+
+"Ah, well, my little love, sing on!  You're a blessing among a lot of
+curses; but never mind, it's a fine world, and Ireland's the best part of
+it.  Heaven knows it--and on this hill, how beautiful it is!"
+
+He was now on the top of a hill where he could look out towards the bog
+and in towards the mellow, waving hills.  He could drink in the yellowish
+green, with here and there in the distance a little house; and about two
+miles away smoke stealing up from the midst of the plantation where
+Playmore was--Playmore, his father's house--to be his own one day.
+
+How good it was!  There, within his sight, was the great escarpment of
+rock known as the Devil's Ledge, and away to the east was the black spot
+in the combe known as the Cave of Mary.  Still farther away, towards the
+south, was the great cattle-pasture, where, as he looked, a thousand
+cattle roamed.  Here and there in the wide prospect were plantations
+where Irish landlords lived, and paid a heavy price for living.  Men did
+not pay their rents.  Crops were spoiled, markets were bad, money was
+scarce, yet--
+
+"Please God, it will be better next year!"  Michael Clones said, and
+there never was a man with a more hopeful heart than Michael Clones.
+
+Dyck Calhoun had a soul of character, originality, and wayward
+distinction.  He had all the impulses and enthusiasms of a poet, all the
+thirst for excitement of the adventurer, all the latent patriotism of the
+true Celt; but his life was undisciplined, and he had not ordered his
+spirit into compartments of faith and hope.  He had gifts.  They were
+gifts only to be borne by those who had ambitions.
+
+Now, as he looked out upon the scene where nature was showing herself at
+her best, some glimmer of a great future came to him.  He did not know
+which way his feet were destined to travel in the business of life.  It
+was too late to join the navy; but there was still time enough to be a
+soldier, or to learn to be a lawyer.
+
+As he gazed upon the scene, his wonderful deep blue eyes, his dark brown
+hair thick upon his head, waving and luxuriant like a fine mattress, his
+tall, slender, alert figure, his bony, capable hands, which neither sun
+nor wind ever browned, his nervous yet interesting mouth, and his long
+Roman nose, set in a complexion rich in its pink-and-cream hardness and
+health--all this made him a figure good to see.
+
+Suddenly, as he listened to the lark singing overhead, with his face
+lifted to the sky, he heard a human voice singing; and presently there
+ran up a little declivity to his left a girl--an Irish girl of about
+seventeen years of age.
+
+Her hat was hanging on her arm by a green ribbon.  Her head was covered
+with the most wonderful brown, waving hair.  She had a broad, low
+forehead, Greek in its proportions and lines.  The eyes were bluer even
+than his own, and were shaded by lashes of great length, which slightly
+modified the firm lines of the face, with its admirable chin, and mouth
+somewhat large with a cupid's bow.
+
+In spite of its ardent and luscious look, it was the mouth of one who
+knew her own mind and could sustain her own course.  It was open when
+Dyck first saw it, because she was singing little bits of wild lyrics of
+the hills, little tragedies of Celtic life--just bursts of the Celtic
+soul, as it were, cheerful yet sad, buoyant and passionate, eager yet
+melancholy.  She was singing in Irish too.  They were the words of songs
+taught her by her mother's maid.
+
+She had been tramping over the hills for a couple of hours, virile,
+beautiful, and alone.  She wore a gown of dark gold, with little green
+ribbons here and there.  The gown was short, and her ankles showed.  In
+spite of the strong boots she wore they were alert, delicate, and
+shapely, and all her beauty had the slender fullness of a quail.
+
+When she saw Dyck, she stopped suddenly, her mouth slightly open.  She
+gave him a sidelong glance of wonder, interest, and speculation.  Then
+she threw her head slightly back, and all the curls gathered in a bunch
+and shook like bronze flowers.  It was a head of grace and power, of
+charm and allurement--of danger.
+
+Dyck was lost in admiration.  He looked at her as one might look at a
+beautiful thing in a dream.  He did not speak; he only smiled as he gazed
+into her eyes.  She was the first to speak.
+
+"Well, who are you?" she asked with a slightly southern accent in her
+voice, delicate and entrancing.  Her head gave a little modest toss, her
+fine white teeth caught her lower lip with a little quirk of humour; for
+she could see that he was a gentleman, and that she was safe from
+anything that might trouble her.
+
+He replied to her question with the words:
+
+"My name?  Why, it's Dyck Calhoun.  That's all."
+
+Her eyes brightened.  "Isn't that enough?" she asked gently.
+
+She knew of his family.  She was only visiting in the district with her
+mother, but she had lately heard of old Miles Calhoun and his wayward
+boy, Dyck; and here was Dyck, with a humour in his eyes and a touch of
+melancholy at his lips.  Somehow her heart went out to him.
+
+Presently he said to her: "And what's your name?"
+
+"I'm only Sheila Llyn, the daughter of my mother, a widow, visiting at
+Loyland Towers.  Yes, I'm only Sheila!"
+
+She laughed.
+
+"Well, just be 'only Sheila,"' he answered admiringly, and he held out a
+hand to her.  "I wouldn't have you be anything else, though it's none of
+my business."
+
+For one swift instant she hesitated; then she laid her hand in his.
+
+"There's no reason why we should not," she said.  "Your father's
+respectable."
+
+She looked at him again with a sidelong glance, and with a whimsical,
+reserved smile at her lips.
+
+"Yes, he's respectable, I agree, but he's dull," answered Dyck.  "For an
+Irishman, he's dull--and he's a tyrant, too.  I suppose I deserve that,
+for I'm a handful."
+
+"I think you are, and a big handful too!"
+
+"Which way are you going?" he asked presently.
+
+"And you?"
+
+"Oh, I'm bound for home."  He pointed across the valley.  "Do you see
+that smoke coming up from the plantation over there?"
+
+"Yes, I know," she answered.  "I know.  That's Playmore, your father's
+place.  Loyland Towers is between here and there.  Which way were you
+going there?"
+
+"Round to the left," he said, puzzled, but agreeable.
+
+"Then we must say good-bye, because I go to the right.  That's my nearest
+way."
+
+"Well, if that's your nearest way, I'm going with you," he said,
+"because--well, because--because--"
+
+"If you won't talk very much!" she rejoined with a little air of
+instinctive coquetry.
+
+"I don't want to talk.  I'd like to listen.  Shall we start?"
+
+A half-hour later they suddenly came upon an incident of the road.
+
+It was, alas, no uncommon incident.  An aged peasant, in a sudden fit of
+weakness, had stumbled on the road, and, in falling, had struck his head
+on a stone and had lost consciousness.  He was an old peasant of the
+usual Irish type, coarsely but cleanly dressed.  Lying beside him was a
+leather bag, within which were odds and ends of food and some small books
+of legend and ritual.  He was a peasant of a superior class, however.
+
+In falling, he had thrown over on his back, and his haggard face was
+exposed to the sun and sky.  At sight of him Dyck and Sheila ran forward.
+Dyck dropped on one knee and placed a hand on the stricken man's heart.
+
+"He's alive, all right," Dyck said.  "He's a figure in these parts.  His
+name's Christopher Dogan."
+
+"Where does he live?"
+
+"Live?  Well, not three hundred yards from here, when he's at home, but
+he's generally on the go.  He's what the American Indians would call a
+medicine-man."
+
+"He needs his own medicine now."
+
+"He's over eighty, and he must have gone dizzy, stumbled, fallen, and
+struck a stone.  There's the mark on his temple.  He's been lying here
+unconscious ever since; but his pulse is all right, and we'll soon have
+him fit again."
+
+So saying, Dyck whipped out a horn containing spirit, and, while Sheila
+lifted the injured head, he bathed the old man's face with the spirit,
+then opened the mouth and let some liquor trickle down.
+
+"He's the cleanest peasant I ever saw," remarked Sheila; "and he's coming
+to.  Look at him!"
+
+Yes, he was coming to.  There was a slight tremor of the eyelids, and
+presently they slowly opened.  They were eyes of remarkable poignancy and
+brightness--black, deep-set, direct, full of native intelligence.  For an
+instant they stared as if they had no knowledge, then understanding came
+to them.
+
+"Oh, it's you, sir," his voice said tremblingly, looking at Dyck.  "And
+very kind it is of ye !"  Then he looked at Sheila.  "I don't know ye,"
+he said whisperingly, for his voice seemed suddenly to fail.  "I don't
+know ye," he repeated, "but you look all right."
+
+"Well, I'm Sheila Llyn," the girl said, taking her hand from the old
+man's shoulder.
+
+"I'm Sheila Llyn, and I'm all right in a way, perhaps."
+
+The troubled, piercing eyes glanced from one to the other.
+
+"No relation?"
+
+"No--never met till a half-hour ago," remarked Dyck.
+
+The old man drew himself to a sitting posture, then swayed slightly.  The
+hands of the girl and Dyck went out behind his back.  As they touched his
+back, their fingers met, and Dyck's covered the girl's.  Their eyes met,
+too, and the story told by Dyck in that moment was the beginning of a
+lifetime of experience, comedy, and tragedy.
+
+He thought her fingers were wonderfully soft, warm, and full of life; and
+she thought that his was the hand of a master-of a master in the field of
+human effort.  That is, if she thought at all, for Dyck's warm, powerful
+touch almost hypnotized her.
+
+The old peasant understood, however.  He was standing on his feet now.
+He was pale and uncertain.  He lifted up his bag, and threw it over his
+shoulder.
+
+"Well, I'm not needing you any more, thank God!" he said.
+
+"So Heaven's blessing on ye, and I bid ye good-bye.  You've been kind to
+me, and I won't forget either of ye.  If ever I can do ye a good turn,
+I'll do it."
+
+"No, we're not going to leave you until you're inside your home," said
+Dyck.
+
+The old man looked at Sheila in meditation.  He knew her name and her
+history.  Behind the girl's life was a long prospect of mystery.  Llyn
+was her mother's maiden name.  Sheila had never known her father.  Never
+to her knowledge had she seen him, because when she was yet an infant her
+mother had divorced him by Act of Parliament, against the wishes of her
+church, and had resumed her maiden name.
+
+Sheila's father's name was Erris Boyne, and he had been debauched,
+drunken, and faithless; so at a time of unendurable hurt his wife had
+freed herself.  Then, under her maiden name, she had brought up her
+daughter without any knowledge of her father; had made her believe
+he was dead; had hidden her tragedy with a skilful hand.
+
+Only now, when Sheila was released from a governess, had she moved out of
+the little wild area of the County Limerick where she lived; only now had
+she come to visit an uncle whose hospitality she had for so many years
+denied herself.  Sheila was two years old when her father disappeared,
+and fifteen years had gone since then.
+
+One on either side of the old man, they went with him up the hillside for
+about three hundred yards, to the door of his house, which was little
+more than a cave in a sudden lift of the hill.  He swayed as he walked,
+but by the time they reached his cave-house he was alert again.
+
+The house had two windows, one on either side of the unlocked doorway;
+and when the old man slowly swung the door open, there was shown an
+interior of humble character, but neat and well-ordered.  The floor was
+earth, dry and clean.  There was a bed to the right, also wholesome and
+dry, with horse-blankets for cover.  At the back, opposite the doorway,
+was a fireplace of some size, and in it stood a kettle, a pot, and a few
+small pans, together with a covered saucepan.  On either side of the
+fireplace was a three-legged stool, and about the middle of the left-hand
+wall of the room was a chair which had been made out of a barrel, some of
+the staves having been sawn away to make a seat.
+
+Once inside the house, Christopher Dogan laid his bag on the bed and
+waved his hands in a formula of welcome.
+
+"Well, I'm honoured," he said, "for no one has set foot inside this place
+that I'd rather have here than the two of ye; and it's wonderful to me,
+Mr. Calhoun, that ye've never been inside it before, because there's been
+times when I've had food and drink in plenty.  I could have made ye
+comfortable then and stroked ye all down yer gullet.  As for you, Miss
+Llyn, you're as welcome as the shining of the stars of a night when
+there's no moon.  I'm glad you're here, though I've nothing to give ye,
+not a bite nor sup.  Ah, yes--but yes," he suddenly cried, touching his
+head.  "Faith, then, I have!  I have a drap of somethin' that's as good
+as annything dhrunk by the ancient kings of Ireland.  It's a wee cordial
+that come from the cellars of the Bishop of Dunlany, when I cured his
+cook of the evil-stone that was killing her.  Ah, thank God!"
+
+He went into a corner on the left of the fireplace, opened an old jar,
+thrust his arm down, and drew out a squat little bottle of cordial.  The
+bottle was beautifully made.  It was round and hunched, and of glass,
+with an old label from which the writing had faded.
+
+With eyes bright now, Christopher uncorked the bottle and smelled the
+contents.  As he did so, a smile crinkled his face.
+
+"Thank the Lord!  There's enough for the two of ye--two fine
+tablespoonfuls of the cordial that'd do anny man good, no matter how bad
+he was, and turn an angel of a woman into an archangel.  Bless yer Bowl!"
+
+When Christopher turned to lift down two pewter pots, Calhoun reached up
+swiftly and took them from the shelf.  He placed them in the hands of the
+old man, who drew a clean towel of coarse linen from a small cupboard in
+the wall above his head.
+
+She and Dyck held the pots for the old man to pour the cordial into them.
+As he said, there was only a good porridge-spoon of liqueur for each.  He
+divided it with anxious care.
+
+"There's manny a man," he said, "and manny and manny a lady, too, born in
+the purple, that'd be glad of a dhrink of this cordial from the cellar of
+the bishop.
+
+"Alpha, beta, gamma, delta is the code, and with the word delta," he
+continued, "dhrink every drop of it, as if it was the last thing you were
+dhrinking on earth; as if the Lord stooped down to give ye a cup of
+blessing from His great flagon of eternal happiness.  Ye've got two kind
+hearts, but there's manny a day of throuble will come between ye and the
+end; and yet the end'll be right, God love ye!  Now-alpha, beta, gamma,
+delta!"
+
+With a merry laugh Dyck Calhoun turned up his cup and drained the liquid
+to the last drop.  With a laugh not quite so merry, Sheila raised her mug
+and slowly drained the green happiness away.
+
+"Isn't it good--isn't it like the love of God?" asked the old man.
+"Ain't I glad I had it for ye?  Why I said I hadn't annything for ye to
+dhrink or eat, Lord only knows.  There's nothing to eat, and there's only
+this to dhrink, and I hide it away under the bedclothes of time, as one
+might say.  Ah, ye know, it's been there for three years, and I'd almost
+forgot it.  It was a little angel from heaven whispered it to me whir ye
+stepped inside this house.  I dunno why I kep' the stuff.  Manny's the
+time I was tempted to dhrink it myself, and manny's the time something
+said to me, 'Not yet.'  The Lord be praised, for I've had out of it more
+than I deserve!"
+
+He took the mugs from their hands, and for a minute stood like some
+ancient priest who had performed a noble ritual.  As Sheila looked at
+him, she kept saying to herself:
+
+"He's a spirit; he isn't a man!"
+
+Dyck's eye met that of Sheila, and he saw with the same feeling what was
+working in her heart.
+
+"Well, we must be going," he said to Christopher Dogan.  "We must get
+homeward, and we've had a good drink--the best I ever tasted.  We're
+proud to pay our respects to you in your own house; and goodbye to you
+till we meet again."
+
+His hand went out to the shoulder of the peasant and rested there for a
+second in friendly feeling.  Then the girl stretched out her hand also.
+The old man took the two cups in one hand, and, reaching out the other,
+let Sheila's fingers fall upon his own.  He slowly crooked his neck, and
+kissed her fingers with that distinction mostly to be found among those
+few good people who live on the highest or the lowest social levels, or
+in native tents.
+
+"Ah, please God we meet again!  and that I be let to serve you, Miss
+Sheila Llyn.  I have no doubt you could do with a little help some time
+or another, the same as the rest of us.  For all that's come between us
+three, may it be given me, humble and poor, to help ye both that's helped
+me so!"
+
+Dyck turned to go, and as he did so a thought came to him.
+
+"If you hadn't food and drink for us, what have you for yourself,
+Christopher?" he asked.  "Have you food to eat?"
+
+"Ah, well--well, do ye think I'm no provider?  There was no food cooked
+was what I was thinking; but come and let me show you."
+
+He took the cover off a jar standing in a corner.  "Here's good flour,
+and there's water, and there's manny a wild shrub and plant on the
+hillside to make soup, and what more does a man want?  With the scone
+cooked and inside ye, don't ye feel as well as though ye'd had a pound of
+beef or a rasher of bacon?  Sure, ye do.  I know where there's clumps of
+wild radishes, and with a little salt they're good--the best.  God bless
+ye!"
+
+A few moments later, as he stood in his doorway and looked along the
+road, he saw two figures, the girl's head hardly higher than the man's
+shoulder.  They walked as if they had much to get and were ready for it.
+
+"Well, I dunno," he said to himself.  "I dunno about you, Dyck Calhoun.
+You're wild, and ye have too manny mad friends, but you'll come all right
+in the end; and that pretty girl--God save her!--she'll come with a smile
+into your arms by and by, dear lad.  But ye have far to go and much to do
+before that."
+
+His head fell, his eyes stared out into the shining distance.
+
+"I see for ye manny and manny a stroke of bad luck, and manny a wrong
+thing said of ye, and she not believing wan of them.  But oh, my God, but
+oh!"--his clenched hands went to his eyes.  "I wouldn't like to travel
+the path that's before ye--no!"
+
+Down the long road the two young people travelled, gossiping much, both
+of them touched by something sad and mysterious, neither knowing why;
+both of them happy, too, for somehow they had come nearer together than
+years of ordinary life might have made possible.  They thought of the old
+man and his hut, and then broke away into talk of their own countryside,
+of the war with France, of the growing rebellious spirit in Ireland, of
+riots in Dublin town, of trouble at Limerick, Cork, and Sligo.
+
+At the gate of the mansion where Sheila was visiting, Dyck put into her
+hands the wild flowers he had picked as they passed, and said:
+
+"Well, it's been a great day.  I've never had a greater.  Let's meet
+again, and soon!  I'm almost every day upon the hill with my gun, and
+it'd be worth a lot to see you very soon."
+
+"Oh, you'll be forgetting me by to-morrow," the girl said with a little
+wistfulness at her lips, for she had a feeling they would not meet on the
+morrow.  Suddenly she picked from the bunch of wild flowers he had given
+her a little sprig of heather.
+
+"Well, if we don't meet--wear that," she said, and, laughing over her
+shoulder, turned and ran into the grounds of Loyland Towers.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+THE COMING OF A MESSENGER
+
+When Dyck entered the library of Playmore, the first words he heard were
+these:
+
+"Howe has downed the French at Brest.  He's smashed the French fleet and
+dealt a sharp blow to the revolution.  Hurrah!"
+
+The words were used by Miles Calhoun, Dyck's father, as a greeting to him
+on his return from the day's sport.
+
+Now, if there was a man in Ireland who had a narrow view and kept his
+toes pointed to the front, it was Miles Calhoun.  His people had lived in
+Connemara for hundreds of years; and he himself had only one passion in
+life, which was the Protestant passion of prejudice.  He had ever been a
+follower of Burke--a passionate follower, one who believed the French
+Revolution was a crime against humanity, a danger to the future of
+civilization.
+
+He had resisted more vigorously than most men the progress of
+revolutionary sentiments in Ireland.  He was aware that his son had far
+less rigid opinions than himself; that he even defended Wolfe Tone and
+Thomas Emmet against abuse and damnation.  That was why he had delight in
+slapping his son in the face, whenever possible, with the hot pennant of
+victory for British power.
+
+He was a man of irascible temperament and stern views, given to fits of
+exasperation.  He was small of stature, with a round face, eyes that
+suddenly went red with feeling, and with none of the handsomeness of his
+son, who resembled his mother's family.
+
+The mother herself had been a beautiful and remarkable woman.  Dyck was,
+in a sense, a reproduction of her in body and mind, for a more cheerful
+and impetuous person never made a household happier or more imperfect
+than she made hers.
+
+Her beauty and continual cheerfulness had always been the joy of Dyck's
+life, and because his mother had married his father--she was a woman of
+sense, with all her lightsome ways--he tried to regard his father with
+profound respect.  Since his wife's death, however, Miles Calhoun had
+deteriorated; he had become unreasonable.
+
+As the elder Calhoun made his announcement about the battle of Brest and
+the English victory, a triumphant smile lighted his flushed face, and
+under his heavy grey brows his eyes danced with malicious joy.
+
+"Howe's a wonder!" he said.  "He'll make those mad, red republicans hunt
+their holes.  Eh, isn't that your view, Ivy?" he asked of a naval captain
+who had evidently brought the news.
+
+Captain Ivy nodded.
+
+"Yes, it's a heavy blow for the French bloodsuckers.  If their ideas
+creep through Europe and get hold of England, God only knows what the
+end will be!  In their view, to alter everything is the only way to put
+things right.  No doubt they'll invent a new way to be born before
+they've finished."
+
+"Well, that wouldn't be a bad idea," remarked Dyck.  "The present way has
+its demerits."
+
+"Yes, it throws responsibility upon the man, and gives a heap of trouble
+to the woman," said Captain Ivy with a laugh; "but they'll change it all,
+you'll see."
+
+Dyck poured himself a glass of port, held it up, sniffed the aroma, and
+looked through the beautiful red tinge of the wine with a happy and
+critical eye.
+
+"Well, the world could be remade in a lot of ways," he declared.  "I
+shouldn't mind seeing a bit of a revolution in Ireland--but in England
+first," he hastened to add.  "They're a more outcast folk than the
+Irish."  His father scoffed.
+
+"Look out, Dyck, or they'll drop you in jail if you talk like that!" he
+chided, his red face growing redder, his fingers nervously feeling the
+buttons on his picturesque silk waistcoat.  "There's conspiracy in
+Ireland, and you never truly know if the man that serves you at your
+table, or brings you your horse, or puts a spade into your ground, isn't
+a traitor."
+
+At that moment the door opened, and a servant entered the room.  In his
+hand he carried a letter which, with marked excitement, he brought to
+Miles Calhoun.
+
+"Sure, he's waiting, sir," he said.
+
+"And who's he?" asked his master, turning the letter over, as though to
+find out by looking at the seal.
+
+"Oh, a man of consequence, if we're to judge by the way he's clothed."
+
+"Fit company, then?" his master asked, as he opened the heavily sealed
+letter.
+
+"Well, I'm not saying that, for there's no company good enough for us,"
+answered the higgledy-piggledy butler, with a quirk of the mouth; "but,
+as messengers go, I never seen one with more style and point."
+
+"Well, bring him to me," said Miles Calhoun.  "Bring him to me, and I'll
+form my own judgment--though I have some confidence in yours."
+
+"You could go further and fare worse, as the Papists say about
+purgatory," answered the old man with respectful familiarity.
+
+Captain Ivy and Dyck grinned, but the head of the house seemed none too
+pleased at the freedom of the old butler.
+
+"Bring him as he is," said Miles Calhoun.  "Good God!" he added, for he
+just realized that the stamp of the seal was that of the Attorney-General
+of Ireland.
+
+Then he read the letter and a flush swept over his face, making its red
+almost purple.
+
+"Eternal damnation--eternal damnation!" he declared, holding the paper
+at arm's length a moment, inspecting it.  He then handed it to Dyck.
+"Read that, lad.  Then pack your bag, for we start for Dublin by daylight
+or before."
+
+Dyck read the brief document and whistled softly to himself.
+
+"Well, well, you've got to obey orders like that, I suppose," Dyck said.
+"They want to question us as to the state of the country here."
+
+"I think we can tell them something.  I wonder if they know how wide your
+travel is, how many people you see; and if they know, how did they come
+to know?  There's spies all over the place.  How do I know but the man
+who's just left this room isn't a spy, isn't the enemy of all of us
+here?"
+
+"I'd suspect Michael Clones," remarked Dyck, "just as soon as Mulvaney."
+
+"Michael Clones," said his father, and he turned to Captain Ivy, "Michael
+Clones I'd trust as I'd trust His blessed Majesty, George III.  He's a
+rare scamp, is Michael Clones!  He's no thicker than a cardboard, but he
+draws the pain out of your hurt like a mustard plaster.  A man of better
+sense and greater roguery I've never met.  You must see him, Captain Ivy.
+He's only about twelve years older than my son, but, like my son, there's
+no holding him, there's no control of him that's any good.  He does what
+he wants to do in his own way--talks when he wants to talk, fights when
+he wants to fight.  He's a man of men, is Michael Clones."
+
+At that moment the door opened and the butler entered, followed by a
+tall, thin, Don Quixote sort of figure.
+
+"His excellency," said Mulvaney, with a look slightly malevolent, for the
+visitor had refused his name.  Then he turned and left the room.
+
+At Mulvaney's words, an ironical smile crossed the face of the newcomer.
+Then he advanced to Miles Calhoun.  Before speaking, however, he glanced
+sharply at Captain Ivy, threw an inquisitive look at Dyck, and said:
+
+"I seem to have hurt the feelings of your butler, sir, but that cannot be
+helped.  I have come from the Attorney-General.  My name is Leonard
+Mallow--I'm the eldest son of Lord Mallow.  I've been doing business in
+Limerick, and I bring a message from the Attorney-General to ask you to
+attend his office at the earliest moment."
+
+Dyck Calhoun, noting his glance at a bottle of port, poured out a glass
+of the good wine and handed it over, saying:
+
+"It'll taste better to you because you've been travelling hard, but it's
+good wine anyhow.  It's been in the cellar for forty years, and that's
+something in a land like this."
+
+Mallow accepted the glass of port, raised it with a little gesture of
+respect, and said:
+
+"Long life to the King, and cursed be his enemies!"  So saying he flung
+the wine down his throat--which seemed to gulp it like a well--wiped his
+lips with a handkerchief, and turned to Miles Calhoun again.
+
+"Yes, it's good wine," he said; "as good as you'd get in the cellars of
+the Viceroy.  I've seen strange things as I came.  I've seen lights on
+the hills, and drunken rioters in the roads and behind hedges, and once a
+shot was fired at me; but here I am, safe and sound, carrying out my
+orders.  What time will you start?" he added.
+
+He took it for granted that the summons did not admit of rejection, and
+he was right.  The document contained these words:
+
+     Trouble is brewing; indeed, it is at hand.  Come, please, at once to
+     Dublin, and give the Lord-Lieutenant and the Government a report
+     upon your district.  We do not hear altogether well of it, but no
+     one has the knowledge you possess.  In the name of His Majesty you
+     are to present yourself at once at these offices in Dublin, and be
+     assured that the Lord-Lieutenant will give you warm welcome through
+     me.  Your own loyalty gives much satisfaction here.  I am, sir,
+                              Your obedient servant,
+                                                  JOHN MCNOWELL.
+
+"You have confidence in the people's loyalty here?" asked Mallow.
+
+"As great as in my own," answered Dyck cheerily.  "Well, you ought to
+know what that is.  At the same time, I've heard you're a friend of one
+or two dark spirits in the land."
+
+"I hold no friendships that would do hurt to my country," answered Dyck
+sharply.
+
+Mallow smiled satirically.  "As we're starting at daylight, I suppose, I
+think I'll go to bed, if it may be you can put me up."
+
+"Oh, Lord, yes!  We can put you up, Mr. Mallow," said the old man.
+"You shall have as good a bed as you can find outside the Viceregal
+Lodge--a fourposter, wide and long.  It's been slept in by many a man of
+place and power.  But, Mr. Mallow, you haven't said you've had no dinner,
+and you'll not be going to bed in this house without your food.  Did you
+shoot anything to-day, Dyck?" he asked his son.
+
+"I didn't bring home a feather.  There were no birds to-day, but there
+are the ducks I shot yesterday, and the quail."
+
+"Oh, yes," said his father, "and there's the little roast pig, too.  This
+is a day when we celebrate the anniversary of Irish power and life."
+
+"What's that?" asked Mallow.
+
+"That's the battle of the Boyne," answered his host with a little
+ostentation.
+
+"Oh, you're one of the Peep-o'-Day Boys, then," remarked Mallow.
+
+"I'm not saying that," answered the old man.  "I'm not an Ulsterman, but
+I celebrate the coming of William to the Boyne.  Things were done that
+day that'll be remembered when Ireland is whisked away into the Kingdom
+of Heaven.  So you'll not go to bed till you've had dinner, Mr. Mallow!
+By me soul, I think I smell the little porker now.  Dinner at five, to
+bed at eight, up before daylight, and off to Dublin when the light
+breaks.  That's the course!"  He turned to Captain Ivy.  "I'm sorry,
+captain, but there's naught else to do, and you were going to-morrow at
+noon, anyhow, so it won't make much difference to you."
+
+"No difference whatever," replied the sailorman.  "I have to go to
+Dublin, too, and from there to Queenstown to join my ship, and from
+Queenstown to the coast of France to do some fighting."
+
+"Please God!" remarked Miles Calhoun.  "So be it!" declared Mallow.
+
+"Amen!" said Dyck.
+
+Once again Dyck looked the visitor straight in the eyes, and back in the
+horizon of Mallow's life-sky there shone the light of an evil star.
+
+"There's the call to dinner," remarked Miles Calhoun, as a bell began
+ringing in the tower outside.  "Come with me, Mr. Mallow, and I'll show
+you your room.  You've had your horse put up, I hope?"
+
+"Yes, and my bag brought in."
+
+"Well, come along, then.  There's no time to lose.  I can smell the
+porker crawling from the oven."
+
+"You're a master of tempting thoughts," remarked Mallow enthusiastically.
+
+"Sheila--Sheila!" said Dyck Calhoun to himself where he stood.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+THE QUARREL
+
+The journey to Dublin was made by the Calhouns, their two guests, and
+Michael Clones, without incident of note.  Arrived there, Miles Calhoun
+gave himself to examination by Government officials and to assisting the
+designs of the Peep-o'-Day Boys; and indeed he was present at the
+formation of the first Orange Lodge.
+
+His narrow nature, his petty craft and malevolence, were useful in a time
+of anxiety for the State.  Yet he had not enough ability to develop his
+position by the chances offered him.  He had not a touch of genius; he
+had only bursts of Celtic passion, which he had not mind enough to
+control.
+
+Indeed, as days, weeks and months went on, his position became less
+valuable to himself, and his financial affairs suffered from his own and
+his agent's bad management.  In his particular district he was a power;
+in Dublin he soon showed the weaker side of his nature.  He had a bad
+habit of making foes where he could easily have made friends.  In his
+personal habits he was sober, but erratic.
+
+Dyck had not his father's abstention from the luxuries of life.  He
+drank, he gamed, he went where temptation was, and fell into it.  He
+steadily diminished his powers of resistance to self-indulgence until one
+day, at a tavern, he met a man who made a great impression upon him.
+
+This man was brilliant, ebullient, full of humour, character and life,
+knowing apparently all the lower world of Dublin, and moving with an
+assured step.  It was Erris Boyne, the divorced husband of Mrs. Llyn and
+the father of Sheila Llyn; but this fact was not known to Dyck.  There
+was also a chance of its not becoming known, because so many years had
+passed since Erris Boyne was divorced.
+
+One day Erris Boyne said to Dyck:
+
+"There's a supper to-night at the Breakneck Club.  Come along and have a
+skinful.  You'll meet people worth knowing.  They're a damned fine lot of
+fellows for you to meet, Calhoun !"
+
+"The Breakneck Club isn't a good name for a first-class institution,"
+remarked Dyck, with a pause and a laugh; "but I'll come, if you'll fetch
+me."
+
+Erris Boyne, who was eighteen years older than Dyck, laughed, flicked a
+little pinch of snuff at his nose with his finger.
+
+"Dear lad, of course I'll come and fetch you," he said.  "There's many a
+man has done worse than lead a gay stripling like you into pleasant ways.
+Bring along any loose change you have, for it may be a night of nights."
+
+"Oh, they play cards, do they, at the Breakneck Club?" said Dyck, alive
+with interest.
+
+"Well, call it what you like, but men must do something when they get
+together, and we can't be talking all the time.  So pocket your
+shillings."
+
+"Are they all the right sort?" asked Dyck, with a little touch of
+malice.  "I mean, are they loyal and true?"
+
+Erris Boyne laid a hand on Dyck's arm.
+
+"Come and find out.  Do you think I'd lead you into bad company?  Of
+course Emmet and Wolfe Tone won't be there, nor any of that lot; but
+there'll be some men of the right stamp."  He watched Dyck carefully out
+of the corner of his eye.  "It's funny," he added, "that in Ireland the
+word loyal always means being true to the Union Jack, standing by King
+George and his crowd."
+
+"Well, what would you have?" said Dyck.  "For this is a day and age when
+being loyal to the King is more than aught else in all the Irish world.
+We're never two days alike, we Irish.  There are the United Irishmen and
+the Defenders on one side, and the Peepo'-Day Boys, or Orangemen, on the
+other--Catholic and Protestant, at each other's throats.  Then there's a
+hand thrust in, and up goes the sword, and the rifles, pikes, and
+bayonets; and those that were ready to mutilate or kill each other fall
+into each other's arms."
+
+Erris Boyne laughed.  "Well, there'll soon be an end to that.  The Irish
+Parliament is slipping into disrepute.  It wouldn't surprise me if the
+astute English bribe them into a union, to the ruin of Irish
+Independence.  Yet maybe, before that comes, the French will have a try
+for power here.  And upon my word, if I have to live under foreign rule,
+I'd as leave have a French whip over me as an English!"  He came a step
+nearer, his voice lowered a little.  "Have you heard the latest news from
+France?  They're coming with a good-sized fleet down to the south coast.
+Have you heard it?"
+
+"Oh, there's plenty one hears one doesn't believe is gospel," answered
+Dyck, his eyes half closing.  "I'm not believing all I hear, as if it was
+a prayer-meeting.  Anything may happen here; Ireland's a woman--very
+uncertain."
+
+Dyck flicked some dust from his waistcoat, and dropped his eyes, because
+he was thinking of two women he had known; one of them an angel now in
+company of her sister angels--his mother; the other a girl he had met on
+the hills of Connemara, a wonderfully pretty girl of seventeen.  How
+should he know that the girl was Erris Boyne's daughter?--although there
+were times when some gesture of Boyne, some quick look, some lifting of
+the eyebrows, brought back the memory of Sheila Llyn, as it did now.
+
+Since Dyck left his old home he had seen her twice; once at Loyland
+Towers, and once at her home in Limerick.  The time he had spent with her
+had been very brief, but full of life, interest, and character.  She was
+like some piquant child, bold, beautiful, uncertain, caressing in her
+manner one instant, and distant at another.
+
+She had said radiant things, had rallied him, had shown him where a
+twenty-nine-pound salmon had been caught in a stream, and had fired at
+and brought down a pheasant outside the covert at Loyland Towers.
+Whether at Loyland Towers, or at her mother's house in Limerick, there
+was no touch of forwardness in her, or in anything she said or did.  She
+was the most natural being, the freest from affectation, he had ever
+known.
+
+As Erris Boyne talked to him, the memory of Sheila flooded his mind,
+and on the flood his senses swam like swans.  He had not her careful
+composure.  He was just as real, but he had the wilfulness of man.  She
+influenced him as no woman had ever yet done; but he saw no happy ending
+to the dream.  He was too poor to marry; he had no trade or profession;
+his father's affairs were in a bad way.  He could not bring himself to
+join the army or the navy; and yet, as an Irishman moved by political
+ideals, with views at once critical and yet devoted to the crown, he was
+not in a state to settle down.
+
+He did not know that Erris Boyne was set to capture him for the rebel
+cause.  How could he know that Boyne was an agent of the most evil forces
+in Ireland--an agent of skill and address, prepossessing, with the face
+of a Celtic poet and the eye of an assassin?
+
+Boyne's object was to bring about the downfall of Dyck Calhoun--that is,
+his downfall as a patriot.  At the Breakneck Club this bad business
+began.  Dyck had seen many people, representing the gaiety and deviltry
+of life; but it was as though many doubtful people, many reckless ones,
+all those with purposes, fads, and fancies, were there.  Here was an
+irresponsible member of a Government department; there an officer of His
+Majesty's troops; beyond, a profligate bachelor whose reputation for
+traitorous diplomacy was known and feared.  Yet everywhere were men known
+in the sporting, gaming, or political world, in sea life or land life,
+most of whom had a character untouched by criticism.
+
+It was at this club that Dyck again met that tall, ascetic messenger from
+the Attorney-General, who had brought the message to Miles Calhoun.  It
+was with this man--Leonard Mallow, eldest son of Lord Mallow--that Dyck,
+with three others, played cards one afternoon.
+
+The instinctive antipathy which had marked their first introduction was
+carried on to this later meeting.  Dyck distrusted Mallow, and allowed
+his distrust exercise.  It was unfortunate that Mallow won from him
+three-fourths of the money he had brought to the club, and won it with a
+smile not easy to forgive.
+
+Dyck had at last secured sudden success in a scheme of his cards when
+Mallow asked with a sneer:
+
+"Did you learn that at your home in heaven?"
+
+"Don't they teach it where you live in hell?" was Dyck's reply.
+
+At this Mallow flicked Dyck across the face with his handkerchief.
+
+"That's what they teach where I belong."
+
+"Well, it's easy to learn, and we'll do the sum at any time or place you
+please."  After a moment Dyck continued: "I wouldn't make a fuss over it.
+Let's finish the game.  There's no good prancing till the sport's ready;
+so I'll sit and learn more of what they teach in hell!"
+
+Dyck had been drinking, or he would not have spoken so; and when he was
+drunk daring was strong in him.  He hated profoundly this man-so self-
+satisfied and satanic.
+
+He kept a perfect coolness, however.  Leonard Mallow should not see that
+he was upset.  His wanton wordiness came to his rescue, and until the end
+of the game he played with sang-froid, daring, and skill.  He loved
+cards; he loved the strife of skill against skill, of trick against
+trick, of hand against hand.  He had never fought a duel in his life,
+but he had no fear of doing so.
+
+At length, having won back nearly all he had lost, he rose to his feet
+and looked round.
+
+"Is there any one here from whom I can ask a favour?"
+
+Several stepped forward.  Dyck nodded.  One of them he knew.  It was Sir
+Almeric Foyle.
+
+"Thank you, Sir Almeric," he said; "thank you.  Shall it be swords or
+pistols?" he asked his enemy, coolly.
+
+"Swords, if you please," remarked Mallow grimly, for he had a gift with
+the sword.
+
+Dyck nodded again.
+
+"As you will.  As you will!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+THE DUEL
+
+It was a morning such as could only be brought into existence by the
+Maker of mornings in Ireland.  It was a day such as Dublin placed away
+carefully into the pantechnicon of famous archives.
+
+The city of Dublin was not always clean, but in the bright, gorgeous sun
+her natural filth was no menace to the eye, no repulse to the senses.
+Above the Liffey, even at so early an hour, the heat shimmers like a
+silver mist.  The bells of churches were ringing, and the great cathedral
+bells boomed in thrilling monotony over the peaceful city.  Here and
+there in the shabby yet renowned streets, horsemen moved along; now and
+then the costermonger raised his cry of fresh fruit, flowers, and
+"distinguished vegetables."
+
+People moved into church doorways on their way to mass or confession--
+some bright and rather gorgeous beings, some in deep mourning, shy,
+reserved, and obscure.  Here and there, also, in certain streets--where
+officials lived or worked--were soldiers afoot; soldiers with carbines
+and long bayonets, with tall, slightly peaked hats, smart red coats,
+belts crossing their breasts, knee-breeches and leggings, and all with
+epaulets shining.  They were in marked contrast to the peasant folk with
+the high-peaked soft hat, knee-breeches, rough tail-coat, and stockings,
+some with rifles, some with pikes, some with powder-horns slung under
+their arms or in the small of the back.
+
+Besides this show of foot-soldiers--that is, regulars and irregulars of
+the Cornwallis Regiment, and men of the Defenders and the Peep-o'-Day
+Boys--there were little groups of cavalry making their way to the parade-
+ground, the castle, the barracks, or the courts.
+
+Beyond these there was the jaunting-car trundling over the rough
+cobblestone street, or bumping in and out of dangerous holes.  Whips
+cracked, and the loud voices of jarveys shouted blatant humour and Irish
+fun at horse and passenger.  Here and there, also, some stately coach,
+bedizened with arms of the quality, made its way through the chief
+streets, or across the bridges of the Liffey.
+
+Then came the general population, moving cheerfully in the inspiriting
+sun; for Irishmen move so much in a moist atmosphere that on a sunshiny
+day all tristesse of life seems changed, as in a flash, into high spirits
+and much activity.  Not that the country, at its worst, is slow-footed or
+depressed; for wit is always at the elbow of want.
+
+Never in all Ireland's years had she a more beautiful day than that
+in which Dyck Calhoun and the Hon. Leonard Mallow met to settle their
+account in a secluded corner of Phoenix Park.  It was not the usual place
+for duels.  The seconds had taken care to keep the locale from the
+knowledge of the public; especially as many who had come to know of
+the event at the Breakneck Club were eager to be present.
+
+The affair began an hour after sunrise.  Neither Dyck nor Leonard Mallow
+slept at home the night before, but in separate taverns near Phoenix
+Park.  Mallow came almost jauntily to the obscure spot.  Both men had
+sensitiveness, and both entered the grounds with a certain sense of
+pleasure.
+
+Dyck moved and spoke like a man charged with some fluid which had
+abstracted him from life's monotonous routine.  He had to consider the
+chance of never leaving the grounds alive; yet as he entered the place,
+where smooth grass between the trees made good footing for the work to be
+done, the thrill of the greenery, the sound of the birds, the flick of a
+lizard across the path, and the distant gay leap of a young deer, brought
+to his senses a gust of joyous feeling.
+
+"I never smelled such air!" he said to one of the seconds.  "I never saw
+the sun so beautiful!"  He sniffed the air and turned his face towards
+the sun.  "Well, it's a day for Ireland," he added, in response to a
+gravely playful remark of Sir Almeric Foyle.  "Ireland never was so
+sweet.  Nature's provoking us!"
+
+"Yes, it's a pity," said Sir Almeric.  "But I'm not thinking of bad luck
+for you, Calhoun."
+
+Dyck's smile seemed to come from infinite distance.  He was not normal;
+he was submerged.  He was in the great, consuming atmosphere of the
+bigger world, and the greater life.  He even did not hate Mallow at the
+moment.  The thing about to be done was to him a test of manhood.  It was
+a call upon the courage of the soul, a challenge of life, strength, and
+will.
+
+As Mallow entered the grounds, the thought of Sheila Llyn crossed Dyck's
+mind, and the mental sight of her gladdened the eyes of his soul.  For
+one brief instant he stood lost in the mind's look; then he stepped
+forward, saluted, shook hands with Mallow, and doffed his coat and
+waistcoat.
+
+As he did so, he was conscious of a curious coldness, even of dampness,
+in the hand which had shaken that of Mallow.  Mallow's hand had a clammy
+touch--clammy, but firm and sure.  There was no tremor in the long, thin
+fingers nor at the lips--the thin, ascetic lips, as of a secret-service
+man--but in his eyes was a dark fire of purpose.  The morning had touched
+him, but not as it had thrown over Dyck its mantle of peace.  Mallow also
+had enjoyed the smell and feeling of it all, but with this difference--it
+had filled him with such material joy that he could not bear the thought
+of leaving it.  It gave him strength of will, which would add security to
+his arm and wrist.  Yet, as he looked at Dyck, he saw that his work was
+cut out for him; for in all his days he had never seen a man so well-
+possessed, so surely in hand.
+
+Dyck had learned swordsmanship with as skilled a master as Ireland had
+known, and he had shown, in getting knowledge of the weapon, a natural
+instinct and a capacity worthy of the highest purpose.  He had handled
+the sword since he was six, and his play was better than that of most
+men; but this was, in fact, his first real duel.  In the troubled state
+of Ireland, with internal discord, challenge, and attack, he had more
+than once fought, and with success; but that was in the rough-and-tumble
+of life's chances, as it were, with no deliberate plan to fight according
+to the rules.  Many times, of course, in the process of his training, he
+had fought as men fight in duels, but with this difference--that now he
+was permitted to disable or kill his foe.
+
+It was clear that one or the other would not leave this ground--this
+verdant, beautiful piece of mother earth--exactly as he entered it.  He
+would leave it wounded, incapable, or dead.  Indeed, both might leave it
+wounded, and the chances of success were with the older man, Mallow,
+whose experience would give him an advantage.
+
+Physically, there was not a vast deal to choose between the two men.
+Mallow was lank and tall, nervously self-contained, finely concentrated,
+and vigorous.  Dyck was broad of shoulder, well set up, muscular, and
+with a steadier eye than that of his foe.  Also, as the combat developed,
+it was clear that he had a hand as steady as his eye.  What was more, his
+wrist had superb strength and flexibility; it was as enduring and vital
+as the forefoot and ankle of a tiger.  As a pair they were certainly
+notable, and would give a good account of themselves.
+
+No one of temperament who observed the scene could ever forget it.  The
+light was perfect--evenly distributed, clear enough to permit accuracy of
+distance in a stroke.  The air was still, gently bracing, and, like most
+Irish air, adorably sweet.
+
+The spot chosen for the fight was a sort of avenue between great trees,
+whose broad leaves warded off the direct sun, and whose shade had as yet
+no black shadows.  The turf was as elastic to the foot as a firm
+mattress.  In the trees, birds were singing with liveliness; in the
+distance, horned cattle browsed, and a pair of horses stood gazing at
+the combatants, startled, no doubt, by this invasion of their pasturage.
+From the distance came the faint, mellow booming of church-bells.
+
+The two men fighting had almost the air of gladiators.  Their coats were
+off, and the white linen of their shirts looked gracious; while the
+upraised left hand of the fighters balancing the sword-thrust and the
+weight of the body had an almost singular beauty.  Of the two, Dyck was
+the more graceful, the steadier, the quicker in his motions.
+
+Vigilant Dyck was, but not reckless.  He had made the first attack, on
+the ground that the aggressor gains by boldness, if that boldness is
+joined to skill; and Dyck's skill was of the best.  His heart was warm.
+His momentary vision of Sheila Llyn remained with him--not as a vision,
+rather as a warmth in his inmost being, something which made him
+intensely alert, cheerful, defiant, exactly skilful.
+
+He had need of all his skill, for Mallow was set to win the fight.
+He felt instinctively what was working in Dyck's mind.  He had fought a
+number of duels, and with a certain trick or art he had given the end to
+the lives of several.  He became conscious, however, that Dyck had a
+particular stroke in mind, which he himself was preventing by masterful
+methods.  It might be one thing or another, but in view of Dyck's
+training it would perhaps be the Enniscorthy touch.
+
+Again and again Dyck pressed his antagonist backward, seeking to muddle
+his defence and to clear an opening for his own deadly stroke; but the
+other man also was a master, and parried successfully.
+
+Presently, with a quick move, Mallow took the offensive, and tried to
+unsettle Dyck's poise and disorganize his battle-plan.  For an instant
+the tempestuous action, the brilliant, swift play of the sword, the
+quivering flippancy of the steel, gave Dyck that which almost
+disconcerted him.  Yet he had a grip of himself, and preserved his
+defence intact; though once his enemy's steel caught his left shoulder,
+making it bleed.  The seconds, however, decided that the thrust was not
+serious, and made no attempt to interrupt the combat.
+
+Dyck kept singularly cool.  As Mallow's face grew flushed, his own grew
+paler, but it was the paleness of intensity and not of fear.  Each man's
+remarkable skill in defence was a good guarantee against disaster due to
+carelessness.  Seldom have men fought so long and accomplished so little
+in the way of blood-letting.  At length, however, Dyck's tactics changed.
+Once again he became aggressive, and he drove his foe to a point where
+the skill of both men was tried to the uttermost.  It was clear the time
+had come for something definite.  Suddenly Dyck threw himself back with
+an agile step, lunged slightly to one side, and then in a gallant foray
+got the steel point into the sword-arm of his enemy.  That was the
+Enniscorthy stroke, which had been taught him by William Tandy, the
+expert swordsman, and had been made famous by Lord Welling, of
+Enniscorthy.  It succeeded, and it gave Dyck the victory, for Mallow's
+sword dropped from his hand.
+
+A fatigued smile came to Mallow's lips.  He clasped the wounded arm with
+his left hand as the surgeon came forward.
+
+"Well, you got it home," he said to Dyck; "and it's deftly done."
+
+"I did my best," answered Dyck.  "Give me your hand, if you will."
+
+With a wry look Mallow, now seated on the old stump of a tree, held out
+his left hand.  It was covered with blood.
+
+"I think we'll have to forego that courtesy, Calhoun," he said.  "Look at
+the state of my hand!  It's good blood," he added grimly.  "It's damned
+good blood, but--but it won't do, you see."
+
+"I'm glad it was no worse," said Dyck, not touching the bloody hand.
+"It's a clean thrust, and you'll be better from it soon.  These great
+men"--he smiled towards the surgeons--"will soon put you right.  I got my
+chance with the stroke, and took it, because I knew if I didn't you'd
+have me presently."
+
+"You'll have a great reputation in Dublin town now, and you'll deserve
+it," Mallow added adroitly, the great paleness of his features, however,
+made ghastly by the hatred in his eyes.
+
+Dyck did not see this look, but he felt a note of malice--a distant note
+--in Mallow's voice.  He saw that what Mallow had said was fresh evidence
+of the man's arrogant character.  It did not offend him, however, for he
+was victor, and could enter the Breakneck Club or Dublin society with a
+tranquil eye.
+
+Again Mallow's voice was heard.
+
+"I'd have seen you damned to hell, Calhoun, before I'd have apologized at
+the Breakneck Club; but after a fight with one of the best swordsmen in
+Ireland I've learned a lot, and I'll apologize now--completely."
+
+The surgeon had bound up the slight wound in Dyck's shoulder, had stopped
+the bleeding, and was now helping him on with his coat.  The operation
+had not been without pain, but this demonstration from his foe was too
+much for him.  It drove the look of pain from his face; it brought a
+smile to his lips.  He came a step nearer.
+
+"I'm as obliged to you as if you'd paid for my board and lodging,
+Mallow," he said; "and that's saying a good deal in these days.  I'll
+never have a bigger fight.  You're a greater swordsman than your
+reputation.  I must have provoked you beyond reason," he went on
+gallantly.  "I think we'd better forget the whole thing."
+
+"I'm a Loyalist," Mallow replied.  "I'm a Loyalist, and if you're one,
+too, what reason should there be for our not being friends?"
+
+A black cloud flooded Calhoun's face.
+
+"If--if I'm a Loyalist, you say!  Have you any doubt of it?
+If you have--"
+
+"You wish your sword had gone into my heart instead of my arm, eh?"
+interrupted Mallow.  "How easily I am misunderstood!  I meant nothing by
+that 'if.'"  He smiled, and the smile had a touch of wickedness.  "I
+meant nothing by it-nothing at all.  As we are both Loyalists, we must be
+friends.  Good-bye, Calhoun!"
+
+Dyck's face cleared very slowly.  Mallow was maddening, but the look of
+the face was not that of a foe.  "Well, let us be friends," Dyck answered
+with a cordial smile.  "Good-bye," he added.  "I'm damned sorry we had to
+fight at all.  Good-bye!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+THE KILLING OF ERRIS BOYNE
+
+"There's many a government has made a mess of things in Ireland," said
+Erris Boyne; "but since the day of Cromwell the Accursed this is the
+worst.  Is there a man in Ireland that believes in it, or trusts it?
+There are men that support it, that are served by it, that fill their
+pockets out of it; but by Joseph and by Mary, there's none thinks there
+couldn't be a better!  Have a little more marsala, Calhoun?"
+
+With these words, Boyne filled up the long glass out of which Dyck
+Calhoun had been drinking--drinking too much.  Shortly before Dyck had
+lost all his cash at the card-table.  He had turned from it penniless and
+discomfited to see Boyne, smiling, and gay with wine, in front of him.
+
+Boyne took him by the arm.
+
+"Come with me," said he.  "There's no luck for you at the tables to-day.
+Let's go where we can forget the world, where we can lift the banner of
+freedom and beat the drums of purpose.  Come along, lad!"
+
+Boyne had ceased to have his earlier allurement for Dyck Calhoun, but his
+smile was friendly, his manner was hospitable, and he was on the spot.
+The time was critical for Dyck--critical and dangerous.  He had lost
+money heavily; he had even exhausted his mother's legacy.
+
+Of late he had seen little of his father, and the little he had seen was
+not fortunate.  They had quarrelled over Dyck's wayward doings.  Miles
+Calhoun had said some hard things to him, and Dyck had replied that he
+would cut out his own course, trim his own path, walk his own way.
+He had angered his father terribly, and Miles, in a burst of temper,
+had disclosed the fact that his own property was in peril.  They had
+been, estranged ever since; but the time had come when Dyck must at least
+secure the credit of his father's name at his bank to find the means of
+living.
+
+It was with this staring him in the face that Erris Boyne's company
+seemed to offer at least a recovery of his good spirits.  Dissipated as
+Boyne's look was, he had a natural handsomeness which, with good care of
+himself personally, well-appointed clothes, a cheerful manner, and witty
+talk, made him palatable to careless-living Dublin.
+
+This Dublin knew little of Boyne's present domestic life.  It did not
+know that he had injured his second wife as badly as he had wronged his
+first--with this difference, however, that his first wife was a lady,
+while his second wife, Noreen, was a beautiful, quick-tempered, lovable
+eighteen-year-old girl, a graduate of the kitchen and dairy, when he took
+her to himself.  He had married her in a mad moment after his first wife
+--Mrs. Llyn, as she was now called--had divorced him; and after the first
+thrill of married life was over, nothing remained with Boyne except
+regret that he had sold his freedom for what he might, perhaps, have had
+without marriage.
+
+Then began a process of domestic torture which alienated Noreen from him,
+and roused in her the worst passions of human nature.  She came to know
+of his infidelities, and they maddened her.  They had no children, and in
+the end he had threatened her with desertion.  When she had retorted in
+strong words, he slapped her face, and left her with an ugly smile.
+
+The house where they lived was outside Dublin, in a secluded spot, yet
+not far from stores and shops.  There was this to be said for Noreen--
+that she kept her home spotlessly clean, even with two indifferent
+servants.  She had a gift for housewifery, which, at its best, was as
+good as anything in the world, and far better than could be found in most
+parts of Ireland.
+
+Of visitors they had few, if any, and the young wife was left alone to
+brood upon her wrongs.  Erris Boyne had slapped her face on the morning
+of the day when he met Dyck Calhoun in the hour of his bad luck.  He did
+not see the look in her face as he left the house.
+
+Ruthless as he was, he realized the time had come when by bold effort he
+might get young Calhoun wholly into his power.  He began by getting Dyck
+into the street.  Then he took him by an indirect route to what was,
+reputedly, a tavern of consequence.  There choice spirits met on
+occasion, and dark souls, like Boyne, planned adventures.  Outwardly it
+was a tavern of the old class, superficially sedate, and called the Harp
+and Crown.  None save a very few conspirators knew how great a part it
+played in the plan to break the government of Ireland and to ruin
+England's position in the land.
+
+The entrance was by two doors--one the ordinary public entrance, the
+other at the side of the house, which was on a corner.  This could be
+opened by a skeleton key owned by Erris Boyne.
+
+He and Dyck entered, however, by the general entrance, because Boyne had
+forgotten his key.  They passed through the bar-parlour, nodding to one
+or two habitues, and presently were bestowed in a room, not large, but
+well furnished.  It was quiet and alluring on this day when the world
+seemed disconcerting.  So pleasantly did the place affect Dyck's spirits
+that, as he sat down in the room which had often housed worse men than
+himself, he gave a sigh of relief.
+
+They played cards, and Dyck won.  He won five times what he had lost at
+the club.  This made him companionable.
+
+"It's a poor business-cards," he said at last.  "It puts one up in the
+clouds and down in the ditch all at the same time.  I tell you this,
+Boyne--I'm going to stop.  No man ought to play cards who hasn't a
+fortune; and my fortune, I'm sorry to say, is only my face!"  He laughed
+bitterly.
+
+"And your sword--you've forgotten that, Calhoun.  You've a lot of luck in
+your sword."
+
+"Well, I've made no money out of it so far," Dyck retorted cynically.
+
+"Yet you've put men with reputations out of the running, men like
+Mallow."
+
+"Oh, that was a bit of luck and a few tricks I've learned.  I can't start
+a banking-account on that."
+
+"But you can put yourself in the way of winning what can't be bought."
+
+"No--no English army for me, thank you--if that's what you mean."
+
+"It isn't what I mean.  In the English army a man's a slave.  He can
+neither eat, nor drink, nor sleep without being under command.  He has to
+do a lot of dirty work without having voice in the policy.  He's a child
+of discipline and order."
+
+"And a damned good thing that would be for most of us!" retorted Dyck.
+"But I'm not one of the most."
+
+"I know that.  Try a little more of this marsala, Calhoun.  It's the best
+in the place, and it's got a lot of good stuff.  I've been coming to the
+Harp and Crown for many years, and I've never had a bad drink all that
+time.  The old landlord is a genius.  He doesn't put on airs.  He's a
+good man, is old Swinton, and there's nothing good in the drink of France
+that you can't get here."
+
+"Well, if that's true, how does it happen?" asked Dyck, with a little
+flash of interest.  "Why should this little twopenny, one-horse place--
+I mean in size and furnishments--have such luck as to get the best there
+is in France?  It means a lot of trouble, eh?"
+
+"It means some trouble.  But let me tell you"--he leaned over the table
+and laid a hand on Dyck's, which was a little nervous--"let me speak as
+an old friend to you, if I may.  Here are the facts.  For many a year,
+you know as well as I do, ships have been coming from France to Ireland
+with the very best wines and liquors, and taking back the very best wool-
+-smuggled, of course.  Well, our little landlord here is the damnedest
+rogue of all.  The customs never touch him.  From the coast
+the stuff comes up to Dublin without a check, and, as he's a special
+favourite, he gets the best to be had in la belle France."
+
+"Why is he such a favourite?" asked Dyck.
+
+Erris Boyne laughed, not loudly, but suggestively.  "When a lady kisses a
+man on the lips, of her own free will, and puts her arm around his neck,
+is it done, do you think, because it's her duty to do it or die?  No,
+it's because she likes the man; because the man is a good friend to her;
+because it's money in her pocket.  That's the case with old Swinton.
+France kisses him, as it were, because"--he paused, as though debating
+what to say--"because France knows he'd rather be under her own
+revolutionary government than under the monarchy of England."
+
+His voice had resonance, and, as he said these words, it had insistence.
+
+"Do you know, Calhoun, I think old Swinton is right.  We suffer here
+because monarchy, with its cruel hand of iron, mistrusts us, brutalizes
+us."
+
+He did not see enlightenment come into the half-drunken eyes of Dyck.  He
+only realized that Dyck was very still, and strangely, deeply interested.
+
+"I tell you, Calhoun, we need in Ireland something of the spirit that's
+alive in France to-day.  They've cleaned out the kings--Louis's and
+Marie's heads have dropped into the basket.  They're sweeping the dirt
+out of France; they're cleaning the dark places; they're whitewashing
+Versailles and sawdusting the Tuileries; they're purging the aristocratic
+guts of France; they're starting for the world a reformation which will
+make it clean.  Not America alone, but England, and all Europe, will
+become republics."
+
+"England?" asked Dyck in a low, penetrating voice.  "Aye, England,
+through Ireland.  Ireland will come first, then Wales, Scotland, and
+England.  Dear lad, the great day is come--the greatest the world has
+ever known.  France, the spirit of it, is alive.  It will purge and
+cleanse the universe!"
+
+The suspicious, alert look passed from Dyck's eyes, but his face had
+become flushed.  He reached out and poured himself another glass of wine.
+
+"What you say may be true, Boyne.  It may be true, but I wouldn't put
+faith in it--not for one icy minute.  I don't want to see here in Ireland
+the horrors and savagery of France.  I don't want to see the guillotine
+up on St. Stephen's Green."
+
+Boyne felt that he must march carefully.  He was sure of his game; but
+there were difficulties, and he must not throw his chances away.  Dyck
+was in a position where, with his inflammable nature, he could be
+captured.
+
+"Well, I'll tell you, Calhoun.  I don't know which is worse--Ireland
+bloody with shootings and hangings, Ulster up in the north and Cork in
+the south, from the Giant's Causeway to Tralee; no two sets of feet
+dancing alike, with the bloody hand of England stretching out over the
+Irish Parliament like death itself; or France ruling us.  How does the
+English government live here?  Only by bribery and purchases.  It buys
+its way.  Isn't that true?"
+
+Dyck nodded.  "Yes, it's true in a way," he replied.  "It's so, because
+we're what we are.  We've never been properly put in our places.  The
+heel on our necks--that's the way to do it."
+
+Boyne looked at the flushed, angry face.  In spite of Dyck's words, he
+felt that his medicine was working well.
+
+"Listen to me, Calhoun," he said softly.  "You've got to do something.
+You're living an idle life.  You're in debt.  You've ruined your
+independent fortune at the tables.  There are but two courses open to
+you.  One is to join the British forces--to be a lieutenant, a captain,
+a major, a colonel, or a general, in time; to shoot and cut and hang and
+quarter, and rule with a heavy rod.  That's one way."
+
+"So you think I'm fit for nothing but the sword, eh?" asked Dyck with
+irony.  "You think I've got no brains for anything except the army."
+
+Boyne laughed.  "Have another drink, Calhoun."  He poured out more wine.
+"Oh, no, not the army alone; there's the navy--and there's the French
+navy!  It's the best navy in the world, the freest and the greatest,
+and with Bonaparte going at us, England will have enough to do--too much,
+I'm thinking.  So there's a career in the French navy open.  And listen--
+before you and I are two months older, the French navy will be in the
+harbours of Ireland, and the French army will land here."  He reached out
+and grasped Dyck's arm.  "There's no liberty of freedom under the Union
+Jack.  What do you think of the tricolour?  It's a great flag, and under
+it the world is going to be ruled--England, Spain, Italy, Holland,
+Prussia, Austria, and Russia--all of them.  The time is ripe.  You've got
+your chance.  Take it on, dear lad, take it on."
+
+Dyck did not raise his head.  He was leaning forward with both arms on
+the table, supporting himself firmly; his head was bowed as though with
+deep interest in what Boyne said.  And, indeed, his interest was great--
+so great that all his manhood, vigour, all his citizenship, were vitally
+alive.  Yet he did not lift his head.
+
+"What's that you say about French ships in the harbours of Ireland?" he
+said in a tone that showed interest.  "Of course, I know there's been a
+lot of talk of a French raid on Ireland, but I didn't know it was to be
+so soon."
+
+"Oh, it's near enough!  It's all been arranged," replied Boyne.
+"There'll be ships-war-ships, commanded by Hoche.  They'll have orders
+to land on the coast, to join the Irish patriots, to take control of
+the operations, and then to march on--"
+
+He was going to say "march on Dublin," but he stopped.  He was playing a
+daring game.  If he had not been sure of his man, he would not have been
+so frank and fearless.
+
+He did not, however, mislead Dyck greatly.  Dyck had been drinking a good
+deal, but this knowledge of a French invasion, and a sense of what Boyne
+was trying to do, steadied his shaken emotions; held him firmly in the
+grip of practical common sense.  He laughed, hiccuped a little, as though
+he was very drunk, and said:
+
+"Of course the French would like to come to Ireland; they'd like to seize
+it and hold it.  Why, of course they would!  Don't we know all that's
+been and gone?  Aren't Irishmen in France grown rich in industry there
+after having lost every penny of their property here?  Aren't there
+Irishmen there, always conniving to put England at defiance here by
+breaking her laws, cheating her officers, seducing her patriots?  Of
+course; but what astounds me is that a man of your standing should
+believe the French are coming here now to Ireland.  No, no, Boyne; I'm
+not taking your word for any of these things.  You're a gossip; you're a
+damned, pertinacious, preposterous gossip, and I'll say it as often as
+you like."
+
+"So it's proof you want, is it?  Well, then, here it is."
+
+Boyne drew from his pocket a small leather-bound case and took from it a
+letter, which he laid on the table in front of Dyck.
+
+Dyck looked at the document, then said:
+
+"Ah, that's what you are, eh?--a captain in the French artillery!  Well,
+that'd be a surprise in Ireland if it were told."
+
+"It isn't going to be told unless you tell it, Calhoun, and you're too
+much of a sportsman for that.  Besides:
+
+"Why shouldn't you have one of these if you want it--if you want it!"
+
+"What'd be the good of my wanting it?  I could get a commission here in
+the army of George III, if I wanted it, but I don't want it; and any man
+that offers it to me, I'll hand it back with thanks and be damned to
+you!"
+
+"Listen to me, then, Calhoun," remarked Boyne, reaching out a hand to lay
+it on Dyck's arm.
+
+Dyck saw the motion, however, and carefully drew back in his chair.  "I'm
+not an adventurer," he said; "but if I were, what would there be in it
+for me?"
+
+Boyne misunderstood the look on Dyck's face.  He did not grasp the
+meaning behind the words, and he said to him:
+
+"Oh, a good salary--as good as that of a general, with a commission and
+the spoils of war!  That's the thing in the French army that counts for
+so much--spoils of war.  When they're out on a country like this, they
+let their officers loose--their officers and men.  Did you ever hear tell
+of a French army being pinched for fodder, or going thirsty for drink, or
+losing its head for poverty or indigence?"
+
+"No, I never did."
+
+"Well, then, take the advice of an officer of the French army resident
+now in Dublin," continued Boyne, laughing, "who has the honour of being
+received as the friend of Mr. Dyck Calhoun of Playmore!  Take your hand
+in the game that's going on!  For a man as young as you, with brains and
+ambition, there's no height he mightn't reach in this country.  Think of
+it--Ireland free from English control; Ireland, with all her dreams,
+living her own life, fearless, independent, as it was in days of yore.
+Why, what's to prevent you, Dyck Calhoun, from being president of the
+Irish Republic?  You have brains, looks, skill, and a wonderful tongue.
+None but a young man could take on the job, for it will require boldness,
+skill, and the recklessness of perfect courage.  Isn't it good enough for
+you?"
+
+"What's the way to do it?" asked Dyck, still holding on to his old self
+grimly.  "How is it to be done?"  He spoke a little thickly, for, in
+spite of himself, the wine was clogging his senses.  It had been
+artistically drugged by Boyne.
+
+"Listen to me, Calhoun," continued Boyne.  "I've known you now some time.
+We've come in and gone out together.  This day was inevitable.  You were
+bound to come to it one way or another.  Man, you have a heart of iron;
+you have the courage of Caesar or Alexander; you have the chance of doing
+what no Englishman could ever do--Cromwell, or any other.  Well, then,
+don't you see the fateful moment has come in Irish life and history?
+Strife everywhere!  Alone, what can we do?  Alone, if we try to shake off
+the yoke that binds us we shall be shattered, and our last end be worse
+than our first.  But with French ships, French officers and soldiers,
+French guns and ammunition, with the trained men of the French army to
+take control here, what amelioration of our weakness, what confidence and
+skill on our side!  Can you doubt what the end will be?  Answer me, man,
+don't you see it all?  Isn't it clear to you?  Doesn't such a cause
+enlist you?"
+
+With a sudden burst of primitive anger, Dyck got to his feet, staggering
+a little, but grasping the fatal meaning of the whole thing.  He looked
+Erris Boyne in the eyes.  His own were bloodshot and dissipated, but
+there was a look in them of which Boyne might well take heed.
+
+Boyne had not counted on Dyck's refusal; or, if it had occurred to him,
+the remedy, an ancient one, was ready to his fingers.  The wine was
+drugged.  He had watched the decline of Dyck's fortunes with an eye of
+appreciation; he had seen the clouds of poverty and anxiety closing in.
+He had known of old Miles Calhoun's financial difficulties.  He had
+observed Dyck's wayside loitering with revolutionists, and he had taken
+it with too much seriousness.  He knew the condition of Dyck's purse.
+
+He was not prepared for Dyck's indignant outburst.
+
+"I tell you this, Erris Boyne, there's none has ever tried me as you have
+done!  What do you think I am--a thing of the dirty street-corner,
+something to be swept up and cast into the furnace of treason?  Look you,
+after to-day you and I will never break bread or drink wine together.
+No--by Heaven, no!  I don't know whether you've told me the truth or not,
+but I think you have.  There's this to say--I shall go from this place to
+Dublin Castle, and shall tell them there--without mentioning your name--
+what you've told about the French raid.  Now, by God, you're a traitor!
+You oughtn't to live, and if you'll send your seconds to me I'll try and
+do with you as I did with Leonard Mallow.  Only mark me, Erris Boyne,
+I'll put my sword into your heart.  You understand--into your filthy
+heart!"
+
+At that moment the door of the room opened, and a face looked in for an
+instant-the face of old Swinton, the landlord of the Harp and Crown.
+Suddenly Boyne's look changed.  He burst into a laugh, and brought his
+fists down on the table between them with a bang.
+
+"By Joseph and by Mary, but you're a patriot, Calhoun!  I was trying to
+test you.  I was searching to find the innermost soul of you.  The French
+fleet, my commission in the French army, and my story about the landlord
+are all bosh.  If I meant what I told you, do you think I'd have been so
+mad as to tell you so much, damn it?  Have you no sense, man?  I wanted
+to find out exactly how you stood-faithful or unfaithful to the crown--
+and I've found out.  Sit down, sit down, Calhoun, dear lad.  Take your
+hand off your sword.  Remember, these are terrible days.  Everything I
+said about Ireland is true.  What I said about France is false.  Sit
+down, man, and if you're going to join the king's army--as I hope and
+trust you will--then here's something to help you face the time between."
+He threw on the table a packet of notes.  "They're good and healthy, and
+will buy you what you need.  There's not much.  There's only a hundred
+pounds, but I give it to you with all my heart, and you can pay it back
+when the king's money comes to you, or when you marry a rich woman."
+
+He said it all with a smile on his face.  It was done so cleverly, with
+so much simulated sincerity, that Dyck, in his state of semi-drunkenness,
+could not, at the instant, place him in his true light.  Besides, there
+was something handsome and virile in Boyne's face--and untrue; but the
+untruth Dyck did not at the moment see.
+
+Never in his life had Boyne performed such prodigies of dissimulation.
+He was suddenly like a schoolboy disclosing the deeds of some adventurous
+knight.  He realized to the full the dangers he had run in disclosing the
+truth; for it was the truth that he had told.
+
+So serious was the situation, to his mind, that one thing seemed
+inevitable.  Dyck must be kidnapped at once and carried out of Ireland.
+It would be simple.  A little more drugged wine, and he would be asleep
+and powerless--it had already tugged at him.  With the help of his
+confreres in the tavern, Dyck could be carried out, put on a lugger, and
+sent away to France.
+
+There was nothing else to do.  Boyne had said truly that the French fleet
+meant to come soon.  Dyck must not be able to give the thing away before
+it happened.  The chief thing now was to prime him with the drugged wine
+till he lost consciousness, and then carry him away to the land of the
+guillotine.  Dyck's tempestuous nature, the poetry and imagination of
+him, would quickly respond to French culture, to the new orders of the
+new day in France.  Meanwhile, he must be soaked in drugged drink.
+
+Already the wine had played havoc with him; already stupefaction was
+coming over his senses.  With a good-natured, ribald laugh, Boyne poured
+out another glass of marsala and pushed it gently over to Dyck's fingers.
+
+"My gin to your marsala," he said, and he raised his own glass of gin,
+looking playfully over the top to Dyck.
+
+With a sudden loosening of all the fibres of his nature, Dyck raised the
+glass of marsala to his lips and drained it off almost at a gulp.
+
+"You're a prodigious liar, Boyne," he said.  "I didn't think any one
+could lie so completely."
+
+"I'll teach you how, Calhoun.  It's not hard.  I'll teach you how."
+
+He passed a long cigar over the table to Dyck, who, however, did not
+light it, but held it in his fingers.  Boyne struck a light and held it
+out across the small table.  Dyck leaned forward, but, as he did so, the
+wine took possession of his senses.  His head fell forward in sleep, and
+the cigar dropped from his fingers.
+
+"Ah, well--ah, well, we must do some business now!" remarked Boyne.  He
+leaned over Dyck for a moment.  "Yes, sound asleep," he said, and laughed
+scornfully to himself.  "Well, when it's dark we must get him away.
+He'll sleep for four or five hours, and by that time he'll be out on the
+way to France, and the rest is easy."
+
+He was about to go to the door that led into the business part of the
+house, when the door leading into the street opened softly, and a woman
+stepped inside.  She had used the key which Boyne had forgotten at his
+house.
+
+At first he did not hear her.  Then, when he did turn round, it was too
+late.  The knife she carried under her skirt flashed out and into Boyne's
+heart.  He collapsed on the floor without a sound, save only a deep sigh.
+
+Stooping over, Noreen drew the knife out with a little gurgling cry--a
+smothered exclamation.  Then she opened the door again--the side-door
+leading into the street-closed it softly, and was gone.
+
+Two hours afterwards the landlord opened the door.  Erris Boyne lay in
+his silence, stark and still.  At the table, with his head sunk in his
+arms, sat Dyck Calhoun, snoring stertorously, his drawn sword by his
+side.
+
+With a cry the old man knelt on the floor beside the body of Erris Boyne.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+DYCK IN PRISON
+
+When Dyck Calhoun waked, he was in the hands of the king's constables,
+arrested for the murder of Erris Boyne.  It was hard to protest his
+innocence, for the landlord was ready to swear concerning a quarrel he
+had seen when he opened the door for a moment.  Dyck, with sudden
+caution, only said he would make all clear at the trial.
+
+Dublin and Ireland were shocked and thrilled; England imagined she had
+come upon one of the most violent episodes of Irish history.  One journal
+protested that it was not possible to believe in Dyck Calhoun's guilt;
+that his outward habits were known to all, and were above suspicion,
+although he had collogued--though never secretly, so far as the world
+knew--with some of the advanced revolutionary spirits.  None of the loyal
+papers seemed aware of Erris Boyne's treachery; and while none spoke of
+him with approval, all condemned his ugly death.
+
+Driven through the streets of Dublin in a jaunting-car between two of the
+king's police, Dyck was a mark for abuse by tongue, but was here and
+there cheered by partizans of the ultra-loyal group to which his father
+adhered.  The effect of his potations was still upon him, and his mind
+was bemused.  He remembered the quarrel, Boyne's explanation, and the
+subsequent drinking, but he could recall nothing further.  He was sure
+the wine had been drugged, but he realized that Swinton, the landlord,
+would have made away with any signs of foul play, as he was himself an
+agent of active disloyalty and a friend of Erris Boyne.  Dyck could not
+believe he had killed Boyne; yet Boyne had been found with a wound in his
+heart, and his own naked sword lying beside him on the table.  The
+trouble was he could not absolutely swear innocence of the crime.
+
+The situation was not eased by his stay in jail.  It began with a
+revelation terribly repugnant to him.  He had not long been lodged in the
+cell when there came a visit from Michael Clones, who stretched out his
+hands in an agony of humiliation.
+
+"Ah, you didn't do it--you didn't do it, sir!" he cried.  "I'm sure you
+never killed him.  It wasn't your way.  He was for doing you harm if he
+could.  An evil man he was, as all the world knows.  But there's one
+thing that'll be worse than anything else to you.  You never knew it, and
+I never knew it till an hour ago.  Did you know who Erris Boyne was?
+Well, I'll tell you.  He was the father of Miss Sheila Llyn.  He was
+divorced by Mrs. Llyn many years ago, for having to do with other women.
+She took to her maiden name, and he married again.
+
+"Good God!  Good God!"  Dyck Calhoun made a gesture of horror.  "He
+Sheila Llyn's father!  Good God!"
+
+Suddenly a passion of remorse roused him out of his semi-stupefaction.
+
+"Michael, Michael!" he said, his voice hoarse, broken.  "Don't say such
+a thing!  Are you sure?" Michael nodded.
+
+"I'm sure.  I got it from one that's known Erris Boyne and his first wife
+and girl--one that was a servant to them both in past days.  He's been
+down to Limerick to see Mrs. Llyn and the beautiful daughter.  I met him
+an hour ago, and he told me.  He told me more.  He told me Mrs. Llyn
+spoke to him of your friendship with Erris Boyne, and how she meant to
+tell you who and what he was.  She said her daughter didn't even know her
+father's name.  She had been kept in ignorance."
+
+Dyck seated himself on the rough bed of the cell, and stared at Michael,
+his hands between his knees, his eyes perturbed.
+
+"Michael," he said at last, "if it's true--what you've told me--I don't
+see my way.  Every step in front of me is black.  To tell the whole truth
+is to bring fresh shame upon Mrs. Llyn and her daughter, and not to tell
+the whole truth is to take away my one chance of getting out of this
+trouble.  I see that!"
+
+"I don't know what you mean, sir, but I'll tell you this--none that knows
+you would believe you'd murder Erris Boyne or anny other man."
+
+Dyck wiped the sweat from his forehead.
+
+"I suppose you speak the truth, Michael, but it isn't people who've known
+me that'll try me; and I can't tell all."
+
+"Why not, if it'll help you?"
+
+"I can't--of course I can't.  It would be disgrace eternal."
+
+"Why?  Tell me why, sir!"
+
+Dyck looked closely, firmly, at the old servant and friend.  Should he
+tell the truth--that Boyne had tried to induce him to sell himself to the
+French, to invoke his aid against the English government, to share in
+treason?  If he could have told it to anybody, he would have done so to
+Michael; but if it was true that in his drunken blindness he had killed
+Boyne, he would not seek to escape by proving Boyne a traitor.
+
+He believed Boyne was a servant of the French; but unless the facts came
+out in the trial, they should not have sure origin in himself.  He would
+not add to his crime in killing the father of the only girl who had ever
+touched his heart, the shame of proving that father to be one who should
+have been shot as a traitor.
+
+He had courage and daring, but not sufficient to carry him through that
+dark chapter.  He would not try to save himself by turning public opinion
+against Erris Boyne.  The man had been killed by some one, perhaps--and
+the thing ached in his heart--by himself; but that was no reason why the
+man's death should not be full punishment for all the wrong he had done.
+
+Dyck had a foolish strain in him, after all.  Romance was his deadly foe;
+it made him do a stupid, if chivalrous, thing.  Meanwhile he would warn
+the government at once about the projected French naval raid.
+
+"Michael," said Dyck, rising again, "see my father, but you're not to say
+I didn't kill Boyne, for, to tell the truth, I don't know.  My head"--
+he put his hand to it with a gesture of despair--"my head's a mass of
+contradictions.  It seems a thousand years since I entered that tavern!
+I can't get myself level with all that's happened.  That Erris Boyne
+should be the father of the sweet girl at Limerick shakes me.  Don't you
+see what it means?  If I killed him, it spoils everything--everything.
+If I didn't kill him, I can only help myself by blackening still more the
+life of one who gave being to--"
+
+"Aye, to a young queen!" interrupted Michael.
+
+"God knows, there's none like her in Ireland, or in any other country at
+all!"
+
+Suddenly Dyck regained his composure; and it was the composure of one who
+had opened the door of hell and had realized that in time--perhaps not
+far off--he also would dwell in the infernal place.
+
+"Michael, I have no money, but I'm my father's heir.  My father will not
+see me starve in prison, nor want for defence, though my attitude shall
+be 'no defence.'  So bring me decent food and some clothes, and send to
+me here Will McCormick, the lawyer.  He's as able a man as there is in
+Dublin.  Listen, Michael, you're not to speak of Mrs. Llyn and Miss Llyn
+as related to Erris Boyne.  What will come of what you and I know and
+don't know, Heaven only has knowledge; but I'll see it through.  I've
+spoiled as good chances as ever a young man had that wants to make his
+way; but drink and cards, Michael, and the flare of this damned life at
+the centre--it got hold of me.  It muddled, drowned the best that was in
+me.  It's the witch's kitchen, is Dublin.  Ireland's the only place in
+the world where they make saints of criminals and pray to them; where
+they lose track of time and think they're in eternity; where emotion is
+saturnine logic and death is the touchstone of life.  Michael, I don't
+see any way to safety.  Those fellows down at the tavern were friends of
+Erris Boyne.  They're against me.  They'll hang me if they can!"
+
+"I don't believe they can do it, master.  Dublin and Ireland think more
+of you than they did of Erris Boyne.  There's nothing behind you except
+the wildness of youth--nothing at all.  If anny one had said to me at
+Playmore that you'd do the things you've done with drink and cards since
+you come to Dublin,
+
+"I'd have swore they were liars.  Yet when all's said and done, I'd give
+my last drop of blood as guarantee you didn't kill Erris Boyne!"
+
+Dyck smiled.  "You've a lot of faith in me, Michael--but I'll tell you
+this--I never was so thirsty in my life.  My mouth's like a red-hot iron.
+Send me some water.  Give the warder sixpence, if you've got it, and send
+me some water.  Then go to Will McCormick, and after that to my father."
+
+Michael shook his head dolefully.
+
+"Mr. McCormick's aisy--oh, aisy enough," he said.  "He'll lep up at the
+idea of defendin' you, but I'm not takin' pleasure in goin' to Miles
+Calhoun, for he's a hard man these days.  Aw, Mr. Dyck, he's had a lot
+of trouble.  Things has been goin' wrong with Playmore.  'Pon honour, I
+don't know whether anny of it'll last as long as Miles Calhoun lasts.
+There'll be little left for you, Mr. Dyck.  That's what troubles me.  I
+tell you it'd break my heart if that place should be lost to your father
+and you.  I was born on it.  I'd give the best years of the life that's
+left me to make sure the old house could stay in the hands of the
+Calhouns.  I say to you that while I live all I am is yours, fair and
+foul, good and bad."  He touched his breast with his right hand.  "In
+here is the soul of Ireland that leps up for the things that matter.
+There's a song--but never mind about a song; this is no place for songs.
+It's a prison-house, and you're a prisoner charged--"
+
+"Not charged yet, not charged," interrupted Dyck; "but suspected of and
+arrested for a crime.  I'll fight--before God, I'll fight to the last!
+Good-bye, Michael; bring me food and clothes, and send me cold water at
+once."
+
+When the door closed softly behind Michael Clones, Dyck sat down on the
+bed where many a criminal patriot had lain.  He looked round the small
+room, bare, unfurnished, severe-terribly severe; he looked at the blank
+walls and the barred window, high up; he looked at the floor--it was
+discoloured and damp.  He reached out and touched it with his hand.  He
+looked at the solitary chair, the basin and pail, and he shuddered.
+
+"How awful--how awful!" he murmured.  "But if it was her father, and if
+I killed him"--his head sank low--"if I killed her father!"
+
+"Water, sir."
+
+He looked up.  It was the guard with a tin of water and a dipper.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+MOTHER AND DAUGHTER
+
+"I don't believe he's guilty, mother."
+
+The girl's fine eyes shone with feeling--with protest, indignation,
+anguish.  As she spoke, she thrust her head forward with the vigour of a
+passionate counsel.  Sheila Llyn was a champion who would fight to the
+last gasp for any cause she loved.
+
+A few moments before, she had found her mother, horror-stricken, gazing
+at a newspaper paragraph sent from Dublin.
+
+Sheila at once thought this to be the cause of her mother's agitation,
+and she reached out a hand for it.  Her mother hesitated, then handed the
+clipping to her.  Fortunately it contained no statement save the bare
+facts connected with the killing of Erris Boyne, and no reference to the
+earlier life of the dead man.  It said no more than that Dyck Calhoun
+must take his trial at the sessions.
+
+It also stated that Dyck, though he pleaded "not guilty," declared
+frankly, through Will McCormick, the lawyer, that he had no memory of
+aught that happened after he had drunk wine given him by Erris Boyne.  He
+said that he and Boyne had quarrelled, but had become reconciled again,
+and that the drink was a pledge of their understanding.  From the time he
+had taken the drink until he waked in the hands of the king's constables,
+he had no memory; but he was sure he had not killed Boyne.  The fact that
+there was no blood on his sword was evidence.  Nevertheless, he had been
+committed for trial.
+
+Mrs. Llyn was sorely troubled.  She knew of her daughter's interest in
+Dyck Calhoun, and of Dyck's regard for Sheila.  She had even looked
+forward to marriage, and she wished for Sheila no better fate, because
+nearly all she knew of Dyck was to his credit.  She was unaware that his
+life in Dublin had been dissipated.
+
+If Dyck was guilty--though she could not believe it--there would be an
+end of romance between him and Sheila, and their friendship must be
+severed for ever.  Her daughter did not know that Erris Boyne was her
+father, and she must not know--in any case not yet; but if Dyck was
+condemned, it was almost sure he would be hanged.
+
+She wondered about Boyne's widow, whose name did not appear in the
+paragraph she had seen.  She knew that Noreen was beautiful, but that he
+had married far beneath him socially.  She had imagined Erris Boyne
+living in suburban quiet, not drawing his wife into his social scheme.
+
+That is what had happened.  The woman had lived apart from the daily
+experiences of her husband's life in Dublin; and it had deepened her
+bitterness against him.  When she had learned that Erris Boyne was no
+more faithful to her than he had been to his previous wife, she had gone
+mad; and Dyck Calhoun was paying the price of her madness.
+
+Mrs. Llyn did not know this.  She was a woman of distinguished bearing,
+though small, with a wan, sad look in her eyes always, but with a
+cheerful smile.  She was not poor, but well-to-do, and it was not
+necessary to deny herself or her daughter ordinary comforts, and even
+many of the luxuries of life.
+
+Her hair was darker than her daughter's, black and wavy, with here and
+there streaks of grey.  These, however, only added dignity to a head
+beautifully balanced, finely moulded, and, in the language of the day,
+most genteelly hung.  She was slender, buoyant in movement yet composed,
+and her voice was like her daughter's, clear, gentle, thrilling.
+
+Her mind and heart were given up to Sheila and Sheila's future.  That was
+why a knowledge of the tragedy that had come to Dyck Calhoun troubled her
+as she had not been troubled since the day she first learned of Erris
+Boyne's infidelity to herself.
+
+"Let us go to Dublin, mother," said Sheila with a determined air, after
+reading the clipping.
+
+"Why, my dear?"
+
+The woman's eyes, with their long lashes, looked searchingly into her
+daughter's face.  She felt, as the years went on, that Sheila had gifts
+granted to few.  She realized that the girl had resources which would
+make her a governing influence in whatever sphere of life she should be
+set.  Quietly, Sheila was taking control of their movements, and indeed
+of her own daily life.  The girl had a dominating skill which came in
+part from herself, and also to a degree from her father; but her
+disposition was not her father's-it was her mother's.
+
+Mrs. Llyn had never known Sheila to lie or twist the truth in all her
+days.  No one was more obedient to wise argument; and her mother had a
+feeling that now, perhaps, the time had come when they two must have a
+struggle for mastery.  There was every reason why they should not go to
+Dublin.  There Sheila might discover that Erris Boyne was her father, and
+might learn the story of her mother's life.
+
+Sheila had been told by her mother that her father had passed away abroad
+when she was a little child.  She had never seen her father's picture,
+and her mother had given her the impression that their last days together
+had not been happy.  She had always felt that it was better not to
+inquire too closely into her father's life.
+
+The years had gone on and then had come the happy visit to Loyland
+Towers, where she had met Dyck Calhoun.  Her life at that moment had been
+free from troublesome emotions; but since the time she had met Dyck at
+the top of the hill, a new set of feelings worked in her.
+
+She was as bonny a lass as ever the old world produced--lithe, with a
+body like that of a boy, strong and pleasant of face, with a haunting
+beauty in the eyes, a majesty of the neck and chin, and a carriage which
+had made Michael Clones call her a queen.
+
+She saw Dyck only as, a happy, wild son of the hilltop.  To her he was a
+man of mettle and worth, and irresponsible because he had been given no
+responsibility.  He was a country gentleman of Ireland, with all the
+interest and peril of the life of a country gentleman.
+
+"Yes, we ought to go to Dublin, mother.  We could help him, perhaps,"
+Sheila insisted.
+
+The mother shook her head mournfully.
+
+"My child, we could do him no good at all--none whatever.  Besides, I
+can't afford to visit Dublin now.  It's an expensive journey, and the
+repairs we've been doing here have run me close."
+
+A look of indignation, almost of scorn, came into the girl's face.
+
+"Well, if I were being tried for my life, as Dyck Calhoun is going to be,
+and if I knew that friends of mine were standing off because of a few
+pounds, shillings, and pence, I think I'd be a real murderer!"
+
+The mother took her daughter's hand.  She found it cold.
+
+"My dear," she said, clasping it gently, "you never saw him but three
+times, and I've never seen him but twice except in the distance; but I
+would do anything in my power to help him, if I could, for I like him.
+The thing for us to do--"
+
+"Yes, I know--sit here, twist our thumbs, and do nothing!"
+
+"What more could we do if we went to Dublin, except listen to gossip,
+read the papers and be jarred every moment?  My dear, our best place is
+here.  If the spending of money could be of any use to him, I'd spend it
+--indeed I would; but since it can't be of any use, we must stay in our
+own home.  Of one thing I'm sure--if Dyck Calhoun killed Erris Boyne,
+Boyne deserved it.  Of one thing I'm certain beyond all else--it was no
+murder.  Mr. Calhoun wasn't a man to murder any one.  I don't believe"--
+her voice became passionate--"he murdered, and I don't believe he will be
+hanged."
+
+The girl looked at her mother with surprise.  "Oh, dearest, dearest!"
+she said.  "I believe you do care for him.  Is it because he has no
+mother, and you have no son."
+
+"It may be so, beloved."
+
+Sheila swept her arms around her mother's neck and drew the fine head to
+her breast.
+
+At that moment they heard the clatter of hoofs, and presently they saw a
+horse and rider pass the window.
+
+"It's a government messenger, mother," Sheila said.
+
+As Sheila said, it was a government messenger, bearing a packet to Mrs.
+Llyn--a letter from her brother in America, whom she had not seen for
+many years.
+
+The brother, Bryan Llyn, had gone out there as a young man before the
+Revolutionary War.  He had prospered, taking sides against England in the
+war, and become a man of importance in the schemes of the new republican
+government.  Only occasionally had letters come from him to his sister,
+and for nearly eleven years she had not had a single word from him.
+
+When she opened the packet now, she felt it would help to solve--she knew
+not how--the trouble between herself and her daughter.  The letter had
+been sent to a firm in Dublin with which Bryan Llyn had done business,
+with instructions that it should be forwarded to his sister.  It had
+reached the hands of a government official, who was a brother of a member
+of the firm, and he had used the government messenger, who was going upon
+other business to Limerick, to forward it with a friendly covering note,
+which ended with the words:
+
+     The recent tragedy you have no doubt seen in the papers must have
+     shocked you; but to those who know the inside the end was
+     inevitable, though there are many who do not think Calhoun is
+     guilty.  I am one of them.  Nevertheless, it will go hard with him,
+     as the evidence is strong against him.  He comes from your part of
+     the country, and you will be concerned, of course.
+
+Sheila watched her mother reading, and saw that great emotion possessed
+her, though the girl could not know the cause.  Presently, however, Mrs.
+Llyn, who had read the letter from her brother, made a joyful
+exclamation.
+
+"What is it, mother dear?" Sheila asked eagerly.  "Tell me!"
+
+The mother made a passionate gesture of astonishment and joy; then she
+leaned back in her chair and closed her eyes, with the letter--which was
+closely written, in old-fashioned punctiliousness--in her hands.
+
+"Oh, my dear, my dear!" she said.  "How strange it all is!  Your Uncle
+Bryan is immensely rich.  He has no children and no family; his health is
+failing."
+
+She seemed able to get no further.
+
+"Well, what is it, mother?" asked Sheila again.
+
+For an instant Mrs. Llyn hesitated; then she put the letter into Sheila's
+hands.
+
+"Read it, my child," she said.  "It's for you as much as for me--indeed,
+more for you than for me."  Sheila took the letter.  It ran as follows:
+
+     DEAREST SISTER:
+
+     It is eleven years since I wrote to you, and yet, though it may seem
+     strange, there have not been eleven days in all that time in which I
+     have not wished you and Sheila were here.  Sheila--why, she is a
+     young woman!  She's about the age you were when I left Ireland, and
+     you were one of the most beautiful and charming creatures God ever
+     gave life to.  The last picture I have of you was a drawing made
+     soon after your marriage--sad, bad, unhappy incident.  I have kept
+     it by me always.  It warms my heart in winter; it cools my eyes in
+     summer.
+
+     My estate is neither North nor South, but farther South than North.
+     In a sense it is always summer, but winter on my place would be like
+     summer in Norway--just bitingly fresh, happily alert.  I'm writing
+     in the summer now.  I look out of the window and see hundreds of
+     acres of cotton-fields, with hundreds upon hundreds of negroes at
+     work.  I hear the songs they sing, faint echoes of them, even as I
+     write.  Yes, my black folk do sing, because they are well treated.
+
+     Not that we haven't our troubles here.  You can't administer
+     thousands of acres, control hundreds of slaves, and run an estate
+     like a piece of clockwork without creaks in the machinery.  I've
+     built it all up out of next to nothing.  I landed in this country
+     with my little fortune of two thousand pounds.  This estate is worth
+     at least a quarter of a million now.  I've an estate in Jamaica,
+     too.  I took it for a debt.  What it'll be worth in another twenty
+     years I don't know.  I shan't be here to see.  I'm not the man I was
+     physically, and that's one of the reasons why I'm writing to you
+     to-day.  I've often wished to write and say what I'm going to say
+     now; but I've held back, because I wanted you to finish your girl's
+     education before I said it
+
+     What I say is this: I want you and Sheila to come here to me, to
+     make my home your home, to take control of my household, and to let
+     me see faces I love about me as the shadows enfold me.
+
+     Like your married life, mine was unsuccessful, but not for the same
+     reason.  The woman I married did not understand--probably could not
+     understand.  She gave me no children.  We are born this way, or
+     that.  To understand is pain and joy in one; to misconceive is to
+     scatter broken glass for bare feet.  Yet when I laid her away, a few
+     years ago, I had terrible pangs of regret, which must come to the
+     heart that has striven in vain.  I did my best; I tried to make her
+     understand, but she never did.  I used at first to feel angry; then
+     I became patient.  But I waked up again, and went smiling along,
+     active, vigorous, getting pleasure out of the infinitely small
+     things, and happy in perfecting my organization.
+
+     This place, which I have called Moira, is to be yours--or, rather,
+     Sheila's.  So, in any case, you will want to come and see the home I
+     have made this old colonial mansion, with its Corinthian pillars and
+     verandah, high steps, hard-wood floors polished like a pan, every
+     room hung in dimity and chintz, and the smell of fruit and flowers
+     everywhere.  You will want to see it all, and you'll want to live
+     here.
+
+     There's little rain here, so it's not like Ireland, and the green is
+     not so green; but the flowers are marvellously bright, and the birds
+     sing almost as well as they sing in Ireland, though there's no lark.
+     Strange it is, but true, the only things that draw me back to
+     Ireland in my soul are you, and Sheila, whom I've never seen, and
+     the lark singing as he rises until he becomes a grey-blue speck, and
+     then vanishing in the sky.
+
+     Well, you and the lark have sung in my heart these many days, and
+     now you must come to me, because I need you.  I have placed to your
+     credit in the Bank of Ireland a thousand pounds.  That will be the
+     means of bringing you here--you and Sheila--to my door, to Moira.
+     Let nothing save death prevent your coming.  As far as Sheila's eye
+     can see-north, south, east, and west--the land will be hers when I'm
+     gone.  Dearest sister, sell all things that are yours, and come to
+     me.  You'll not forget Ireland here.  Whoever has breathed her air
+     can never forget the hills and dells, the valleys and bogs, the
+     mountains, with their mists of rain, the wild girls, with their bare
+     ankles, their red petticoats, and their beautiful, reckless air.
+     None who has ever breathed the air of Ireland can breathe in another
+     land without memory of the ancient harp of Ireland.  But it is as a
+     memory-deep, wonderful, and abiding, yet a memory.  I sometimes
+     think I have forgotten, and then I hear coming through this Virginia
+     the notes of some old Irish melody, the song of some wayfarer of
+     Mayo or Connemara, and I know then that Ireland is persuasive and
+     perpetual; but only as a memory, because it speaks in every pulse
+     and beats in every nerve.
+
+     Oh, believe me, I speak of what I know!  I have been away from
+     Ireland for a long time, and I'm never going back, but I'll bring
+     Ireland to me.  Come here, colleen, come to Virginia.  Write to me,
+     on the day you get this letter, that you're coming soon.  Let it be
+     soon, because I feel the cords binding me to my beloved fields
+     growing thinner.  They'll soon crack, but, please God, they won't
+     crack before you come here.
+
+     Now with my love to you and Sheila I stretch out my hand to you.
+     Take it.  All that it is has worked for is yours; all that it wants
+     is you.
+
+                              Your loving brother,
+
+                                                       BRYAN.
+
+As Sheila read, the tears started from her eyes; and at last she could
+read no longer, so her mother took the letter and read the rest of it
+aloud.  When she had finished, there was silence--a long warm silence;
+then, at last, Mrs. Llyn rose to her feet.
+
+"Sheila, when shall we go?"
+
+With frightened eyes Sheila sprang up.
+
+"I said we must go to Dublin!" she murmured.
+
+"Yes, we will go to Dublin, Sheila, but it will be on our way to Uncle
+Bryan's home."
+
+Sheila caught her mother's hands.
+
+"Mother," she said, after a moment of hesitation, "I must obey you."
+
+"It is the one way, my child-the one thing to do.  Some one in prison
+calls--perhaps; some one far away who loves you, and needs us, calls--
+that we know.  Tell me, am I not right?  I ask you, where shall we go?"
+
+"To Virginia, mother."
+
+The girl's head dropped, and her eyes filled with tears.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+DYCK'S FATHER VISITS HIM
+
+In vain Dyck's lawyer, Will McCormick, urged him to deny absolutely
+the killing of Erris Boyne.  Dyck would not do so.  He had, however,
+immediately on being jailed, written to the government, telling of the
+projected invasion of Ireland by the French fleet, and saying that it had
+come to him from a sure source.  The government had at once taken action.
+
+Regarding the death of Boyne, the only thing in his favour was that his
+own sword-point was free from stain.  His lawyer made the utmost of this,
+but to no avail.  The impression in the court was that both men had been
+drinking; that they had quarrelled, and that without a duel being fought
+Dyck had killed his enemy.
+
+That there had been no duel was clear from the fact that Erris Boyne's
+sword was undrawn.  The charge, however, on the instigation of the
+Attorney-General, who was grateful for the information about France, had
+been changed from murder to manslaughter; though it seemed clear that
+Boyne had been ruthlessly killed by a man whom he had befriended.
+
+On one of the days of the trial, Dyck's father, bowed, morose, and
+obstinate, came to see him.  That Dyck and Boyne had quarrelled had been
+stated in evidence by the landlord, Swinton, and Dyck had admitted it.
+Miles Calhoun was bent upon finding what the story of the quarrel was;
+for his own lawyer had told him that Dyck's refusal to give the cause of
+the dispute would affect the jury adversely, and might bring him
+imprisonment for life.  After the formalities of their meeting, Miles
+Calhoun said:
+
+"My son, things are black, but they're not so black they can't be
+brightened.  If you killed Erris Boyne, he deserved it.  He was a bad
+man, as the world knows.  That isn't the point.  Now, there's only one
+kind of quarrel that warrants non-disclosure."
+
+"You mean about a woman?" remarked Dyck coldly.
+
+The old man took a pinch of snuff nervously.  "That's what I mean.  Boyne
+was older than you, and perhaps you cut him out with a woman."
+
+A wry smile wrinkled the corners of Dyck's mouth.  "You mean his wife?"
+he asked with irony.  "Wife--no!" retorted the old man.  "Damn it, no!
+He wasn't the man to remain true to his wife."
+
+"So I understand," remarked Dyck; "but I don't know his wife.  I never
+saw her, except at the trial, and I was so sorry for her I ceased to be
+sorry for my self.  She had a beautiful, strange, isolated face."
+
+"But that wouldn't influence Boyne," was the reply.  "His first wife had
+a beautiful and interesting face, but it didn't hold him.  He went
+marauding elsewhere, and she divorced him by act of parliament.  I don't
+think you knew it, but his first wife was one of your acquaintances--
+Mrs. Llyn, whose daughter you saw just before we left Playmore.
+He wasn't particular where he made love--a barmaid or a housekeeper,
+it was all the same to him."
+
+"I hope the daughter doesn't know that Erris Boyne was her father," said
+Dyck.
+
+"There's plenty can tell her, and she'll hear it sooner or later."
+
+Miles Calhoun looked at his son with dejection.
+
+His eyes wandered over the grimly furnished cell.  His nose smelled the
+damp of it, and suddenly the whole soul of him burst forth.
+
+"You don't give yourself a chance of escape, Dyck You know what Irish
+juries are.  Why don't you tell the truth about the quarrel?  What's the
+good of keeping your mouth shut, when there's many that would profit by
+your telling it?"
+
+"Who would profit?" asked Dyck.
+
+"Who would profit!" snarled the old man.  "Well, you would profit first,
+for it might break the dark chain of circumstantial evidence.  Also, your
+father would profit.  I'd be saved shame, perhaps; I'd get relief from
+this disgrace.  Oh, man, think of others beside yourself!
+
+"Think of others!" said Dyck, and a queer smile lighted his haggard
+face.  "I'd save myself if I honourably could."
+
+"The law must prove you guilty," the old man went on.  "It's not for you
+to prove yourself innocent.  They haven't proved you guilty yet."
+
+The old man fumbled with a waistcoat button.  His eyes blinked hard.
+
+"You don't see," he continued, "the one thing that's plain to my eyes,
+and it's this--that your only chance of escape is to tell the truth about
+the quarrel.  If the truth were told, whatever it is, I believe it would
+be to your credit--I'll say that for you.  If it was to your credit,
+even if they believe you guilty of killing Erris Boyne, they'd touch you
+lightly.  Ah, in the name of the mother you loved, I ask you to tell the
+truth about that quarrel!  Give it into the hands of the jury, and let
+them decide.  Haven't you got a heart in you?  In the name of God--"
+
+"Don't speak to me like that," interrupted Dyck, with emotion.  "I've
+thought of all those things.  I hold my peace because--because I hold my
+peace.  To speak would be to hurt some one I love with all my soul."
+
+"And you won't speak to save me--your father--because you don't love me
+with all your soul!  Is that it?" asked Miles Calhoun.
+
+"It's different--it's different."
+
+"Ah, it's a woman!"
+
+"Never mind what it is.  I will not tell.  There are things more shameful
+than death."
+
+"Yes," snarled the other.  "Rather than save yourself, you bring
+dishonour upon him who gave you birth."
+
+Dyck's face was submerged in colour.
+
+"Father," said he, "on my honour I wouldn't hurt you if I could help it,
+but I'll not tell the world of the quarrel between that man and myself.
+My silence may hurt you, but some one else would be hurt far more if I
+told."
+
+"By God, I think you're some mad dreamer slipped out of the ancient fold!
+Do you know where you are?  You're in jail.  If you're found guilty,
+you'll be sent to prison at least for the years that'll spoil the making
+of your life; and you do it because you think you'll spare somebody.
+Well, I ask you to spare me.  I don't want the man that's going to
+inherit my name, when my time comes, to bring foulness on it.  We've been
+a rough race, we Calhouns; we've done mad, bad things, perhaps, but none
+has shamed us before the world--none but you."
+
+"I have never shamed you, Miles Calhoun," replied his son sharply.  "As
+the ancients said, 'alis volat propriis'--I will fly with my own wings.
+Come weal, come woe, come dark, come light, I have fixed my mind, and
+nothing shall change it.  You loved my mother better than the rest of the
+world.  You would have thought it no shame to have said so to your own
+father.  Well, I say it to you--I'll stand by what my conscience and my
+soul have dictated to me.  You call me a dreamer.  Let it be so.  I'm
+Irish; I'm a Celt.  I've drunk deep of all that Ireland means.  All
+that's behind me is my own, back to the shadowy kings of Ireland, who
+lost life and gave it because they believed in what they did.  So will I.
+If I'm to walk the hills no more on the estate where you are master, let
+it be so.  I have no fear; I want no favour.  If it is to be prison, then
+it shall be prison.  If it is to be shame, then let it be shame.  These
+are days when men must suffer if they make mistakes.  Well, I will
+suffer, fearlessly if helplessly, but I will not break the oath which I
+have taken.  And so I will not do it--never--never--never!"
+
+He picked up the cloak which the old man had dropped on the floor, and
+handed it to him.
+
+"There is no good in staying longer.  I must go into court again
+to-morrow.  I have to think how my lawyer shall answer the evidence
+given."
+
+"But of one thing have you thought?" asked his father.  "You will not
+tell the cause of the quarrel, for the reason that you might hurt
+somebody.  If you don't tell the cause, and you are condemned, won't that
+hurt somebody even more?"
+
+For a moment Dyck stood silent, absorbed.  His face looked pinched,
+his whole appearance shrivelled.  Then, with deliberation, he said:
+
+"This is not a matter of expediency, but of principle. My heart tells
+me what to do, and my heart has always been right."
+
+There was silence for a long time.  At last the old man drew the cloak
+about his shoulders and turned towards the door.
+
+"Wait a minute, father," said Dyck.  "Don't go like that.  You'd better
+not come and see me again.  If I'm condemned, go back to Playmore; if I'm
+set free, go back to Playmore.  That's the place for you to be.  You've
+got your own troubles there."
+
+"And you--if you're acquitted?"
+
+"If I'm acquitted, I'll take to the high seas--till I'm cured."
+
+A moment later, without further words, Dyck was alone.  He heard the door
+clang.
+
+He sat for some time on the edge of his bed, buried in dejection.
+Presently, however, the door opened.  "A letter for you, sir," said the
+jailer.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+A LETTER FROM SHEILA
+
+The light of the cell was dim, but Dyck managed to read the letter
+without great difficulty, for the writing was almost as precise as print.
+The sight of it caught his heart like a warm hand and pressed it.  This
+was the substance of the letter:
+
+     MY DEAR FRIEND:
+
+     I have wanted to visit you in prison, but my mother has forbidden
+     it, and so, even if I could be let to enter, I must not disobey her.
+     I have not read the papers giving an account of your trial.  I only
+     know you are charged with killing a bad man, notorious in Dublin
+     life, and that many think he got his just deserts in being killed.
+
+     I saw Christopher Dogan only a week ago, before we came to Dublin.
+     His eyes, as he talked of you, shone like the secret hill-fires
+     where the peasants make illegal drink.
+
+     "Look you," he said to me, "I care not what a jury decides.  I know
+     my man; and I also know that if the fellow Boyne died by his hand,
+     it was in fair fight.  I have read Dyck Calhoun's story in the
+     stars; and I know what his end will be.  It will be fair, not foul;
+     good, not bad; great, not low.  Tell him that from me, miss," was
+     what he said.
+
+     I also will not believe that your fate is an evil one, that the law
+     will grind you between the millstones of guilt and dishonour; but if
+     the law should call you guilty, I still will not believe.  Far away
+     I will think of you, and believe in you, dear, masterful, madman
+     friend.  Yes, you are a madman, for Michael Clones told me--faith,
+     he loves you well!--that you've been living a gay life in Dublin
+     since you came here, and that the man you are accused of killing
+     was in great part the cause of it.
+
+     I think I never saw my mother so troubled in spirit as she is at
+     this time.  Of course, she could not feel as I do about you.  It
+     isn't that which makes her sad and haggard; it is that we are
+     leaving Ireland behind.
+
+     Yes, she and I are saying good-bye to Ireland.  That's why I think
+     she might have let me see you before we went; but since it must not
+     be, well, then, it must not.  But we shall meet again.  In my soul
+     I know that on the hills somewhere far off, as on the first day we
+     met, we shall meet each other once more.  Where are we going?  Oh,
+     very far!  We are going to my Uncle Bryan--Bryan Llyn, in Virginia.
+     A letter has come from him urging us to make our home with him.  You
+     see, my friend--
+
+Then followed the story which Bryan Llyn had told her mother and herself,
+and she wrote of her mother's decision to go out to the new, great home
+which her uncle had made among the cotton-fields of the South.  When she
+had finished that part of the tale, she went on as follows:
+
+     We shall know your fate only through the letters that will follow
+     us, but I will not believe in your bad luck.  Listen to me--why
+     don't you come to America also?  Oh, think it over!  Don't believe
+     the worst will come.  When they release you from prison, innocent
+     and acquitted, cross the ocean and set up your tent under the Stars
+     and Stripes.  Think of it!  Nearly all those men in America who
+     fought under Washington and won were born in these islands.  They
+     took with them to that far land the memory and love of these old
+     homes.  You and I would have fought for England and with the British
+     troops, because we detest revolution.  Here, in Ireland, we have
+     seen its evils; and yet if we had fought for the Union Jack beyond
+     the mountains of Maine and in the lonely woods, we should, I
+     believe, in the end have said that the freedom fought for by the
+     American States was well won.
+
+     So keep this matter in your mind, for my mother and I will soon be
+     gone.  She would not let me come to you,--I think I have never seen
+     her so disturbed as when I asked her, and she forbade me to write to
+     you; but I disobey her.  Well, this is a sad business.  I know my
+     mother has suffered.  I know her married life was unhappy, and that
+     her husband--my father-died many a year ago, leaving a dark trail of
+     regret behind him; but, you see, I never knew my father.  That was
+     all long ago, and it is a hundred times best forgotten.
+
+     Our ship sails for Virginia in three days, and I must go.  I will
+     keep looking back to the prison where lies, charged with an evil
+     crime, of which he is not guilty, a young man for whom I shall
+     always carry the spirit of good friendship.
+
+     Do not believe all will not go well.  Let us keep the courage of
+     our hearts and the faith of our souls--and I hope I always shall!
+     I believe in you, and, believing, I say good-bye.  I say farewell in
+     the great hope that somehow, somewhere, we shall help each other on
+     the way of life.  God be with you!
+                                   I am your friend,
+                                                  SHEILA LLYN.
+
+     P. S.--I beg you to remember that America is a good place for a
+     young man to live in and succeed.
+
+Dyck read the letter with a wonderful slowness.  He realized that by
+happy accident--it could be nothing else--Mrs. Llyn had been able to keep
+from her daughter the fact that the man who had been killed in the tavern
+by the river was her father.  It was clear that the girl was kept much to
+herself, read no newspapers, and saw few people, and that those whom she
+saw had been careful to hold their peace about her close relationship to
+Erris Boyne.  None but the evil-minded would recall the fact to her.
+
+Sheila's ignorance must not be broken by himself.  He had done the right
+thing--he had held his peace for the girl's sake, and he would hold it to
+the end.  Slowly he folded up the letter, pressed it to his lips, and put
+it in the pocket over his heart.
+
+
+
+
+ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:
+
+Beginning of a lifetime of experience, comedy, and tragedy
+Wit is always at the elbow of want
+
+
+
+
+
+
+NO DEFENSE
+
+By Gilbert Parker
+
+
+
+BOOK II
+
+X.        DYCK CALHOUN ENTERS THE WORLD AGAIN
+XI.       WHITHER NOW?
+XII.      THE HOUR BEFORE THE MUTINY
+XIII.     TO THE WEST INDIES
+XIV.      IN THE NICK OF TIME
+XV.       THE ADMIRAL HAS HIS SAY
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+DYCK CALHOUN ENTERS THE WORLD AGAIN
+
+"Is it near the time?" asked Michael Clones of his friend, as they stood
+in front of the prison.
+
+His companion, who was seated on a stone, wrapped in dark-green coverings
+faded and worn, and looking pinched with cold in the dour November day,
+said, without lifting his head:
+
+"Seven minutes, an' he'll be out, God bless him!"  "And save him and
+protect him!" said Michael.  "He deserved punishment no more than I did,
+and it's broke him.  I've seen the grey gather at his temples, though
+he's only been in prison four years.  He was condemned to eight, but
+they've let him free, I don't know why.  Perhaps it was because of what
+he told the government about the French navy.  I've seen the joy of life
+sob itself down to the sour earth.  When I took him the news of his
+father's death, and told him the creditors were swallowing what was left
+of Playmore, what do you think he did?"
+
+Old Christopher Dogan smiled; his eyes twinkled with a mirth which had
+more pain than gaiety.  "God love you, I know what he did.  He flung out
+his hands, and said: 'Let it go!  It's nothing to me.'  Michael, have I
+said true?"
+
+Michael nodded.
+
+"Almost his very words you've used, and he flung out his hands, as you
+said.
+
+"Aye, he'll be changed; but they've kept the clothes he had when he went
+to prison, and he'll come out in them, I'm thinking--"
+
+"Ah, no!" interrupted Michael.  "That can't be, for his clothes was
+stole.  Only a week ago he sent to me for a suit of my own.  I wouldn't
+have him wear my clothes--he a gentleman!  It wasn't fitting.  So I sent
+him a suit I bought from a shop, but he wouldn't have it.  He would leave
+prison a poor man, as a peasant in peasant's clothes.  So he wrote to me.
+Here is the letter."  He drew from his pocket a sheet of paper, and
+spread it out.  "See-read it.  Ah, well, never mind," he added, as old
+Christopher shook his head.  "Never mind, I'll read it to you!"
+Thereupon he read the note, and added: "We'll see him of the Calhouns
+risin' high beyant poverty and misfortune some day."
+
+Old Christopher nodded.
+
+"I'm glad Miles Calhoun was buried on the hilltop above Playmore.  He had
+his day; he lived his life.  Things went wrong with him, and he paid the
+price we all must pay for work ill-done."
+
+"There you're right, Christopher Dogan, and I remember the day the
+downfall began.  It was when him that's now Lord Mallow, Governor of
+Jamaica, came to summon Miles Calhoun to Dublin.  Things were never the
+same after that; but I well remember one talk I had with Miles Calhoun
+just before his death.  'Michael,' he said to me, 'my family have had
+many ups and downs, and some that bear my name have been in prison before
+this, but never for killing a man out of fair fight.'  'One of your name
+may be in prison, sir,' said I, 'but not for killing a man out of fair
+fight.  If you believe he did, there's no death bad enough for you!'
+He was silent for a while; then at last he whispered Mr. Dyck's name, and
+said to me: 'Tell him that as a Calhoun I love him, and as his father I
+love him ten times more.  For look you, Michael, though we never ran
+together, but quarrelled and took our own paths, yet we are both
+Calhouns, and my heart is warm to him.  If my son were a thousand
+times a criminal, nevertheless I would ache to take him by the hand.'"
+
+"Hush!  Look at the prison gate," said his companion, and stood up.
+
+As the gates of the prison opened, the sun broke through the clouds and
+gave a brilliant phase to the scene.  Out of the gates there came slowly,
+yet firmly, dressed in peasant clothes, the stalwart but faded figure of
+Dyck Calhoun.
+
+Terribly changed he was.  He had entered prison with the flush upon his
+cheek, the lilt of young manhood in his eyes, with hair black and hands
+slender and handsome.  There was no look of youth in his face now.  It
+was the face of a middle-aged man from which the dew of youth had
+vanished, into which life's storms had come and gone.  Though the body
+was held erect, yet the head was thrust slightly forward, and the heavy
+eyebrows were like a pent-house.  The eyes were slightly feverish, and
+round the mouth there crept a smile, half-cynical but a little happy.
+All freshness was gone from his hands.  One hung at his side, listless,
+corded; the other doffed his hat in reply to the salute of his two humble
+friends.
+
+As the gates closed behind him he looked gravely at the two men, who were
+standing not a foot apart.  There swept slowly into his eyes, enlarging,
+brightening them, the glamour of the Celtic soul.  Of all Ireland, or all
+who had ever known him, these two were the only ones welcoming him into
+the world again!  Michael Clones, with his oval red face, big nose,
+steely eye, and steadfast bearing, had in him the soul of great kings.
+His hat was set firmly on his head.  His knee-breeches were neat, if
+coarse; his stockings were clean.  His feet were well shod, his coat
+worn, and he had still the look that belongs to the well-to-do peasant.
+He was a figure of courage and endurance.  Dyck's hand went out to him,
+and a warm smile crept to his lips.
+
+"Michael--ever--faithful Michael!"
+
+A moisture came to Michael's eyes.  He did not speak as he clasped the
+hand Dyck offered him.  Presently Dyck turned to old Christopher with a
+kindly laugh.
+
+"Well, old friend!  You, too, come to see the stag set loose again?
+You're not many, that's sure."  A grim, hard look came into his face, but
+both hands went out and caught the old man's shoulders affectionately.
+"This is no day for you to be waiting at prison's gates, Christopher; but
+there are two men who believe in me--two in all the world.  It isn't the
+killing," he added after a moment's silence--"it isn't the killing that
+hurts so.  If it's true that I killed Erris Boyne, what hurts most is the
+reason why I killed him."
+
+"One way or another--does it matter now?" asked Christopher gently.
+
+"Is it that you think nothing matters since I've paid the price, sunk
+myself in shame, lost my friends, and come out with not a penny left?"
+asked Dyck.  "But yes," he added with a smile, wry and twisted, "yes, I
+have a little left!"
+
+He drew from his pocket four small pieces of gold, and gazed ironically
+at them in his palm.
+
+"Look at them!"  He held out his hand, so that the two men could see the
+little coins.  "Those were taken from me when I entered prison.  They've
+been in the hands of the head of the jail ever since.  They give them to
+me now--all that's left of what I was."
+
+"No, not all, sir," declared Michael.  "There's something left from
+Playmore--there's ninety pounds, and it's in my pocket.  It was got from
+the sale of your sporting-kit.  There was the boat upon the lake, the
+gun, and all kinds of riffraff stuff not sold with Playmore."
+
+Dyck nodded and smiled.  "Good Michael!"
+
+Then he drew himself up stiffly, and blew in and out his breath as if
+with the joy of living.  For four hard years he had been denied the free
+air of free men.  Even when walking in the prison-yard, on cold or fair
+days, when the air was like a knife or when it had the sun of summer in
+it, it still had seemed to choke him.
+
+In prison he had read, thought, and worked much.  They had at least done
+that for him.  The Attorney-General had given him freedom to work with
+his hands, and to slave in the workshop like one whose living depended on
+it.  Some philanthropic official had started the idea of a workshop, and
+the officials had given the best of the prisoners a chance to learn
+trades and make a little money before they went out into the world.  All
+that Dyck had earned went to purchase things he needed, and to help his
+fellow prisoners or their families.
+
+Where was he now?  The gap between the old life of nonchalance,
+frivolity, fantasy, and excitement was as great as that between heaven
+and hell.  Here he was, after four years of prison, walking the highway
+with two of the humblest creatures of Ireland, and yet, as his soul said,
+two of the best.
+
+Stalking along in thought, he suddenly became conscious that Michael and
+Christopher had fallen behind.  He turned round.
+
+"Come on.  Come on with me."  But the two shook their heads.
+
+"It's not fitting, you a Calhoun of Playmore!" Christopher answered.
+
+"Well, then, list to me," said Dyck, for he saw the men could not bear
+his new democracy.  "I'm hungry.  In four years I haven't had a meal that
+came from the right place or went to the right spot.  Is the little
+tavern, the Hen and Chickens, on the Liffeyside, still going?  I mean the
+place where the seamen and the merchant-ship officers visit."
+
+Michael nodded.
+
+"Well, look you, Michael--get you both there, and order me as good a meal
+of fish and chops and baked pudding as can be bought for money.  Aye, and
+I'll have a bottle of red French wine, and you two will have what you
+like best.  Mark me, we'll sit together there, for we're one of a kind.
+I've got to take to a life that fits me, an ex-jailbird, a man that's
+been in prison for killing!"
+
+"There's the king's army," said Michael.  "They make good officers in
+it."
+
+A strange, half-sore smile came to Dyck's thin lips.
+
+"Michael," said he, "give up these vain illusions.  I was condemned for
+killing a man not in fair fight.
+
+"I can't enter the army as an officer, and you should know it.  The king
+himself could set me up again; but the distance between him and me is ten
+times round the world and back again!"  But then Dyck nodded kindly.  It
+was as if suddenly the martyr spirit had lifted him out of rigid, painful
+isolation, and he was speaking from a hilltop.  "No, my friends, what is
+in my mind now is that I'm hungry.  For four years I've eaten the bread
+of prison, and it's soured my mouth and galled my belly.  Go you to that
+inn and make ready a good meal."
+
+The two men started to leave, but old Christopher turned and stretched a
+hand up and out.
+
+"Son of Ireland, bright and black and black and bright may be the picture
+of your life, but I see for you brightness and sweet faces, and music and
+song.  It's not Irish music, and it's not Irish song, but the soul of the
+thing is Irish.  Grim things await you, but you will conquer where the
+eagle sways to the shore, where the white mist flees from the hills,
+where heroes meet, where the hand of Moira stirs the blue and the witches
+flee from the voice of God.  There is honour coming to you in the world."
+
+Having said his say, with hand outstretched, having thrilled the air with
+the voice of one who had the soul of a prophet, the old man turned.  Head
+bent forward, he shuffled away with Michael Clones along the stony
+street.
+
+Dyck watched them go, his heart beating hard, his spirit overwhelmed.
+
+It was not far to the Castle, yet every footstep had a history.  Now and
+again he met people who knew him.  Some bowed a little too profoundly,
+some nodded; but not one stopped to speak to him, though a few among them
+were people he had known well in days gone by.  Was it the clothes he
+wore, or was it that his star had sunk so low that none could keep it
+company?  He laughed to himself in scorn, and yet there kept ringing
+through his brain all the time the bells of St. Anselm's, which he was
+hearing:
+
+              "Oh, God, who is the sinner's friend,
+               Make clean my soul once more!"
+
+When he arrived at the Castle walls he stood and looked long at them.
+
+"No, I won't go in.  I won't try to see him," he said at last.  "God, how
+strange Ireland is to me!  The soil of it, the trees of it, the grass of
+it, are dearer than ever, but--I'll have no more of Ireland.  I'll ask
+for nothing.  I'll get to England.  What's Ireland to me?  I must make my
+way somewhere.  There's one in there"--he nodded towards the Castle--
+"that owes me money at cards.  He should open his pockets to me, and see
+me safe on a ship for Australia; but I've had my fill of every one in
+Ireland.  There's nothing here for me but shame.  Well, back I'll go to
+the Hen and Chickens, to find a good dinner there."
+
+He turned and went back slowly along the streets by which he had come,
+looking not to right nor left, thinking only of where he should go and
+what he should do outside of Ireland.
+
+At the door of the inn he sniffed the dinner Michael had ordered.
+
+"Man alive!" he said as he entered the place and saw the two men with
+their hands against the bright fire.  "There's only one way to live, and
+that's the way I'm going to try."
+
+"Well, you'll not try it alone, sir, if you please," said Michael.  "I'll
+be with you, if I may."
+
+"And I'll bless you as you go," said Christopher Dogan.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+WHITHER NOW?
+
+England was in a state of unrest.  She had, as yet, been none too
+successful in the war with France.  From the king's castle to the poorest
+slum in Seven Dials there was a temper bordering on despair.  Ministries
+came and went; statesmen rose and fell.  The army was indifferently
+recruited and badly paid.  England's battles were fought by men of whom
+many were only mercenaries, with no stake in England's rise or fall.
+
+In the army and navy there were protests, many and powerful, against
+the smallness of the pay, while the cost of living had vastly increased.
+In more than one engagement on land England had had setbacks of a serious
+kind, and there were those who saw in the blind-eyed naval policy, in
+the general disregard of the seamen's position, in the means used for
+recruiting, the omens of disaster.  The police courts furnished the navy
+with the worst citizens of the country.  Quota men, the output of the
+Irish prisons--seditious, conspiring, dangerous--were drafted for the
+king's service.
+
+The admiralty pursued its course of seizing men of the mercantile marine,
+taking them aboard ships, keeping them away for months from the harbours
+of the kingdom, and then, when their ships returned, denying them the
+right of visiting their homes.  The press-gangs did not confine their
+activities to the men of the mercantile marine.  From the streets after
+dusk they caught and brought in, often after ill-treatment, torn from
+their wives and sweethearts, knocked on the head for resisting, tradesmen
+with businesses, young men studying for the professions, idlers, debtors,
+out-of-work men.  The marvel is that the British fleets fought as well as
+they did.
+
+Poverty and sorrow, loss and bereavement, were in every street, peeped
+mournfully out of every window, lurked at street corners.  From all parts
+of the world adventurers came to renew their fortunes in the turmoil of
+London, and every street was a kaleidoscope of faces and clothes and
+colours, not British, not patriot, not national.
+
+Among these outlanders were Dyck Calhoun and Michael Clones.  They had
+left Ireland together in the late autumn, leaving behind them the
+stirrings of the coming revolution, and plunging into another revolt
+which was to prove the test and trial of English character.
+
+Dyck had left Ireland with ninety pounds in his pocket and many tons'
+weight of misery in his heart.  In his bones he felt tragedies on foot in
+Ireland which concession and good government could not prevent.  He had
+fled from it all.  When he set his face to Holyhead, he felt that he
+would never live in Ireland again.  Yet his courage was firm as he made
+his way to London, with Michael Clones--faithful, devoted, a friend and
+yet a servant, treated like a comrade, yet always with a little
+dominance.
+
+The journey to London had been without event, yet as the coach rolled
+through country where frost silvered the trees; where, in the early
+morning, the grass was shining with dew; where the everlasting green
+hedges and the red roofs of villages made a picture which pleased the eye
+and stirred the soul, Dyck Calhoun kept wondering what would be his
+future.  He had no profession, no trade, no skill except with his sword;
+and as he neared London Town--when they left Hendon--he saw the smoke
+rising in the early winter morning and the business of life spread out
+before him, brave and buoyant.
+
+As from the heights of Hampstead he looked down on the multitudinous area
+called London, something throbbed at his heart which seemed like hope;
+for what he saw was indeed inspiring.  When at last, in the Edgware Road,
+he drew near to living London, he turned to Michael Clones and said:
+
+"Michael, my lad, I think perhaps we'll find a footing here."
+
+So they reached London, and quartered themselves in simple lodgings in
+Soho.  Dyck walked the streets, and now and then he paid a visit to the
+barracks where soldiers were, to satisfy the thought that perhaps in the
+life of the common soldier he might, after all, find his future.  It was,
+however, borne in upon him by a chance remark of Michael one day--"I'm
+not young enough to be a recruit, and you wouldn't go alone without me,
+would you?"--that this way to a livelihood was not open to him.
+
+His faithful companion's remark had fixed Dyck's mind against entering
+the army, and then, towards the end of the winter, a fateful thing
+happened.  His purse containing what was left of the ninety pounds--two-
+fifths of it--disappeared.  It had been stolen, and in all the bitter
+days to come, when poverty and misery ground them down, no hint of the
+thief, no sign of the robber, was ever revealed.
+
+Then, at last, a day when a letter came from Ireland.  It was from the
+firm in which Bryan Llyn of Virginia had been interested, for the letter
+had been sent to their care, and Dyck had given them his address in
+London on this very chance.  It reached Dyck's hands on the day after
+the last penny had been paid out for their lodgings, and they faced the
+streets, penniless, foodless--one was going to say friendless.  The
+handwriting was that of Sheila Llyn.
+
+At a street corner, by a chemist's shop where a red light burned, Dyck
+opened and read the letter.  This is what Sheila had written to him.
+
+     MY DEAR FRIEND:
+
+     The time is near (I understand by a late letter to my mother from an
+     official) when you will be freed from prison and will face the world
+     again.  I have not written you since your trial, but I have never
+     forgotten and never shall.  I have been forbidden to write to you or
+     think of you, but I will take my own way about you.  I have known
+     all that has happened since we left Ireland, through the letters my
+     mother has received.  I know that Playmore has been sold, and I am
+     sorry.
+
+     Now that your day of release is near, and you are to be again a free
+     man, have you decided about your future?  Is it to be in Ireland?
+     No, I think not.  Ireland is no place for a sane and level man to
+     fight for honour, fame, and name.  I hear that things are worse
+     there in every way than they have been in our lifetime.
+
+     After what has happened in any case, it is not a field that offers
+     you a chance.  Listen to me.  Ireland and England are not the only
+     places in the world.  My uncle came here to Virginia a poor man.
+     He is now immensely rich.  He had little to begin with, but he was
+     young like you--indeed, a little older than you--when he first came.
+     He invested wisely, worked bravely, and his wealth grew fast.  No
+     man needs a fortune to start the business of life in this country.
+     He can get plenty of land for almost nothing; he can get credit for
+     planting and furnishing his land, and, if he has friends, the credit
+     is sure.
+
+     All America is ready for "the likes of you."  Think it over, and
+     meanwhile please know there has been placed with the firm in Dublin
+     money enough to bring you here with comfort.  You must not refuse
+     it.  Take it as a loan, for I know you will not take it as a gift.
+
+     I do not know the story of the killing, even as it was told in
+     court.  Well, some one killed the man, but not you, and the truth
+     will out in time.  If one should come to me out of the courts of
+     heaven, and say that there it was declared you were a rogue, I
+     should say heaven was no place for me.  No, of one thing I am sure--
+     you never killed an undefended man.  Wayward, wanton, reckless,
+     dissipated you may have been, but you were never depraved--never!
+
+     When you are free, lift up your shoulders to all the threats of
+     time, then go straight to the old firm where the money is, draw it,
+     take ship, and come here.  If you let me know you are coming, I will
+     be there to meet you when you step ashore, to give you a firm hand-
+     clasp; to tell you that in this land there is a good place for you,
+     if you will win it.
+
+     Here there is little crime, though the perils of life are many.
+     There is Indian fighting; there are Indian depredations; and not a
+     dozen miles from where I sit men have been shot for crimes
+     committed.  The woods are full of fighters, and pirates harry the
+     coast.  On the wall of the room where I write there are carbines
+     that have done service in Indian wars and in the Revolutionary War;
+     and here out of the window I can see hundreds of black heads-slaves,
+     brought from Africa and the Indies, slaves whose devotion to my
+     uncle is very great.  I hear them singing now; over the white-tipped
+     cotton-fields there flows the sound of it.
+
+     This plantation has none of the vices that belong to slavery.  Here
+     life is complete.  The plantation is one great workshop where trades
+     are learned and carried out-shoeing, blacksmithing, building,
+     working in wood and metal.
+
+     I am learning here--you see I am quite old, for I am twenty-one now
+     --the art of management.  They tell me that when my uncle's day is
+     done--I grieve to think it is not far off--I must take the rod of
+     control.  I work very, very hard.  I have to learn figures and
+     finance; I have to see how all the work is done, so that I shall
+     know it is done right.  I have had to discipline the supervisors and
+     bookkeepers, inspect and check the output, superintend the packing,
+     and arrange for the sale of the crop-yes, I arranged for the sale of
+     this year's crop myself.  So I live the practical life, and when I
+     say that you could make your home here and win success, I do it with
+     some knowledge.
+
+     I beg you take ship for the Virginian coast.  Enter upon the new
+     life here with faith and courage.  Have no fear.  Heaven that has
+     thus far helped you will guide you to the end.
+
+     I write without my mother's permission, but my uncle knows, and
+     though he does not approve, he does not condemn.
+
+     Once more good-bye, my dear friend, and God be with you.
+
+                                        SHEILA LLYN.
+
+     P. S.--I wonder where you will read this letter.  I hope it will
+     find you before your release.  Please remember that she who wrote it
+     summons you from the darkness where you are to light and freedom
+     here.
+
+
+Slowly Dyck folded up the letter, when he had read it, and put it in his
+pocket.  Then he turned with pale face and gaunt look to Michael Clones.
+
+"Michael," said he, "that letter is from a lady.  It comes from her new
+home in Virginia."
+
+Michael nodded.
+
+"Aye, aye, sir, I understand you," he said.  "Then she doesn't know the
+truth about her father?" Dyck sighed heavily.  "No, Michael, she doesn't
+know the truth."
+
+"I don't believe it would make any difference to her if she did know."
+
+"It would make all the difference to me, Michael.  She says she wishes to
+help me.  She tells me that money's been sent to the big firm in Dublin-
+money to take me across the sea to Virginia."
+
+Michael's face clouded.
+
+"Yes, sir.  To Virginia--and what then?"
+
+"Michael, we haven't a penny in the world, you and I, but if I took one
+farthing of that money I should hope you would kill me.  I'm hungry;
+we've had nothing to eat since yesterday; but if I could put my hands
+upon that money here and now I wouldn't touch it.  Michael, it looks as
+if we shall have to take to the trade of the footpad."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+THE HOUR BEFORE THE MUTINY
+
+In the days when Dyck Calhoun was on the verge of starvation in London,
+evil naval rumours were abroad.  Newspapers reported, one with
+apprehension, another with tyrannous comment, mutinous troubles in the
+fleet.
+
+At first the only demand at Spithead and the Nore had been for an
+increase of pay, which had not been made since the days of Charles II.
+Then the sailors' wages were enough for comfortable support; but in 1797
+through the rise in the cost of living, and with an advance of thirty per
+cent. on slops, their families could barely maintain themselves.  It was
+said in the streets, and with truth, that seamen who had fought with
+unconquerable gallantry under Howe, Collingwood, Nelson, and the other
+big sea-captains, who had borne suffering and wounds, and had been in the
+shadow of death--that even these men damned a system which, in its stern
+withdrawal of their class for long spaces of time from their own
+womenfolk, brought evil results to the forecastle.
+
+The soldier was always in touch with his own social world, and he had
+leave sufficient to enable him to break the back of monotony.  He drank,
+gambled, and orated; but his indulgences were little compared with the
+debauches of able-bodied seamen when, after months of sea-life, they
+reached port again.  A ship in port at such a time was not a scene of
+evangelical habits.  Women of loose class, flower-girls, fruit-sellers,
+and costermongers turned the forecastle into a pleasure-house where the
+pleasures were not always secret; where native modesty suffered no
+affright, and physical good cheer, with ribald paraphrase, was notable
+everywhere.
+
+"How did it happen, Michael?"
+
+As he spoke, Dyck looked round the forecastle of the Ariadne with a
+restless and inquisitive expression.  Michael was seated a few feet away,
+his head bent forward, his hands clasped around his knees.
+
+"Well, it don't matter one way or 'nother," he replied; "but it was like
+this.  The night you got a letter from Virginia we was penniless; so at
+last I went with my watch to the pawnbroker's.  You said you'd wait till
+I got back, though you knew not where I was goin'.  When I got back, you
+were still broodin'.  You were seated on a horse-block by the chemist's
+lamp where you had read the letter.  It's not for me to say of what you
+were thinkin'; but I could guess.  You'd been struck hard, and there had
+come to you a letter from one who meant more to you than all the rest of
+the world; and you couldn't answer it because things weren't right.
+As I stood lookin' at you, wonderin' what to do, though, I had twelve
+shillin's in my pocket from the watch I'd pawned, there came four men,
+and I knew from their looks they were recruitin' officers of the navy.
+I saw what was in their eyes.  They knew--as why shouldn't they, when
+they saw a gentleman like you in peasant clothes?--that luck had been
+agin' us.
+
+"What the end would have been I don't know.  It was you that solved the
+problem, not them.  You looked at the first man of them hard.  Then you
+got to your feet.
+
+"'Michael,' says you quietly, 'I'm goin' to sea.  England's at war, and
+there's work to do.  So let's make for a king's ship, and have done with
+misery and poverty.'
+
+"Then you waved a hand to the man in command of the recruitin' gang, and
+presently stepped up to him and his friends.
+
+"'Sir,' I said to you, 'I'm not going to be pressed into the navy.'
+
+"'There's no pressin', Michael,' you answered.  'We'll be quota men.
+We'll do it for cash--for forty pounds each, and no other.  You let them
+have you as you are.  But if you don't want to come,' you added, 'it's
+all the same to me.'
+
+"Faith, I knew that was only talk.  I knew you wanted me.  Also I knew
+the king's navy needed me, for men are hard to get.  So, when they'd paid
+us the cash--forty pounds apiece--I stepped in behind you, and here we
+are--here we are!  Forty pounds apiece--equal to three years' wages of
+an ordinary recruit of the army.  It ain't bad, but we're here for three
+years, and no escape from it.  Yes, here we are!"
+
+Dyck laughed.
+
+"Aye, here we're likely to remain, Michael.  There's only this to be
+said--we'll be fighting the French soon, and it's easy to die in the
+midst of a great fight.  If we don't die, Michael, something else will
+turn up, maybe."
+
+"That's true, sir!  They'll make an officer of you, once they see you
+fight.  This is no place for you, among the common herd.  It's the dregs
+o' the world that comes to the ship's bottom in time of peace or war."
+
+"Well, I'm the dregs of the world, Michael.  I'm the supreme dregs."
+
+Somehow the letter from Virginia had decided Dyck Calhoun's fate for him.
+Here he was--at sea, a common sailor in the navy.  He and Michael Clones
+had eaten and drunk as sailors do, and they had realized that, as they
+ate and drank on the River Thames, they would not eat and drink on the
+watery fairway.  They had seen the tank foul with age, from which water
+was drawn for men who could not live without it, and the smell of it had
+revolted Dyck's senses.  They had seen the kegs of pickled meat, and they
+had been told of the evil rations given to the sailors at sea.
+
+The Ariadne had been a flag-ship in her day, the home of an admiral and
+his staff.  She carried seventy-four guns, was easily obedient to her
+swift sail, and had a reputation for gallantry.  From the first hour on
+board, Dyck Calhoun had fitted in; with a discerning eye he had
+understood the seamen's needs and the weaknesses of the system.
+
+The months he had spent between his exit from prison and his entrance
+into the Ariadne had roughened, though not coarsened, his outward
+appearance.  From his first appearance among the seamen he had set
+himself to become their leader.  His enlistment was for three years, and
+he meant that these three should prove the final success of this naval
+enterprise, or the stark period in a calendar of tragedy.
+
+The life of the sailor, with its coarseness and drudgery, its inadequate
+pay, its evil-smelling food, its maggoty bread, its beer drawn from casks
+that once had held oil or fish, its stinking salt-meat barrels, the
+hideous stench of the bilge-water--all this could in one sense be no
+worse than his sufferings in jail.  In spite of self-control, jail had
+been to him the degradation of his hopes, the humiliation of his manhood.
+
+He had suffered cold, dampness, fever, and indigestion there, and it had
+sapped the fresh fibre of life in him.  His days in London had been
+cruel.  He had sought work in great commercial concerns, and had almost
+been grateful when rejected.  When his money was stolen, there seemed
+nothing to do, as he said to Michael Clones, but to become a footpad or a
+pirate.  Then the stormy doors of the navy had opened wide to him; and as
+many a man is tempted into folly or crime by tempestuous nature, so he,
+forlorn, spiritually unkempt, but physically and mentally well-composed,
+in a spirit of bravado, flung himself into the bowels of the fleet.
+
+From the moment Dyck arrived on board the Ariadne he was a marked man.
+Ferens, a disfranchised solicitor, who knew his story, spread the
+unwholesome truth about him among the ship's people, and he received
+attentions at once offensive and flattering.  The best-educated of the
+ship's hands approached him on the grievances with which the whole navy
+was stirring.
+
+Something had put a new spirit into the life of his majesty's ships; it
+was, in a sense, the reflection of the French Revolution and Tom Paine's
+Age of Reason.  What the Americans had done in establishing a republic,
+what France was doing by her revolution, got into the veins and minds of
+some men in England, but it got into the veins and minds of the sailor
+first; for, however low his origin, he had intercourse not given to the
+average landsman.  He visited foreign ports, he came in touch with other
+elements than those of British life and character.
+
+Of all the ships in the navy the Ariadne was the best that Dyck Calhoun
+could have entered.  Her officers were humane and friendly, yet firm; and
+it was quite certain that if mutiny came they would be treated well.  The
+agitation on the Ariadne in support of the grievances of the sailors was
+so moderate that, from the first, Dyck threw in his lot with it.  Ferens,
+the former solicitor, first came to him with a list of proposals, which
+only repeated the demands made by the agitators at Spithead.
+
+"You're new among us," said Ferens to Dyck.  "You don't quite know what
+we've been doing, I suppose.  Some of us have been in the navy for two
+years, and some for ten.  There are men on this ship who could tell
+you stories that would make your blood run cold--take my word for it.
+There's a lot of things goin' on that oughtn't to be goin' on.  The time
+has come for reform.  Have a look at this paper, and tell me what you
+think."
+
+Dyck looked at the pockmarked face of Ferens, whose record in the courts
+was a bad one, and what he saw did not disgust him.  It was as though
+Ferens had stumbled and been badly hit in his fall, but there were no
+signs of permanent evil in his countenance.  He was square-headed,
+close-cropped, clear-eyed, though his face was yellow where it was not
+red, and his tongue was soft in his head.
+
+Dyck read the paper slowly and carefully.  Then he handed it back without
+a word.
+
+"Well, what have you got to say?" asked Ferens.  "Nothing?  Don't you
+think that's a strong list of grievances and wrongs?"
+
+Dyck nodded.  "Yes, it's pretty strong," he said, and he held up his
+hand.  "Number One, wages and cost of living.  I'm sure we're right
+there.  Cost of living was down in King Charles's time, and wages were
+down accordingly.  Everything's gone up, and wages should go up.  Number
+Two, the prize-money scandal.  I'm with you there.  I don't see why an
+officer should get two thousand five hundred times as much as a seaman.
+There ought to be a difference, but not so much.  Number Three, the food
+ought to be better; the water ought to be better.  We can't live on rum,
+maggoty bread, and foul water--that's sure.  The rum's all right; it's
+powerful natural stuff, but we ought to have meat that doesn't stink,
+and bread that isn't alive.  What's more, we ought to have lots of lime-
+juice, or there's no protection for us when we're out at sea with the
+best meat taken by the officers and the worst left to us; and with foul
+water and rotten food, there's no hope or help.  But, if we're going in
+for this sort of thing, we ought to do it decently.  We can't slap a
+government in the mouth, and we can't kick an admiral without paying
+heavy for it in the end.  If it's wholesome petitioning you're up to,
+I'm with you; but I'm not if there's to be knuckle-dusting."
+
+Ferens shrugged a shoulder.
+
+"Things are movin', and we've got to take our stand now when the time is
+ripe for it, or else lose it for ever.  Over at Spithead they're gettin'
+their own way.  The government are goin' to send the Admiralty Board down
+here, because our admiral say to them that it won't be safe goin' unless
+they do."
+
+"And what are we going to do here?" asked Dyck.  "What's the game of the
+fleet at the Nore?"
+
+Ferens replied in a low voice:
+
+"Our men are goin' to send out petitions--to the Admiralty and to the
+House of Commons."
+
+"Why don't you try Lord Howe?"
+
+"He's not in command of a fleet now.  Besides, petitions have been sent
+him, and he's taken no notice."
+
+"Howe?  No notice--the best admiral we ever had!  I don't believe it,"
+declared Dyck savagely.  "Why, the whole navy believes in Howe.  They
+haven't forgotten what he did in '94.  He's as near to the seaman as the
+seaman is to his mother.  Who sent the petitions to him?"
+
+"They weren't signed by names--they were anonymous."
+
+Dyck laughed.
+
+"Yes, and all written by the same hand, I suppose."  Ferens nodded.
+
+"I think that's so."
+
+"Can you wonder, then, that Lord Howe didn't acknowledge them?  But I'm
+still sure he acted promptly.  He's a big enough friend of the sailor to
+waste no time before doing his turn."
+
+Ferens shook his head morosely.
+
+"That may be," he said; "but the petitions were sent weeks ago, and
+there's no sign from Lord Howe.  He was at Bath for gout.  My idea is he
+referred them to the admiral commanding at Portsmouth, and was told that
+behind the whole thing is conspiracy--French socialism and English
+politics.  I give you my word there's no French agent in the fleet,
+and if there were, it wouldn't have any effect.  Our men's grievances
+are not new.  They're as old as Cromwell."
+
+Suddenly a light of suspicion flashed into Ferens's face.
+
+"You're with us, aren't you?  You see the wrongs we've suffered, and how
+bad it all is!  Yet you haven't been on a voyage with us.  You've only
+tasted the life in harbour.  Good God, this life is heaven to what we
+have at sea!  We don't mind the fightin'.  We'd rather fight than eat."
+An evil grin covered his face for a minute.  "Yes, we'd rather fight than
+eat, for the stuff we get to eat is hell's broil, God knows!  Did you
+ever think what the life of the sailor is, that swings at the top of a
+mast with the frost freezin' his very soul, and because he's slow, owin'
+to the cold, gets twenty lashes for not bein' quicker?  Well, I've seen
+that, and a bad sight it is.  Did you ever see a man flogged?  It ain't a
+pretty sight.  First the back takes the click of the whip like a damned
+washboard, and you see the ridges rise and go purple and red, and the man
+has his breath knocked clean out of him with every blow.  Nearly every
+stroke takes off the skin and draws the blood, and a dozen will make the
+back a ditch of murder.  Then the whipper stops, looks at the lashes,
+feels them tender like, and out and down it comes again.  When all the
+back is ridged and scarred, the flesh, that looked clean and beautiful,
+becomes a bloody mass.  Some men get a hundred lashes, and that's torture
+and death.
+
+"A man I knew was flogged told me once that the first blow made his flesh
+quiver in every nerve from his toe-nails to his finger-nails, and stung
+his heart as if a knife had gone through his body.  There was agony in
+his lungs, and the time between each stroke was terrible, and yet the
+next came too soon.  He choked with the blood from his tongue, lacerated
+with his teeth, and from his lungs, and went black in the face.  I saw
+his back.  It looked like roasted meat; yet he had only had eighty
+strokes.
+
+"The punishments are bad.  Runnin' the gauntlet is one of them.  Each
+member of the crew is armed with three tarry rope-yarns, knotted at the
+ends.  Then between the master-at-arms with a drawn sword and two
+corporals with drawn swords behind, the thief, stripped to the waist, is
+placed.  The thing is started by a boatswain's mate givin' him a dozen
+lashes.  Then he's slowly marched down the double line of men, who flog
+him as he passes, and at the end of the line he receives another dose of
+the cat from the boatswain's mate.  The poor devil's body and head are
+flayed, and he's sent to hospital and rubbed with brine till he's healed.
+
+"But the most horrible of all is flogging through the fleet.  That's
+given for strikin' an officer, or tryin' to escape.  It's a sickenin'
+thing.  The victim is lashed by his wrists to a capstan-bar in the ship's
+long-boat, and all the ship's boats are lowered also, and each ship in
+harbour sends a boat manned by marines to attend.  Then, with the master-
+at-arms and the ship's surgeon, the boat is cast off.  The boatswain's
+mate begins the floggin', and the boat rows away to the half-minute bell,
+the drummer beatin' the rogue's march.  From ship to ship the long-boat
+goes, and the punishment of floggin' is repeated.  If he faints, he gets
+wine or rum, or is taken back to his ship to recover.  When his back is
+healed he goes out to get the rest of his sentence.  Very few ever live
+through it, or if they do it's only for a short time.  They'd better have
+taken the hangin' that was the alternative.  Even a corpse with its back
+bare of flesh to the bone has received the last lashes of a sentence, and
+was then buried in the mud of the shore with no religious ceremony.
+
+"Mind you, there's many a man gets fifty lashes that don't deserve them.
+There's many men in the fleet that's stirred to anger at ill-treatment,
+until now, in these days, the whole lot is ready to see the thing
+through--to see the thing through--by heaven and by hell!"
+
+The pockmarked face had taken on an almost ghastly fervour, until it
+looked like a distorted cartoon-vindictive, fanatical; but Dyck, on the
+edge of the river of tragedy, was not ready to lose himself in the stream
+of it.
+
+As he looked round the ship he felt a stir of excitement like nothing he
+had ever known, though he had been brought up in a country where men were
+by nature revolutionists, and where the sword was as often outside as
+inside the scabbard.  There was something terrible in a shipboard
+agitation not to be found in a land-rising.  On land there were a
+thousand miles of open country, with woods and houses, caves and cliffs,
+to which men could flee for hiding; and the danger of rebellion was less
+dominant.  At sea, a rebellion was like some beastly struggle in one
+room, beyond the walls of which was everlasting nothingness.  The thing
+had to be fought out, as it were, man to man within four walls, and God
+help the weaker!
+
+"How many ships in the fleet are sworn to this agitation?" Dyck asked
+presently.
+
+"Every one.  It's been like a spread of infection; it's entered at every
+door, looked out of every window.  All the ships are in it, from the
+twenty-six-hundred-tonners to the little five-hundred-and-fifty-tonners.
+Besides, there are the Delegates."
+
+He lowered his voice as he used these last words.  "Yes, I know," Dyck
+answered, though he did not really know.  "But who is at the head?"
+
+"Why, as bold a man as can be--Richard Parker, an Irishman.  He was once
+a junior naval officer, and left the navy and went into business; now he
+is a quotaman, and leads the mutiny.  Let me tell you that unless there's
+a good round answer to what we demand, the Nore fleet'll have it out with
+the government.  He's a man of character, is Richard Parker, and the
+fleet'll stand by him."
+
+"How long has he been at it?" asked Dyck.
+
+"Oh, weeks and weeks!  It doesn't all come at once, the grip of the
+thing.  It began at Spithead, and it worked right there; and now it's
+workin' at the Nore, and it'll work and work until there isn't a ship and
+there isn't a man that won't be behind the Delegates.  Look.  Half the
+seamen on this ship have tasted the inside of a jail; and the rest come
+from the press-gang, and what's left are just the ragged ends of street
+corners.  But"--and here the man drew himself up with a flush--"but
+there's none of us that wouldn't fight to the last gasp of breath for the
+navy that since the days of Elizabeth has sailed at the head of all the
+world.  Don't think we mean harm to the fleet.  We mean to do it good.
+All we want is that its masters shall remember we're human flesh and
+blood; that we're as much entitled to good food and drink on sea as on
+land; and that, if we risk our lives and shed our blood, we ought to have
+some share in the spoils.  We're a great country and we're a great
+people, but, by God, we're not good to our own!  Look at them there."
+
+He turned and waved a hand to the bowels of the ship where sailors traded
+with the slop-sellers, or chaffered with women, or sat in groups and
+sang, or played rough games which had no vital meaning; while here and
+there in groups, with hands gesticulating, some fanatics declared their
+principles.  And the principles of every man in the Nore fleet so far
+were embraced in the four words--wages, food, drink, prize-money.
+
+Presently Ferens stopped short.  "Listen!" he said.
+
+There was a cry from the ship's side not far away, and then came little
+bursts of cheering.
+
+"By Heaven, it's the Delegates comin' here!" he said.  He held up a
+warning palm, as though commanding silence, while he listened intently.
+"Yes, it's the Delegates.  Now look at that crowd of seamen!"  He swung
+his hand towards the bowels of the ship.  Scores of men were springing to
+their feet.  Presently there came a great shouting and cheers, and then
+four new faces appeared on deck.  They were faces of intelligence, but
+one of them had the enlightened look of leadership.
+
+"By Judas, it's our leader, Richard Parker!" declared Ferens.
+
+What Dyck now saw was good evidence of the progress of the agitation.
+There were officers of the Ariadne to be seen, but they wisely took no
+notice of the breaches of regulation which followed the arrival of the
+Delegates.  Dyck saw Ferens speak to Richard Parker after the men had
+been in conference with Parker and the Delegates, and then turn towards
+himself.  Richard Parker came to him.
+
+"We are fellow countrymen," he said genially.  "I know your history.
+We are out to make the navy better--to get the men their rights.  I
+understand you are with us?"
+
+Dyck bowed.  "I will do all possible to get reforms in wages and food put
+through, sir."
+
+"That's good," said Parker.  "There are some petitions you can draft,
+and some letters also to the Admiralty and to the Houses of Lords and
+Commons."
+
+"I am at your service," said Dyck.
+
+He saw his chance to secure influence on the Ariadne, and also to do good
+to the service.  Besides, he felt he might be able to check the worst
+excesses of the agitation, if he got power under Parker.  He was free
+from any wish for mutiny, but he was the friend of an agitation which
+might end as successfully as the trouble at Spithead.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+TO THE WEST INDIES
+
+A fortnight later the mutiny at the Nore shook and bewildered the British
+Isles.  In the public journals and in Parliament it was declared that
+this outbreak, like that at Spithead, was due partly to political strife,
+but more extensively to agents of revolution from France and Ireland.
+
+The day after Richard Parker visited the Ariadne the fleet had been put
+under the control of the seamen's Delegates, who were men of standing in
+the ships, and of personal popularity.  Their first act was to declare
+that the fleet should not leave port until the men's demands were
+satisfied.
+
+The King, Prime Minister, and government had received a shock greater
+than that which had come with the announcement of American independence.
+The government had armed the forts at Sheerness, had sent troops and guns
+to Gravesend and Tilbury, and had declared war upon the rebellious fleet.
+
+At the head of the Delegates, Richard Parker, with an officer's
+knowledge, became a kind of bogus admiral, who, in interview with the
+real admirals and the representatives of the Admiralty Board, talked like
+one who, having power, meant to use it ruthlessly.  The government had
+yielded to the Spithead mutineers, giving pardon to all except the
+ringleaders, and granting demands for increased wages and better food,
+with a promise to consider the question of prize-money; but the Nore
+mutineers refused to accept that agreement, and enlarged the Spithead
+demands.  Admiral Buckner arrived on board his flag-ship, the Sandwich,
+without the deference due to an admiral, and then had to wait three hours
+for Parker and the Delegates on the quarter-deck.  At the interview that
+followed, while apologizing to the admiral for his discourtesy, Parker
+wore his hat as quasi-admiral of the fleet.  The demands of the Delegates
+were met by reasoning on the part of Buckner, but without effect: for the
+seamen of the Nore believed that what Spithead could get by obstinacy the
+Nore could increase by contumacy; and it was their firm will to bring the
+Lords of the Admiralty to their knees.
+
+The demands of the Nore Delegates, however, were rejected by the
+Admiralty, and with the rejection two regiments of militia came from
+Canterbury to reinforce the Sheerness garrison.  The mutineers were
+allowed to parade the town, so long as their conduct was decent, as
+Admiral Buckner admitted it to be; but Parker declared that the presence
+of the militia was an insult to the seamen in the Nore fleet.
+
+Then ensued the beginning of the terror.  When Buckner presented the
+Admiralty's refusal to deal with the Delegates, there came quick
+response.  The reply of the mutineers was to row into Sheerness harbour
+and take away with them eight gunboats lying there, each of which fired a
+shot at the fort, as if to announce that the mutineers were now the
+avowed enemies of the government.
+
+Thereupon the rebels ordered all their ships together at the Great Nore,
+ranging them into two crescents, with the newly acquired gunboats at the
+flanks.  The attitude of the authorities gave the violent mutineers their
+opportunity.  Buckner's flag was struck from the mainmast-head of the
+Sandwich, and the red flag was hoisted in its place.
+
+The Delegates would not accept an official pardon for their mutiny
+through Buckner.  They demanded a deputation from the Admiralty, Parker
+saying that no accommodation could occur without the appearance of the
+Lords of the Admiralty at the Nore.  Then followed threatening
+arrangements, and the Delegates decided to blockade the Thames and the
+Medway.
+
+It was at this time that Dyck Calhoun--who, by consent of Richard Parker,
+had taken control of the Ariadne--took action which was to alter the
+course of his own life and that of many others.
+
+Since the beginning of the mutiny he had acted with decision, judgment,
+and strength.  He had agreed to the Ariadne joining the mutinous ships,
+and he had skilfully constructed petitions to the Admiralty, the House of
+Commons, and the King.  His habit of thought, his knowledge of life, made
+him a power.  He believed that the main demands of the seamen were just,
+and he made a useful organization to enforce them.  It was only when he
+saw the mutineers would not accept the terms granted to the Spithead
+rebels that a new spirit influenced him.
+
+He had determined to get control of the Ariadne.  His gift as a speaker
+had conquered his fellow-sailors, and the fact that he was an ex-convict
+gave them confidence that he was no friend of the government.
+
+One of the first things he did, after securing his own pre-eminence on
+the ship, was to get the captain and officers safely ashore.  This he did
+with skill, and the crew of the ship even cheered them as they left.
+
+None of the regular officers of the Ariadne were left upon her, except
+Greenock, the master of the ship, whose rank was below that of
+lieutenant, and whose duties were many and varied under the orders of the
+captain.  Greenock chose to stay, though Dyck said he could go if he
+wished.  Greenock's reply was that it was his duty to stay, if the ship
+was going to remain at sea, for no one else could perform his duties or
+do his work.
+
+Then, by vote, Dyck became captain of the ship.  He did not, however,
+wear a captain's uniform--blue coat, with white cuffs, flat gold buttons;
+with lace at the neck, a white-sleeved waistcoat, knee-breeches, white
+silk stockings, and a three-cornered black hat edged with gold lace and
+ornamented with a cockade; with a black cravat, a straight dress sword,
+a powdered cue tied with a black-silk ribbon, and epaulets of heavy gold
+stuff completing the equipment.  Dyck, to the end of his career at sea,
+wore only the common seaman's uniform.
+
+Dyck would not have accepted the doubtful honour had he not had long
+purposes in view.  With Ferens, Michael Clones, and two others whom
+Ferens could trust, a plan was arranged which Dyck explained to his
+fellow-seamen on the Ariadne.
+
+"We've come to the parting of the ways, brothers," he said.  "We've all
+become liable to death for mutiny.  The pardon offered by the King has
+been refused, and fresh demands are made.  There, I think, a real wrong
+has been done by our people.  The Ariadne is well supplied with food and
+water.  It is the only ship with sufficiency.  And why?  Because at the
+beginning we got provisions from the shore in time; also we got
+permission from Richard Parker to fill our holds from two stopped
+merchant-ships.  Well, the rest of the fleet know what our food and drink
+fitment is.  They know how safe we are, and to-day orders have come to
+yield our provisions to the rest of the fleet.  That is, we, who have
+taken time by the forelock, must yield up our good gettings to bad
+receivers.  I am not prepared to do it.
+
+"On shore the Admiralty have stopped the supply of provisions to us and
+to all the fleet.  Our men have been arrested at Gravesend, Tilbury, and
+Sheerness.  The fleet could not sail now if it wished; but one ship can
+sail, and it is ours.  The fleet hasn't the food to sail.  On Richard
+Parker's ship, the Sandwich, there is food only for a week.  The others
+are almost as bad.  We are in danger of being attacked.  Sir Erasmus
+Gower, of the Neptune, has a fleet of warships, gunboats, and amateur
+armed vessels getting ready to attack us.  The North Sea fleet has come
+to help us, but that doesn't save us.  I'll say this--we are loyal men in
+this fleet, otherwise our ships would have joined the enemy in the waters
+of France or Holland.  They can't go now, in any case.  The men have lost
+heart.  Confidence in our cause has declined.  The government sent Lords
+of the Admiralty here, and they offered pardon if we accepted the terms
+of the Spithead settlement.  We declined the terms.  That was a bad day
+for us, and put every one of our heads in a noose.
+
+"For the moment we have a majority in men and ships; but we can't renew
+our food or drink, or ammunition.  The end is sure against us.  Our
+original agitation was just; our present obduracy is madness.  This ship
+is suspected.  It is believed by the rest of the fleet--by ships like the
+Invincible--that we're weak-kneed, selfish, and lacking in fidelity to
+the cause.  That's not true; but we have either to fight or to run, and
+perhaps to do both.
+
+"Make no mistake.  The government are not cowards; the Admiralty are
+gentlemen of determination.  If men like Admiral Howe support the
+Admiralty--Howe, one of the best friends the seaman ever had--what do you
+think the end will be?  Have you heard what happened at Spithead?  The
+seamen chivvied Admiral Alan Gardner and his colleagues aboard a ship.
+He caught hold of a seaman Delegate by the collar and shook him.  They
+closed in on him.  They handled him roughly.  He sprang on the hammock-
+nettings, put the noose of the hanging-rope round his neck, and said to
+the men who advanced menacingly:
+
+"'If you will return to your duty, you may hang me at the yard-arm!'
+
+"That's the kind of stuff our admirals are made of.  We have no quarrel
+with the majority of our officers.  They're straight, they're honest, and
+they're true to their game.  Our quarrel is with Parliament and the
+Admiralty; our struggle is with the people of the kingdom, who have not
+seen to it that our wrongs are put right, that we have food to eat, water
+to drink, and money to spend."
+
+He waved a hand, as though to sweep away the criticisms he felt must be
+rising against him.
+
+"Don't think because I've spent four years in prison under the sternest
+discipline the world offers, and have never been a seaman before, that
+I'm not fitted to espouse your cause.  By heaven, I am--I am--I am--
+I know the wrongs you've suffered.  I've smelled the water you drink.
+I've tasted the rotten meat.  I've seen the honest seaman who has been
+for years upon the main--I've seen the scars upon his back got from a
+brutal officer who gave him too big a job to do, and flogged him for not
+doing it.  I know of men who, fevered with bad food, have fallen, from
+the mainmast-head, or have slipped overboard, glad to go, because of the
+wrongs they'd suffered.
+
+"I'll tell you what our fate will be, and then I'll put a question to
+you.  We must either give up our stock of provisions or run for it.
+Parker and the other Delegates proclaim their comradeship; yet they have
+hidden from us the king's proclamation and the friendly resolutions of
+the London merchants.  I say our only hope is to escape from the Thames.
+I know that skill will be needed, but if we escape, what then?  I say if
+we escape, because, as we sail out, orders will be given for the other
+mutiny ships to attack us.  We shall be fired on; we shall risk our
+lives.  You've done that before, however, and will do it again.
+
+"We have to work out our own problem and fight our own fight.  Well,
+what I want to know is this--are we to give in to the government, or do
+we stand to be hammered by Sir Erasmus Gower?  Remember what that means.
+It means that if we fight the government ships, we must either die in
+battle, or die with the ropes round our necks.  There is another way.
+I'm not inclined to surrender, or to stand by men who have botched our
+business for us.  I'm for making for the sea, and, when I get there, I'm
+for striking for the West Indies, where there's a British fleet fighting
+Britain's enemies, and for joining in and fighting with them.  I'm for
+getting out of this river and away from England.  It's a bold plan, but
+it's a good one.  I want to know if you're with me.  Remember, there's
+danger getting out, and there's danger when and if we get out.  The other
+ships may pursue us.  The Portsmouth fleet may nab us.  We may be caught,
+and, if we are, we must take the dose prepared for us; but I'm for making
+a strong rush, going without fear, and asking no favour.  I won't
+surrender here; it's too cowardly.  I want to know, will you come
+to the open sea with me?"
+
+There were many shouts of assent from the crowd, though here and there
+came a growl of dissent.
+
+"Not all of you are willing to come with me," Dyck continued vigorously.
+"Tell me, what is it you expect to get by staying here?  You're famished
+when you're not poisoned; you're badly clothed and badly fed; you're kept
+together by flogging; you're treated worse than a convict in jail or a
+victim in a plague hospital.  You're not paid as well as your
+grandfathers were, and you're punished worse.  Here, on the Ariadne,
+we're not skulkers.  We don't fear our duty; we are loyal men.  Many of
+you, on past voyages, fighting the enemy, lived on burgoo and molasses
+only, with rum and foul water to drink.  On the other ships there have
+been terrible cruelty and offence.  Surgeons have neglected and ill-
+treated sick men and embezzled provisions and drinks intended for the
+invalids.  Many a man has died because of the neglect of the ship's
+surgeons; many have been kicked about the head and beaten, and haven't
+dared to go on the sick list for fear of their officers.  The Victualling
+Board gets money to supply us with food and drink according to measure.
+They get the money for a full pound and a full gallon, and we get
+fourteen ounces of food and seven pints of liquor, or less.  Well, what
+do you say, friends, to being our own Victualling Board out in the open
+sea, if we can get there?
+
+"We may have to fight when we get out; but I'm for taking the Ariadne
+into the great world battle when we can find it.  This I want to ask--
+isn't it worth while making a great fight in our own way, and showing
+that British seamen can at once be mutineers and patriots?  We have a
+pilot who knows the river.  We can go to the West Indian Islands, to the
+British fleet there.  It's doom and death to stay here; and it may be
+doom and death to go.  If we try to break free, and are fired on, the
+Admiralty may approve of us, because we've broken away from the rest.
+See now, isn't that the thing to do?  I'm for getting out.  Who's coming
+with me?"
+
+Suddenly a burly sailor pushed forward.  He had the head of a viking.
+His eyes were strong with enterprise.  He had a hand like a ham, with
+long, hairy fingers.
+
+"Captain," said he, "you've put the thing so there can be only one answer
+to it.  As for me, I'm sick of the way this mutiny has been bungled from
+first to last.  There's been one good thing about it only--we've got
+order without cruelty, we've rebelled without ravagement; but we've
+missed the way, and we didn't deal with the Admiralty commissioners as
+we ought.  So I'm for joining up with the captain here"--he waved a hand
+towards Dyck--"and making for open sea.  As sure as God's above, they'll
+try to hammer us; but it's the only way."
+
+He held a handkerchief-a dirty, red silk thing.  "See," he continued,
+"the wind is right to take us out.  The other ships won't know what we're
+going to do until we start.  I'm for getting off.  I'm a pressed man.  I
+haven't seen my girl for five years, and they won't let me free in port
+to go and see her.  Nothing can be worse than what we have to suffer now,
+so let's make a break for it.  That's what I say.  Come, now, lads, three
+cheers for Captain Calhoun!"
+
+A half-hour later, on the captain's deck, Dyck gave the order to pass
+eastward.  It was sunset when they started, and they had not gone a
+thousand yards before some of the mutineering ships opened fire on the
+Ariadne.  The breeze was good, however, and she sailed bravely through
+the leaden storm.  Once twice--thrice she was hit, but she sped on.  Two
+men were killed and several were wounded.  Sails were torn, and the high
+bulkheads were broken; but, without firing a shot in reply, the Ariadne
+swung clear at last of the hostile ships and reached safe water.
+
+On the edge of the open sea Dyck took stock of the position.  The Ariadne
+had been hit several times, and the injury done her was marked.  Before
+morning the dead seamen were sunk in watery graves, and the wounded were
+started back to health again.  By daylight the Ariadne was well away from
+the land.
+
+The first thing Dyck had done, after escaping from the river, was to
+study the wants of the Ariadne and make an estimate for the future with
+Greenock, the master.  He calculated they had food and water enough to
+last for three months, even with liberal provisioning.  Going among the
+crew, he realized there was no depression among them; that they seemed to
+care little where they were going.  It was, however, quite clear they
+wished to fight--to fight the foes of England.
+
+He knew his task was a hard one, and that all efforts at discipline
+would have dangers.  He knew, also, that he could have no authority,
+save personality and success.  He set himself, therefore, to win the
+confidence of Greenock and the crew, and he began discipline at once.
+He knew that a reaction must come; that the crew, loose upon their own
+trail, would come to regret the absence of official command.  He realized
+that many of them would wish to return to the fleet at the Nore, but
+while the weather was good he did not fear serious trouble.  The danger
+would come in rough weather or on a becalmed sea.
+
+They had passed Beachy Head in the mist.  They had seen no battle-ship,
+and had sighted no danger, as they made their way westward through the
+Channel.  There had been one moment of anxiety.  That was when they
+passed Portsmouth, and had seen in the far distance, to the right of
+them, the mastheads of Admiral Gardner's fleet.
+
+It was here that Dyck's orderly, Michael Clones, was useful.  He brought
+word of murmuring among the more brutish of the crew, that some of them
+wished to join Gardner's fleet.  At this news, Dyck went down among the
+men.  It was an unusual thing to do, but it brought matters to an issue.
+
+Among the few dissatisfied sailors was one Nick Swaine, who had been
+the cause of more trouble on the Ariadne than any other.  He had a
+quarrelsome mind; he had been influenced by the writings of Wolfe Tone,
+the Irish rebel.  One of the secrets of Dyck's control of the crew was
+the fact that he was a gentleman, and was born in the ruling class, and
+this was anathema to Nick Swaine.  His view of democracy was ignorance
+controlling ignorance.
+
+By nature he was insolent, but under the system of control pursued by the
+officers of the Ariadne, previous to the mutiny, he had not been able to
+do much.  The system had bound him down.  He had been the slave of habit,
+custom, and daily duty.  His record, therefore, was fairly clean until
+two days after the escape from the Thames and the sighting of the
+Portsmouth fleet.  Then all his revolutionary spirit ran riot in him.
+Besides, the woman to whom he had become attached at the Nore had been
+put ashore on the day Dyck gained control.  It roused his enmity now.
+
+When Dyck came down, he had the gunners called to him, admonishing them
+that drill must go on steadily, and promising them good work to do.  Then
+he turned to the ordinary seamen.
+
+At this moment Nick Swaine strode forward within a dozen feet of Dyck.
+
+"Look there!" he said, and he jerked a finger towards the distant
+Portsmouth fleet.  "Look there!  You've passed that."
+
+Dyck shrugged a shoulder.
+
+"I meant to pass it," he said quietly.
+
+"Give orders to make for it," said Nick with a sullen eye.
+
+"I shall not.  And look you, my man, keep a civil tongue to me, who
+command this ship, or I'll have you put in irons."
+
+"Have me put in irons!" Swaine cried hotly.  "This isn't Dublin jail.
+You can't do what you like here.  Who made you captain of this ship?"
+
+"Those who made me captain will see my orders carried out.  Now, get you
+back with the rest, or I'll see if they still hold good."  Dyck waved a
+hand.  "Get back when I tell you, Swaine !"
+
+"When you've turned the ship to the Portsmouth fleet I'll get back, and
+not till then."
+
+Dyck made a motion of the hand to some boatswains standing by.  Before
+they could arrest him, Swaine flung himself towards Dyck with a knife in
+his hand.
+
+Dyck's hand was quicker, however.  His pistol flung out, a shot was
+fired, and the knife dropped from the battered fingers of Nick Swaine.
+
+"Have his wounds dressed, then put him in irons," Dyck commanded.
+
+From that moment, in good order and in good weather, the Ariadne sped on
+her way westward and southward.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+IN THE NICK OF TIME
+
+Perhaps no mutineer in the history of the world ever succeeded, as did
+Dyck Calhoun, in holding control over fellow-mutineers on the journey
+from the English Channel to the Caribbean Sea.  As a boy, Dyck had been
+an expert sailor, had studied the machinery of a man-of-war, and his love
+of the sea was innate and deep-seated; but his present success was based
+upon more than experience.  Quite apart from the honour of his nature,
+prison had deepened in him the hatred of injustice.  In soul he was
+bitter; in body he was healthy, powerful, and sane.
+
+Slowly, sternly, yet tactfully, he had broken down the many customs of
+ship life injurious to the welfare of the men.  Under his system the
+sailors had good coffee for breakfast, instead of a horrible mixture made
+of burnt biscuits cooked in foul water.  He gave the men pea-soup and
+rice instead of burgoo and the wretched oatmeal mess which was the staple
+thing for breakfast.  He saw to it that the meat was no longer a hateful,
+repulsive mass, two-thirds bone and gristle, and before it came into the
+cook's hands capable of being polished like mahogany.  He threatened the
+cook with punishment if he found the meals ill-cooked.
+
+In all the journey to the West Indian seas there had been only three
+formal floggings.  His attitude was not that of the commander who
+declared:
+
+"I will see the man's backbone, by God!"
+
+He wished to secure discipline without cruelty.  His greatest difficulty,
+at the start, was in making lieutenants.  That he overcame by appointing
+senior midshipmen before the Ariadne was out of the Channel.  He offered
+a lieutenancy to Ferens, who had the courage to decline it.
+
+"Make me purser," remarked Ferens.  "Make me purser, and I'll do the job
+justly."
+
+As the purser of the Ariadne had been sent to the sick-bay and was likely
+to die (and did die subsequently), Ferens was put into his uniform-three-
+cornered cocked hat, white knee-breeches, and white stockings.  The
+purser of a man-of-war was generally a friend of the captain, going with
+him from ship to ship.
+
+Of the common sailors, on the whole, Dyck had little doubt.  He had
+informed them that, whatever happened, they should not be in danger; that
+the ship should not join the West Indian fleet unless every man except
+himself received amnesty.  If the amnesty was not granted, then one of
+two things should happen--the ship must make for a South American port,
+or she must fight.  Fighting would not frighten these men.
+
+It was rather among the midshipmen that Dyck looked for trouble.
+Sometimes, with only two years' training at Gosport, a youngster became a
+midshipman on first going to sea, and he could begin as early as eleven
+years of age.  A second-rate ship like the Ariadne carried eighteen
+midshipmen; and as six lieutenants were appointed from them, only twelve
+remained.  From these twelve, in the dingy after-cockpit, where the
+superficial area was not more than twelve square feet; where the air was
+foul, and the bilges reeked with a pestilential stench; where the
+purser's store-room near gave out the smell of rancid butter and
+poisonous cheese; where the musty taint of old ropes came to them, there
+was a spirit of danger.
+
+Dyck was right in thinking that in the midshipmen's dismal berth the
+first flowers of revolt to his rule would bloom.
+
+Sailors, even as low as the pig-sty men, had some idea of fair play; and
+as the weeks that had passed since they left the Thames had given them
+better food and drink, and lessened the severity of those above them,
+real obedience had come.
+
+It was not strange that the ship ran well, for all the officers under the
+new conditions, except Dyck himself, had had previous experience.  The
+old lieutenants had gone, but midshipmen, who in any case were trained,
+had taken their places.  The rest of the ship's staff were the same,
+except the captain; and as Dyck had made a friend of Greenock the master,
+a man of glumness, the days were peaceful enough during the voyage to the
+Caribbean Sea.
+
+The majority saw that every act of Dyck had proved him just and capable.
+He had rigidly insisted on gun practice; he had keyed up the marines to a
+better spirit, and churlishness had been promptly punished.  He was, in
+effect, what the sailors called a "rogue," or a "taut one"--seldom
+smiling, gaunt of face but fearless of eye, and with a body free from
+fatigue.
+
+As the weather grew warmer and the days longer, and they drew near to the
+coast of Jamaica, a stir of excitement was shown.
+
+"You'd like to know what I'm going to do, Michael, I suppose?" said Dyck
+one morning, as he drank his coffee and watched the sun creeping up the
+sky.
+
+"Well, in three days we shall know what's to become of us, and I have no
+doubt or fear.  This ship's a rebel, but it's returning to duty.  We've
+shown them how a ship can be run with good food and drink and fair
+dealing, and, please God, we'll have some work to do now that belongs to
+a man-of-war!"
+
+"Sir, I know what you mean to do," replied Michael.  "You mean to get all
+of us off by giving yourself up."
+
+"Well, some one has to pay for what we've done, Michael."  A dark,
+ruthless light came into Dyck's eyes.  "Some one's got to pay."  A grim
+smile crossed his face.  "We've done the forbidden thing; we've mutinied
+and taken to the open sea.  We were fired on by the other mutiny ships,
+and that will help our sailors, but it won't help me.  I'm the leader.
+We ought, of course, to have taken refuge with the nearest squadron of
+the king's ships.  Well, I've run my luck, and I'll have to pay."
+
+He scratched his chin with a thumb-nail-a permanent physical trait.  "You
+see, the government has pardoned all the sailors, and will hang only the
+leaders.  I expect Parker is hung already.  Well, I'm the leader on the
+Ariadne.  I'm taking this ship straight to his majesty's West Indian
+fleet, in thorough discipline, and I'll hand it over well-found, well-
+manned, well-officered, on condition that all go free except myself.  I
+came aboard a common sailor, a quota man, a prison-bird, penniless.
+Well, have I shown that I can run a ship?  Have I learned the game of
+control?  During the weeks we've been at sea, bursting along, have I
+proved myself?"
+
+Michael smiled.  "What did I say to you the first night on board, sir?
+Didn't I say they'd make an officer of you when they found out what
+brains you had?  By St. Patrick, you've made yourself captain with the
+good-will of all, and your iron hand has held the thing together.  You've
+got a great head, too, sir."
+
+Dyck looked at him with a face in which the far future showed.
+
+"Michael, I've been lucky.  I've had good men about me.  God only knows
+what would have happened to me if the master hadn't been what he is--a
+gentleman who knows his job-aye, a gentleman through and through!  If he
+had gone against me, Michael"--he flicked a finger to the sky--"well,
+that much for my chances!  I'd have been dropped overboard, or stabbed in
+my cabin, as was that famous Captain Pigot, son of an admiral, who had as
+much soul as you'd find in a stone-quarry.  When two men had dropped from
+the masts, hurrying to get down because of his threat that the last man
+should be thrashed--when the two men lay smashed to pieces at his feet,
+Pigot said: 'Heave the lubbers overboard.'  That night, Michael, the
+seamen rose, crept to his cabin, stabbed him to death, pitched his body
+overboard, put his lieutenants to sea in open boats, and then ran away to
+South America.  Well, I've escaped that fate, because this was a good
+ship, and all the officers knew their business, and did it without
+cruelty.  I've been well served.  It was a great thing making the new
+lieutenants from the midshipmen.  There never was a better lot on board a
+ship."
+
+Michael's face clouded.  "Sir, that's true.  The new lieutenants have
+done their work well, but them that's left behind in the midshipmen's
+berth--do you think they're content?  No, sir.  The only spot on board
+this ship where there lurks an active spirit against you is in the
+midshipmen's berth.  Mischief's there, and that's what's brought me to
+you now."
+
+Dyck smiled.  "I know that.  I've had my eye on the midshipmen.  I've
+never trusted them.  They're a hard lot; but if the rest of the ship is
+with me, I'll deal with them promptly.  They're not clever or bold enough
+to do their job skilfully.  They've got some old hands down there--
+hammock-men, old stagers of the sea that act as servants to them.  What
+line do they take?"
+
+Michael laughed softly.
+
+"What I know I've got from two of them, and it is this--the young
+gentlemen'll try to get control of the ship."
+
+The cynicism deepened in Dyck's face.
+
+"Get control of the ship, eh?  Well, it'll be a new situation on a king's
+ship if midshipmen succeed where the rest dare not try.  Now, mark what
+I'm going to do."
+
+He called, and a marine showed himself.
+
+"The captain's compliments to the master, and his presence here at once.
+Michael," he continued presently, "what fools they are!  They're scarcely
+a baker's dozen, and none of them has skill to lead.  Why, the humblest
+sailor would have more sense than to start a revolt, the success of which
+depends upon his personal influence, and the failure of which must end in
+his own ruin.  Does any one think they're the kind to lead a mutiny
+within a mutiny?  Listen to me I'm not cruel, but I'll put an end to this
+plot.  We're seven hundred on this ship, and she's a first-class sailer.
+I warrant no ship ever swam the seas that looks better going than she
+does.  So we've got to see that her, record is kept clean as a mutineer."
+
+At that moment the master appeared.  He saluted.  "Greenock," said Dyck,
+"I wonder if you've noticed the wind blowing chilly from the midshipmen's
+berth."  A lurking devilish humour shot from Greenock's eyes.
+
+"Aye, I've smelled that wind."
+
+"Greenock, we're near the West Indian Islands.  Before we eat many meals
+we'll see land.  We may pass French ships, and we may have to fight.
+Well, we've had a good running, master; so I'll tell you what I mean to
+do."
+
+He then briefly repeated what he had said to Michael, and added
+
+"Greenock, in this last to-do, I shall be the only man in danger.  The
+king's amnesty covers every one except the leaders--that lets you off.
+The Delegate of the Ariadne is aboard the Invincible, if he's not been
+hanged.  I'm the only one left on the Ariadne.  I've had a good time,
+Greenock--thanks to you, chiefly.  I think the men are ready for anything
+that'll come; but I also think we should guard against a revolt of the
+midshipmen by healthy discipline now.  Therefore I'll instruct the
+lieutenants to spread-eagle every midshipman for twelve hours.  There's a
+stiff wind; there's a good stout spray, and the wind and spray should
+cool their hot souls.  Meanwhile, though without food, they shall have
+water as they need it.  If at the end of the twelve hours any still seems
+to be difficult, give him another twelve.  Look!"
+
+He stretched out a hand to the porthole on his right.  "Far away in front
+are islands.  You cannot see them yet, but those little thickening mists
+in the distance mean land.  Those are the islands in front of the
+Windward Passage.  I think it would be a good lesson for the young
+gentlemen to be spread-eagled against the mists of their future.  It
+shall be' done at once; and pass the word why it's done."
+
+An hour later there was laughter in every portion of the ship, for the
+least popular members of the whole personnel were being dragooned into
+discipline.  The sailors had seen individual midshipmen spread-eagled and
+mastheaded, while all save those they could bribe were forbidden to bring
+them drink or food; but here was a whole body of junior officers,
+punished en masse, as it were, lashed to the rigging and taking the wind
+and the spray in their teeth.
+
+Before the day was over, the whole ship was alive with anticipation, for,
+in the far distance, could be seen the dark blue and purplish shadows
+which told of land; and this brought the minds of all to the end of their
+journey, with thoughts of the crisis near.
+
+Word had been passed that all on board were considered safe--all except
+the captain who had manoeuvred them to the entrance of the Caribbean Sea.
+Had he been of their own origin, they would not have placed so much
+credence in the rumour; but coming as he did of an ancient Irish family,
+although he had been in jail for killing, the traditional respect for the
+word of a gentleman influenced them.  When a man like Ferens, on the one
+hand, and the mutineer whose fingers had been mutilated by Dyck in the
+Channel, on the other--when these agreed to bend themselves to the rule
+of a usurper, some idea of Calhoun's power may be got.
+
+On this day, with the glimmer of land in the far distance, the charges of
+all the guns were renewed.  Also word was passed that at any moment the
+ship must be cleared for action.  Down in the cockpit the tables were got
+ready by the surgeon and the loblolly-boys; the magazines were opened,
+and the guards were put on duty.
+
+Orders were issued that none should be allowed to escape active share in
+the coming battle; that none should retreat to the orlop deck or the
+lower deck; that the boys should carry the cartridge-cases handed to them
+from the magazine under the cover of their coats, running hard to the
+guns.  The twenty-four-pounders-the largest guns in use at the time-the
+eighteen-pounders, and the twelve-pounder guns were all in good order.
+
+The bags of iron balls called grape-shot-the worst of all--varying in
+size from sixteen to nine balls in a bag, were prepared.  Then the
+canister, which produced ghastly murder, chain-shot to bring down masts
+and spars, langrel to fire at masts and rigging, and the dismantling shot
+to tear off sails, were all made ready.  The muskets for the marines, the
+musketoons, the pistols, the cutlasses, the boarding-pikes, the axes or
+tomahawks, the bayonets and sailors' knives, were placed conveniently for
+use.  A bevy of men were kept busy cleaning the round shot of rust, and
+there was not a man on the ship who did not look with pride at the guns,
+in their paint of grey-blue steel, with a scarlet band round the muzzle.
+
+To the right of the Ariadne was the coast of Cuba; to the left was the
+coast of Haiti, both invisible to the eye.  Although the knowledge that
+they were nearing land had already given the officers and men a feeling
+of elation, the feeling was greatly intensified as they came through the
+Turk Island Passage, which is a kind of gateway to the Windward Passage
+between Cuba and Haiti.  The glory of the sunny, tropical world was upon
+the ship and upon the sea; it crept into the blood of every man, and the
+sweet summer weather gave confidence to their minds.  It was a day which
+only those who know tropical and semitropical seas can understand.  It
+had the sense of soaking luxury.
+
+In his cabin, with the ship's chart on the table before him, Dyck Calhoun
+studied the course of the Ariadne.  The wind was fair and good, the sea-
+birds hovered overhead.  From a distant part of the ship came the sound
+of men's voices in song.  They were singing "Spanish Ladies":
+
+         "We hove our ship to when the wind was sou'west, boys,
+          We hove our ship to for to strike soundings clear;
+          Then we filled our main tops'l and bore right away, boys,
+          And right up the Channel our course did we steer.
+
+         "We'll rant and we'll roar like true British sailors,
+          We'll range and we'll roam over all the salt seas,
+          Until we strike soundings in the Channel of old England
+          From Ushant to Scilly 'tis thirty-five leagues."
+
+Dyck raised his head, and a smile came to his lips.
+
+"Yes, you sing of a Channel, my lads, but it's a long way there, as
+you'll find.  I hope to God they give us some fighting!  .  .  .  Well,
+what is it?" he asked of a marine who appeared in his doorway.
+
+"The master of the ship begs to see you, sir," was the reply.
+
+A moment afterwards Greenock entered.  He asked Dyck several questions
+concerning the possible fighting, the disposition of ammunition and all
+that, and said at last:
+
+"I think we shall be of use, sir.  The ship's all right now."
+
+"As right as anything human can be.  I've got faith in my star, master."
+
+A light came into the other man's dour face.  "I wish you'd get into
+uniform, sir."
+
+"Uniform?  No, Greenock!  No, I use the borrowed power, but not the
+borrowed clothes.  I'm a common sailor, and I wear the common sailor's
+clothes.  You've earned your uniform, and it suits you.  Stick to it; and
+when I've earned a captain's uniform I'll wear it.  I owe you the success
+of this voyage so far, and my heart is full of it, up to the brim.  Hark,
+what's that?"
+
+"By God, it's guns, sir!  There's fighting on!"
+
+"Fighting!"
+
+Dyck stood for a minute with head thrust forward, eyes fixed upon the
+distant mists ahead.  The rumble of the guns came faintly through the
+air.  An exultant look came into his face.
+
+"Master, the game's with us--it is fighting!  I know the difference
+between the two sets of guns, English and French.  Listen--that quick,
+spasmodic firing is French; the steady-as-thunder is English.  Well,
+we've got all sail on.  Now, make ready the ship for fighting."
+
+"She's almost ready, sir."
+
+An hour later the light mist had risen, and almost suddenly the Ariadne
+seemed to come into the field of battle.  Dyck Calhoun could see the
+struggle going on.  The two sets of enemy ships had come to close
+quarters, and some were locked in deadly conflict.  Other ships, still
+apart, fired at point-blank range, and all the horrors of slaughter were
+in full swing.  From the square blue flag at the mizzen top gallant
+masthead of one of the British ships engaged, Dyck saw that the admiral's
+own craft was in some peril.  The way lay open for the Ariadne to bear
+down upon the French ship, engaged with the admiral's smaller ship, and
+help to end the struggle successfully for the British cause.
+
+While still too far away for point-blank range, the Ariadne's guns began
+upon the French ships distinguishable by their shape and their colours.
+Before the first shot was fired, however, Dyck made a tour of the decks
+and gave some word of cheer to the men, The Ariadne lost no time in
+getting into the thick of the fight.  The seamen were stripped to the
+waist, and black silk handkerchiefs were tightly bound round their heads
+and over their ears.
+
+What the French thought of the coming of the Ariadne was shown by the
+reply they made presently to her firing.  The number of French ships in
+action was greater than the British by six, and the Ariadne arrived just
+when she could be of greatest service.  The boldness of her seamanship,
+and the favour of the wind, gave her an advantage which good fortune
+helped to justify.
+
+As she drew in upon the action, she gave herself up to great danger; she
+was coming in upon the rear of the French ships, and was subject to
+fierce attack.  To the French she seemed like a fugitive warrior
+returning to his camp just when he was most needed, as was indeed the
+case.  Two of her shots settled one of the enemy's vessels; and before
+the others could converge upon her, she had crawled slowly up against the
+off side of the French admiral's ship, which was closely engaged with the
+Beatitude, the British flagship, on the other side.
+
+The canister, chain-shot, and langrel of the French foe had caused much
+injury to the Ariadne, and her canvas was in a sore plight.  Fifty of her
+seamen had been killed, and a hundred and fifty were wounded by the time
+she reached the starboard side of the Aquitaine.  She would have lost
+many more were it not that her onset demoralized the French gunners,
+while the cheers of the British sailors aboard the Beatitude gave
+confidence to their mutineer comrades.
+
+On his own deck, Dyck watched the progress of the battle with the joy of
+a natural fighter.  He had carried the thing to an almost impossible
+success.  There had only been this in his favour, that his was an
+unexpected entrance--a fact which had been worth another ship at least.
+He saw his boarders struggle for the Aquitaine.  He saw them discharge
+their pistols, and then resort to the cutlass and the dagger; and the
+marines bringing down their victims from the masts of the French flag-
+ship.
+
+Presently he heard the savagely buoyant shouts of the Beatitude men, and
+he realized that, by his coming, the admiral of the French fleet had been
+obliged to yield up his sword, and to signal to his ships--such as could
+--to get away.  That half of them succeeded in doing so was because the
+British fleet had been heavily handled in the fight, and would have been
+defeated had it not been for the arrival of the Ariadne.
+
+Never, perhaps, in the history of the navy had British ships clamped the
+enemy as the Aquitaine was clamped by the Beatitude and the Ariadne.
+Certain it is that no admiral of the British fleet had ever to perform
+two such acts in one day as receiving the submission of a French admiral
+and offering thanks to the captain of a British man-of-war whom, while
+thanking, he must at once place under arrest as a mutineer.  What might
+have chanced further to Dyck's disadvantage can never be known, because
+there appeared on the deck of the Beatitude, as its captain under the
+rear-admiral, Captain Ivy, who, five years before, had visited Dyck and
+his father at Playmore, and had gone with them to Dublin.
+
+The admiral had sent word to the Ariadne for its captain to come to the
+Beatitude.  When the captain's gig arrived, and a man in seaman's clothes
+essayed to climb the side of the flag-ship, he was at first prevented.
+Captain Ivy, however, immediately gave orders for Dyck to be admitted,
+but without honours.
+
+On the deck of the Beatitude, Dyck looked into the eyes of Captain Ivy.
+He saluted; but the captain held out a friendly hand.
+
+"You're a mutineer, Calhoun, but your ship has given us victory.  I'd
+like to shake hands with one that's done so good a stroke for England."
+
+A queer smile played about Calhoun's lips.
+
+"I've brought the Ariadne back to the fleet, Captain Ivy.  The men have
+fought as well as men ever did since Britain had a navy.  I've brought
+her back to the king's fleet to be pardoned."
+
+"But you must be placed under arrest, Calhoun.  Those are the orders--
+that wherever the Ariadne should be found she should be seized, and that
+you should be tried by court-martial."
+
+Dyck nodded.  "I understand.  When did you get word?"
+
+"About forty-eight hours ago.  The king's mail came by a fast frigate."
+
+"We took our time, but we came straight from the Channel to find this
+fleet.  At the mouth of the Thames we willed to find it, and to fight
+with it--and by good luck so we have done."
+
+"Let me take you to the admiral," said Captain Ivy.
+
+He walked beside Dyck to the admiral's cabin.  "You've made a terrible
+mess of things, Calhoun, but you've put a lot right to-day," he said at
+the entrance to the cabin.  "Tell me one thing honestly before we part
+now--did you kill Erris Boyne?" Dyck looked at him long and hard.
+
+"I don't know--on my honour I don't know!  I don't remember--I was drunk
+and drugged."
+
+"Calhoun, I don't believe you did; but if you did, you've paid the price
+--and the price of mutiny, too."  In the clear blue eyes of Captain Ivy
+there was a look of friendliness.  "I notice you don't wear uniform,
+Calhoun," he added.  "I mean a captain's uniform."  Dyck smiled.  "I
+never have."
+
+The next moment the door of the admiral's cabin was opened.
+
+"Mr. Dyck Calhoun of the Ariadne, sir," said Captain Ivy.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+THE ADMIRAL HAS HIS SAY
+
+The admiral's face was naturally vigorous and cheerful, but, as he looked
+at Dyck Calhoun, a steely hardness came into it, and gave a cynical twist
+to the lips.  He was a short man, and spare, but his bearing had dignity
+and every motion significance.
+
+He had had his high moment with the French admiral, had given his
+commands to the fleet and had arranged the disposition of the captured
+French ships.  He was in good spirits, and the wreckage in the fleet
+seemed not to shake his nerve, for he had lost in men far less than the
+enemy, and had captured many ships--a good day's work, due finally to the
+man in sailor's clothes standing there with Captain Ivy.  The admiral
+took in the dress of Calhoun at a glance--the trousers of blue cloth, the
+sheath-knife belt, the stockings of white silk, the white shirt with the
+horizontal stripes, the loose, unstarched, collar, the fine black silk
+handkerchief at the throat, the waistcoat of red kerseymere, the shoes
+like dancing-pumps, and the short, round blue jacket, with the flat gold
+buttons--a seaman complete.  He smiled broadly; he liked this mutineer
+and ex-convict.
+
+"Captain Calhoun, eh!" he remarked mockingly, and bowed satirically.
+"Well, you've played a strong game, and you've plunged us into great
+difficulty."
+
+Dyck did not lose his opportunity.  "Happily, I've done what I planned to
+do when we left the Thames, admiral," he said.  "We came to get the
+chance of doing what, by favour of fate, we have accomplished.  Now, sir,
+as I'm under arrest, and the ship which I controlled has done good
+service, may I beg that the Ariadne's personnel shall have amnesty, and
+that I alone be made to pay--if that must be--for the mutiny at the
+Nore."
+
+The admiral nodded.  "We know of your breaking away from the mutinous
+fleet, and of their firing on you as you passed, and that is in your
+favour.  I can also say this: that bringing the ship here was masterly
+work, for I understand there were no officers on the Ariadne.  She always
+had the reputation of being one of the best-trained ships in the navy,
+and she has splendidly upheld that reputation.  How did you manage it,
+Mr. Calhoun?"
+
+Dyck briefly told how the lieutenants were made, and how he himself had
+been enormously indebted to Greenock, the master of the ship, and all the
+subordinate officers.
+
+The admiral smiled sourly.  "I have little power until I get instructions
+from the Admiralty, and that will take some time.  Meanwhile, the Ariadne
+shall go on as she is, and as if she were--and had been from the first, a
+member of my own squadron."
+
+Dyck bowed, explained what reforms he had created in the food and
+provisions of the Ariadne, and expressed a hope that nothing should be
+altered.  He said the ship had proved herself, chiefly because of his
+reforms.
+
+"Besides, she's been badly hammered.  She's got great numbers of wounded
+and dead, and for many a day the men will be busy with repairs."
+
+"For a man without naval experience, for a mutineer, an ex-convict and a
+usurper, you've done quite well, Mr. Calhoun; but my instructions were,
+if I captured your ship, and you fell into my hands, to try you, and hang
+you."
+
+At this point Captain Ivy intervened.
+
+"Sir," he said, "the instructions you received were general.  They could
+not anticipate the special service which the Ariadne has rendered to the
+king's fleet.  I have known Mr. Calhoun; I have visited at his father's
+house; I was with him on his journey to Dublin, which was the beginning
+of his bad luck.  I would beg of you, sir, to give Mr. Calhoun his parole
+on sea and land until word comes from the Admiralty as to what, in the
+circumstances, his fate shall be."
+
+"To be kept on the Beatitude on parole!" exclaimed the admiral.
+
+"Land or sea, Captain Ivy said.  I'm as well-born as any man in the
+king's fleet," declared Dyck.  "I've as clean a record as any officer in
+his majesty's navy, save for the dark fact that I was put in prison for
+killing a man; and I will say here, in the secrecy of an admiral's cabin,
+that the man I killed--or was supposed to kill--was a traitor.  If I did
+kill him, he deserved death by whatever hand it came.  I care not what
+you do with me"--his hands clenched, his shoulders drew up, his eyes
+blackened with the dark fire of his soul--"whether you put me on parole,
+or try me by court-martial, or hang me from the yard-arm.  I've done a
+piece of work of which I'm not ashamed.  I've brought a mutinous ship out
+of mutiny, sailed her down the seas for many weeks, disciplined her,
+drilled her, trained her, fought her; helped to give the admiral of the
+West Indian squadron his victory.  I enlisted; I was a quota man.  I
+became a common sailor--I and my servant and friend, Michael Clones.  I
+shared the feelings of the sailors who mutinied.  I wrote petitions and
+appeals for them.  I mutinied with them.  Then at last, having been made
+leader of the ship, with the captain and the lieutenants sent safely
+ashore, and disagreeing with the policy of the Delegates in not accepting
+the terms offered, I brought the ship out, commanding it from the
+captain's cabin, and have so continued until to-day.  If I'm put ashore
+at Jamaica, I'll keep my parole; if I stay a prisoner here, I'll keep my
+parole.  If I've done you service, admiral, be sure of this, it was done
+with clear intent.  My object was to save the men who, having mutinied
+and fled from Admiralty control, are subject to capital punishment."
+
+"Your thinking came late.  You should have thought before you mutinied,"
+was the sharp reply.
+
+"As a common sailor I acted on my conscience, and what we asked for the
+Admiralty has granted.  Only by mutiny did the Admiralty yield to our
+demands.  What I did I would do again!  We took our risks in the Thames
+against the guns that were levelled at us; we've taken our risks down
+here against the French to help save your squadron, and we've done it.
+The men have done it, because they've been loyal to the flag, and from
+first to last set to make the Admiralty and the people know they have
+rights which must be cherished.  If all your men were as faithful to the
+Crown as are the men on the Ariadne, then they deserve well of the King.
+But will you put for me on paper the written word that every man now
+aboard the Ariadne shall be held guiltless in the eyes of the admiral of
+this fleet; that the present officers shall remain officers, that the
+reforms I have made shall become permanent?  For myself, I care not; but
+for the men who have fought under me, I want their amnesty.  And I want
+Michael Clones to be kept with me, and Greenock, the master, and Ferens,
+the purser, to be kept where they are.  Admiral, I think you know my
+demands are just.  Over there on the Ariadne are a hundred and fifty
+wounded at least, and fifty have been killed.  Let the living not
+suffer."
+
+"You want it all on the nail, don't you?"
+
+"I want it at this moment when the men who have fought under me have
+helped to win your battle, sir."  There was something so set in Dyck's
+voice that the admiral had a sudden revulsion against him, yet, after a
+moment of thought, he made a sign to Captain Ivy.  Then he dictated the
+terms which Dyck had asked, except as to the reforms he had made, which
+was not in his power to do, save for the present.
+
+When the document had been signed by the admiral, Dyck read the contents
+aloud.  It embodied nearly all he had asked.
+
+"Now I ask permission for one more thing only, sir--for the new captain
+of the Ariadne to go with me to her, and there I will read this paper to
+the crew.  I will give a copy of it to the new captain, whoever he may
+be."
+
+The admiral stood for a moment in thought.  Then he said:
+
+"Ivy, I transfer you to the Ariadne.  It's better that some one who
+understands, as you do, should be in control after Calhoun has gone.
+Go with him now, and have your belongings sent to you.  I appoint you
+temporary captain of the Ariadne, because I think no one could deal with
+the situation there so wisely.  Ivy, every ship in the squadron must
+treat the Ariadne respectfully.  Within two days, Mr. Calhoun, you shall
+be landed at Jamaica, there to await the Admiralty decree.  I will say
+this: that as the sure victory of our fleet has come through you, you
+shall not suffer in my report.  Fighting is not an easy trade, and to
+fight according to the rules is a very hard trade.  Let me ask you to
+conduct yourself as a prisoner of war on parole."
+
+
+
+
+
+
+NO DEFENSE
+
+By Gilbert Parker
+
+
+BOOK III
+
+XVI.      A LETTER
+XVII.     STRANGERS ARRIVE
+XVIII.    AT SALEM
+XIX.      LORD MALLOW INTERVENES
+XX.       OUT OF THE HANDS OF THE PHILISTINES
+XXI.      THE CLASH OF RACE
+XXII.     SHEILA HAS HER SAY
+XXIII.    THE COMING OF NOREEN
+XXIV.     WITH THE GOVERNOR
+XXV.      THEN WHAT HAPPENED
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+A LETTER
+
+With a deep sigh, the planter raised his head from the table where he was
+writing, and looked out upon the lands he had made his own.  They lay on
+the Thomas River, a few hours' horseback travelling from Spanish Town,
+the capital, and they had the advantage of a plateau formation, with
+mountains in the far distance and ravines everywhere.
+
+It was Christmas Day, and he had done his duty to his slaves and the folk
+on his plantation.  He had given presents, had attended a seven o'clock
+breakfast of his people, had seen festivities of his negroes, and the
+feast given by his manager in Creole style to all who came--planting
+attorneys, buccras, overseers, bookkeepers, the subordinates of the local
+provost-marshal, small planters, and a few junior officers of the army
+and navy.
+
+He had turned away with cynicism from the overladen table, with its
+shoulder of stewed wild boar in the centre; with its chocolate, coffee,
+tea, spruce-beer, cassava-cakes, pigeon-pies, tongues, round of beef,
+barbecued hog, fried conchs, black crab pepper-pod, mountain mullet, and
+acid fruits.  It was so unlike what his past had known, so "damnable
+luxurious!"  Now his eyes wandered over the space where were the
+grandilla, with its blossom like a passion-flower, the black Tahiti plum,
+with its bright pink tassel-blossom, and the fine mango trees, loaded
+half with fruit and half with bud.  In the distance were the guinea
+cornfields of brownish hue, the cotton-fields, the long ranges of negro
+houses like thatched cottages, the penguin hedges, with their beautiful
+red, blue, and white convolvuluses; the lime, logwood, and breadfruit
+trees, the avocado-pear, the feathery bamboo, and the jack-fruit tree;
+and between the mountains and his own sugar-estates, negro settlements
+and pens.  He heard the flight of parrots chattering, he watched the
+floating humming-bird, and at last he fixed his eyes upon the cabbage
+tree down in the garden, and he had an instant desire for it.  It was a
+natural and human taste--the cabbage from the tree-top boiled for a
+simple yet sumptuous meal.
+
+He liked simplicity.  He did not, as so many did in Jamaica, drink claret
+or punch at breakfast soon after sunrise.  In a land where all were bon-
+vivants, where the lowest tradesmen drank wine after dinner, and rum,
+brandy and water, or sangaree in the forenoon, a somewhat lightsome view
+of table-virtues might have been expected of the young unmarried planter.
+For such was he who, from the windows of his "castle," saw his domain
+shimmering in the sun of a hot December day.
+
+It was Dyck Calhoun.
+
+With an impatient air he took up the sheets that he had been reading.
+Christmas Day was on his nerves.  The whole town of Kingston, with its
+twenty to thirty thousand inhabitants, had but one church.  If he entered
+it, even to-day, he would have seen no more than a hundred and fifty to
+two hundred people; mostly mulattoes--"bronze ornaments"--and peasants in
+shag trousers, jackets of coarse blue cloth, and no waistcoats, with one
+or two magistrates, a dozen gentlemen or so, and probably twice that
+number of ladies.  It was not an island given over to piety, or to
+religious habits.
+
+Not that this troubled Dyck Calhoun; nor, indeed, was he shocked by the
+fact that nearly every unmarried white man in the island, and many
+married white men, had black mistresses and families born to the black
+women, and that the girls had no married future.  They would become the
+temporary wives of white men, to whom they were on the whole faithful and
+devoted.  It did not even vex him that a wretched mulatto might be
+whipped in the market-square for laying his hands upon a white man, and
+that if he was a negro-slave he could be shot for the same liberty.
+
+It all belonged to the abnormal conditions of an island where black and
+white were in relations impossible in the countries from which the white
+man had come.  It did not even startle Dyck that all the planters, and
+the people generally in the island, from the chief justice and custos
+rotulorum down to the deckswabber, cultivated amplitude of living.
+
+But let Dyck tell his own story.  The papers he held were sheets of a
+letter he was writing to one from whom he had heard nothing since the
+night he enlisted in the navy, and that was nearly three years before.
+This was the letter:
+
+     MY DEAR FRIEND:
+
+     You will see I address you as you have done me in the two letters I
+     have had from you in the past.  You will never read this letter, but
+     I write it as if you would.  For you must know I may never hope for
+     personal intercourse with you.  I was imprisoned for killing your
+     father, Erris Boyne, and that separates us like an abysss.  It
+     matters little whether I killed him or not; the law says I did, and
+     the law has taken its toll of me.  I was in prison for four years,
+     and when freed I enlisted in the king's navy, a quota man, with my
+     servant-friend, Michael Clones.  That was the beginning of painful
+     and wonderful days for me.  I was one of the mutineers of the Nore,
+     and--
+
+Here followed a description of the days he had spent on the Ariadne and
+before, and of all that happened down to the time when he was arrested by
+the admiral in the West Indian Sea.  He told how he was sent over to the
+Ariadne with Captain Ivy to read the admiral's letter to the seamen, and
+then, by consent of the admiral, to leave again with Michael Clones for
+Jamaica, where he was set ashore with twenty pounds in his pocket--and
+not on parole, by the admiral's command.  Here the letter shall again
+take up the story, and be a narrative of Dyck Calhoun's life from that
+time until this Christmas Day.
+
+     What to do was the question.  I knew no one in Jamaica--no one at
+     all except the governor, Lord Mallow, and him I had fought with
+     swords in Phoenix Park five years before.  I had not known he was
+     governor here.  I came to know it when I first saw him riding over
+     the unpaved street into Kingston from Spanish Town with his suite,
+     ornate with his governorship.  He was a startling figure in scarlet,
+     with huge epaulets on his lieutenant-general's uniform, as big a pot
+     as ever boiled on any fire-chancellor, head of the government and of
+     the army, master of the legislature, judging like one o'clock in the
+     court of chancery, controller of the affairs of civil life, and
+     maker of a policy of which he alone can judge who knows what
+     interests clash in the West Indies.
+
+     English, French, Spanish, and Dutch are all hereabout.  All struggle
+     for place above the other in the world of commerce and society,
+     though chiefly it is the English versus the French in these days;
+     and the policy of the governor is the policy of the country.  He
+     never knows whether there will be a French naval descent or whether
+     the blacks in his own island will do as the blacks in St. Domingo
+     did--massacre the white people in thousands.  Or whether the free
+     blacks, the Maroons, who got their freedom by treaty with Governor
+     Trelawney, when the British commander changed hats with Cudjoe, the
+     Maroon chief, as the sealing of the bargain--whether they will rise
+     again, as they before have risen, and bring terror into the white
+     settlement; and whether, in that case, all negro-slaves will join
+     them, and Jamaica become a land of revolution.
+
+     Of what good, then, will be the laws lately passed regulating the
+     control of slaves, securing them rights never given before, even
+     forbidding lashes beyond forty-nine!  Of what use, then, the
+     punishment of owners who have ill-used the slaves?  The local
+     councils who have power to punish never proceed against white men
+     with rigour; and to preserve a fair balance between the white man up
+     above and the black down below is the responsibility of the fair-
+     minded governor.  If, like Mallow, he is not fair-minded, then is
+     the lash the heavier, and the governor has burdens greater than
+     could easily be borne in lands where the climate is more friendly.
+
+     Lord Mallow did not see me when I passed him in the street, but he
+     soon came to know of me from the admiral and Captain Ivy, who told
+     him all my story since I was freed from jail.  Then he said I should
+     be confined in a narrow space near to Kingston, and should have no
+     freedom; but the admiral had his way, and I was given freedom of the
+     whole island till word should come from the Admiralty what should be
+     done with me.  To the governor's mind it was dangerous allowing me
+     freedom, a man convicted of crime, who had been imprisoned, had been
+     a mutineer, had stolen one of his majesty's ships, and had fled to
+     the Caribbean Sea.  He thought I should well be at the bottom of the
+     ocean, where he would soon have put me, I make no doubt, if it had
+     not been for the admiral, and Captain Ivy--you do not know him, I
+     think--who played a good part to me, when men once close friends
+     have deserted me.
+
+     Well, we had, Michael and I, but twenty pounds between us; and if
+     there was not plenty of free food in the island, God knows what
+     would have become of us!  But there it was, fresh in every field, by
+     every wayside, at every doorway.  We could not starve, or die of
+     thirst, or faint for lack of sleep, since every bush was a bed in
+     spite of the garapatos or wood-ticks, the snore of the tree-toad,
+     the hoarse shriek of the macaw, and the shrill gird of the guinea-
+     fowl.  Every bed was thus free, and there was land to be got for a
+     song, enough to grow what would suffice for two men's daily wants.
+     But we did not rest long upon the land--I have it still, land which
+     cost me five pounds out of the twenty, and for the rest there was an
+     old but on the little place--five acres it was, and good land too,
+     where you could grow anything at all.  Heaven knows what we might
+     have become in that tiny plantation, for I was sick of life, and the
+     mosquitos and flying ants, and the chattering parroquets, the grim
+     gallinazo, and the quatre, or native bed--a wooden frame and canvas;
+     but one day at Kingston I met a man, one Cassandro Biatt, who had an
+     obsession for adventure, and he spoke to me privately.  He said he
+     knew me from people's talk, and would I listen to him?  What was
+     there to do?  He was a clean-cut rogue, if ever there was one, but
+     a rogue of parts, as he proved; and I lent an ear.
+
+     Now, what think you was his story?  Well, but this--that off the
+     coast of Haiti, there was a ship which had been sunk with every man
+     on board, and with the ship was treasure without counting-jewels
+     belonging once to a Spaniard of high place, who was taking them to
+     Paris.  His box had been kept in the captain's cabin, and it could
+     be found, no doubt, and brought to the surface.  Even if that were
+     not possible, there was plenty of gold on the ship, and every piece
+     of it was good money.  There had been searching for the ship, but
+     none had found it; but he, Cassandro Biatt, had sure knowledge, got
+     from an obi-man, of the place where it lay.  It would not be an
+     expensive business, but, cheap as it was, he had no means of raising
+     cash for the purpose; while I could, no doubt, raise the needed
+     money if I set about it.  That was how he put it to me.  Would I do
+     it?  It was not with me a case of "no shots left in the locker, no
+     copper to tinkle on a tombstone."  I was not down to my last
+     macaroni, or quarter-dollar; but I drank some sangaree and set about
+     to do it.  I got my courage from a look towards Rodney's statue in
+     its temple--Rodney did a great work for Jamaica against Admiral de
+     Grasse.
+
+     Why should I tell Biatt the truth about myself?  He knew it.
+     Cassandro was an accomplished liar, and a man of merit of his kind.
+     This obi-man's story I have never believed; yet how Biatt came to
+     know where that treasure-ship was I do not know now.
+
+     Yes, out we went through the harbour of Kingston, beyond the
+     splendid defences of Port Royal and the men-of-war there, past the
+     Palisadoes and Rock Fort, and away to the place of treasure-trove.
+     We found it--that lost galleon; and we found the treasure-box of the
+     captain's cabin.  We found gold too; but the treasure-box was the
+     chief thing; and we made it ours after many a hard day.  Three
+     months it was from the day Biatt first spoke to me to the day when,
+     with an expert diver, we brought the box to the surface and opened
+     it.
+
+     How I induced one of the big men of Jamaica to be banker and skipper
+     for us need not be told; but he is one of whom men have dark
+     sayings--chiefly, I take it, because he does bold, incomprehensible
+     things.  That business paid him well, for when the rent of the ship
+     was met, and the few men on it paid--slaves they were chiefly--he
+     pocketed ten thousand pounds, while Biatt and I each pouched forty
+     thousand, and Michael two thousand.  Aye, to be sure, Michael was in
+     it!  He is in all I do, and is as good as men of ten times his birth
+     and history.  Michael will be a rich man one day.  In two years his
+     two thousand have grown to four, and he misses no chance.
+
+     But those days when Biatt and I went treasure-ship hunting were not
+     without their trials.  If we had failed, then no more could this
+     land have been home or resting-place for us.  We should only have
+     been sojourners with no name, in debt, in disgrace, a pair of
+     braggart adventurers, who had worked a master-man of the island for
+     a ship, and money and men, and had lost all except the ship!  Though
+     to be sure, the money was not a big thing--a, few hundred pounds;
+     but the ship was no flea-bite.  It was a biggish thing, for it could
+     be rented to carry sugar--it was, in truth, a sugar-ship of four
+     hundred tons--but it never carried so big a cargo of sugar as it did
+     on the day when that treasure-box was brought to the surface of the
+     sea.
+
+     I'm bound to say this--one of the straightest men I ever met, liar
+     withal, was Cassandro Biatt.  He took his jewels and vanished up the
+     seas in a flourish.  He would not even have another try at the gold
+     in the bowels of the ship.
+
+     "I've got plenty to fill my paunch, and I'll go while I've enough.
+     It's the men not going in time that get left in the end"--that's
+     what he said.
+
+     And he was right; for other men went after the gold and got some of
+     it, and were caught by French and South American pirates and lost
+     all they had gained.  Still another group went and brought away ten
+     thousand pounds, and lost it in fighting with Spanish buccaneers.
+     So Biatt was right, and went away content, while I stayed here--
+     because I must--and bought the land and house where I have my great
+     sugar-plantation.  It is an enterprise of volume, and all would be
+     well if I were normal in mind and body; but I am not.  I have a past
+     that stinks to heaven, as Shakespeare says, and I am an outlaw of
+     the one land which has all my soul and name and heritage.  Yes, that
+     is what they have done to me--made a convict, an outlaw of me.  I
+     may live--but not in the British Isles; and if any man kills me, he
+     is not liable to the law.
+
+     Men do not treat me badly here, for I have property and money, and
+     this is a land where these two things mean more than anywhere else,
+     even more than in a republic like that where you live.  Here men
+     live according to the law of the knife, fork, and bottle, yet
+     nowhere in the world is there deeper national morality or wider
+     faith or endurance.  It is a land where the sea is master, where
+     naval might is the chief factor, and weighs down all else.
+
+     Here the navies of the great powers meet and settle their disputes,
+     and every being in the island knows that life is only worth what a
+     hundred-ton brig-of-war permits.  I have seen here in Jamaica the
+     off-scourings of the French and Spanish fleets on parole; have seen
+     them entering King's House like loyal citizens; have even known of
+     French prisoners being used as guards at the entrance of King's
+     House, and I have informed the chief justice of dismal facts which
+     ought to have moved him.  But what can you expect of a chief justice
+     who need not be a lawyer, as this one is not, and has other means of
+     earning income which, though not disloyal, are lowering to the
+     status of a chief justice?  And not the chief justice alone.  I have
+     seen French officers entertained at Government House who were guilty
+     of shocking inhumanities and cruelties.  The governor, Lord Mallow,
+     is much to blame.  On him lies the responsibility; to him must go
+     the discredit.  For myself, I feel his enmity on every hand.  I
+     suffer from his suggestions; I am the victim of his dark moods.
+
+     If I want a concession from a local council, his hand is at work
+     against me; if I see him in the street, I get a courtesy tossed, as
+     you would toss a bone to a dog.  If I appear at the king's ball,
+     which is open to all on the island who are respectable, I am treated
+     with such disdain by the viceroy of the king that all the island is
+     agog.  I went one day to the king's ball the same as the rest of the
+     world, and I went purposely in dress contrary to the regulations.
+     Here was the announcement of the affair in the Royal Gazette, which
+     was reproduced in the Chronicle, the one important newspaper in the
+     island:
+
+                                        KING'S HOUSE,
+                                        October 27th, 1797.
+
+          KING'S BALL.
+
+          There will be a Ball given by His Honour the Lieutenant-
+          Governor, on Tuesday evening, the 6th day of December next,
+          in honour of
+
+                         HIS MAJESTY'S BIRTHDAY.
+
+          To prevent confusion, Ladies and Gentlemen are requested to
+          order their carriages to come by the Old Court House, and go
+          off by the Long Room.
+
+          N.B.--No gentlemen can possibly be admitted in boots, or
+          otherwise improperly dressed.
+
+
+     Well, in a spirit of mutiny--in which I am, in a sense, an expert--
+     I went in boots and otherwise "improperly dressed," for I wore my
+     hair in a queue, like a peasant.  What is more, I danced with a
+     negress in the great quadrille, and thereby offended the governor
+     and his lady aunt, who presides at his palace.  It matters naught to
+     me.  On my own estate it was popular enough, and that meant more to
+     me than this goodwill of Lord Mallow.
+
+     He does not spare me in his recitals to his friends, who carry his
+     speech abroad.  His rancour against me is the greater, I know,
+     because of the wealth I got in the treasure-ship, to prevent which
+     he tried to prohibit my leaving the island, through the withholding
+     of a leave-ticket to me.  His argument to the local authorities was
+     that I had no rights, that I am a murderer and a mutineer, and
+     confined to the island, though not on parole.  He almost succeeded;
+     but the man to whom I went, the big rich man intervened,
+     successfully--how I know not--and I was let go with my permit-
+     ticket.
+
+     What big things hang on small issues!  If my Lord Mallow had
+     prevented me leaving the island, I shouldn't now own a great
+     plantation and three hundred negroes.  I shouldn't be able to pay
+     my creditors in good gold Portuguese half-johannes and Spanish
+     doubloons, and be free of Spanish silver, and give no heed to the
+     bitt, which, as you perhaps know, is equal to fivepence in British
+     money, such as you and I used to spend when you were Queen of
+     Ireland and I was your slave.
+
+     Then I worshipped you as few women have been worshipped in all the
+     days of the world--oh, cursed spite of life and time that I should
+     have been jailed for killing your bad father!  Aye, he was a bad
+     man, and he is better in his grave than out of it, but it puts a
+     gulf between you and me which nothing will ever bridge--unless it
+     should some day be known I did not kill him, and then, no doubt, it
+     will be too late.
+
+     On my soul, I don't believe I put my sword into him; but if I did,
+     he well deserved it, for he was worse than faithless to your mother,
+     he was faithless to his country--he was a traitor!  I did not tell
+     that story of his treachery in court--I did not tell it because of
+     you.  You did not deserve such infamy, and the truth came not out at
+     the trial.  I, in my view, dared not, lest it might injure you, and
+     you had suffered enough--nay, more than enough--through him.
+
+     I wonder how you are, and if you have changed--I mean in appearance.
+     I am sure you are not married; I should have felt it in my bones,
+     if you were.  No, no, my sweet lass, you are not married.  But
+     think--it is more than seven long years since we met on the hills
+     above Playmore, and you put your hand in mine and said we should be
+     friends for all time.  It is near three years since a letter came to
+     me from you, and in the time I have made progress.
+
+     I did not go to the United States, as you asked me to do.  Is it not
+     plain I could not?  My only course was to avoid you.  You see, your
+     mother knows the truth--knows that I was jailed for killing your
+     father and her divorced husband.  Therefore, the only way to do was
+     as I did.  I could not go where you were.  There should be hid from
+     you the fact that Erris Boyne was a traitor.  This is your right, in
+     my mind.  Looking back, I feel sure I could have escaped jail if I
+     had told what I knew of Erris Boyne; and perhaps it would have been
+     better, for I should, no doubt, have been acquitted.  Yet I could
+     not have gone to you, for I am not sure I did not kill him.
+
+     So it is best as it is.  We are as we are, and nothing can make all
+     different for us.  I am a dissolute planter of Jamaica who has
+     snatched from destiny a living and some riches.  I have a bad name
+     in the world.  Yet by saving the king's navy from defeat out here I
+     did a good turn for my country and the empire.
+
+     So much to the good.  It brought me freedom from the rope and pardon
+     for my chief offence.  Then, in company with a rogue, I got wealth
+     from the depths of the sea, and here I am in the bottom of my
+     luxury, drunken and obscene--yes, obscene, for I permit my overseers
+     and my manager to keep black women and have children by them.  That
+     I do not do so myself is no virtue on my part, but the virtue of a
+     girl whom I knew in Connemara.  I fill myself with drink.  I have a
+     bottle of madeira or port every night, and pints of beer or claret.
+     I am a creature of low habits, a man sodden with self-indulgence.
+     And when I am in drink, no slaver can be more cruel and ruthless.
+
+     Yet I am moderate in eating.  The meals that people devour here
+     almost revolt me.  They eat like cormorants and drink like dry
+     ground; but at my table I am careful, save with the bottle.  This
+     is a land of wonderful fruits, and I eat in quantities pineapple,
+     tamarind, papaw, guava, sweet-sop, star-apple, granadilla, hog-plum,
+     Spanish-gooseberry, and pindal-nut.  These are native, but there are
+     also the orange, lemon, lime, shaddock, melon, fig, pomegranate,
+     cinnamon, and mango, brought chiefly from the Spanish lands of South
+     America.  The fruit-market here is good, Heaven knows, and I have my
+     run of it.  Perhaps that is why my drink does not fatten me greatly.
+     Yes, I am thin--thinner even than when you saw me last.  How
+     wonderful a day it was!  You remember it, I'm sure.
+
+     We stood on the high hills, you and I, looking to the west.  It was
+     a true Irish day.  A little in front of us, in the sky, were great
+     clusters of clouds, and beyond them, as far as eye could see, were
+     hills so delicately green, so spotted with settlements, so misty and
+     full of glamour, and so cheerful with the western light.  And the
+     storm broke--do you remember it?  It broke, but not on us.  It fell
+     on the middle of the prospect before us, and we saw beyond it the
+     bright area of sunny country where men work and prophesy and slave,
+     and pray to the ancient gods and acclaim the saints, and die and
+     fructify the mould; where such as Christopher Dogan live, and men a
+     thousand times lower than he.  Christopher came to the jail the day
+     I was released--with Michael Clones he came.  He read me my bill of
+     life's health--what was to become of me--the black and the white of
+     it, the good and the bad, the fair and the foul.  Even the good
+     fortune of the treasure from the sea he foresaw, and much else that
+     has not come to me, and, as I think, will never come; for it is too
+     full a cup for me so little worthy of it.
+
+     It seems strange to me that I am as near to the United States here
+     in Jamaica, or almost as near, as one in London is to one in Dublin;
+     and yet one might as well be ten thousand leagues distant for all it
+     means to her one loves in the United States.  Yes, dear Sheila, I
+     love you, and I would tear out the heart of the world for you.  I
+     bathe my whole being in your beauty and your charm.  I hunger for
+     you--to stand beside you, to listen to your voice, to dip my prison
+     fingers into the pure cauldron of your soul and feel my own soul
+     expand.  I wonder why it is that to-day I feel more than I ever felt
+     before the rare splendour of your person.
+
+     I have always admired you and loved you, always heard you calling
+     me, as if from some sacred corner of a perfect world.  Is it that
+     yesterday's dissipation--yes, I was drunk yesternight, drunk in a
+     new way.  I was drunk with the thought of you, the longing for you.
+     I picked a big handful of roses, and in my mind gave them into your
+     hands.  And I thought you smiled and said:
+
+     "Well done, good and faithful servant.  Enter Paradise."  So I
+     followed you to your home there in the Virginian country.  It was a
+     dream, all except the roses, and those I laid in front of the box
+     where I keep your letters and a sketch I made of you when we were
+     young and glad--when I was young and glad.  For I am an old man,
+     Sheila, in all that makes men old.  My step is quick still, my eye
+     is sharp, and my brain beats fast, but my heart is ancient.  I am an
+     ancient of days, without hope or pleasure, save what pleasure comes
+     in thinking of one whom I worship, yet must ever worship from afar.
+
+     I wonder why I seem to feel you very near to-day!  Perhaps it's
+     because 'tis Christmas Day.  I am not a religious man but Christmas
+     is a day of memories.
+
+     Is it because of the past in Ireland?  Am I only--God, am I only to
+     be what I am for the rest of my days, a planter denied the pleasure
+     of home by his own acts!  Am I only a helpless fragment of a world
+     of lost things?
+
+     I have no friends--but yes, I have.  I have Michael Clones and
+     Captain Ivy, though he's far away-aye, he's a friend of friends, is
+     Captain Ivy.  These naval folk have had so much of the world, have
+     got the bearings of so many seas, that they lose all littleness, and
+     form their own minds.  They are not like the people who knew me in
+     Ireland--the governor here is one of them--and who believe the worst
+     of me.  The governor--faugh, he was made for bigger and better
+     things!  He is one of the best swordsmen in the world, and he is
+     out against me here as if I was a man of importance, and not a
+     commonplace planter on an obscure river.  I have no social home
+     life, and yet I live in what is called a castle.  A Jamaica castle
+     has none of the marks of antiquity, chivalry, and distinction which
+     castles that you and I know in the old land possess.
+
+     What is my castle like?  Well, it is a squarish building, of
+     bungalow type, set on a hill.  It has stories and an attic, with a
+     jutting dormer-window in the front of the roof; and above the lowest
+     story there is a great verandah, on which the livingrooms and
+     bedrooms open.  It is commodious, and yet from a broad standpoint it
+     is without style or distinction.  It has none of those Corinthian
+     pillars which your homesteads in America have.  Yet there is in it a
+     simple elegance.  It has no carpets, but a shining mahogany floor,
+     for there are few carpets in this land of heat.  It is a place where
+     music and mirth and family voices would be fitting; but there are no
+     family voices here, save such as speak with a negro lisp and
+     oracularly.
+
+     I can hear music at this moment, and inside my castle.  It comes
+     from the irrepressible throats of my cook and my housemaid, who have
+     more joy in the language of the plantation than you could have in
+     the songs of St. Angelus.  The only person in this castle out of
+     spirits is its owner.
+
+     My castle is embowered in a loose grove of palms and acacias,
+     pimento shrubs, spendid star-apples, and bully-trees, with wild
+     lemon, mahogany, dogwood, Jerusalem-thorn, and the waving plumes of
+     bamboo canes.  There is nothing British in it--nothing at all.  It
+     stands on brick pillars, is reached by a stair of marble slabs, and
+     has a great piazza on the front.  You enter a fine, big hall, dark-
+     you will understand that, though it is not so hot in Virginia, for
+     the darkness makes for coolness.  From the hall the bedrooms open
+     all round.  We are not so barbaric here as you might think, for my
+     dining-room, which lies beyond the hall, with jalousies or movable
+     blinds, exposed to all the winds, is comfortable, even ornate.
+     There you shall see waxlights on the table, and finger-glasses with
+     green leaves, and fine linen and napkins, and plenty of silver--even
+     silver wine-coolers, and beakers of fame and beauty, and flowers,
+     flowers everywhere, and fruit of exquisite charm.  I have to live
+     in outward seeming as do my neighbours, even to keeping a black
+     footman, gorgeously dressed, with bare legs.
+
+     Here at my window grows a wild aloe, and it is in flower.  Once only
+     in fifty years does this aloe flower, and I pick its sweet verdure
+     now and offer it to you.  There it lies, beside this letter that I
+     am writing.  It is typical of myself, for only once has my heart
+     flowered, and it will be only once in fifty years.  The perfume of
+     the flower is like an everlasting bud from the last tree of Time.
+     See, my Sheila, your drunken, reckless lover pulls this sweet
+     offering from his garden and offers it to you.  He has no virtues;
+     and yet he would have been a thousand times worse, if you had not
+     come into his life.  He had in him the seeds of trouble, the
+     sproutings of shame, for even in the first days of his love there in
+     Dublin he would not restrain himself.  He drank, he played cards, he
+     fought and went with bad company--not women, never that; but he kept
+     the company of those through whom he came at last to punishment for
+     manslaughter.
+
+     Yet, without you, who can tell what he might have been?  He might
+     have fallen so low that not the wealth of ten thousand treasure-
+     boxes could give him even the appearance of honesty.  And now he
+     offers you what you cannot accept--can never accept--a love as deep
+     as the life from which he came; a love that would throttle the world
+     for you, that would force the doors of hell to bring you what you
+     want.
+
+     What do you want?  I know not.  Perhaps you have inherited the vast
+     property to which you were the heir.  If you have, what can you want
+     that you have not means to procure?  Ah, I have learned one thing,
+     my friend 'one can get nearly everything with money.  It is the
+     hidden machinery which makes the world of success go round.  With
+     brains, you say?  Yes, money and brains, but without the money
+     brains seldom win alone.  Do not I know?  When I was in prison, with
+     estate vanished and home gone and my father in his grave, who was
+     concerned about me?
+
+     Only the humblest of all God's Irish people; but with them I have
+     somehow managed to win back lost ground.  I am a stronger man than I
+     was in all that men count of value in the world.  I have an estate
+     where I work like any youth who has everything before him.  I have
+     nothing before me, yet I shall go on working to the end.  Why?
+     Because I have some faculties which are more than bread and butter,
+     and I must give them opportunity.
+
+     Yet I am not always sane.  Sometimes I feel I could march out and
+     sweep into the sea one of the towns that dot the coast of this
+     island.  I have the bloody thirst, as said the great Spanish
+     conquistador.  I would like--yes, sometimes I would like to sweep
+     to a watery grave one of the towns that are a glory to this island,
+     as Savanna la Mar was swept to oblivion in the year 1780 by a
+     hurricane.  You can still see the ruins of the town at the bottom of
+     the sea--I have sailed over it in what is now the harbour, and there
+     beneath, on the deep sands, lost to time and trouble, is the slain
+     and tortured town of Savanna la Mar.  Was the Master of the World
+     angry that day when, with a besom of wind and a tidal wave, He swept
+     the place into the sea?  Or was it some devil's work while the Lord
+     of All slept?  As the Spanish say, Quien sabe?
+
+     Then there was that other enormous incident which made a man to be
+     swallowed by an earthquake, then belched out again into the sea and
+     picked up and restored to life again, and to live for many years.
+     Indeed, yes, it is so.  His tombstone may be seen even at this day
+     at Green Bay, Kingston.  His name was Lewis Galdy, and he is held in
+     high repute in this land.
+
+     I feel sometimes as Beelzebub may feel, and I long to do what
+     Beelzebub might do as part of his mission.  Sometimes a madness
+     of revolt comes over me, and I long to ravage all the places I see,
+     all the people I know--or nearly all.  Why I do not have negroes
+     thrashed and mutilated, as some do, I know not.  Over against the
+     southern shore in the parish of St. Elizabeth is an estate called
+     Salem, owned, it is said, by an American, where the manager does
+     such things.  I am told that savageries are found there.  There
+     are too many absentee owners of land in this island, and the wrongs
+     done by agents who have no personal honour at stake are all too
+     plentiful.  If I could, I would have no slavery, would set all the
+     blacks free, making full compensation to the owners, and less to the
+     absentee owners.
+
+     I look out on a world of summer beauty and of heat.  I see the sheep
+     in hundreds on the far hills of pasturage--sheep with short hair,
+     small and sweet as any that ever came from the South Downs.  I see
+     the natives in their Madras handkerchiefs.  I see upon the road some
+     planter in his ketureen--a sort of sedan chair; I see a negro
+     funeral, with its strange ceremony and its gumbies of African drums.
+     I see yam-fed planters, on their horses, making for the burning,
+     sandy streets of the capital.  I see the Scots grass growing five
+     and six feet high, food unsurpassed for horses--all the foliage too
+     --beautiful tropical trees and shrubs, and here and there a huge
+     breeding-farm.  Yet I know that out beyond my sight there is the
+     region known as Trelawney, and Trelawney Town, the headquarters of
+     the Maroons, the free negroes--they who fled after the Spanish had
+     been conquered and the British came, and who were later freed and
+     secured by the Trelawney Treaty.  I know that now they are ready to
+     rise, that they are working among the slaves; and if they rise the
+     danger is great to the white population of the island, who are
+     outnumbered ten to one.
+
+     The governor has been warned, but he gives no heed, or treats it all
+     lightly, pointing out how few the Maroons are.  He forgets that a
+     few determined men can demoralize a whole state, can fight and
+     murder and fly to dark coverts in the tropical woods, where they
+     cannot be tracked down and destroyed; and, if they have made
+     supporters of the slaves, what consequences may not follow!
+
+     What do the Maroons look like?  They are ferocious and isolated,
+     they are proud and overbearing, they are horribly cruel, but they
+     are potent, and are difficult to reach.  They are not small and
+     meagre, but are big, brawny fellows, clothed in wide duck trousers
+     and shirts, and they are well-armed--cutlass, powder-horn,
+     haversack, sling, shot-gun, and pouch for ball.  They dress as the
+     country requires, and they are strong fighters against our soldiers
+     who are burdened with heavy muskets, and who defy the climate, with
+     their stuffed coats, their weighty caps, and their tight cross-
+     belts.  The Maroons are not to be despised.  They have brains, the
+     insolence of freedom among natives who are not free, and vast
+     cruelty.  They can be mastered and kept in subjection, can be made
+     allies, if properly handled; but Lord Mallow goes the wrong way
+     about it all.  He permits things that inflame the Maroons.
+
+     One thing is clear to me--only by hounds can these people be
+     defeated.  So sure am I upon this point, that I have sent to Cuba
+     for sixty hounds, with which, when the trouble comes--and it is not
+     far off--we shall be able to hunt the Maroons with the only weapon
+     they really fear--the dog's sharp tooth.  It may be the governor may
+     intervene on the arrival of the dogs; but I have made friends with
+     the provost-marshal-general and some members of the Jamaica
+     legislature; also I have a friend in the deputy of the provost-
+     marshal-general in my parish of Clarendon here, and I will make a
+     good bet that the dogs will be let come into the island, governor
+     or no governor.
+
+     When one sets oneself against the Crown one must be sure of one's
+     ground, and fear no foe, however great and high.  Well, I have won
+     so far, and I shall win in the end.  Mallow should have some respect
+     for one that beat him at Phoenix Park with the sword; that beat him
+     when he would have me imprisoned here; that beat him in the matter
+     of the ship for Haiti, and that will beat him on every hazard he
+     sets, unless he stoops to underhand acts, which he will not do.
+     That much must be said for him.  He plays his part in no small way,
+     and he is more a bigot and a fanatic loyalist than a rogue.
+     Suppose--but no, I will not suppose.  I will lay my plans, I will
+     keep faith with people here who trust me, and who know that if I am
+     stern I am also just, and I will play according to the rules made by
+     better men than myself.
+
+But what is this I see?  Michael Clones--in his white jean waistcoat,
+white neckcloth and trousers, and blue coat--is coming up the drive in
+hot haste, bearing a letter.  He rides too hard.  He has never carried
+himself easily in this climate.  He treats it as if it was Ireland.  He
+will not protect himself, and, if penalty followed folly, should now be
+in his grave.  I like you, Michael.  You are a boon, but--
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+STRANGERS ARRIVE
+
+Dyck Calhoun's letter was never ended.  It was only a relic of the years
+spent in Jamaica, only a sign of his well-being, though it gave no real
+picture of himself.  He did not know how like a tyrant he had become in
+some small ways, while in the large things he remained generous, urbane,
+and resourceful.  He was in appearance thin, dark-favoured, buoyant in
+manner, and stern of face, with splendid eyes.  Had he dwelt on Olympus,
+he might have been summoned to judge and chastise the sons of men.
+
+When Michael Clones came to the doorway, Dyck laid down his quill-pen and
+eyed the flushed servant in disapproval.
+
+"What is it, Michael?  Wherefore this starkness?  Is some one come from
+heaven?"
+
+"Not precisely from heaven, y'r honour, but--"
+
+"But--yes, Michael!  Have done with but-ing, and come to the real
+matter."
+
+"Well, sir, they've come from Virginia."
+
+Dyck Calhoun slowly got to his feet, his face paling, his body
+stiffening.  From Virginia!  Who should be come from Virginia, save she
+to whom he had just been writing?
+
+"Who has come from Virginia?"  He knew, but he wanted it said.
+
+"Sure, you knew a vessel came from America last night.  Well, in her was
+one that was called the Queen of Ireland long ago."
+
+"Queen of Ireland--well, what then?"  Dyck's voice was tuneless, his
+manner rigid, his eyes burning.  "Well, she--Miss Sheila Llyn and her
+mother are going to the Salem Plantation, down by the Essex Valley
+Mountain.  It is her plantation now.  It belonged to her uncle, Bryan
+Llyn.  He got it in payment of a debt.  He's dead now, and all his lands
+and wealth have come to her.  Her mother, Mrs. Llyn, is with her, and
+they start to-morrow or the next day for Salem.  There'll be different
+doings at Salem henceforward, y'r honour.  She's not the woman to see
+slaves treated as the manager at Salem treated 'em."
+
+Dyck Calhoun made an impatient gesture at this last remark.
+
+"Yes, yes, Michael.  Where are they now?"
+
+"They're at Charlotte Bedford's lodgings in Spanish Town.  The governor
+waited on them this morning.  The governor sent them flowers and--"
+
+"Flowers--Lord Mallow sent them flowers!  Hell's fiend, man, suppose he
+did?"
+
+"There are better flowers here than in any Spanish Town."
+
+"Well, take them, Michael; but if you do, come here again no more while
+you live, for I'll have none of you.  Do you think I'm entering the lists
+against the king's governor?"
+
+"You've done it before, sir, and there's no harm in doing it again.  One
+good turn deserves another.  I've also to tell you, sir, that Lord Mallow
+has asked them to stay at King's House."
+
+
+"Lord Mallow has asked Americans to stay at King's House!"
+
+"But they're Irish, and he knew them in Ireland, y 'r honour."
+
+"Well, he knew me in Ireland, and I'm proscribed!"
+
+"Ah, that's different, as you know.  There's no war on now, and they're
+only good American citizens who own land in this dominion of the king; so
+why shouldn't he give them courtesy?"
+
+"From whom do you get your information?" asked Dyck Calhoun with an air
+of suspicion.
+
+"From Darius Boland, y'r honour," answered Michael, with a smile.  "Who
+is Darius Boland, you're askin' in y'r mind?  Well, he's the new manager
+come from the Llyn plantations in Virginia; and right good stuff he is,
+with a tongue that's as dry as cut-wheat in August.  And there's humour
+in him, plenty-aye, plenty.  When did I see him, and how?  Well, I saw
+him this mornin', on the quay at Kingston.  He was orderin' the porters
+about with an air--oh, bedad, an air!  I saw the name upon the parcels--
+Miss Sheila Llyn, of Moira, Virginia, and so I spoke to him.  The rest
+was aisy.  He looked me up and down in a flash, like a searchlight
+playin' on an enemy ship, and then he smiled.  'Well,' said he, 'who
+might you be?  For there's queer folks in Jamaica, I'm told.'  So I said
+I was Michael Clones, and at that he doffed his hat and held out a hand.
+'Well, here's luck,' said he.  'Luck at the very start!  I've heard of
+you from my mistress.  You're servant to Mr. Dyck Calhoun--ain't that
+it?'  And I nodded, and he smiled again--a smile that'd cost money
+annywhere else than in Jamaica.  He smiled again, and give a slow hitch
+to his breeches as though they was fallin' down.  Why, sir, he's the
+longest bit of man you ever saw, with a pointed beard, and a nose that's
+as long as a midshipman's tongue-dry, lean, and elastic.  He's quick and
+slow all at once.  His small eyes twinkle like stars beatin' up against
+bad weather, and his skin's the colour of Scots grass in the dead of
+summer-yaller, he'd call it if he called it anything, and yaller was what
+he called the look of the sky above the hills.  Queer way of talk he has,
+that man, as queer as--"
+
+"I understand, Michael.  But what else?  How did you come to talk about
+the affairs of Mrs. and Miss Llyn?  He didn't just spit it out, did he?"
+
+"Sure, not so quick and free as spittin', y'r honour; but when he'd
+sorted me out, as it were, he said Miss Llyn had come out here to take
+charge of Salem; her own estate in Virginia bein' in such good runnin'
+order, and her mind bein' active.  Word had come of the trouble with the
+manager here, and one of the provost-marshal's deputies had written
+accounts of the flogging and ill-treatment of slaves, and that's why
+she come--to put things right at Salem!"
+
+"To put things wrong in Jamaica, Michael, that's why she's come.  To
+loose the ball of confusion and free the flood of tragedy--that's why
+she's come!  Man, Michael, you know her history--who she was and what
+happened to her father.  Well, do you think there's no tragedy in her
+coming here?  I killed her father, they say, Michael.  I was punished for
+it.  I came here to be free of all those things--lifted out and away from
+them all.  I longed to forget the past, which is only shame and torture;
+and here it is all spread out at my door again like a mat, which I must
+see as I go in and out.  Essex Valley--why, it's less than a day's ride
+from here, far less than a day's ride!  It can be ridden in four or five
+hours at a trot.  Michael, it's all a damnable business.  And here she is
+in Jamaica with her Darius Boland!  There was no talk on Boland's part of
+their coming here, was there Michael?"
+
+"None at all, sir, but there was that in the man's eye, and that in his
+tone, which made me sure he thought Miss Llyn and you would meet."
+
+"That would be strange, wouldn't it, in this immense continent!"  Dyck
+remarked cynically.
+
+"She knew I was here before she came?"
+
+"Aye, she knew.  She had seen your name in the papers--English and
+Jamaican.  She knew you had regained your life and place, and was a man
+of mark here."
+
+"A marked man, you mean, Michael--a man whom the king has had to pardon
+of a crime because of an act done that served the State.  I am forbidden
+to return to the British Isles or to the land of my birth, forbidden free
+traffic as a citizen, hammered out of recognition by the strokes of
+enmity.  A man of mark, indeed!  Aye, with the broad arrow on me, with
+the shame of prison and mutiny on my name!"
+
+"But if she don't believe?"
+
+"If she don't believe!  Well, she must be told the truth at last.  I
+wonder her mother let her come here.  Her mother knew part of the truth.
+She hid it all from the girl--and now they are here!  I must see it
+through, but it's a wretched fate, Michael."
+
+"Perhaps her mother didn't know you were here, sir."
+
+Dyck laughed grimly.  "Michael, you've a lawyer's mind.  Perhaps you're
+right.  The girl may have hid from her mother all newspapers referring to
+me.  That may well be; but it's not the way that will bring
+understanding."
+
+"I think it's the truth, sir, for Darius Boland spoke naught of the
+mother--indeed, he said only what would make me think the girl came with
+her own ends in view.  Faith, I'm sure the mother did not know."
+
+"She will know now.  Your Darius Boland will tell her."
+
+"By St. Peter, it doesn't matter who tells her, sir.  The business must
+be faced."
+
+"Michael, order my horse, and I will go to Spanish Town.  This matter
+must be brought to a head.  The truth must be told.  Order my horse!"
+"It is the very heat of the day, sir."
+
+"Then at five o'clock, after dinner, have my horse here."
+
+"Am I to ride with you, sir?"
+
+Dyck nodded.  "Yes, Michael.  There's only one thing to do--face all the
+facts with all the evidence, and you are fact and evidence too.  You know
+more of the truth than any one else."
+
+Several hours later, when the sun was abating its force a little, after
+travelling the burning roads through yams and cocoa, grenadillas and all
+kinds of herbs and roots and vagrant trees, Dyck Calhoun and Michael
+Clones came into Spanish Town.  Dyck rode the unpaved streets on his
+horse with its high demipicque Spanish saddle, with its silver stirrups
+and heavy bit, and made his way towards Charlotte Bedford's lodgings.
+
+Dyck looked round upon the town with new eyes.  He saw it like one for
+the first time visiting it.  He saw the people passing through the wide
+verandahs of the houses, like a vast colonnade, down the street, to be
+happily sheltered from the fierce sun.  As he had come down from the
+hills he thought he had never seen the houses look more beautiful in
+their gardens of wild tamarinds, kennips, cocoa-nuts, pimentos, and
+palms, backed by negro huts.  He had seen all sorts of people at the
+draw-wells of the houses-British, Spanish, French, South American,
+Creoles, and here and there a Maroon, and the everlasting negro who sang
+as he worked:
+
+                   "Come along o' me, my buccra brave,
+                    You see de shild de Lord he gave:
+                    You drink de sangaree,
+                    I make de frichassee--"
+
+Here a face peeped out from the glazed sash of the jalousies of the
+balconies above--a face that could never be said to be white, though it
+had only a tinge of black in its coaxing beauty.  There a workman with
+long hair and shag trousers painted the prevailing two-storied house the
+prevailing colour, white and green.  There was a young naval officer in
+full dress, gold-buckled shoes, white trousers, short jacket with gold
+swab on shoulders, dress-sword and smart gait making for supper at King's
+House.
+
+A long-legged "son of a gun" of a Yankee had a "clapper-claw," or
+handshake, with a planting attorney in a kind of four-posted gig,
+canopied in leather and curtained clumsily.  The Yankee laughed at the
+heavy straight shafts and the mule that drew the volante, as the gig was
+called, and the vehicle creaked and cried as it rolled along over the
+road, which was like a dry river-bed.  There a French officer in Hessian
+boots, white trousers, blue uniform, and much-embroidered scarlet cuffs
+watched with amusement a slave carrying a goglet, or earthen jar, upon
+his head like an Egyptian, untouched by the hand, so adding dignity to
+carriage.  He was holding a "round-aboutation" with an old hag who was
+telling his fortune.
+
+As they passed King's House, they saw troops of the viceroy's guests
+issuing from the palace-officers of the king's navy and army, officers
+and men of the Jamaica militia, pale-faced, big-eyed men of the Creole
+class, mulattoes, quadroons and octoroons, Samboes with their wives in
+loose skirts, white stockings, and pinnacle hats.  There also passed, in
+the streets, black servants with tin cases on their heads, or carrying
+parcels in their arms, and here and there processions of servants, each
+with something that belonged to their mistresses, who would presently be
+attending the king's ball.
+
+Snatches of song were heard, and voices of men who had had a full meal
+and had "taken observations"--as looking through the bottom of a glass of
+liquor was called by people with naval spirit--were mixed in careless
+carousal.
+
+All this jarred on Dyck Calhoun and gave revolt to his senses.  Yet he
+was only half-conscious of the great sensuousness of the scene as he
+passed through it.  Now and then some one doffed a hat to him, and very
+occasionally some half-drunken citizen tossed at him a remark meant to
+wound; but he took no notice, and let things pleasant and provocative
+pass down the long ranges of indifference.
+
+All was brought to focus at last, however, by their arrival at Charlotte
+Bedford's lodgings, which, like most houses in the town, had a lookout or
+belfry fitted with green blinds and a telescope, and had a green-painted
+wooden railing round it.
+
+At the very entrance, inside the gate, in the garden, they saw Sheila
+Llyn, her mother, and Darius Boland, who seemed to be enduring from the
+mother some sharp reprimand, to the amusement of the daughter.  As the
+gate closed behind Dyck and Michael, the three from Virginia turned round
+and faced them.  As Dyck came forward, Sheila flushed and trembled.  She
+was no longer a young girl, but her slim straightness and the soft lines
+of her figure, gave her a dignity and charm which made her young
+womanhood distinguished--for she was now twenty-five, and had a carriage
+of which a princess might have been proud.  Yet it was plain that the
+entrance of Dyck at this moment was disturbing.  It was not what she had
+foreseen.
+
+She showed no hesitation, however, but came forward to meet her visitor,
+while Michael fell back, as also did Darius Boland.  Both these seemed to
+realize that the less they saw and heard the better; and they presently
+got together in another part of the garden, as Dyck Calhoun came near
+enough almost to touch Sheila.
+
+Surely, he thought, she was supreme in appearance and design.  She was
+like some rare flower of the field, alert, gentle, strong, intrepid, with
+buoyant face, brown hair, blue eyes and cream-like skin.  She was touched
+by a rose on each cheek and made womanly by firm and yet generous
+breasts, tenderly imprisoned by the white chiffon of her blouse in which
+was one bright sprig of the buds of a cherry-tree-a touch of modest
+luxuriance on a person sparsely ornamented.  It was not tropical, this
+picture of Sheila Llyn; it was a flick of northern life in a summer sky.
+It was at once cheerful and apart.  It had no August in it; no oil and
+wine.  It was the little twig that grew by a running spring.  It was
+fresh, dominant and serene.  It was Connemara on the Amazon!  It was
+Sheila herself, whom time had enriched with far more than years and
+experience.  It was a personality which would anywhere have taken place
+and held it.  It was undefeatable, persistent and permanent; it was the
+spirit of Ireland loose in a world that was as far apart from Ireland as
+she was from her dead, dishonoured father.
+
+And Dyck?  At first she felt she must fly to him--yes, in spite of the
+fact that he had suffered prison for manslaughter.  But a nearer look at
+him stopped the impulse at its birth.  Here was the Dyck Calhoun she had
+known in days gone by, but not the Dyck she had looked to see; for this
+man was like one who had come from a hanging, who had seen his dearest
+swinging at the end of a rope.  His face was set in coldness; his hair
+was streaked with grey; his forehead had a line in the middle; his manner
+was rigid, almost frigid, indeed.  Only in his eyes was there that which
+denied all that his face and manner said--a hungry, absorbing, hopeless
+look, the look of one who searches for a friend in the denying desert.
+
+Somehow, when he bowed low to her, and looked her in the eyes as no one
+in all her life had ever done, she had an almost agonized understanding
+of what a man feels who has been imprisoned--that is, never the same
+again.  He was an ex-convict, and yet she did not feel repelled by him.
+She did not believe he had killed Erris Boyne.  As for the later crime
+of mutiny, that did not concern her much.  She was Irish; but, more than
+that, she was in sympathy with the mutineers.  She understood why Dyck
+Calhoun, enlisting as a common sailor, should take up their cause and run
+risk to advance it.  That he had advanced it was known to all the world;
+that he had paid the price of his mutiny by saving the king's navy with
+a stolen ship had brought him pardon for his theft of a ship and mutiny;
+and that he had won wealth was but another proof of the man's power.
+
+"You would not come to America, so I came here, and--"  She paused, her
+voice trembling slightly.  "There is much to do at Salem," he added
+calmly, and yet with his heart beating, as it had not beaten since the
+day he had first met her at Playmore.
+
+"You would not take the money I sent to Dublin for you--the gift of a
+believing friend, and you would not come to America!"
+
+"I shall have to tell you why one day," he answered slowly, "but I'll pay
+my respects to your mother now."  So saying he went forward and bowed low
+to Mrs. Llyn.  Unlike her daughter, Mrs. Llyn did not offer her hand.
+She was pale, distraught, troubled--and vexed.  She, however, murmured
+his name and bowed.  "You did not expect to see me here in Jamaica," he
+said boldly.
+
+"Frankly, I did not, Mr. Calhoun," she said.
+
+"You resent my coming here to see you?  You think it bold, at least."
+
+She looked at him closely and firmly.  "You know why I cannot welcome
+you."
+
+"Yet I have paid the account demanded by the law.  And you had no regard
+for him.  You divorced him."
+
+Sheila had drawn near, and Dyck made a gesture in her direction.  "She
+does not know," he said, "and she should not hear what we say now?"
+
+Mrs. Llyn nodded, and in a low tone told Sheila that she wished to be
+alone with Dyck for a little while.  In Dyck's eyes, as he watched Sheila
+go, was a thing deeper than he had ever known or shown before.  In her
+white gown, and with her light step, Sheila seemed to float away--a
+picture graceful, stately, buoyant, "keen and small."  As she was about
+to pass beyond a clump of pimento bushes, she turned her head towards the
+two, and there was that in her eyes which few ever see and seeing are
+afterwards the same.  It was a look of inquiry, or revelation, of emotion
+which went to Dyck's heart.
+
+"No, she does not know the truth," Mrs. Llyn said.  "But it has been hard
+hiding it from her.  One never knew whether some chance remark, some
+allusion in the papers, would tell her you had killed her father."
+
+"Did I kill her father?" asked Dyck helplessly.  "Did I?  I was found
+guilty of it, but on my honour, Mrs. Llyn, I do not know, and I do not
+think I did.  I have no memory of it.  We quarrelled.  I drew my sword on
+him, then he made an explanation and I madly, stupidly drank drugged wine
+in reconciliation with him, and then I remember nothing more--nothing at
+all."
+
+"What was the cause of your quarrel?"
+
+Dyck looked at her long before answering.  "I hid that from my father
+even, and hid it from the world--did not even mention it in court at the
+trial.  If I had, perhaps I should not have gone to jail.  If I had,
+perhaps I should not be here in Jamaica.  If I had--"  He paused, a flood
+of reflection drowning his face, making his eyes shine with black sorrow.
+
+"Well, if you had!  .  .  .  Why did you not?  Wasn't it your duty to
+save yourself and save your friends, if you could?  Wasn't that your
+plain duty?"
+
+"Yes, and that was why I did not tell what the quarrel was.  If I had,
+even had I killed Erris Boyne, the jury would not have convicted me.
+Of that I am sure.  It was a loyalist jury."
+
+"Then why did you not?"
+
+"Isn't it strange that now after all these years, when I have settled the
+account with judge and jury, with state and law--that now I feel I must
+tell you the truth.  Madam, your ex-husband, Erris Boyne, was a traitor.
+He was an officer in the French army, and he offered to make me an
+officer also and pay me well in French Government money, if I would break
+my allegiance and serve the French cause--Ah, don't start!  He knew I was
+on my last legs financially.  He knew I had acquaintance with young rebel
+leaders like Emmet, and he felt I could be won.  So he made his proposal.
+Because of your daughter I held my peace, for she could bear it less than
+you.  I did not tell the cause of the quarrel.  If I had, there would
+have been for her the double shame.  That was why I held my peace--a
+fool, but so it was!"
+
+The woman seemed almost robbed of understanding.  His story overwhelmed
+her.  Yet what the man had done was so quixotic, so Celtic, that her
+senses were almost paralysed.
+
+"So mad--so mad and bad and wild you were," she said.  "Could you not see
+it was your duty to tell all, no matter what the consequences.  The man
+was a villain.  But what madness you were guilty of, what cruel madness!
+Only you could have done a thing like that.  Erris Boyne deserved death
+--I care not who killed him--you or another.  He deserved death, and it
+was right he should die.  But that you should kill him, apart from all
+else--why, indeed, oh, indeed, it is a tragedy, for you loved my
+daughter, and the killing made a gulf between you!  There could be
+no marriage in such a case.  She could not bear it, nor could you.  But
+please know this, Mr. Calhoun, that she never believed you killed Erris
+Boyne.  She has said so again and again.  You are the only man who has
+ever touched her mind or her senses, though many have sought her.
+Wherever she goes men try to win her, but she has no thought for any.
+Her mind goes back to you.  Just when you entered the garden I learned--
+and only then-that you were here.  She hid it from me, but Darius Boland
+knew, and he had seen your man, Michael Clones, and she had then made him
+tell me.  I was incensed.  I was her mother, and yet she had hid the
+thing from me.  I thought she came to this island for the sake of Salem,
+and I found that she came not for Salem, but for you.  .  .  .  Ah, Mr.
+Calhoun, she deserves what you did to save her, but you should not have
+done it."
+
+"She deserves all that any better man might do.  Why don't you marry her
+to some great man in your Republic?  It would settle my trouble for me
+and free her mind from anxiety.  Mrs. Llyn, we are not children, you and
+I.  You know life, and so do I, and--"
+
+She interrupted him.  "Be sure of this, Mr. Calhoun, she knows life even
+better than either of us.  She is, and has always been, a girl of sense
+and judgment.  When she was a child she was my master, even in Ireland.
+Yet she was obedient and faithful, and kept her head in all vexed things.
+She will have her way, and she will have it as she wants it, and in no
+other manner.  She is one of the world's great women.  She is unique.
+Child as she is, she still understands all that men do, and does it.
+Under her hands the estates in Virginia have developed even more than
+under the hands of my brother.  She controls like another Elizabeth.
+She has made those estates run like a spool of thread, and she will
+do the same here with Salem.  Be sure of that."
+
+"Why does she not marry?  Is there no man she can bear?  She could have
+the highest, that's sure."  He spoke with passion and insistence.  If she
+were married his trouble would be over.  The worst would have come to
+him--like death.  His eyes were only two dark fires in a face that was as
+near to tragic pain crystallized as any the world has seen.  Yet there
+was in it some big commanding thing, that gave it a ghastly handsomeness
+almost; that bathed his look in dignity and power, albeit a reckless
+power, a thing that would not be stayed by any blandishments.  He had the
+look of a lost angel, one who fell with Belial in the first days of sin.
+
+"There is no man she can bear--except here in Jamaica.  It is no use.
+Your governor, Lord Mallow, whom she knew in Ireland, who is distant kin
+of mine, he has already made advances here to her, as he did in Ireland
+--you did not know that.  Even before we left for Virginia he came to see
+us, and brought her books and flowers, and here, on our arrival, he
+brought her choicest blooms of his garden.  She is rich, and he would be
+glad of an estate that brings in scores of thousands of pounds yearly.
+He has asked us to stay at King's House, but we have declined.  We start
+for Salem in a few hours.  She wants her hand on the wheel."
+
+"Lord Mallow--he courts her, does he?"  His face grew grimmer.  "Well,
+she might do worse, though if she were one of my family I would rather
+see her in her grave than wedded to him.  For he is selfish--aye, as few
+men are!  He would eat and keep his apple too.  His theory is that life
+is but a game, and it must be played with steel.  He would squeeze the
+life out of a flower, and give the flower to his dog to eat.  He thinks
+first and always of himself.  He would--but there, he would make a good
+husband as husbands go for some women, but not for this woman!  It is not
+because he is my enemy I say this.  It is because there is only one woman
+like your daughter, and that is herself; and I would rather see her
+married to a hedger that really loved her than to Lord Mallow, who loves
+only one being on earth--himself.  But see, Mrs. Llyn, now that you know
+all, now that we three have met again, and this island is small and
+tragedy is at our doors, don't you think your daughter should be told the
+truth.  It will end everything for me.  But it would be better so.  It is
+now only cruelty to hide the truth, harsh to continue a friendship which
+will only appal her in the end.  If we had not met again like this, then
+silence might have been best; but as she is not cured of her tender
+friendship made upon the hills at Playmore, isn't it well to end it all?
+Your conscience will be clearer, and so will mine.  We shall have done
+the right thing at last.  Why did you not tell her who her father was?
+Then why blame me!  You held your peace to save your daughter, as you
+thought.  I held my tongue for the same reason; but she is so much a
+woman now, that she will understand, as she could not have understood
+years ago in Limerick.  In God's name, let us speak.  One of us should
+tell her, and I think it should be you.  And see, though I know I did
+right in withholding the facts about the quarrel with Erris Boyne, yet I
+favour telling her that he was a traitor.  The whole truth now, or
+nothing.  That is my view."
+
+He saw how lined and sunken was her face, he noted the weakness of her
+carriage, he realized the task he was putting on her, and his heart
+relented.  "No, I will do it," he added, with sudden will, "and I will do
+it now, if I may."
+
+"Oh, not to-day-not to-day!" she said with a piteous look.  "Let it
+not be to-day.  It is our first day here, and we are due at King's House
+to-night, even in an hour from now."
+
+"You want her at her glorious best, is that it?"  It seemed too strange
+that the pure feminine should show at a time of crisis like this, but
+there it was.  It was this woman's way.  But he added presently: "When
+she asks you what we have talked about, what will you say?"
+
+"Is it not easy?  I am a mother," she said meaningly.
+
+"And I am an ex-convict, and a mutineer--is that it?"
+
+She inclined her head.  "It should not be difficult to explain.  When you
+came I was speaking as I felt, and she will not think it strange if I
+give that as my reason."
+
+"But is it wise?  Isn't it better to end it all now?  Suppose Lord Mallow
+tells her."
+
+"He did not before.  He is not likely now," was the vexed reply.  "Is it
+a thing a gentleman will speak of to a lady?"
+
+"But you do not know Mallow.  If he thought she had seen me to-day, he
+would not hesitate.  What would you do if you were Lord Mallow?"
+
+"No, not to-day," she persisted.  "It is all so many years ago.  It can
+hurt naught to wait a little longer."
+
+"When and where shall it be?" he asked gloomily.  "At Salem--at Salem.
+We shall be settled then--and steady.  There is every reason why you
+should consider me.  I have suffered as few women have suffered,
+and I do not hate you.  I am only sorry."
+
+Far down at the other end of the garden he saw Sheila.  Her face was in
+profile--an exquisite silhouette.  She moved slowly among the pimento
+bushes.
+
+"As you wish," he said with a heavy sigh.  The sight of the girl
+anguished his soul.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+AT SALEM
+
+The plantation of Salem was in a region below the Pedro Plains in the
+parish of St. Elizabeth, where grow the aloe, and torch-thistle, and
+clumps of wood which alter the appearance of the plain from the South
+Downs of England, but where thousands of cattle and horses even in those
+days were maintained.  The air of the district was dry and elastic, and
+it filtered down to the valleys near like that where Salem was with its
+clusters of negro huts and offices, its mills and distilleries where
+sugar and rum were made.  Salem was situated on the Black River,
+accessible by boats and canoes.  The huts of negro slaves were near the
+sugar mills, without regard to order, but in clusters of banana, avocado-
+pear, limes and oranges, and with the cultivated land round their huts
+made an effective picture.
+
+One day every fortnight was allowed the negroes to cultivate their crops,
+and give them a chance to manufacture mats for beds, bark-ropes, wicker-
+chairs and baskets, earthen jars, pans, and that kind of thing.  The huts
+themselves were primitive to a degree, the floor being earth, the roof,
+of palm-thatch or the leaves of the cocoa-nut tree, the sides hard-posts
+driven in the ground and interlaced with wattle and plaster, and inside
+scarcely high enough for its owner to walk upright.  The furniture was
+scant--a quatre, or bed, made of a platform of boards, with a mat and a
+blanket, some low stools, a small table, an earthen water-jar, and some
+smaller ones, a pail and an iron pot, and calabashes which did duty for
+plates, dishes and bowls.  In one of the two rooms making the hut, there
+were always the ashes of the night-fire, without which negroes could not
+sleep in comfort.
+
+These were the huts of the lowest grade of negro-slaves of the fields.
+The small merchants and the domestics had larger houses with boarded
+floors, some even with linen sheets and mosquito nets, and shelves with
+plates and dishes of good ware.  Every negro received a yearly allowance
+of Osnaburgh linen, woollen, baize and checks for clothes, and some
+planters also gave them hats and handkerchiefs, knives, needles and
+thread, and so on.
+
+Every plantation had a surgeon who received a small sum for attendance on
+every slave, while special cases of midwifery, inoculation, etc., had a
+particular allowance.  The surgeon had to attend to about four hundred to
+five hundred negroes, on an income of L150 per annum, and board and
+lodging and washing, besides what he made from his practice with the
+whites.
+
+Salem was no worse than some other plantations on the island, but it was
+far behind such plantations as that owned by Dyck Calhoun, and had been
+notorious for the cruelties committed on it.  To such an estate a lady
+like Sheila Llyn would be a boon.  She was not on the place a day before
+she started reforms which would turn the plantation into a model scheme.
+Houses, food, treatment of the negroes, became at once a study to her,
+and her experience in Virginia was invaluable.  She had learned there not
+to work the slaves too hard in the warm period of the day; and she showed
+her interest by having served at her own table the favourite olio the
+slaves made of plantains, bananas, yams, calalue, eddoes, cassavi, and
+sweet potatoes boiled with salt fish and flavoured with cayenne pepper.
+This, with the unripe roasted plantain as bread, was a native relish and
+health-giving food.
+
+Ever since the day when she had seen Dyck Calhoun at Spanish Town she had
+been disturbed in mind.  Dyck had shown a reserve which she felt was not
+wholly due to his having been imprisoned for manslaughter.  In one way he
+looked little older.  His physique was as good, or better than when she
+first saw him on the hills of Playmore.  It was athletic, strenuous,
+elastic.  Yet there was about it the abandonment of despair--at least
+of recklessness.  The face was older, the head more powerful, the hair
+slightly touched with grey-rather there was one spot in the hair almost
+pure white; a strand of winter in the foliage of summer.  It gave a touch
+of the bizarre to a distinguished head, it lent an air of the singular to
+a personality which had flare and force--an almost devilish force.  That
+much was to be said for him, that he had not sought to influence her to
+his own advantage.  She was so surrounded in America by men who knew her
+wealth and prized her beauty, she was so much a figure in Virginia, that
+any reserve with regard to herself was noticeable.  She was enough
+feminine to have pleasure in the fact that she was thought desirable
+by men; yet it played an insignificant part in her life.
+
+It did not give her conceit.  It was only like a frill on the skirts
+of life.  It did not play any part in her character.  Certainly Dyck
+Calhoun had not flattered her.  That one to whom she had written, as she
+had done, should remove himself so from the place of the deserving
+friend, one whom she had not deserted while he was in jail as a criminal
+--that he should treat her so, gave every nerve a thrill of protest.
+Sometimes she trembled in indignation, and then afterwards gave herself
+to the work on the estate or in the household--its reform and its
+rearrangement; though the house was like most in Jamaica, had adequate
+plate, linen, glass and furniture.  At the lodgings in Spanish Town,
+after Dyck Calhoun had left, her mother had briefly said that she had
+told Dyck he could not expect the conditions of the Playmore friendship
+should be renewed; that, in effect, she had warned him off.  To this
+Sheila had said that the killing of a man whose life was bad might be
+punishable.  In any case, that was in another land, under abnormal
+conditions; and, with lack of logic, she saw no reason why he should be
+socially punished in Jamaica for what he had been legally punished for
+in Ireland.  As for the mutiny, he had done what any honest man of spirit
+would do; also, he had by great bravery and skill brought victory to the
+king's fleet in West Indian waters.
+
+Then it was she told her mother how she had always disobeyed her commands
+where Dyck was concerned, that she had written to him while he was in
+jail; that she had come to Jamaica more to see him than to reform Salem;
+that she had the old Celtic spirit of brotherhood, and she would not be
+driven from it.  In a sudden burst of anger her mother had charged her
+with deceit; but the girl said she had followed her conscience, and she
+dismissed it all with a gesture as emphatic as her mother's anger.
+
+That night they had dined with Lord Mallow, and she saw that his
+attentions had behind them the deep purpose of marriage.  She had not
+been overcome by the splendour of his retinue and table, or by the
+magnificence of his guests; though the military commander-in-chief and
+the temporary admiral on the station did their utmost to entertain her,
+and some of the local big-wigs were pompous.  Lord Mallow had ability and
+knew how to use it; and he was never so brilliant as on this afternoon,
+for they dined while it was still daylight and hardly evening.  He told
+her of the customs of the country, of the people; and slyly and
+effectively he satirized some of his grandiloquent guests.  Not unduly,
+for one of them, the most renowned in the island, came to him after
+dinner as he sat talking to Sheila, and said: "I'm very sorry, your
+honour, but good Almighty God, I must go home and cool coppers."  Then he
+gave Sheila a hot yet clammy hand, and bade her welcome as a citizen to
+the island, "alien but respected, beautiful but capable!"  Sheila had
+seen a few of the Creole ladies present at their best-large-eyed, simple,
+not to say primitive in speech, and very unaffected in manner.  She had
+learned also that the way to the Jamaican heart was by a full table and a
+little flattery.
+
+One incident at dinner had impressed her greatly.  Not far away from
+her was a young lady, beautiful in face and person, and she had seen a
+scorpion suddenly shoot into her sleeve and ruthlessly strike and strike
+the arm of the girl, who gave one cry only and then was still.  Sheila
+saw the man next to the girl--he was a native officer--secure the
+scorpion, and then whip from his pocket a little bag of indigo, dip it in
+water, and apply the bag to the wounded arm, immediately easing the
+wound.  This had all been done so quickly that it was over before the
+table had been upset, almost.
+
+"That is the kind of thing we have here," said Lord Mallow.  "There is a
+lady present who has seen in one day a favourite black child bitten by a
+congereel, a large centipede in her nursery, a snake crawl from under her
+child's pillow, and her son nearly die from a bite of the black spider
+with the red spot on its tail.  It is a life that has its trials--and its
+compensations."
+
+"I saw a man's head on a pole on my way to King's House.  You have to use
+firm methods here," Sheila said in reply.  "It is not all a rose-garden.
+You have to apply force."
+
+Lord Mallow smiled grimly.  "C'est la force morale toujours."
+
+"Ah, I should not have thought it was moral force always," was the
+ironical reply.
+
+"We have criminals here," declared the governor with aplomb, "and they
+need some handling, I assure you.  We have in this island one of the
+worst criminals in the British Empire."
+
+"Ah, I thought he was in the United States!" answered the girl sedately.
+
+"You mean General George Washington," remarked the governor.  "No, it is
+one who was a friend and fellow-countryman of yours before he took to
+killing unarmed men."
+
+"You refer to Mr. Dyck Calhoun, I doubt not, sir?  Well, he is still a
+friend of mine, and I saw him today--this afternoon, before I came here.
+I understood that the Crown had pardoned his mutiny."
+
+The governor started.  He was plainly annoyed.
+
+"The crime is there just the same," he replied.  "He mutinied, and he
+stole a king's ship, and took command of it, and brought it out here."
+
+"And saved you and your island, I understand."
+
+"Ah, he said that, did he?"
+
+"He said nothing at all to me about it.  I have been reading the Jamaica
+Cornwall Chronicle the last three years."
+
+"He is ever a source of anxiety to me," declared the governor.
+
+"I knew he was once in Phoenix Park years ago," was the demure yet sharp
+reply, "but I thought he was a good citizen here--a good and well-to-do
+citizen."
+
+Lord Mallow flushed slightly.  "Phoenix Park--ah, he was a capable fellow
+with the sword!  I said so always, and I'd back him now against a
+champion; but many a bad man has been a good swordsman."
+
+"So, that's what good swordsmanship does, is it?  I wondered what it was
+that did it.  I hear you fight him still--but with a bludgeon, and he
+dodges it."
+
+"I do not understand," declared Lord Mallow tartly.  "Ah, wasn't there
+some difference over his going for the treasure to Haiti?  Some one told
+me, I think, that you were not in favour of his getting his ticket-of-
+leave, or whatever it is called, and that the provost-marshal gave it to
+him, as he had the right to do."
+
+"You have wide sources of information in this case.  I wonder--"
+
+"No, your honour need not wonder.  I was told that by a gentleman on the
+steamer coming here.  He was a native of the island, I think--or perhaps
+it was the captain, or the mate, or the boatswain.  I can't recall.  Or
+maybe it came to me from my manager, Darius Boland, who hears things
+wherever he is, one doesn't know how; but he hears them.  He is to me
+what your aide-de-camp is to you," she nodded towards a young man near by
+at the table.
+
+"And do you dress your Darius Boland as I dress my aide in scarlet, with
+blue facings and golden embroidery, and put a stiff hat with a feather on
+his head?"
+
+"But no, he does not need such things.  I am a Republican now.  I am a
+citizen of the United States, where men have no need of uniform to tell
+the world what they are.  You shall see my Darius Boland--indeed, you
+have seen him.  He was there to-day when you gave me the distinction of
+your presence."
+
+"That dry, lean, cartridge of a fellow, that pair of pincers with a
+face!"
+
+"And a tongue, your honour.  If you did not hear it yet, you will hear
+it.  He is to be my manager here.  So he will be under your control--
+if I permit him."
+
+"If you permit him, mistress?"
+
+"If I permit him, yes.  You are a power, but you are not stronger than
+the laws and rules you make.  For instance, there was the case of Mr.
+Dyck Calhoun.  When he came, you were for tying him up in one little
+corner of this island--the hottest part, I know, near to Kingston, where
+it averages ninety degrees in the shade at any time of the year.  But the
+King you represent had not restricted his liberties so, and you being the
+King, that is, yourself, were forced to abide by your own regulations.
+So it may be the same with Darius Boland.  He may want something, and
+you, high up, looking down, will say, "What devilry is here!" and
+decline.  He will then turn to your chief-justice or provost-marshal-
+general, or a deputy of the provost-marshal, and they will say that
+Darius Boland shall have what he wants, because it is the will of the
+will you represent."
+
+Almost the last words the governor used to her were these: "Those only
+live at peace here who are at peace with me"; and her reply had been:
+"But Mr. Dyck Calhoun lives at peace, does he not, your honour?"
+
+To that he had replied: "No man is at peace while he has yet desires."
+He paused a minute and then added: "That Erris Boyne killed by Dyck
+Calhoun--did you ever see him that you remember?"
+
+"Not that I remember," she replied quickly.  "I never lived in Dublin."
+
+"That may be.  But did you never know his history?"  She shook her head
+in negation.  His eyes searched her face carefully, and he was astonished
+when he saw no sign of confusion there.  "Good God, she doesn't know.
+She's never been told!" he said to himself.  "This is too startling.
+I'll speak to the mother."
+
+A little later he turned from the mother with astonishment.  "It's
+madness," he remarked to himself.  "She will find out.  Some one will
+tell her.  .  .  .  By heaven, I'll tell her first," he hastily said.
+"When she knows the truth, Calhoun will have no chance on earth.  Yes,
+I'll tell her myself.  But I'll tell no one else," he added; for he felt
+that Sheila, once she knew the truth, would resent his having told abroad
+the true story of the Erris Boyne affair.
+
+So Sheila and her mother had gone to their lodgings with depression, but
+each with a clear purpose in her mind.  Mrs. Llyn was determined to tell
+her daughter what she ought to have known long before; and Sheila was
+firm to make the one man who had ever interested her understand that he
+was losing much that was worth while keeping.
+
+Then had followed the journey to Salem.  Yet all the while for Sheila
+one dark thought kept hovering over everything.  Why should life be so
+complicated?  Why should this one man who seemed capable and had the
+temperament of the Irish hills and vales be the victim of punishment and
+shame--why should he shame her?
+
+Suddenly, without her mother's knowledge, she sent Darius Boland through
+the hills in the early morning to Enniskillen, Dyck Calhoun's place, with
+a letter which said only this: "Is it not time that you came to wish us
+well in our new home?  We shall expect you to-morrow."
+
+When Dyck read this note he thought it was written by Sheila, but
+inspired by the mother; and he lost no time in making his way down across
+the country to Salem, which he reached a few hours after sunrise.  At the
+doorway of the house he met Mrs. Llyn.
+
+"Have you told her?" he asked in anxiety.  Astonished at his presence
+she could make no reply for a moment.  "I have told her nothing," she
+answered.  "I meant to do so this morning.  I meant to do it--I must."
+
+"She sent me a letter asking if it was not time I came to wish you well
+in your house, and you and she would expect me to-day."
+
+"I knew naught of her writing you," was the reply--"naught at all.  But
+now that you are here, will you not tell her all?"
+
+Dyck smiled grimly.  "Where is she?" he asked.  "I will tell her."
+
+The mother pointed down the garden.  "Yonder by the clump of palms I saw
+her a moment ago.  If you go that way you will find her."
+
+In another moment Dyck Calhoun was on his way to the clump of palms, and
+before he reached it, the girl came out into the path.  She was dressed
+in a black silk skirt with a white bodice and lace, as he had seen her on
+her arrival in Kingston, and at her throat was a sprig of the wild pear-
+tree.  When she saw him, she gave a slight start, then stood still, and
+he came to her.
+
+"I have your letter," he said, "and I came to say what I ought to say
+about your living here: you will bring blessings to the place."
+
+She looked at him steadfastly.  "Shall we talk here," she said,
+"or inside the house?  There is a little shelter here in the trees"--
+pointing to the right--"a shelter built by the late manager.  It has the
+covering of a hut, but it is open at two sides.  Will you come?"  As she
+went on ahead, he could not fail to notice how slim and trim she was, how
+perfectly her figure seemed to fit her gown-as though she had been poured
+into it; and yet the folds of her skirt waved and floated like silky
+clouds around her!  Under cover of the shelter, she turned and smiled at
+him.
+
+"You have seen my mother?"
+
+"I have just come from her," he answered.  "She bade me tell you what
+ought to have been told long ago, and you were not, for there seemed no
+reason that you should.  You were young and ignorant and happy.  You had
+no cares, no sorrows.  The sorrows that had come to your mother belonged
+to days when you were scarce out of the cradle.  But you did not know.
+You were not aware that your mother had divorced your father for crime
+against marital fidelity and great cruelty.  You did not know even who
+that father was.  Well, I must tell you.  Your father was a handsome man,
+a friend of mine until I knew the truth about him, and then he died--I
+killed him, so the court said."
+
+Her face became ghastly pale.  After a moment of anguished bewilderment,
+she said: "You mean that Erris Boyne was my father?"
+
+"Yes, I mean that.  They say I killed him.  They say that he was found
+with no sword drawn, but that my open sword lay on the table beside me
+while I was asleep, and that it had let out his life-blood."
+
+"Why was he killed?" she asked, horror-stricken and with pale lips.
+
+"I do not know, but if I killed him, it was because I revolted from the
+proposals he made to me.  I--"  He paused, for the look on her face was
+painful to see, and her body was as that of one who had been struck by
+lightning.  It had a crumpled, stricken look, and all force seemed to be
+driven from it.  It had the look of crushed vitality.  Her face was set
+in paleness, her eyes were frightened, her whole person was, as it were,
+in ghastly captivity.  His heart smote him, and he pulled himself
+together to tell her all.
+
+"Go on," she said.  "I want to hear.  I want--to know all.  I ought to
+have known--long ago; but that can't be helped now.  Continue--please."
+
+Her words had come slowly, in gasps almost, and her voice was so frayed
+he could scarcely recognize it.  All the pride of her nature seemed
+shattered.
+
+"If I killed him," he said presently, "it was because he tried to tempt
+me from my allegiance to the Crown to become a servant of France, to--"
+
+He stopped short, for a cry came from her lips which appalled him.
+
+"My God--my God!" she said with bloodless lips, her eyes fastened on his
+face, her every look and motion the inflection of despair.  "Go on--tell
+all," she added presently with more composure.
+
+Swiftly he described what happened in the little room at the traitor's
+tavern, of the momentary reconciliation and the wine that he drank,
+drugged wine poured out but not drunk by Erris Boyne, and of his later
+unconsciousness.  At last he paused.
+
+"Why did these things not come out at the trial?" she asked in hushed
+tones.
+
+He made a helpless gesture.  "I did not speak of them because I thought
+of you.  I hid it--I did not want you to know what your father was."
+
+Something like a smile gathered at her pale lips.  "You saved me for the
+moment, and condemned yourself for ever," she said in a voice of torture.
+"If you had told what he was--if you had told that, the jury would not
+have condemned you, they would not have sent you to prison."
+
+"I believe I did the right thing," he said.  "If I killed your father,
+prison was my proper punishment.  But I can't remember.  There was no
+other clue, no other guide to judgment.  So the law said I killed him,
+and--he had evidently not drawn his sword.  It was clear he was killed
+defenceless."
+
+"You killed a defenceless man!"  Her voice was sharp with agony.  "That
+was mentioned at the trial--but I did not believe it then--in that long
+ago."  She trembled to her feet from the bench where she was sitting.
+"And I do not believe it now--no, on my soul, I do not."
+
+"But it makes no difference, you see.  I was condemned for killing your
+father, and the world knows that Erris Boyne was your father, and here
+Lord Mallow, the governor, knows it; and there is no chance of friendship
+between you and me.  Since the day he was found dead in the room, there
+was no hope for our friendship, for anything at all between us that I had
+wished to be there.  You dare not be friends with me--"
+
+Her face suddenly suffused and she held herself upright with an effort.
+She was about to say, "I dare, Dyck--I do dare!" but he stopped her with
+a reproving gesture.
+
+"No, no, you dare not, and I would not let you if you would.  I am an
+ex-convict.  They say I killed your father, and the way to understanding
+between us is closed."
+
+She made a protesting gesture.  "Closed!  Closed!--But is it closed?  No,
+no, some one else killed him, not you.  You couldn't have done it.  You
+would have fought him--fought him as you did Lord Mallow, and in fighting
+you might have killed him, but your sword never let out his life when he
+was defenceless--never."
+
+A look of intense relief, almost of happiness, came to Dyck's face.
+"That is like you, Sheila, but it does not cure the trouble.  You and I
+are as far apart as noon and midnight.  The law has said the only thing
+that can be said upon it."
+
+She sank down again upon the wooden bench.  "Oh, how mad you were, not to
+tell the whole truth long ago!  You would not have been condemned, and
+then--"
+
+She paused overcome, and his self-control almost deserted him.  With
+strong feeling he burst out: "And then, we might have come together?
+No, your mother--your friends, myself, could not have let that be.  See,
+Sheila, I will tell you the whole truth now--aye, the whole absolute
+truth.  I have loved you since the first day I saw you on the hills when
+you and I rescued Christopher Dogan.  Not a day has passed since then
+when you were not more to me than any other woman in all the world."
+
+A new light came into her face, the shadows left her eyes, and the pallor
+fled from her lips.  "You loved me?" she said in a voice grown soft-
+husky still, but soft as the light in a summer heaven.  "You loved me
+--and have always loved me since we first met?"
+
+Her look was so appealing, so passionate and so womanly, that he longed
+to reach out his arms to her, and say, "Come--come home, Sheila," but the
+situation did not permit that, and only his eyes told the story of what
+was in his mind.
+
+"I have always loved you, Sheila, and shall do so while I have breath and
+life.  I have always given you the best that is in me, tried to do what
+was good for us both, since my misfortune--crime, Lord Mallow calls it,
+as does the world.  Never a sunrise that does not find you in the
+forefront of all the lighted world; never a flower have I seen that does
+not seem sweeter--it brings thoughts of you; never a crime that does not
+deepen its shame because you are in the world.  In prison, when I used to
+mop my floor and clean down the walls; when I swept the dust from the
+corners; when I folded up my convict clothes; when I ate the prison food
+and sang the prison hymns; when I placed myself beside the bench in the
+workshop to make things that would bring cash to my fellow-prisoners in
+their need; when I saw a minister of religion or heard the Litany; when I
+counted up the days, first that I had spent in jail and then the days I
+had still to spend in jail; when I read the books from the prison library
+of the land where you had gone, and of the struggle there; when I saw
+you, in my mind's eye, in the cotton-fields or on the verandah of your
+house in Virginia--I had but one thought, and that was the look in your
+face at Playmore and Limerick, the sound of your voice as you came
+singing up the hill just before I first met you, the joyous beauty of
+your body."
+
+"And at sea?" she whispered with a gesture at once beautiful and
+pathetic, for it had the motion of helplessness and hopelessness.  What
+she had heard had stirred her soul, and she wanted to hear more--or was
+it that she wished to drain the cup now that it was held to her lips?
+-drain it to the last drop of feeling.
+
+"At sea," he answered, with his eyes full of intense feeling--"at sea, I
+was free at last, doomed as I thought, anguished in spirit, and yet with
+a wild hope that out of it would come deliverance.  I expected to lose my
+life, and I lived each day as though it would be my last.  I was chief
+rogue in a shipful of rogues, chief sinner in a hell of sinners, and yet
+I had no remorse and no regret.  I had done all with an honest purpose,
+with the good of the sailors in my mind; and so I lived in daily touch
+with death, honour, and dishonour.  Yet I never saw a sailor in the
+shrouds, or heard the night watch call 'All's well!' in the midst of
+night and mutiny, that I did not long for a word from you that would take
+away the sting of death.  Those days at sea for ten long weeks were never
+free from anxiety, not anxiety for myself, only for the men who had put
+me where I was, had given me captain's rank, had--"
+
+Suddenly he stopped, and took from his pocket the letter he was writing
+on the very day she landed in Jamaica.  He opened it and studied it for a
+moment with a dark look in his face.
+
+"This I wrote even as you were landing in Jamaica, and I knew naught of
+your coming.  It was an outbreak of my soul.  It was the truth written
+to you and for you, and yet with the feeling that you would never see it.
+I was still writing it when Michael Clones came up the drive to tell me
+you and your mother were here.  Now, I know not what Christopher Dogan
+would say of it, but I say it is amazing that in the hour you were first
+come to this land I should be moved to tell you the story of my life
+since I left prison; since, on receiving your letter in London, forwarded
+from Dublin, I joined the navy.  But here it is with all the truth and
+terror in it.--Aye, there was terror, for it gave the soul of my life to
+one I never thought to see again; and, if seeing, should be compelled to
+do what I have done--tell her the whole truth at once and so have it
+over.
+
+"But do not think that in telling it now I repent of my secrecy.
+I repent of nothing; I would not alter anything.  What was to be is, and
+what is has its place in the book of destiny.  No, I repent nothing, yet
+here now I give you this to read while still my story of the days of
+which you know is in your ears.  Here it is.  It will tell the whole
+story; for when you have read it and do understand, then we part to meet
+no more as friends.  You will go back to Virginia, and I will stay here.
+You will forgive the unwilling wrong I have done you, but you will make
+your place in life without thought of me.  You will marry some one--not
+worthy of you, for that could not be; but you will take to yourself some
+man from among the men of this world.  You will set him apart from all
+other men as yours, and he will be happy, having been blessed beyond
+deserving.  You will not regret coming here; but you will desire our
+friendship to cease; and what has been to be no more, while the tincture
+of life is in your veins.  Sheila, read this thing, for it is the rest of
+the story until now."
+
+He handed her the papers, and she took them with an inclination of the
+head which said: "Give it to me.  I will read it now while my eyes can
+still bear to read it.  I have laid on my heart the nettle of shame, and
+while it is still burning there I will read all that you have to teach
+me."
+
+"I will go out in the garden while you read it," he said.  "In a half-
+hour I will come back, and then we can say good-bye," he added, with pain
+in his voice, but firmly.
+
+"No, do not go," she urged.  "Sit here on the bench--at the end of it
+here," she said, motioning with her hand.
+
+He shook his head in negation.  "No, I will go and say to your mother
+that I have told you, and ease her mind, for I know she herself meant to
+tell you."
+
+As he went he looked at her face closely.  It was so young, so pathetic,
+so pale, yet so strangely beautiful, and her forehead was serene.  That
+was one of her characteristics.  In all her life, her forehead remained
+untroubled and unlined.  Only at her mouth and in her eyes did misery or
+sorrow show.  He looked into her eyes now, and he was pleased with what
+he saw; for they had in them the glow of understanding and the note of
+will which said: "You and I are parted, but I believe in you, and I will
+not show I am a weak woman by futile horror.  We shall meet no more, but
+I shall remember you."
+
+That was what he saw, and it was what he wished to see.  He knew her
+character would stand the test of any trial, and it had done so.  Horror
+had struck her, but had not overwhelmed her.  She had cried out in her
+agony, but she had not been swept out into chaos.  She had no weak
+passions and no futilities.  But as he turned away now, it was with the
+sharp conviction that he had dealt a blow from which the girl would
+recover, but would never be the same again.  She was rich "beyond the
+dreams of avarice," but that would not console her.  She had resources
+within herself, had what would keep her steady.  Her real power and
+force, her real hope, were in her regnant soul which was not to be
+cajoled by life's subterfuges.  Her lips opened now, as though she would
+say something, but nothing came from them.  She only shook her head
+sadly, as if to say: "You understand.  Go, and when you come again, it
+will be for us to part in peace--at least in peace."
+
+Out in the garden he found her mother.  After the first agitated
+greeting-agitated on her part, he said: "The story has been told, and she
+is now reading--"
+
+He told her the story of the manuscript, and added that Sheila had
+carried herself with courage.  Presently the woman said to him: "She
+never believed you killed Erris Boyne.  Well, it may not help the
+situation, but I say too, that I do not believe you did.  I cannot
+understand why you did not deny having killed him."
+
+"I could not deny.  In any case, the law punished me for it, and the book
+is closed for ever."
+
+"Have you never thought that some one--"
+
+"Yes, I have thought, but who is there?  The crowd at the Dublin hotel
+where the thing was done were secret, and they would lie the apron off a
+bishop.  No, there is no light, and, to tell the truth, I care not now."
+
+"But if you are not guilty--it is not too late; there is my girl!  If the
+real criminal should appear--can you not see?"
+
+The poor woman, distressedly pale, her hair still abundant, her eyes
+still bright, her pulses aglow, as they had ever been, made a gesture of
+appeal with hands that were worn and thin.  She had charm still, in a way
+as great as her daughter's.
+
+"I can see--but, Mrs. Llyn, I have no hope.  I am a man whom some men
+fear--"
+
+"Lord Mallow!" she interjected.
+
+"He does not fear me.  Why do you say that?"
+
+"I speak with a woman's intuition.  I don't know what he fears, but he
+does fear you.  You are a son of history; you had a duel with him, and
+beat him; you have always beaten him, even here where he has been supreme
+as governor--from first to last, you have beaten him."
+
+"I hope I shall be even with him at the last--at the very last," was Dyck
+Calhoun's reply.  "We were made to be foes.  We were from the first.  I
+felt it when I saw him at Playmore.  Nothing has changed since then.  He
+will try to destroy me here, but I will see it through.  I will try and
+turn his rapier-points.  I will not be the target of his arrows without
+making some play against him.  The man is a fool.  I could help him here,
+but he will have none of it, and he is running great risks.  He has been
+warned that the Maroons are restive, that the black slaves will rise if
+the Maroons have any initial success, and he will listen to no advice.
+He would not listen to me, but, knowing that, I got the provost-marshal
+to approach him, and when he knew my hand was in it, he stiffened.  He
+would have naught to do with it, and so no preparations are made.  And up
+there"--he turned and pointed--"up there in Trelawney the Maroons are
+plotting and planning, and any day an explosion may occur.  If it occurs
+no one will be safe, especially if the blacks rise too--I mean the black
+slaves.  There will be no safety then for any one."
+
+"For us as well, you mean?"
+
+"For you as well as all others, and you are nearer to Trelawney than most
+others.  You are in their path.  So be wise, Mrs. Llyn, and get back to
+Virginia as soon as may be.  It is a better place than this."
+
+"My daughter is mistress here," was the sorrowful reply.  "She will have
+her own way."
+
+"Your daughter will not care to stay here now," he answered firmly.
+
+"She will do what she thinks her duty in spite of her own feelings, or
+yours, or mine.  It is her way, and it has always been her way."
+
+"I will tell her what I fear, and she may change her mind."
+
+"But the governor may want her to stay," answered Mrs. Llyn none too
+sagely, but with that in her mind which seemed to justify her.
+
+"Lord Mallow--oh, if you think there is any influence in him to keep
+her, that is another question," said Dyck with a grim smile.  "But,
+nevertheless, I think you should leave here and go back to Virginia.
+It is no safe place for two ladies, in all senses.  Whatever Lord Mallow
+thinks or does, this is no place for you.  This place is your daughter's
+for her to do what she chooses with it, and I think she ought to sell it.
+There would be no trouble in getting a purchaser.  It is a fine
+property."
+
+"But the governor might not think as you do; he might not wish it sold."
+
+Mrs. Llyn was playing a bold, indeed a reckless game.  She wanted to show
+Dyck there were others who would interest themselves in Sheila even if
+he, Dyck, were blotted from the equation; that the girl could look high,
+if her mind turned towards marriage.  Also she felt that Dyck should know
+the facts before any one else, so that he would not be shocked in the
+future, if anything happened.  Yet in her deepest heart she wished him
+well.  She liked him as she had never liked any of Sheila's admirers, and
+if the problem of Erris Boyne had been solved, she would gladly have seen
+him wedded to Sheila.
+
+"What has the governor to do with it!" he declared.  "It is your
+daughter's own property, and she is free to hold or to part with it.
+There is no Crown consent to ask, no vice-regal approval needed."
+
+Suddenly he became angry, almost excited.  His blood pounded in his
+veins.  Was this man, Mallow, to come between his and her fate always,
+come into his problem at the most critical moment?  "God in heaven!" he
+said in a burst of passion, "is this a land of the British Empire or is
+it not?  Why should that man break in on every crisis?  Why should he do
+this or that--say yea or nay, give or take away!  He is the king's
+representative, but he is bound by laws as rigid as any that bind you or
+me.  What has he to do with your daughter or what concerns her?  Is there
+not enough trouble in the world without bringing in Lord Mallow?
+If he--"
+
+He stopped short, for he saw coming from the summerhouse, Sheila with his
+paper in her hand.  She walked slowly and with dignity.  She carried her
+head high and firmly, and the skin of her face was shining with light
+as she came on.  Dyck noticed how her wide skirts flicked against the
+flowers that bordered the path, and how her feet seemed scarcely to touch
+the ground as she walked--a spirit, a regnant spirit of summer she
+seemed.  But in her face there was no summer, there was only autumn and
+winter, only the bright frost of purpose.  As she came, her mother turned
+as though to leave Dyck Calhoun.  She called to her to wait, and Mrs.
+Llyn stood still, anxious.  As Sheila came near she kept her eyes fixed
+on Dyck.  When she reached them, she held out the paper to him.
+
+"It is wonderful," she said quietly, "that which you have written, but it
+does not tell all; it does not say that you did not kill my father.  You
+are punished for the crime, and we must abide by it, even though you did
+not kill Erris Boyne.  It is the law that has done it, and we cannot
+abash the law."
+
+"We shall meet no more then!" said Dyck with decision.
+
+Her lips tightened, her face paled.  "There are some things one may not
+do, and one of them is to be openly your friend--at present."
+
+He put the letter carefully away in his pocket, his hand shaking, then
+flicking an insect from the collar of his coat, he said gently, yet with
+an air of warning: "I have been telling Mrs. Llyn about the Maroons up
+there"--he pointed towards Trelawney--"and I have advised your going back
+to Virginia.  The Maroons may rise at any moment, and no care is being
+taken by Lord Mallow to meet the danger.  If they rise, you, here, would
+be in their way, and I could not guarantee your safety.  Besides,
+Virginia is a better place--a safer place than this," he added with
+meaning.
+
+"You wish to frighten me out of Jamaica," she replied with pain in her
+voice.  "Well, I will not go till I have put this place in order and
+brought discipline and good living here.  I shall stay here in Jamaica
+till I have done my task.  There is no reason why we should meet.  This
+place is not so large as Ireland or America, but it is large enough to
+give assurance we shall not meet.  And if we meet, there is no reason why
+we should talk.  As for the Maroons, when the trouble comes, I shall not
+be unprepared."  She smiled sadly.  "The governor may not take your
+advice, but I shall.  And remember that I come from a land not without
+its dangers.  We have Red Indians and black men there, and I can shoot."
+
+He waved a hand abruptly and then made a gesture--such as an ascetic
+might make-of reflection, of submission.  "I shall remember every word
+you have said, and every note of your voice will be with me in all the
+lonely years to come.  Good-bye--but no, let me say this before I go:
+I did not know that Erris Boyne was your father until after he was dead.
+So, if I killed him, it was in complete ignorance.  I did not know.  But
+we have outlived our friendship, and we must put strangeness in its
+place.  Good-bye--God protect you!" he added, looking into Sheila's
+eyes.
+
+She looked at him with sorrow.  Her lips opened but no words came forth.
+He passed on out of the garden, and presently they heard his horse's
+hoofs on the sand.
+
+"He is a great gentleman," said Mrs. Llyn.
+
+Her daughter's eyes were dry and fevered.  Her lips were drawn.  "We must
+begin the world again," she said brokenly.  Then suddenly she sank upon
+the ground.  "My God--oh, my God!" she said.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+LORD MALLOW INTERVENES
+
+Two months went by.  In that time Sheila and Dyck did not meet, though
+Dyck saw her more than once in the distance at Kingston.  Yet they had
+never met since that wonderful day at Salem, when they had parted, as
+it might seem, for ever.  Dyck had had news of her, however, for Darius
+Boland had come and gone between the two plantations, and had won Michael
+Clones' confidence.  He knew more perhaps than he ever conveyed to Dyck,
+who saw him and talked with him, gave him advice as to the customs of
+Jamaica, and let him see the details in the management of Enniskillen.
+
+Yet Dyck made no inquiries as to how Mrs. Llyn and Sheila were; first
+because he chose not to do so, and also because Darius Boland, at one
+time or another, would of his own accord tell what Mrs. Llyn and Sheila
+were doing.  One day Boland brought word that the governor had, more than
+once, visited Salem with his suite; that he had sat in judgment on a case
+in Kingston concerning the estate of Salem, and had given decision in its
+favour; and that Mrs. Llyn and Sheila visited him at Spanish Town and
+were entertained at King's House at second breakfast and dinner--in
+short, that Lord Mallow was making hay in Salem Plantation.  This was no
+surprise to Dyck.  He had full intuition of the foray the governor would
+make on Sheila, her estate and wealth.
+
+Lord Mallow had acted with discretion, and yet with sufficient passion to
+warrant some success.  He was trying to make for himself a future which
+might mean the control of a greater colony even.  If he had wealth, that
+would be almost a certainty, and he counted Sheila's gold as a guarantee
+of power.  He knew well how great effect could be produced at Westminster
+and at the Royal Palace by a discreet display of wealth.  He was also
+aware that no scandal could be made through an alliance with Sheila, for
+she had inherited long after the revolutionary war and with her skirts
+free from responsibility.  England certainly would welcome wealth got
+through an Irish girl inheriting her American uncle's estates.  So,
+steadily and happily, he pressed his suit.  At his dinner-parties he
+gave her first place nearly always, and even broke the code controlling
+precedence when his secretary could be overruled.  Thus Sheila was given
+honour when she did not covet it, and so it was that one day at Salem
+when the governor came to court her she was able to help Dyck Calhoun.
+
+"Then you go to Enniskillen?" Lord Mallow said to Darius Boland, as he
+entered the plantation, being met by the astute American.
+
+"Sometimes, your honour," was the careful reply.  "I suppose you know
+what Mr. Calhoun's career has been, eh?"
+
+"Oh, in a way, your honour.  They tell me he is a good swordsman."
+
+The governor flushed.  "He told you that, did he?"
+
+"No, no, your honour, never.  He told me naught.  He does not boast.
+He's as modest as a man from Virginia.  He does not brag at all."
+
+"Who told you, then?"
+
+"Ah, well, I heard it in the town!  They speak of him there.  They all
+know that Kingston and Spanish Town, and all the other places, would have
+been French by now, if it hadn't been for him.  Oh, they talk a lot about
+him in Kingston and thereabouts!"
+
+"What swordsmanship do they speak of that was remarkable?"
+
+"Has your honour forgotten, then?  Sure, seven years is a poor limit for
+a good memory."  The blow was a shrewd one, for Darius Boland knew that
+Phoenix Park must be a galling memory to his honour.  But Darius did not
+care.  He guessed why the governor was coming to Salem, and he could not
+shirk having his hand in it.  He had no fear of the results.
+
+"Aye, seven years is a poor limit," he repeated.
+
+The governor showed no feeling.  He had been hit, and he took it as part
+of the game.  "Ah, you mean the affair in Phoenix Park?" he said with no
+apparent feeling.
+
+Darius tossed his head a little.  "Wasn't it a clever bit of work?
+Didn't he get fame there by defeating one of the best swordsmen--in
+Ireland?"
+
+Lord Mallow nodded.  "He got fame, which he lost in time," he answered.
+
+"You mean he put the sword that had done such good work against a
+champion into a man's bowels, without 'by your leave,' or 'will you draw
+and fight'?"
+
+"Something like that," answered the governor sagely.
+
+"Is it true you believed he'd strike a man that wasn't armed, sir?"
+
+The governor winced, but showed nothing.  "He'd been drinking--he is a
+heavy drinker.  Do you never drink with him?"
+
+Darius Boland's face took on a strange look.  Here was an intended insult
+to Dyck Calhoun.  Right well the governor knew their relative social
+positions.  Darius pulled at the hair on his chin reflectively.  "Yes,
+I've drunk his liquor, but not as you mean, your honour.  He'd drink with
+any man at all: he has no nasty pride.  But he doesn't drink with me."
+"Modest enough he is to be a good republican, eh, Boland?"
+
+"Since your honour puts it so, it must stand.  I'll not dispute it, me
+being what I am and employed by whom I am."
+
+Darius Boland had a gift of saying the right thing in the right way, and
+he had said it now.  The governor was not so dense as to put this man
+against him, for women were curious folk.  They often attach importance
+to the opinion of a faithful servant and let it weigh against great men.
+He had once lost a possible fortune by spurning a little terrier of the
+daughter of the Earl of Shallow, and the lesson had sunk deep into his
+mind.  He was high-placed, but not so high as to be sure of success where
+a woman was concerned, and he had made up his mind to capture Sheila
+Llyn, if so be she could be caught flying, or settled, or sleeping.
+
+"Ah, well, he has drunk with worse men than republicans.  Boland.  He was
+a common sailor.  He drank what was given him with whom it chanced in the
+fo'castle."
+
+Darius sniffed a little, and kept his head.  "But he changed all that,
+your honour, and gave sailormen better drink than they ever had, I hear.
+In Jamaica he treats his slaves as though they were men and not
+Mohicans."
+
+"Well, he'll have less freedom in future, Boland, for word has come from
+London that he's to keep to his estate and never leave it."
+
+Darius looked concerned, and his dry face wrinkled still more.  "Ah, and
+when was this word come, your honour?"
+
+"But yesterday, Boland, and he'll do well to obey, for I have no choice
+but to take him in hand if he goes gallivanting."
+
+"Gallivanting--here, in Jamaica!  Does your honour remember where we
+are?"
+
+"Not in a bishop's close, Boland."
+
+"No, not in a bishop's close, nor in an archdeacon's garden.  For of all
+places on earth where they defy religion, this is the worst, your honour.
+There's as much religion here as you'll find in a last year's bird's-
+nest.  Gallivanting--where should he gallivant?"
+
+The governor waved a contemptuous hand.  "It doesn't need ingenuity to
+find a place, for some do it on their own estate.  I have seen it."
+
+Darius spoke sharply.  "Your honour, there's naught on Mr. Calhoun's
+estate that's got the taint, and he's not the man to go hunting for it.
+Drink--well, suppose a gentleman does take his quartern, is it a crime?
+I ask your honour, is that a crime in Jamaica?"
+
+"It's no crime, Boland; nevertheless, your Mr. Calhoun will have to take
+his fill on his own land from the day I send him the command of the
+London Government."
+
+"And what day will that be, your honour?"
+
+To be questioned by one who had been a revolutionary was distasteful to
+the governor.  "That day will be when I find the occasion opportune, my
+brave Boland," he said sourly.
+
+"Why 'brave,' your honour?"  There was an ominous light in Darius' eye.
+
+"Did you not fight with George Washington against the King of England--
+against King George?  And if you did, was that not brave?"
+
+"It was true, your honour," came the firm reply.  "It was the one right
+good thing to do, as we proved it by the victory we had.  We did what we
+set out to do.  But see, if you will let a poor man speak his mind, if I
+were you I'd not impose the command on Mr. Calhoun."
+
+"Why, Boland?"
+
+Darius spoke courageously.  "Your honour, he has many friends in Jamaica,
+and they won't stand it.  Besides, he won't stand it.  And if he contests
+your honour, the island will be with him."
+
+"Is he popular here as all that?" asked the governor with a shrug of the
+shoulders.
+
+"They don't give their faith and confidence to order, your honour,"
+answered Darius with a dry inflection.
+
+The burr in the voice did not escape the other's attentive ear.  He swung
+a glance sharply at Darius.  "What is the secret of his popularity--how
+has it been made?" he asked morosely.
+
+Darius' face took on a caustic look.  "He's only been in the island a
+short time, your honour, and I don't know that I'm a good judge, but I'll
+say the people here have great respect for bravery and character."
+
+"Character!  Character!" sniffed the governor.  "Where did he get that?"
+
+"Well, I don't know his age, but it's as old as he is--his character.
+Say, I'm afraid I'm talking too much, your honour.  We speak our minds
+in Virginia; we never count the cost."
+
+The governor waved a deprecating hand.  "You'll find the measure of your
+speech in good time, Boland, I've no doubt.  Meanwhile, you've got the
+pleasure of hunting it.  Character, you say.  Well, that isn't what the
+judge and jury said."
+
+Darius took courage again.  Couldn't Lord Mallow have any decency?
+
+"Judge and jury be damned, your honour," he answered boldly.  "It was an
+Irish verdict.  It had no sense.  It was a bit of ballyhack.  He did not
+kill an unarmed man.  It isn't his way.  Why, he didn't kill you when he
+had you at his mercy in Phoenix Park, now, did he, governor?"
+
+A flush stole up the governor's face from his chin.  Then he turned to
+Boland and looked him straight in the eyes.  "That's true.  He had me at
+his mercy, and he did not take my life."
+
+"Then, why do you head the cabal against him?  Why do you take joy in
+commanding him to stay on his estate?  Is that grateful, your honour?"
+
+The governor winced, but he said: "It's what I am ordered to do, my man.
+I'm a servant of the Crown, and the Crown has ordained it."
+
+Again Darius grew stronger in speech.  "But why do you have pleasure in
+it?  Is nothing left to your judgment?  Do you say to me that if he keeps
+the freedom such as he has enjoyed, you'd punish him?  Must the governor
+be as ruthless as his master?  Look, your honour, I wouldn't impose that
+command--not till I'd taken his advice about the Maroons anyway.  There's
+trouble brewing, and Mr. Calhoun knows it.  He has warned you through the
+provost-marshal.  I'd heed his warning, your honour, or it may injure
+your reputation as a ruler.  No, I'd see myself in nethermost hell before
+I'd meddle with Mr. Calhoun.  He's a dangerous man, when he's moved."
+
+"Boland, you'll succeed as a schoolmaster, when all else fails.  You
+teach persistently."
+
+"Your honour is clever enough to know what's what, but I'd like to see
+the Maroons dealt with.  This is not my country, but I've got interests
+here, or my mistress has, and that's the same to me.  .  .  .  Does your
+honour travel often without a suite?"
+
+The governor waved a hand behind him.  "I left them at the last
+plantation, and rode on alone.  I felt safe enough till I saw you,
+Boland."
+
+He smiled grimly, and a grimmer smile stole to the lean lips of the
+manager of Salem.  "Fear is a good thing for forward minds, your honour,"
+he said with respect in the tone of his voice and challenge in the words.
+
+"I'll say this, Boland, your mistress has been fortunate in her staff.
+You have a ready tongue."
+
+"Oh, I'm readier in other things, your honour, as you'd find on occasion.
+But I thank you for the compliment in a land where compliments are few.
+For a planter's country it has few who speak as well as they entertain.
+I'll say this for the land you govern, the hospitality is rich and rare."
+
+"In what way, Boland?"
+
+"Why, your honour, it is the custom for a man and his whole family to go
+on a visit to a neighbour, perhaps twenty or forty miles away, bring
+their servants--maybe a dozen or more--and sit down on their neighbour's
+hearthstone.  There they eat his food, drink his wine, exhaust his fowl-
+yard and debilitate his cook--till all the resources of the place are
+played out; then with both hands round his friend's neck the man and his
+people will say adieu, and go back to their own accumulated larder and
+await the return visit.  The wonder is Jamaica is so rich, for truly the
+waste is harmful.  We have the door open in Virginia, but not in that
+way.  We welcome, but we don't debauch."
+
+The governor smiled.  "As you haven't old friends here, you should make
+your life a success--ah, there is the open door, Boland, and your
+mistress standing in it.  But I come without my family, and with no fell
+purposes.  I will not debilitate the cook; I will not exhaust the fowl-
+yard.  A roasted plantain is good enough for me."
+
+Darius' looks quickened, and he jerked his chin up.  "So, your honour,
+so.  But might I ask that you weigh carefully the warning of Mr. Calhoun.
+There's trouble at Trelawny.  I have it from good sources, and Mr.
+Calhoun has made preparations against the sure risings.  I'd take heed of
+what he says.  He knows.  Your honour, it is not my mistress in the
+doorway, it is Mrs. Llyn; she is shorter than my mistress."
+
+The governor shaded his brow with his hands.  Then he touched up his
+horse.  "Yes, you are right, Boland.  It is Mrs. Llyn.  And look you,
+Boland, I'll think over what you've said about the Maroons and Mr.
+Calhoun.  He's doing no harm as he is, that's sure.  So why shouldn't he
+go on as he is?  That's your argument, isn't it?"
+
+Boland nodded.  "It's part of my argument, not all of it.  Of course he's
+doing no harm; he's doing good every day.  He's got a stiff hand for the
+shirker and the wanton, but he's a man that knows his mind, and that's a
+good thing in Jamaica."
+
+"Does he come here-ever?"
+
+"He has been here only once since our arrival.  There are reasons why he
+does not come, as your honour kens, knowing the history of Erris Boyne."
+
+A quarter of an hour later Darius Boland said to Sheila: "He's got an
+order from England to keep Mr. Calhoun to his estate and to punish him,
+if he infringes the order."
+
+Sheila started.  "He will infringe the order if it's made, Boland.  But
+the governor will be unwise to try and impose it.  I will tell him so."
+
+"But, mistress, he should not be told that this news comes from me."
+
+"No, he should not, Boland.  I can tempt him to speak of it, I think.
+He hates Mr. Calhoun, and will not need much prompting."
+
+Sheila had changed since she saw Dyck Calhoun last.  Her face was
+thinner, but her form was even fuller than it was when she had bade him
+good-bye, as it seemed to him for ever, and as it at first seemed to her.
+Through anxious days and nights she had fought with the old passion; and
+at last it seemed the only way to escape from the torture was by making
+all thought of him impossible.  How could this be done?  Well, Lord
+Mallow would offer a way.  Lord Mallow was a man of ancient Irish family,
+was a governor, had ability, was distinguished-looking in a curious lean
+way; and he had a real gift with his tongue.  He stood high in the
+opinion of the big folk at Westminster, and had a future.  He had a
+winning way with women--a subtle, perniciously attractive way with her
+sex, and to herself he had been delicately persuasive.  He had the
+ancient gift of picturesqueness without ornamentation.  He had a strong
+will and a healthy imagination.  He was a man of mettle and decision.
+
+Of all who had entered her field outside of Dyck Calhoun he was the most
+attractive; he was the nearest to the possible husband which she must one
+day take.  And if at any day at all, why not now when she needed a man as
+she had never done--when she needed to forget?  The sardonic critic might
+ask why she did not seek forgetfulness in flight; why she remained in
+Jamaica where was what she wished to forget.  There was no valid reason,
+save a business one, why she should remain in Jamaica, and she was in a
+quandary when she put the question.  There were, however, other reasons
+which she used when all else failed to satisfy her exigeant mind.  There
+was the question of vessels to Virginia or New York.  They were few and
+not good, and in any case they could have no comfortable journey to the
+United States for several weeks at least, for, since the revolutionary
+war, commerce with the United States was sparse.
+
+Also, there was the question of Salem.  She did not feel she ought to
+waste the property which her Uncle Bryan had nurtured with care.  In
+justice to his memory, and in fairness to Darius Boland, she felt she
+ought to stay--for a time.  It did not occur to her that these reasons
+would vanish like mist--that a wilful woman would sweep them into the
+basket of forgetfulness, and do what she wished in spite of reason: that
+all else would be sacrificed, if the spirit so possessed her.  Truth was
+that, far back in her consciousness, there was a vision of better days
+and things.  It was as though some angel touched the elbow of her spirit
+and said: "Stay on, for things will be better than they seem.  You will
+find your destiny here.  Stay on."
+
+So she had stayed.  She was deluding herself to believe that what she was
+doing was all for the best; that the clouds were rising; that her fate
+had fairer aspects than had seemed possible when Dyck Calhoun told her
+the terrible tale of the death of her father, Erris Boyne.  Yet memory
+gave a touch of misery and bitterness to all she thought and did.  For
+twenty-five years she had lived in ignorance as to her paternity.  It
+surely was futile that her mother should have suffered all those years,
+with little to cheer her, while her daughter should be radiant in health
+and with a mind free from care or sadness.  Yet the bitterest thing of
+all was the thought that her father was a traitor, and had died
+sacrificing another man.  When Dyck had told her first, she had shivered
+with anger and shame--but anger and shame had gone.  Only one thing gave
+her any comfort--the man who knew Erris Boyne was a traitor, and could
+profit by telling it, held his tongue for her own sake, kept his own
+counsel, and went to prison for four years as the price of his silence.
+He was now her neighbour and he loved her, and, if the shadow of a grave
+was not between them, would offer himself in marriage to her.  This she
+knew beyond all doubt.  He had given all a man can give--had saved her
+and killed her father--in ignorance had killed her father; in love had
+saved herself.  What was to be done?
+
+In a strange spirit Sheila entered the room where the governor sat with
+her mother.  She had reached the limit of her powers of suffering.  Soon
+after her mother had left the room, the governor said:
+
+"Why do you think I have come here to-day?"
+
+He added to the words a note of sympathy, even of passion in his voice.
+
+"It was to visit my mother and myself, and to see how Salem looks after
+our stay on it, was it not?"
+
+"Yes, to see your mother and yourself, but chiefly the latter.  As for
+Salem, it looks as though a mastermind had been at work, I see it in
+everything.  The slaves are singing.  Listen!"
+
+He held up a finger as though to indicate attention and direction.
+
+                        "One, two, three,
+                         All de same;
+                         Black, white, brown,
+                         All de same;
+                         All de same.
+                         One, two, three--"
+
+They could hear the words indistinctly.
+
+"What do the words mean?" asked Sheila.  "I don't understand them."
+
+"No more do I, but I think they refer to the march of pestilence or
+plague.  Numbers, colour, race, nothing matters, the plague sweeps all
+away.  Ah, then, I was right," he added.  "There is the story in other
+words.  Listen again."
+
+To clapping of hands in unison, the following words were sung:
+
+                        "New-come buckra,
+                         He get sick,
+                         He tak fever,
+                         He be die;
+                         He be die.
+                         New-come buckra--"
+
+"Well, it may be a chant of the plague, but it's lacking in poetry," she
+remarked.  "Doesn't it seem so to you?"
+
+"No, I certainly shouldn't go so far as that.  Think of how much of a
+story is crowded into those few words.  No waste, nothing thrown away.
+It's all epic, or that's my view, anyhow," said the governor.  "If you
+look out on those who are singing it, you'd see they are resting from
+their labours; that they are fighting the ennui which most of us feel
+when we rest from our labours.  Let us look at them."
+
+The governor stood up and came to the open French windows that faced the
+fields of sugar-cane.  In the near distance were clumps of fruit trees,
+of hedges of lime and flowering shrubs, rows of orange trees, mangoes,
+red and purple, forbidden-fruit and grapefruit, the large scarlet fruit
+of the acqui, the avocado-pear, the feathering bamboo, and the Jack-fruit
+tree, with its enormous fruit like pumpkins.  Parrots were chattering in
+the acacia and in the Otaheite plum tree, with its bright pink blossoms
+like tassels, and flanking the negro huts by the river were bowers of
+grenadilla fruit.  Around the negro huts were small individual
+plantations kept by the slaves, for which they had one day a fortnight,
+besides Sundays, free to work on their own account.  Here and there also
+were patches of "ground-fruit," as the underground vegetables were
+called, while there passed by on their way to the open road leading to
+Kingston wains loaded with sugar-casks, drawn by oxen, and in two cases
+by sumpter mules.
+
+"Is there anything finer than that in Virginia?" asked the governor.
+"I have never been in Virginia, but I take this to be in some ways like
+that state.  Is it?"
+
+"In some ways only.  We have not the same profusion of wild fruits and
+trees, but we have our share--and it is not so hot as here.  It is a
+better country, though."
+
+"In what way is it better?" the governor asked almost acidly.
+
+"It is better governed."
+
+"What do you mean by that?  Isn't Jamaica well governed?"
+
+"Not so well that it couldn't be improved," was Sheila's reply.
+
+"What improvements would you suggest?" Lord Mallow asked urbanely, for
+he was set to play his cards carefully to-day.
+
+"More wisdom in the governor," was the cheerful and bright reply.
+
+"Is he lacking in wisdom?"
+
+"In some ways, yes."
+
+"Will you mind specifying some of the things?"
+
+"I think he is careless."
+
+"Careless--as to what?"
+
+Sheila smiled.  "He is indifferent to good advice.  He has been told of
+trouble among the Maroons, that they mean to rise; he has been advised to
+make preparations, and he makes none, and he is deceived by a show of
+loyalty on the part of the slaves.  Lord Mallow, if the free Maroons
+rise, why should not the black slaves rise at the same time?  Why do you
+not act?"
+
+"Is everybody whose good opinion is worth having mad?" answered the
+governor.  "I have sent my inspectors to Trelawney.  I have had reports
+from them.  I have used every care--what would you have me do?"
+
+"Used every care?  Why don't you ensure the Maroons peaceableness by
+advancing on them?  Why don't you take them prisoners?  They are enraged
+that two of their herdsmen should be whipped by a negro-slave under the
+order of one of your captains.  They are angry and disturbed and have
+ambushed the roads to Trelawney, so I'm told."
+
+"Did Mr. Calhoun tell you that when he was here?"
+
+"It was not that which Mr. Calhoun told me the only time he came here.
+But who Erris Boyne was.  I never knew till, in his honour, he told me,
+coming here for that purpose.  I never knew who my father was till he
+told me.  My mother had kept it from me all my life."
+
+The governor looked alert.  "And you have not seen him since that day?"
+
+"I have seen him, but I have not spoken to him.  It was in the distance
+only."
+
+"I understand your manager, Mr. Boland, sees him."
+
+"My manager does not share my private interests--or troubles.  He is free
+to go where he will, to speak to whom he chooses.  He visits Enniskillen,
+I suppose--it is a well-managed plantation on Jamaican lines, and its
+owner is a man of mark."
+
+Sheila spoke without agitation of any kind; her face was firm and calm,
+her manner composed, her voice even.  As she talked, she seemed to be
+probing the centre of a flower which she had caught from a basket at the
+window, and her whole personality was alight and vivifying, her good
+temper and spirit complete.  As he looked at her, he had an overmastering
+desire to make her his own--his wife.  She was worth hundreds of
+thousands of pounds; she had beauty, ability and authority.  She was the
+acme of charm and good bearing.  With her he could climb high on the
+ladder of life.  He might be a really great figure in the British world-
+if she gave her will to help him, to hold up his hands.  It had never
+occurred to him that Dyck Calhoun could be a rival, till he had heard of
+Dyck's visit to Sheila and her mother, till he had heard Sheila praise
+him at the first dinner he had given to the two ladies on Christmas Day.
+
+On that day it was clear Sheila did not know who her father was; but
+stranger things had happened than that she should take up with, and even
+marry, a man imprisoned for killing another, even one who had been
+condemned as a mutineer, and had won freedom by saving the king's navy.
+But now that Sheila knew the truth there could be no danger!  Dyck
+Calhoun would be relegated to his proper place in the scheme of things.
+Who was there to stand between him and his desire?  What was there to
+stay the great event?  He himself was a peer and high-placed, for it
+was a time when the West Indian Islands were a centre of the world's
+fighting, where men like Rodney had made everlasting fame; where the
+currents of world-controversy challenged, met and fought for control.
+
+The West Indies was as much a cock-pit of the fighting powers as ever
+Belgium was; and in those islands there was wealth and the power which
+wealth buys; the clash of white and black and coloured peoples; the naval
+contests on the sea; the horrible massacres and enslavement of free white
+peoples, as in St. Domingo and Grenada; the dominating attacks of people
+fighting for control--peoples of old empires like France and Spain, and
+new empires like that of Britain.  These were a centre of colonial life
+as important as had been the life in Virginia and New York and the New
+England States and Canada--indeed, more important than Canada in one
+sense, for the West Indies brought wealth to the British Isles, and had a
+big export trade.  He lost no time in bringing matters to an issue.
+
+He got to his feet and came near to her.  His eyes were inflamed with
+passion, his manner was impressive.  He had a distinguished face, become
+more distinguished since his assumption of governorship, and authority
+had increased his personality.
+
+"A man of mark!" he said.  "You mean a marked man.  Let me tell you I
+have an order from the British Government to confine him to his estate;
+not to permit him to leave it; and, if he does, to arrest him.  That is
+my commanded duty.  You approve, do you not?  Or are you like most women,
+soft at heart to bold criminals?"
+
+Sheila did not reply at once.  The news was no news to her, for Darius
+Boland had told her; but she thought it well to let the governor think
+he had made a new, sensational statement.
+
+"No," she said at last, looking him calmly in the eyes.  "I have no soft
+feelings for criminals as criminals, none at all.  And there is every
+reason why I should be adamant to this man, Dyck Calhoun.  But, Lord
+Mallow, I would go carefully about this, if I were you.  He is a man who
+takes no heed of people, high or low, and has no fear of consequences.
+Have you thought of the consequences to yourself?  Suppose he resists,
+what will you do?"
+
+"If he resists I will attack him with due force."
+
+"You mean you will send your military and police to attack him?"  The
+gibe was covered, but it found the governor's breast.  He knew what she
+was meaning.
+
+"You would not expect me to do police work, would you?  Is that what your
+president does?  What your great George Washington does?  Does he make
+the state arrests with his own hand?"
+
+"I have no doubt he would if the circumstances were such as to warrant
+it.  He has no small vices, and no false feelings.  He has proved
+himself," she answered boldly.
+
+"Well, in that case," responded Lord Mallow irritably, "the event will be
+as is due.  The man is condemned by my masters, and he must submit to my
+authority.  He is twice a criminal, and--"
+
+"And yet a hero and a good swordsman, and as honest as men are made in a
+dishonest world.  Your Admiralty and your government first pardoned the
+man, and then gave him freedom on the island which you tried to prevent;
+and now they turn round and confine him to his acres.  Is that pardon in
+a real sense?  Did you write to the government and say he ought not to be
+free to roam, lest he should discover more treasure-chests and buy
+another estate?  Was it you?"
+
+The governor shook his head.  "No, not I.  I told the government in
+careful and unrhetorical language the incident of his coming here, and
+what I did, and my reasons for doing it--that was all."
+
+"And you being governor they took your advice.  See, my lord, if this
+thing is done to him it will be to your own discomfiture.  It will hurt
+you in the public service."
+
+"Why, to hear you speak, mistress, it would almost seem you had a
+fondness for the man who killed your father, who went to jail for it,
+and--"
+
+"And became a mutineer," intervened the girl flushing.  "Why not say all?
+Why not catalogue his offences?  Fondness for the man who killed my
+father, you say!  Yes, I had a deep and sincere fondness for him ever
+since I met him at Playmore over seven years ago.  Yes, a fondness which
+only his crime makes impossible.  But in all that really matters I am
+still his friend.  He did not know he was killing my father, who had no
+claims upon me, none at all, except that through him I have life and
+being; but it is enough to separate us for ever in the eyes of the world,
+and in my eyes.  Not morally, of course, but legally and actually.  He
+and I are as far apart as winter and summer; we are parted for ever and
+ever and ever."
+
+Now at last she was inflamed.  Every nerve in her was alive.  All she had
+ever felt for Dyck Calhoun came rushing to the surface, demanding
+recognition, reasserting itself.  As she used the words, "ever and ever
+and ever," it was like a Cordelia bidding farewell to Lear, her father,
+for ever, for there was that in her voice which said: "It is final
+separation, it is the judgment of Jehovah, and I must submit.  It is the
+last word."
+
+Lord Mallow saw his opportunity, and did not hesitate.  "No, you are
+wrong, wholly wrong," he said.  "I did not bias what I said in my report
+--a report I was bound to make--by any covert prejudice against Mr.
+Calhoun.  I guarded myself especially"--there he lied, but he was an
+incomparable liar--"lest it should be used against him.  It would appear,
+however, that the new admiral's report with mine were laid together, and
+the government came to its conclusion accordingly.  So I am bound to do
+my duty."
+
+"If you--oh, if you did your duty, you would not obey the command of the
+government.  Are there not times when to obey is a crime, and is not this
+one of them?  Lord Mallow, you would be doing as great a crime as Mr.
+Dyck Calhoun ever committed, or could commit, if you put this order into
+actual fact.  You are governor here, and your judgment would be accepted
+--remember it is an eight weeks' journey to London at the least, and what
+might not happen in that time!  Are you not given discretion?"
+
+The governor nodded.  "Yes, I am given discretion, but this is an order."
+
+"An order!" she commented.  "Then if it should not be fulfilled, break
+it and take the consequences.  The principle should be--Do what is right,
+and have no fear."
+
+"I will think it over," answered the governor.  "What you say has immense
+weight with me--more even than I have words to say.  Yes, I will think it
+over--I promise you.  You are a genius--you prevail."
+
+Her face softened, a new something came into her manner.  "You do truly
+mean it?" she asked with lips that almost trembled.
+
+It seemed to her that to do this thing for Dyck Calhoun was the least
+that was possible, and it was perhaps the last thing she might ever be
+able to do.  She realized how terrible it would be for him to be shorn of
+the liberty he had always had; how dangerous it might be in many ways;
+and how the people of the island might become excited by it--and
+troublesome.
+
+"Yes, I mean it," answered Lord Mallow.  "I mean it exactly as I say it."
+
+She smiled.  "Well, that should recommend you for promotion," she said
+happily.  "I am sure you will decide not to enforce the order, if you
+think about it.  You shall be promoted, your honour, to a better place,"
+she repeated, half-satirically.
+
+"Shall I then?" he asked with a warm smile and drawing close to her.
+"Shall I?  Then it can only be by your recommendation.  Ah, my dear, my
+beautiful dear one," he hastened to add, "my life is possible
+henceforward only through you.  You have taught me by your life and
+person, by your beauty and truth, by your nobility of mind and character
+how life should be lived.  I have not always deserved your good opinion
+nor that of others.  I have fought duels and killed men; I have aspired
+to place; I have connived at appointment; I have been vain, overbearing
+and insistent on my rights or privileges; I have played the dictator here
+in Jamaica; I have not been satisfied save to get my own way; but you
+have altered all that.  Your coming here has given me a new outlook.
+Sheila, you have changed me, and you can change me infinitely more.
+I who have been a master wish to become your slave.  I want you--beloved,
+I want you for my wife."
+
+He reached out as though to take her hand, but she drew back from him.
+His thrilling words had touched her, as she had seldom been touched, as
+she had never been touched by any one save the man that must never be
+hers; she was submerged for the moment in the flood of his eloquence, and
+his yielding to her on the point of Dyck's imprisonment gave fresh accent
+to his words.  Yet she could not, she dared not yet say yes to his
+demand.
+
+"My lord," she said, "oh, you have stirred me!  Yet I dare not reply to
+you as you wish.  Life is hard as it is, and you have suddenly made it
+harder.  What is more, I do not, I cannot, believe you.  You have loved
+many.  Your life has been a covert menace.  Oh, I know what they said of
+you in Ireland.  I know not of your life here.  I suppose it is
+circumspect now; but in Ireland it was declared you were notorious with
+women."
+
+"It is a lie," he answered.  "I was not notorious.  I was no better and
+no worse than many another man.  I played, I danced attendance, I said
+soft nothings, but I was tied to no woman in all Ireland.  I was
+frolicsome and adventurous, but no more.  There is no woman who can
+say I used her ill or took from her what I did not--"
+
+"Atone for, Lord Mallow?"
+
+"Atone--no.  What I did not give return for, was what I was going to
+say."
+
+The situation was intense.  She was in a place from which there was no
+escape except by flight or refusal.  She did not really wish to refuse.
+Somehow, there had come upon her the desire to put all thought of Dyck
+Calhoun out of her mind by making it impossible for her to think of him;
+and marriage was the one sure and complete way--marriage with this man,
+was it possible?  He held high position, he was her fellow countryman and
+an Irish peer, and she was the daughter of an evil man, who was, above
+all else, a traitor to his country, though Lord Mallow did not know that.
+The only one she knew possessed of the facts was the man she desired to
+save herself from in final way--Dyck Calhoun.  Her heart was for the
+moment soft to Lord Mallow, in spite of his hatred of Dyck Calhoun.  The
+governor was a man of charm in conversation.  He was born with rare
+faculties.  Besides, he had knowledge of humanity and of women.  He knew
+how women could be touched.  He had appealed to Sheila more by ability
+than by aught else.  His concessions to her were discretion in a way.
+They opened the route to her affections, as his place and title could not
+do.
+
+"No, no, no, believe me, Sheila, I was a man who had too many temptations
+--that was all.  But I did not spoil my life by them, and I am here a
+trusted servant of the government.  I am a better governor than your
+first words to me would make you seem to think."
+
+Her eyes were shining, her face was troubled, her tongue was silent.  She
+knew not what to say.  She felt she could not say yes--yet she wanted to
+escape from him.  Her good fortune did not desert her.  Suddenly the door
+of the room opened and her mother entered.
+
+"There is a member of your suite here, your honour, asking for you.  It
+is of most grave importance.  It is urgent.  What shall I say?"
+
+"Say nothing.  I am coming," said the governor.  "I am coming now."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+OUT OF THE HANDS OF THE PHILISTINES
+
+That night the Maroons broke loose upon Jamaica, and began murder and
+depredation against which the governor's activities were no check.
+Estates were invaded, and men, women and children killed, or carried into
+the mountains and held as hostages.  In the middle and western part of
+the island the ruinous movements went on without being stayed; planters
+and people generally railed at the governor, and said that through his
+neglect these dark things were happening.  It was said he had failed to
+punish offences by the Maroons, and this had given them confidence,
+filling them with defiance.  They had one advantage not possessed by the
+government troops and militia--they were masters of every square rod of
+land in the middle and west of the island.  Their plan was to raid, to
+ambush, to kill and to excite the slaves to rebel.
+
+The first assault and repulse took place not far from Enniskillen, Dyck
+Calhoun's plantation, and Michael Clones captured a Maroon who was
+slightly wounded.
+
+Michael challenged him thus: "Come now, my blitherin' friend, tell us
+your trouble--why are you risin'?  You don't do this without cause--
+what's the cause?"
+
+The black man, naked except for a cloth about his loins, and with a small
+bag at his hip, slung from a cord over his shoulder, showed his teeth in
+a stark grimace.
+
+"You're a newcomer here, massa, or you'd know we're treated bad," he
+answered.  "We're robbed and trod on and there's no word kept with us.
+We asked the governor for more land and he moved us off.  We warned him
+against having one of our head young men flogged by a slave in the
+presence of slaves--for we are free men, and he laughs.  So, knowing a
+few strong men can bring many weak men to their knees, we rose.  I say
+this--there's plenty weak men in Jamaica, men who don't know right when
+they see it.  So we rose, massa, and we'll make Jamaica sick before we've
+done.  They can't beat us, for we can ambush here, and shoot those that
+come after us.  We hide, one behind this rock and one behind that, two or
+three together, and we're safe.  But the white soldiers come all together
+and beat drums and blow horns, and we know where they are, and so we
+catch 'em and kill 'em.  You'll see, we'll capture captains and generals,
+and we'll cut their heads off and bury them in their own guts."
+
+He made an ugly grimace, and a loathsome gesture, and Michael Clones felt
+the man ought to die.  He half drew his sword, but, thinking better of
+it, he took the Maroon to the Castle and locked him up in a slave's hut,
+having first bound him and put him in the charge of one he could trust.
+But as he put the man away, he said:
+
+"You talk of your people hiding, and men not being able to find you; but
+did you never hear of bloodhounds, that can hunt you down, and chew you
+up?  Did you never hear of them?"
+
+The man's face wrinkled like a rag, for there is one thing the native
+fears more than all else, and that is the tooth of the hound.  But he
+gathered courage, and said: "The governor has no hounds.  There ain't
+none in Jamaica.  We know dat--all of us know dat--all of us know dat,
+massa."
+
+Michael Clones laughed, and it was not pleasant to hear.  "It may be the
+governor has no bloodhounds, and would not permit their being brought
+into the island, but my master is bringing them in himself--a lot with
+their drivers from Cuba, and you Maroons will have all you can do to
+hide.  Sure, d'ye think every wan in the island is as foolish as the
+governor?  If you do, y'are mistaken, and that's all there is to say."
+
+"The hounds not here--in de island, massa!" declared the Maroon
+questioningly.
+
+"They'll be here within the next few hours, and then where will you and
+your pals be?  You'll be caught between sharp teeth--nice, red, sharp,
+bloody teeth; and you'll make good steak-better than your best olio."
+
+The native gave a moan--it was the lament of one whose crime was come
+tete-a-tete with its own punishment.
+
+"That's the game to play," said Michael to himself as he fastened the
+door tight.  "The hounds will settle this fool-rebellion quicker than
+aught else.  Mr. Calhoun's a wise man, and he ought to be governor here.
+Criminal?  As much as the angel Gabriel!  He must put down this
+rebellion--no wan else can.  They're stronger, the Maroons, than ever
+they've been.  They've planned this with skill, and they'll need a lot of
+handlin'.  We're safe enough here, but down there at Salem--well, they
+may be caught in the bloody net.  Bedad, that's sure."
+
+A few moments afterwards he met Dyck Calhoun.  "Michael," said Dyck,
+"things are safe enough here, but we've prepared!  The overseers,
+bookkeepers and drivers are loyal enough.  But there are others not so
+safe.  I'm going to Salem-riding as hard as I can, with six of our best
+men.  They're not so daft at Salem as we are, Michael.  They won't know
+how to act or what to do.  Darius Boland is a good man, but he's only had
+Virginian experience, and this is different.  A hundred Maroons are as
+good as a thousand white soldiers in the way the Maroons fight.  There
+are a thousand of them, and they can lay waste this island, if they get
+going.  So I shall stop them.  The hounds are outside the harbour now,
+Michael.  The ship Vincent, bringing them, was sighted by a sloop two
+days ago, making slowly for Kingston.  She should be here before we've
+time to turn round.  Michael, the game is in our hands, if we play it
+well.  Do you go down to Kingston and--"
+
+He detailed what Michael was to do on landing the hounds, and laid out
+plans for the immediate future.  "They're in danger at Salem, Michael, so
+we must help them.  The hounds will settle this whole wretched business."
+
+Michael told him of his prisoner, and what effect the threat about the
+hounds had had.  A look of purpose came into Dyck's face.
+
+"A hound is as fair as a gun, and hounds shall be used here in Jamaica.
+The governor can't refuse their landing now.  The people would kill him
+if he did.  It was I proposed it all."
+
+"Look, sir--who's that?" asked Michael, as they saw a figure riding
+under the palms not far away.
+
+It was very early morning, and the light was dim yet, but there was
+sufficient to make even far sight easy.  Dyck shaded his forehead with
+his hand.
+
+"It's not one of our people, Michael.  It's a stranger."
+
+As the rider came on he was stopped by two of the drivers of the estate.
+Dyck and Michael saw him hold up a letter, and a moment later he was on
+his way to Dyck, galloping hard.  Arrived, he dropped to the ground, and
+saluted Dyck.
+
+"A letter from Salem, sir," he said, and handed it over to Dyck.
+
+Dyck nodded, broke the seal of the letter and read it quickly.  Then he
+nodded again and bade the man eat a hearty breakfast and return with him
+on one of the Enniskillen horses, as his own would be exhausted.  "We'll
+help protect Salem, my man," said Dyck.
+
+The man grinned.  "That's good," he answered.  "They knew naught of the
+rising when I left.  But the governor was there yesterday, and he'd
+protect us."
+
+"Nonsense, fellow, the governor would go straight to Spanish Town where
+he belongs, when there is trouble."
+
+When the man had gone, Dyck turned to his servant.  "Michael," he said,
+"the news in the letter came from Darius Boland.  He says the governor
+told him he had orders from England to confine me here at Enniskillen,
+and he meant to do it.  We'll see how he does it.  If he sends his
+marshals, we'll make Gadarene swine of them."
+
+There was a smile at his lips, and it was contemptuous, and the lines of
+his forehead told of resolve.  "Michael," he added, "we'll hunt Lord
+Mallow with the hounds of our good fortune, for this war is our war.
+They can't win it without me, and they shan't.  Without the hounds it may
+be a two years' war--with the hounds it can't go beyond a week or so."
+
+"If the hounds get here, sir!  But if they don't?"
+
+Dyck laid his hand upon the sword at his side.  "If they don't get here,
+Michael, still the war will be ours, for we understand fighting, and the
+governor does not.  Confine me here, will he?  If he does, he'll be a
+better man than I have ever known him, Michael.  In a few hours I shall
+be at Salem, to do what he could not, and would not, do if he could.  His
+love is as deep as water on a roof, no deeper.  He'll think first of
+himself, and afterwards of the owner of Salem or any other.  Let me show
+you what I mean to do once we've Salem free from danger.  Come and have a
+look at my chart."
+
+Some hours later Dyck Calhoun, with his six horsemen, was within a mile
+or so of Salem.  They had ridden hard in the heat and were tired, but
+there was high spirit in the men, for they were behind a trusted leader
+--a man who ate little, but who did not disdain a bottle of Madeira or
+a glass of brandy, and who made good every step of the way he went--
+watchful, alert, careful, determined.  They cared little what his past
+had been.  Jamaica was not a heaven for the good, but it was a haven for
+many who had been ill-used elsewhere; where each man, as though he were
+really in a new world, was judged by his daily actions and not by any
+history of a hidden or an open past.  As they came across country, Dyck
+always ahead, they saw how he responded to every sign of life in the
+bush, how he moved always with discretion where ambush seemed possible.
+They knew how on his own estate he never made mistakes of judgment;
+that he held the balance carefully, and that his violences, rare and
+tremendous, were not outbursts of an unregulated nature.  "You can't fool
+Calhoun," was a common phrase in the language of Enniskillen, and there
+were few in the surrounding country who would not have upheld its truth.
+
+Now, to-day, he was almost moodily silent, reserved and watchful.  None
+knew the eddies of life which struggled for mastery in him, nor of his
+horrible disappointments.  None knew of his love for Sheila.  Yet all
+knew that he had killed--or was punished for killing--Erris Boyne.  None
+of them had seen Sheila, but all had heard of her, and the governor's
+courtship of her, and all wondered why Dyck Calhoun should be doing what
+clearly the governor should do.
+
+Somehow, in spite of the criminal record with which Calhoun's life was
+stained, they had a respect for him they did not have for Lord Mallow.
+Dyck's life in Jamaica was clean; and his progress as a planter had been
+free from black spots.  He even kept no mistress, and none had ever known
+him to have to do with women, black, brown, or white.  He had never gone
+a-Maying, as the saying was, and his only weakness or fault--if it was a
+fault--was a fondness for the bottle of good wine which was ever open on
+his table, and for tobacco in the smoking-leaf.  To-day he smoked
+incessantly and carefully.  He threw no loose ends of burning tobacco
+from cigar or pipe into the loose dry leaves and stiff-cut ground.  Yet
+they knew the small clouds floating away from his head did not check his
+observation.  That was proved beyond peradventure when they were within
+sight of the homestead of Salem on an upland well-wooded.  It was in
+apparently happy circumstances, for they could see no commotion about the
+homestead; they saw men with muskets, evidently keeping guard--yet too
+openly keeping guard, and so some said to each other.
+
+Presently Dyck reined his horse.  Each man listened attentively, and eyed
+the wood ahead of them, for it was clear Dyck suspected danger there.
+For a moment there seemed doubt in Dyck's mind what to do, but presently
+he had decided.
+
+"Ride slow for Salem," he said.  "It's Maroons there in the bush.  They
+are waiting for night.  They won't attack us now.  They're in ambush--of
+that I'm sure.  If they want to capture Salem, they'll not give alarm by
+firing on us, so if we ride on they'll think we haven't sensed them.  If
+they do attack us, we'll know they are in good numbers, for they'll be
+facing us as well as the garrison of Salem.  But keep your muskets ready.
+Have a drink," he added, and handed his horn of liquor.  "If they see us
+drink, and they will, they'll think we've only stopped to refresh, and
+we'll be safe.  In any case, if they attack, fire your muskets at them
+and ride like the devil.  Don't dismount and don't try to find them in
+the rocks.  They'll catch us that way, as they've caught others.  It's a
+poor game fighting hidden men.  I want to get them into the open down
+below, and that's where they'll be before we're many hours older."
+
+With this he rode on slightly ahead, and presently put his horse at a
+gentle canter which he did not increase as they neared the place where
+the black men ambushed.  Every man of the group behaved well.  None
+showed nervousness, even when one of the horses, conscious of hidden
+Maroons in the wood, gave a snort and made a sharp movement out of the
+track, in an attempt to get greater speed.
+
+That was only for an instant, however.  Yet every man's heart beat
+faster as they came to the place where the ambush was.  Indeed, Dyck saw
+a bush move, and had a glimpse of a black, hideous face which quickly
+disappeared.  Dyck's imperturbable coolness kept them steady.  They even
+gossiped of idle things loud enough for the hidden Maroons to hear.  No
+face showed suspicion or alarm, as they passed, while all felt the
+presence of many men in the underbrush.  Only when they had passed the
+place, did they realize the fulness of the danger through which they had
+gone.  Dyck talked to them presently without turning round, for that
+might have roused suspicion, and while they were out of danger now,
+there was the future and Dyck's plan which he now unfolded.
+
+"They'll come down into the open before it's dark," he said quietly,
+"and when they do that, we'll have 'em.  They've no chance to ambush in
+the cane-fields now.  We'll get them in the open, and wipe them out.
+Don't look round.  Keep steady, and we'll ride a little more quickly
+soon."
+
+A little later they cantered to the front door of the Salem homestead.
+
+The first face they saw there was that of Darius Boland.  It had a look
+of trouble.  Dyck explained.  "We thought you might not have heard of the
+rise of the Maroons.  We have no ladies at Enniskillen.  We prepared, and
+we're safe enough there, as things are.  Your ladies must go at once to
+Spanish Town, unless--"
+
+"Unless they stay here!  Well, they would not be unwise, for though the
+slaves under the old management might have joined the Maroons, they will
+not do so now.  We have got them that far.  But, Mr. Calhoun, the ladies
+aren't here.  They rode away into the hills this morning, and they've not
+come back.
+
+"I was just sending a search party for them.  I did not know of the rise
+of the Maroons."
+
+"In what direction did they go?" asked Dyck with anxiety, though his
+tone was even.
+
+Darius Boland pointed.  "They went slightly northwest, and if they go as
+I think they meant to do, they would come back the way you came in."
+
+"They were armed?" Dyck asked sharply.
+
+"Yes, they were armed," was the reply.  "Miss Llyn had a small pistol.
+She learned to carry one in Virginia, and she has done so ever since we
+came here."
+
+"Listen, Boland," said Dyck with anxiety.  "Up there in the hills by
+which we came are Maroons hidden, and they will invade this place to-
+night.  We were ready to fight them, of course, as we came, but it's a
+risky business, and we wanted to get them all if possible.  We couldn't
+if we had charged them there, for they were well-ambushed.  My idea was
+to let them get into the open between there and here, and catch them as
+they came.  It would save our own men, and it would probably do for them.
+If Mrs. and Miss Llyn come back that way, they will be in greater danger
+than were we, for the Maroons were coming here to capture the ladies and
+hold them as hostages; and they would not let them pass.  In any case,
+the risk is immense.  The ladies must be got to Spanish Town, for the
+Maroons are desperate.  They know we have no ships of the navy here now,
+and they rely on their raiding powers and the governor's weakness.  They
+have placed their men in every part of the middle and western country,
+and they came upon my place last evening and were defeated.  Several were
+killed and one taken prisoner.  They can't be marched upon like an army.
+Their powers of ambush are too great.  They must be run down by
+bloodhounds.  It's the only way."
+
+"Bloodhounds--there are no bloodhounds here!" said Darius Boland.  "And
+if there were, wouldn't pious England make a fuss?"
+
+Dyck Calhoun was about to speak sharply, but he caught sarcasm in Darius
+Boland's face, and he said: "I have the bloodhounds.  They're outside the
+harbour now, and I intend to use them."
+
+"If the governor allows you!" remarked Darius Boland ironically.  "He
+does not like you or your bloodhounds.  He has his orders, so he says."
+
+Dyck made an impatient gesture.  "I will not submit to his orders.
+I have earned my place in this is land, and he shall not have his way.
+The ladies must be brought to Spanish Town, and placed where the
+governor's men can protect them."
+
+"The governor's men!  Indeed.  They might as well stay here; we can
+surely protect them."
+
+"Perhaps, for you have skill, Boland, and you are cautious, but is it
+fair for ladies to stay in this isolated spot with murderers about?  When
+the ladies come back, they must be sent at once to Spanish Town.  Can't
+you see?"
+
+Darius Boland bowed.  "What you say goes always," he remarked, "but tell
+me, sir, who will take the ladies to Spanish Town?"
+
+Dyck Calhoun read the inner meaning of Darius Boland's words.  They did
+not put him out of self-control.  It was not a time to dwell on such
+things.  It was his primary duty to save the ladies.
+
+"Come, Boland," he said sharply, "I shall start now.  We must find the
+ladies.  What sort of a country is it through which they pass?"  He
+pointed.
+
+"Bad enough in some ways.  There's an old monastery of the days of the
+Spaniards up there"--he pointed or the ruins of one, and it is a pleasant
+place to rest.  I doubt not they rested there, if--"
+
+"If they reached it!" remarked Dyck with crisp inflection.  "Yes, they
+would rest there--and it would be a good place for ambush by the Maroons,
+eh?"
+
+"Good enough from the standpoint of the Maroons," was the reply, the
+voice slightly choked.
+
+"Then we must go there.  It's a damnable predicament--no, you must not
+come with me!  You must keep command here."
+
+He hastily described the course to be followed by those of his own men
+who stayed to defend, and then said: "Our horses are fagged.  If you loan
+us four I'll see they are well cared for, and returned in kind or cash.
+I'll take three of my men only, and loan you three of the best.  We'll
+fill our knapsacks and get away, Boland."
+
+A few moments later, Calhoun and his three men, with a guide added by
+Boland, had started away up the road which had been ridden by Mrs. Llyn
+and Sheila.  One thing was clear, the Maroons on the hill did not know of
+the absence of Sheila and her mother, or they would not be waiting.  He
+did not like the long absence of the ladies.  It was ominous at such a
+time.
+
+Dyck and his small escort got away by a road unseen from where the
+Maroons were, and when well away put their horses to a canter and got
+into the hills.  Once in the woods, however, they rode alertly, and
+Dyck's eyes were everywhere.  He was quick to see a bush move, to observe
+the flick of a branch, to catch the faintest sound of an animal origin.
+He was obsessed with anxiety, for he had a dark fear that some ill had
+happened to the two.  His blood almost dried in his veins when he thought
+of the fate which had followed the capture of ladies in other islands
+like Haiti or Grenada.
+
+It did not seem possible that these beautiful women should have fallen
+into the outrageous hands of savages.  He knew the girl was armed, and
+that before harm might come to her she would end her own life and her
+mother's also; but if she was caught from behind, and the opportunity of
+suicide should not be hers--what then?
+
+Yet he showed no agitation to his followers.  His eyes were, however,
+intensely busy, and every nerve was keen to feel.  Life in the open had
+developed in him the physical astuteness of the wild man, and he had all
+the gifts that make a supreme open-air fighter.  He sensed things; but
+with him it was feeling, and not scent or hearing; his senses were such
+perfect listeners.  He had the intense perception of a delicate plant,
+those wonderful warnings which only come to those who live close to
+nature, who study from feeling the thousand moods and tenses of living
+vegetables and animal life.  He was a born hunter, and it was not easy to
+surprise him when every nerve was sharp with premonition.  He saw the
+marks of the hoofs of Sheila's and her mother's horses in the road,
+knowing them by the freshness of the indentations.  An hour, two hours
+passed, and they then approached the monasterial ruin of which Boland had
+spoken.  Here, suddenly, Dyck dropped to the ground, for he saw
+unmistakable signs of fright or flurry in the hoofmarks.
+
+He quickly made examination, and there were signs of women's feet and
+also a bare native foot, but no signs of struggle or disturbance.  The
+footprints, both native and white, were firmly placed, but the horses'
+hoof-prints showed agitation.  Presently the hoofmarks became more
+composed again.  Suddenly one of Dyck's supporters exclaimed he had
+picked up a small piece of ribbon, evidently dropped to guide those who
+might come searching.  Presently another token was found in a loose bit
+of buckle from a shoe.  Then, suddenly, upon the middle of the road was a
+little pool of blood and signs that a body had lain in the dust.
+
+"She shot a native here," said Dyck to his men coolly.  "There are no
+signs of a struggle," remarked the most observant.
+
+"We must go carefully here, for they may have been imprisoned in the
+ruin.  You stay here, and I'll go forward," he added, with a hand on his
+sword.  "I've an idea they're here.  We have one chance, my lads, and
+let's keep our heads.  If anything should happen to me, have a try
+yourselves, and see what you can do.  The ladies must be freed, if
+they're there.  There's not one of you that won't stand by to the last,
+but I want your oath upon it.  By the heads or graves of your mothers,
+lads, you'll see it through?  Up with your hands!"
+
+Their hands went up.  "By our mothers' heads or graves!" they said in low
+tones.
+
+"Good!" he replied.  "I'll go on ahead.  If you hear a call, or a shot
+fired, forward swiftly."
+
+An instant later he plunged into the woods to the right of the road, by
+which he would come upon the ruins from the rear.  He held a pistol as he
+stole carefully yet quickly forward.  He was anxious there should be no
+delay, but he must not be rash.  Without meeting anyone he came near the
+ruins.  They showed serene in the shade of the trees.
+
+Then suddenly came from the ruin a Maroon of fierce, yet not cruel
+appearance, who laid a hand behind his ear, and looked steadfastly
+towards that part of the wood where Dyck was.  It was clear he had heard
+something.  Dyck did not know how many Maroons there might be in the
+ruins, or near it, and he did not attack.  It was essential he should
+know the strength of his foe; and he remained quiet.  Presently the
+native turned as though to go back into the ruins, but changed his mind,
+and began to tour the stony, ruined building.  Dyck waited, and presently
+saw more natives come from the ruins, and after a moment another three.
+These last were having an argument of some stress, for they pulled at
+each other's arms and even caught at the long cloths of their
+headdresses.
+
+"They've got the ladies there," thought Dyck, "but they've done them no
+harm yet."  He waited moments longer to see if more natives were coming
+out, then said to himself: "I'll make a try for it now.  It won't do to
+run the risk of going back to bring my fellows up.  It's a fair risk, but
+it's worth taking."
+
+With that he ran softly to the entrance from which he had seen the men
+emerge.  Looking in he saw only darkness.  Then suddenly he gave a soft
+call, the call of an Irish bird-note which all people in Ireland--in the
+west and south of Ireland--know.  If Sheila was alive and in the place
+she would answer it, he was sure.  He waited a moment, and there was no
+answer.  Then he called again, and in an instant, as though from a great
+distance, there came the reply of the same note, clearer and more bell-
+like than his own.
+
+"She's there!" he said, and boldly entered the place.  It was dark and
+damp, but ahead was a break in the solid monotony of ruined wall, and he
+saw a clear stream of light beyond.  He stole ahead, got over the stone
+obstructions, and came on to a biggish room which once had been a
+refectory.  Looking round it he saw three doors--one evidently led into
+the kitchen, one into a pantry, and one into a hall.  It was clear the
+women were alone, or some one would have come in answer to his call.  Who
+could tell when they would come?  There was no time to be lost.  With an
+instinct, which proved correct, he opened the door leading into the old
+kitchen, and there, tied, and with pale faces, but in no other sense
+disordered, were Sheila and her mother.  He put his fingers to his lips,
+then hastily cut them loose from the ropes of bamboo, and helped them to
+their feet.
+
+"Can you walk?" he whispered to Mrs. Llyn.  She nodded assent, and
+braced herself.  "Then here," he said, "is a pistol.  Come quickly.  We
+may have to fight our way out.  Don't be afraid to fire, but take good
+aim first.  I have some men in the wood beyond where you shot the
+native," he added to Sheila.  "They'll come at once if I call, or a shot
+is fired.  Keep your heads, and we shall be all right.  They're a
+dangerous crew, but we'll beat them this time.  Come quickly."
+
+Presently they were in the refectory, and a moment after that they were
+over the stones, and near the entrance, and then a native appeared,
+armed.  Without an instant's hesitation Dyck ran forward, and as he
+entered, put his sword into the man's vitals, and he fell, calling out as
+he fell.
+
+"The rest will be on us now," said Dyck, "and we must keep going."
+
+Three more natives appeared, and he shot two.
+
+Catching a pistol from Sheila he aimed at the third native and wounded
+him, but did not kill him.  The man ran into the wood.  Presently more
+Maroons came--a dozen or more, and rushed for the entrance.  They were
+met by Dyck's fire, and now also Sheila fired and brought down her man.
+Dyck wounded another, and in great skill loaded again, but at that moment
+three of the Maroons rushed down into the ruins.
+
+They were astonished to see Dyck there, and more astonished to receive--
+first one and then another--his iron in their bowels.  The third man made
+a stroke at Dyck with his lance, and only gashed Dyck's left arm.  Then
+he turned and fled out into the open, and was met by a half-dozen others.
+They all were about to rush the entrance when suddenly four shots behind
+them brought three of them down, and the rest fled into the wood
+shouting.  In another moment Dyck and the ladies were in the open, and
+making for the woods, the women in front, the men behind, loading their
+muskets as they ran, and alive to the risks of the moment.
+
+The dresses of the ladies were stained and soiled with dust and damp, but
+otherwise they seemed little the worse for the adventure, save that Mrs.
+Llyn was shaken, and her face was pale.
+
+"How did you know where we were, and why did you come?" she said, after
+they had got under way, having secured the horses which Sheila and her
+mother had ridden.
+
+Briefly Dyck explained how as soon as he had dealt with the revolt of the
+Maroons at his own place he came straight to Salem.
+
+"I knew you were unused to the ways of the country and to our sort of
+native here, and I felt sure you would not refuse to take help--even mine
+at a pinch.  But what happened to you?" he added, turning to Sheila.
+
+It was only yesterday Sheila had determined to cut him wholly out of her
+life by assenting to marry Lord Mallow.  Yet here he was, and she could
+scarcely bear to look into his face.  He was shut off from her by every
+fact of human reason.  These were days when the traditions of family life
+were more intense than now; when to kill one's own father was not so bad
+as to embrace, as it were, him or her who had killed that father.  Sheila
+felt if she were normal she ought to feel abhorrence against Dyck; yet
+she felt none at all, and his saving them had given a new colour to
+their relations.  If he had killed her father, the traitor, he had saved
+themselves from death or freed them from a shameful captivity which might
+have ended in black disaster.  She kept herself in hand, and did not show
+confusion.
+
+"We had not heard of the rising of the Maroons," she said.  "The governor
+was at Salem yesterday and a message came from his staff to say would he
+come at once.  His staff were not at Salem, but at the next plantation
+nearer to Spanish Town.  Lord Mallow went.  If he suspected the real
+trouble he said naught, but was gone before you could realize it.  The
+hours went by, night came and passed, then my mother and I, this morning,
+resolved to ride to the monastery, and then round by the road you
+travelled back to Salem."
+
+"There are Maroons now on that hill above your place.  They were in
+ambush when we passed, but we took no notice.  It was not wise to invite
+trouble.  Some of us would have been killed, but--"
+
+He then told what had been in his mind, and what might be the outcome--
+the killing or capture of the whole group, and safety for all at Salem.
+
+When he had finished, she continued her story.  "We rode for an hour
+unchallenged, and then came the Maroons.  At first I knew not what to do.
+We were surrounded before we could act.  I had my pistol ready, and there
+was the chance of escape--the faint chance--if we drove our horses on;
+but there was also the danger of being fired at from behind!  So we sat
+still on our horses, and I asked them how they dared attack white ladies.
+I asked them if they had never thought what vengeance the governor would
+take.  They did not understand my words, but they grasped the meaning,
+and one of them, the leader, who understood English, was inclined to have
+reason.  As it was, we stopped what might have been our murder by saying
+it would be wiser to hold us as hostages, and that we were Americans.
+That man was killed--by you.  A shot from your pistol brought him down as
+he rushed forward to enter the ruins.  But he took care of us as we went
+forward, and when I shot one of his followers for laying his hand upon me
+in the saddle--he caught me by the leg under my skirt--he would allow no
+retaliation.  I knew boldness was the safe part to play.
+
+"But in the end we were bound with ropes as you found us, while they
+waited for more of their people to come, those, no doubt, you found
+ambushed on the hill.  As we lay, bound as you saw us, the leader said to
+us we should be safe if he could have his way, but there were bad
+elements among the Maroons, and he could not guarantee it.  Yet he knew
+the government would pay for our release, would perhaps give the land for
+which they had asked with no avail.  We must, therefore, remain
+prisoners.  If we made no efforts to escape, it would be better in the
+end.  "Keep your head steady, missy, try no tricks, and all may go well;
+but I have bad lot, and they may fly at you."  That was the way he spoke.
+It made our blood run cold, for he was one man, with fair mind, and he
+had around him men, savage and irresponsible.  Black and ruthless, they
+would stop at nothing except the sword at their throats or the teeth in
+their flesh."
+
+"The teeth in their flesh!" said Dyck with a grim smile.  "Yes, that is
+the only way with them.  Naught can put the fear of God into them except
+bloodhounds, and that Lord Mallow will not have.  He has been set against
+it until now.  But this business will teach him.  He may change his mind
+now, since what he cares for is in danger--his place and his ladies!"
+
+Mrs. Llyn roused herself to say: "No, no, Mr. Calhoun, you must not say
+that of him.  His place may be in danger, but not his ladies.  He has no
+promise of that.  .  .  .  And see, Mr. Calhoun, I want to say that, in
+any case, you have paid your debt, if you owe one to us.  For a life
+taken you have given two lives--to me and my girl.  I speak as one who
+has a right to say it!  Erris Boyne was naught to me at all, but he was
+my daughter's father, and that made everything difficult.  I could make
+him cease to be my husband, and I did; but I could not make him cease to
+be her father."
+
+"I had no love for Erris Boyne," said Sheila.  Misery was heavy on her.
+"None at all, but he was my father."
+
+"See, all's well still at Salem," said Dyck waving a hand as though to
+change the talk.  "All's as we left it."
+
+There in the near distance lay Salem, serene.  All tropical life about
+seemed throbbing with life and soaking with leisure.
+
+"We were in time," he added.  "The Maroons are still in ambush.  The sun
+is beginning to set though, and the trouble may begin.  We shall get
+there about sundown--safe, thank God!"
+
+"Safe, thank God--and you," said Sheila's mother.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+THE CLASH OF RACE
+
+In the King's House at Spanish Town the governor was troubled.  All his
+plans and prophecies had come to naught.  He had been sure there would be
+no rebellion of the Maroons, and he was equally sure that his career
+would be made hugely successful by marriage with Sheila Llyn--but the
+Maroons had revolted, and the marriage was not settled!
+
+Messages had been coming from the provost-marshal-general of reports from
+the counties of Middlesex and Cornwall, that the Maroons were ravaging
+everywhere and that bands of slaves had joined them with serious
+disasters to the plantation people.  Planters, their wives and children
+had been murdered, and in some districts the natives were in full
+possession and had destroyed, robbed and ravaged.  He had summoned his
+commander of the militia forces, had created special constables, and
+armed them, and had sent a ship to the Bahamas to summon a small British
+fleet there.  He had also mapped out a campaign against the Maroons,
+which had one grave demerit--it was planned on a basis of ordinary
+warfare and not with Jamaica conditions in mind.  The provost-marshal
+warned him of the futility of these plans, but he had persisted in them.
+He had later been shocked, however, by news that the best of his colonels
+had been ambushed and killed, and that others had been made prisoners and
+treated with barbarity.  From everywhere, except one, had come either
+news of defeat or set-back.
+
+One good thing he immediately did: he threw open King's House to the
+wounded, and set the surgeons to work, thereby checking bitter criticism
+and blocking the movement rising against him.  For it was well known he
+had rejected all warnings, had persisted in his view that trust in the
+Maroons and fair treatment of themselves and the slaves were all that was
+needed.
+
+As he walked in the great salon or hall of audience where the wounded
+lay--over seventy feet long and thirty wide, with great height, to which
+beds and conveniences had been hastily brought--it seemed to him that he
+was saving, if barely saving, his name and career.  Standing beside one
+of the Doric pillars which divided the salon from an upper and lower
+gallery of communications, he received the Custos of Kingston.  As the
+Custos told his news the governor's eyes were running along the line of
+busts of ancient and modern philosophers on the gilt brackets between the
+Doric pilasters.  They were all in bronze, and his mind had the doleful
+imagination of brown slave heroes placed there in honour for services
+given to the country.  The doors at the south end of the great salon
+opened now and then into the council chambers beyond, and he could see
+the surgeons operating on the cases returned from the plantations.
+
+"Your honour," said the Custos, "things have suddenly improved.  The
+hounds have come from Cuba and in the charge of ten men--ten men with
+sixty hounds.  That is the situation at the moment.  All the people at
+Kingston are overjoyed.  They see the end of the revolt."
+
+"The hounds!" exclaimed the governor.  "What hounds?"
+
+"The hounds sent for by Dyck Calhoun--surely your honour remembers!"
+
+Surely his honour did, and recalled also that he forbade the importation
+of the hounds; but he could not press that prohibition now.  "The
+mutineer and murderer, Dyck Calhoun!" he exclaimed.  "And they have
+come!"
+
+"Yes, your honour, and gone with Calhoun's man, Michael Clones, to
+Salem."
+
+"To Salem--why Salem?"
+
+"Because Calhoun is there fighting the Maroons in that district.  The
+Maroons first captured the ladies of Salem as they rode in the woods.
+They were beaten at that game by Calhoun and four men; the ladies then
+were freed and taken back to Salem.  Then the storm burst on Salem--
+burst, but did not overwhelm.  Calhoun saved the situation there; and
+when his hounds arrive at Salem he will range over the whole country.
+It is against the ideas of the people of England, but it does our work
+in Jamaica as nothing else could.  It was a stroke of genius, the hounds,
+your honour!"
+
+Lord Mallow was at once relieved and nonplussed.  No doubt the policy of
+the hounds was useful, and it might save his own goose, but it was, in a
+sense, un-English to hunt the wild man with hounds.  Yet was it un-
+English?  What was the difference between a sword and a good sharp tooth
+save that the sword struck and let go and the tooth struck and held on?
+It had been said in England that to hunt negroes with hounds was
+barbarous and cowardly; but criminals were hunted with bloodhounds
+in all civilized countries; and as for cowardice, the man who had sent
+for these hounds was as brave as any old crusader!  No, Dyck Calhoun
+could not be charged with cowardice, and his policy of the hounds might
+save the island and the administration in the end.  They had arrived in
+the very hour of Jamaica's and Lord Mallow's greatest peril.  They had
+gone on to the man who had been sane enough to send for them.
+
+"Tell me about the landing of the hounds," said Lord Mallow.
+
+"It was last night about dusk that word came from the pilot's station
+at Port Royal that the vessel Vincent was making for port, and that she.
+came from Cuba.  Presently Michael Clones, the servant of Dyck Calhoun,
+came also to say that the Vincent was the ship bringing Calhoun's hounds
+from Cuba, and asking permit for delivery.  This he did because he
+thought you were opposed to the landing.  In the light of our position
+here, we granted the delivery.
+
+"When the vessel came to anchor, the hounds with their drivers were
+landed.  The landing was the signal for a great display on the part of
+the people and the militia--yes, the militia shared in the applause, your
+honour!  They had had a taste of war with the Maroons and the slaves, and
+they were well inclined to let the hounds have their chance.  Resolutions
+were then passed to approach your honour and ask that full powers be
+given to Calhoun to pursue the war without thought of military precedent
+or of Calhoun's position.  He has no official place in the public life
+here, but he is powerful with the masses.  It is rumoured you have an
+order to confine him to his plantation; but to apply it would bring
+revolution in Jamaica.  There are great numbers of people who love his
+courage, what he did for the King's navy, and for his commercial success
+here, and they would resent harsh treatment of him.  They are aware, your
+honour, that he and you knew each other in Ireland, and they think you
+are hard on him.  People judge not from all the facts, but from what they
+see and hear."
+
+During the Custos' narrative, Lord Mallow was perturbed.  He had the
+common sense to know that Dyck Calhoun, ex-convict and mutineer as he
+was, had personal power in the island, which he as governor had not been
+able to get, and Dyck had not abused that power.  He realized that Dyck's
+premonition of an outbreak and sending for the hounds was a stroke
+of genius.  He recalled with anger Dyck's appearance, in spite of
+regulations, in trousers at the King's ball and his dancing with a black
+woman, and he also realized that it was a cool insult to himself.  It was
+then he had given the home authorities information which would poison
+their mind against Dyck, and from that had come the order to confine him
+to his plantation.
+
+Yet he felt the time had come when he might use Dyck for his own
+purposes.  That Dyck should be at Salem was a bitter dose, but that could
+amount to nothing, for Sheila could never marry the man who had killed
+her father, however bad and mad her father was.  Yet it gravelled his
+soul that Dyck should be doing service for the lady to whom he had
+offered his own hand and heart, and from whom he had had no word of
+assent.  It angered him against himself that he had not at once sent
+soldiers to Salem to protect it.  He wished to set himself right with
+Sheila and with the island people, and how to do so was the question.
+
+First, clearly, he must not apply the order to confine Dyck to his
+plantation; also he must give Dyck authority to use the hounds in
+hunting down the Maroons and slaves who were committing awful crimes.
+He forthwith decided to write, asking Dyck to send him outline of his
+scheme against the rebels.  That he must do, for the game was with Dyck.
+
+"How long will it take the hounds to get to Salem?" he asked the Custos
+presently in his office, with deepset lines in his face and a determined
+look in his eyes.  He was an arrogant man, but he was not insane, and he
+wished to succeed.  It could only be success if he dragged Jamaica out of
+this rebellion with flying colours, and his one possible weapon was the
+man whom he detested.
+
+"Why, your honour, as we sent them by wagons and good horses they should
+be in Dyck Calhoun's hands this evening.  They should be there by now
+almost, for they've been going for hours, and the distance is not great."
+
+The governor nodded, and began to write.  A halfhour later he handed to
+the Custos what he had written.
+
+"See what you think of that, Custos," he said.  "Does it, in your mind,
+cover the ground as it should?"
+
+The Custos read it all over slowly and carefully, weighing every word.
+Presently he handed back the paper.  "Your honour, it is complete and
+masterly," he said.  "It puts the crushing of the revolt into the hands
+of Mr. Calhoun, and nothing could be wiser.  He has the gifts of a
+leader, and he will do the job with no mistake, and in a time of crisis
+like this, that is essential.  You have given him the right to order the
+militia to obey him, and nothing could be better.  He will organize like
+a master.  We haven't forgotten his fight on the Ariadne.  Didn't the
+admiral tell the story at the dinner we gave him of how this ex-convict
+and mutineer, by sheer genius, broke the power of the French at the
+critical moment and saved our fleet, though it was only three-fourths
+that of the French?"
+
+"You don't think the French will get us some day?" asked the governor
+with a smile.
+
+"I certainly don't since our defences have been improved.  Look at the
+sixty big cannon on Fort Augusta!  They'd be knocked to smithereens
+before they could get into the quiet waters of the harbour.  Don't forget
+the narrows, your honour.  Then there's the Apostle's Battery with its
+huge shot, and the guns of Fort Royal would give them a cross-fire that
+would make them sick.  Besides, we could stop them within the shoals and
+reefs and narrow channels before they got near the inner circle.  It
+would only be the hand of God that would get them in, and it doesn't work
+for Frenchmen these days, I observe.  No, this place is safe, and King's
+House will be the home of British governors for many a century."
+
+"Ah, that's your gallant faith, and no doubt you are right, but go on
+with your tale of the hounds," said Lord Mallow.
+
+"Your honour, as the hounds went away with Michael Clones there was
+greater applause than I have ever seen in the island except when Rodney
+defeated De Grasse.  Imagine a little sloop in the wash of the seas and
+the buccaneers piling down on him, and no chance of escape, and then a
+great British battleship appearing, and the situation saved--that was how
+we were placed here till the hounds arrived.
+
+"Your honour, this morning's--this early morning's exit of the hounds was
+like a procession of veterans to Walhalla.  There was the sun breaking
+over the tops of the hills, a crimsonish, greyish, opaline touch of soft
+sprays or mists breaking away from the onset of the sunrise; and all the
+trees with night-lips wet sucking in the sun and drinking up the light
+like an overseer at a Christmas breakfast; and you know what that is.
+And all the shore, rocky and sandy, rough and smooth, happy and homely,
+shimmering in the radiance.  And hundreds of Creoles and coloured folk
+beating the ground in agitation, and slaves a-plenty carrying boxes to
+the ships that are leaving, and white folk crowding the streets, and
+bugles blowing, and the tramp of the militia, and the rattle of carts on
+the cobble-stones, and the voices of the officers giving orders, and
+turmoil everywhere.
+
+"Then, suddenly, the sharp sound of a long whip and a voice calling, and
+there rises out of the landing place the procession--the sixty dogs in
+three wagons, their ten drivers with their whips, but keeping order by
+the sound of their voices, low, soft, and peculiar, and then the horses
+starting into a quick trot which presently would become a canter--and the
+hounds were off to Salem!  There could be no fear with the hounds loose
+to do the hunting."
+
+"But suppose when they get to Salem their owner is no more."
+
+The Custos laughed.  "Him, your honour--him no more!  Isn't he the man
+of whom the black folk say: "Lucky buckra--morning, lucky new-comer!"
+If that's his reputation, and the coming of his hounds just when the
+island most needed them is good proof of it, do you think he'll be killed
+by a lot of dirty Maroons!  Ah, Calhoun's a man with the luck of the
+devil, your honour!  He has the pull--as sure as heaven's above he'll
+make success.  If you command your staff to have this posted as a
+proclamation throughout the island, it will do as much good as a thousand
+soldiers.  The military officers will not object, they know how big a man
+he is, and they have had enough.  The news is not good from all over the
+island, for there are bad planters and bad overseers, and they've
+poisoned large fields of men in many quarters of the island, and things
+are wrong.
+
+"But this proclamation will put things right.  It will stop the slaves
+from revolting; it will squelch the Maroons, and I'm certain sure Calhoun
+will have Maroons ready to fight for us, not against us, before this
+thing is over.  I tell you, your honour, it means the way out--that's
+what it means.  So, if you'll give me your order, keeping a copy of it
+for the provost-marshal, I'll see it's delivered to Dyck Calhoun before
+morning--perhaps by midnight.  It's not more than a six hours' journey
+in the ordinary way."
+
+At that moment an aide-de-camp entered, and with grave face presented to
+the governor the last report from the provost-marshal-general.  Then he
+watched the governor read the report.
+
+"Ten more killed and twenty wounded!" said the governor.  "It must be
+stopped."
+
+He gave the Custos the letter to Dyck Calhoun, and a few moments later
+handed the proclamation to his aide-de-camp.
+
+"That will settle the business, your honour," said the aide-de-camp as he
+read the proclamation.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+SHEILA HAS HER SAY
+
+"Then, tell me please, what you know of the story," said the governor to
+Sheila at King's House one afternoon two weeks later.  "I only get meagre
+reports from the general commanding.  But you close to the intimate
+source of the events must know all."
+
+Sheila shrank at the suggestion in the governor's voice, but she did not
+resent it.  She had purposes which she must carry out, and she steeled
+herself.  She wanted to get from Lord Mallow a pledge concerning Dyck
+Calhoun, and she must be patient.
+
+"I know nothing direct from Mr. Calhoun, your honour!" she said, "but
+only through his servant, Michael Clones, who is a friend of my Darius
+Boland, and they have met often since the first outbreak.  You know, of
+course, what happened at Port Louise--how the Maroons seized and murdered
+the garrison, how families were butchered when they armed first, how
+barbarism broke loose and made all men combine to fight the rebels.  Even
+before Mr. Calhoun came they had had record of a sack of human ears, cut
+from the dead rebel-slaves, when they had been killed by faithful slaves,
+and good progress was made.  But the revolters fixed their camps on high
+rocks, and by blowing of shells brought many fresh recruits to the
+struggle.  It was only when Mr. Calhoun came with his hounds that
+anything decisive was done.  For the rebels--Maroons and slaves--were
+hid, well entrenched and cautious, and the danger was becoming greater
+every day.  On Mr. Calhoun's arrival, he was almost caught in ambush,
+being misled, and saved himself only by splendid markmanship.  He was
+attacked by six rebels of whom he killed four, and riding his wounded
+horse over the other two he escaped.  Then he set the hounds to work and
+the rebellion in that district was soon over."
+
+"It was gathering strength with increasing tragedy elsewhere," remarked
+the governor.  "Some took refuge in hidden places, and came out only to
+steal, rob, and murder--and worse.  In one place, after a noted slave,
+well known for his treachery, had been killed--Khoftet was his name--
+his head was cut off by slaves friendly to us and his heart roasted and
+eaten.  There is but one way to deal with these people.  No gaming or
+drinking must be allowed, blowing of shells or beating of drums must be
+forbidden, and every free negro or mulatto must wear on his arm a sign--
+perhaps a cross in blue or red."
+
+"Slavery is doomed," said Sheila firmly.  "Its end is not far off."
+
+"Well, they still keep slaves in the land of Washington and Alexander
+Hamilton.  They are better off here at any rate than in their own
+country, where they were like animals among whom they lived.  Here they
+are safe from poverty, cared for in sickness, and have no fear of being
+handed over to the keepers of carrion, or being the food of the
+gallinaso.  They can feed their fill on fricasees of macaca worms and
+steal without punishment teal or ring-tailed pigeons and black crabs from
+the massa."
+
+"But they are not free.  They are atoms in heaps of dust.  They have no
+rights--no liberties."
+
+Sheila was agitated, but she showed no excitement.
+
+She seemed to Lord Mallow like one who had perfect control of herself,
+and was not the victim of anticipation.  She seemed, save for her dark
+searching eyes, like one who had gone through experience which had
+disciplined her to control.  Only her hands were demonstrative--yet
+quietly so.  Any one watching her closely would have seen that her hands
+were sensitive, expressed even more markedly than her eyes or lips what
+were her feelings.  Her tragedy had altered her in one sense.  She was
+paler and thinner than ever she had been, but there was enough of her,
+and that delicately made, which gave the governor a thrill of desire to
+make her his own for the rest of his life or hers.  He had also gone
+through much since they had last met, and he had seen his own position in
+the balance--uncertain, troubled, insecure.  He realized that he had lost
+reputation, which had scarcely been regained by his consent to the use of
+the hounds and giving Dyck Calhoun a free hand, as temporary head of the
+militia.  He could not put him over the regular troops, but as the
+general commanding was, in effect, the slave of Dyck Calhoun, there was
+no need for anxiety.
+
+Dyck Calhoun had smashed the rebellion, had quieted the island, had
+risen above all the dark disturbances of revolt like a master.  He had
+established barracks and forts at many points in the island, and had
+stationed troops in them; he had subdued Maroons and slaves by the
+hounds.  Yet he had punished only the chief of those who had been in
+actual rebellion, and had repressed the violent punishments of the
+earlier part of the conflict.  He had forbidden any one to be burned
+alive, and had ordered that no one should be executed without his first
+judging--with the consent of the governor!--the facts of the case.
+
+Dyck had built up for himself a reputation as no one in all the history
+of the island had been able to do.  He commanded by more than official
+authority--by personality and achievement.  There was no one in the
+island but knew they had been saved by his prudence, foresight and skill.
+It was to their minds stupendous and romantic.  Fortunately they showed
+no strong feeling against Lord Mallow.  By placing King's House at
+disposal as a hospital, and by gifts of food and money to wives and
+children of soldiers and civilians, the governor had a little eradicated
+his record of neglect.
+
+Lord Mallow had a way with him when he chose to use it.  He was not
+without the gift for popularity, and he saw now that he could best attain
+it by treating Dyck Calhoun well.  He saw troops come and go, he listened
+to grievances, he corrected abuses, he devised a scheme for nursing, he
+planned security for the future, he gave permission for buccaneer trading
+with the United States, he had by legislative order given the Creoles a
+better place in the civic organism.  This was a time for broad policy--
+for distribution of cassavi bread, yams and papaws, for big, and maybe
+rough, display of power and generosity.  He was not blind to the fact
+that he might by discreet courses impress favourably his visitor.  All he
+did was affected by that thought.  He could not but think that Sheila
+would judge of him by what he did as much as by what he said.
+
+He looked at her now with interest and longing.  He loved to hear her
+talk, and she had information which was no doubt truer than most he
+received--was closer to the brine, as it were.
+
+"What more can you tell me of Mr. Calhoun and his doings?" he asked
+presently.  "He is lucky in having so perfect a narrator of his
+histories--yet so unexpected a narrator."
+
+A flush stole slowly up Sheila's face, and gave a glow even to the roots
+of her hair.  She could not endure these references to the dark gulf
+between her and Dyck Calhoun.
+
+"My lord," she said sharply, "it is not meet that you should say such
+things.  Mr. Calhoun was jailed for killing my father--let it be at that.
+The last time you saw me you offered me your hand and heart.  Well, do
+you know I had almost made up my mind to accept your hand, when the news
+of this trouble was brought to you, and you left us--to ourselves and our
+dangers!"
+
+The governor started.  "You are as unfriendly as a 'terral garamighty,'
+you make me draw my breath thick as the blackamoors, as they say.  I did
+what I thought best," he said.  "I did not think you would be in any
+danger.  I had not heard of the Maroons being so far south as Salem."
+
+"Yet it is the man who foresees chances that succeeds, as you should know
+by now, your honour.  I was greatly touched by the offer you made me--
+indeed, yes," she added, seeing the rapt eager look in his face.  "I had
+been told what had upset me, that Dyck Calhoun was guilty of killing my
+father, and all the world seemed dreadful.  Yes, in the reaction, it was
+almost on my tongue to say yes to you, for you are a good talker, you had
+skill in much that you did, and with honest advice from a wife might do
+much more.  So I was in a mind to say yes.  I had had much to try me,
+indeed, so very much.  Ever since I first saw Dyck Calhoun he had been
+the one man who had ever influenced me.  He was for ever in my mind even
+when he was in prison--oh, what is prison, what is guilt even to a girl
+when she loves!  Yes, I loved him.  There it was.  He was ever in my
+mind, and I came here to Jamaica--he was here--for what else?  Salem
+could have been restored by Darius Boland or others, or I could have sold
+it.  I came to Jamaica to find him here--unwomanly, perhaps, you will
+say."
+
+"Unusual only with a genius--like you."
+
+"Then you do not speak what is in your mind, your honour.  You say what
+you feel is the right thing to say--the slave of circumstances.  I will
+be wholly frank with you.  I came here to see Dyck Calhoun, for I knew he
+would not come to see me.  Yes, there it was, a real thing in his heart.
+If he had been a lesser man than he is, he would have come to America
+when he was freed from prison.  But he did not, would not, come.  He knew
+he had been found guilty of killing my father, and that for him and me
+there could be no marriage--indeed he never asked me to marry him.
+
+"Yet I know he would have done so if he could.  When I came to know
+what he was jailed for doing, I felt there was no place for him and me
+together in the world.  Yet my heart kept crying out to him, and I felt
+there was but one thing left for me to do, and that was to make it
+impossible for me to think of him even, or for him to think of me.  Then
+you came and offered me your hand.  It was a hand most women might have
+been glad to accept from the standpoint of material things.  And you were
+Irish like myself, and like the boy I loved.  I was sick of the robberies
+of life and time, and I wanted to be out of it all in some secure place.
+What place so secure from the sorrow that was eating at my heart as
+marriage!  It said no to every stir of feeling that was vexing me, to
+every show of love or remembrance.  So I listened to you.  It was not
+because you were a governor or a peer--no, not that!  For even in
+Virginia I had offers from one higher than yourself--and younger, and a
+peer also.  No, it was not material things that influenced me, but your
+own intellectual eminence; for you have more brains than most men, as you
+know so well."
+
+The governor interrupted her with a gesture.  "No, no, I am not so vain
+as you think.  If I were I should have seen at Salem that you meant to
+say yes."
+
+"Yet you know well you have gifts, though you have made sad mistakes
+here.  Do not think it was your personality, your looks that induced me
+to think of you, to listen to you.  When Mr. Calhoun told me the truth,
+and gave me a letter he had written to me--"
+
+"A letter--to you?"
+
+There was surprise in the governor's voice--surprise and chagrin, for the
+thing had moved him powerfully.  "Yes, a letter to me which he never
+meant me to have.  It was a kind of diary of his heart, and it was
+written even while I was landing on the island on Christmas Day.  It was
+the most terribly truthful thing, opening his whole soul to the girl whom
+he had always loved, but from whom he was separated by a thing not the
+less tragical because it was merely technical.  He gave it me to read,
+and when I read it I saw there was no place for me in the world except
+a convent or marriage.  The convent could not be, for I was no Catholic,
+and marriage seemed the only thing possible.  That day you came I saw
+only one thing to do--one mad, hopeless thing to do."
+
+"Mad and hopeless!" burst out Lord Mallow.  "How so?  Your very reason
+shows that it was sane, well founded in the philosophy of the heart."
+
+He was eager to win her yet, and he did not see the end at which she
+aimed.  He felt he must tell her all the passion and love he felt.  But
+her look gave no encouragement, her eyes were uninviting.
+
+Sheila smiled painfully.  "Yes, mad and hopeless, for be sure of this: we
+cannot kill in one day the growth of years.  I could not cure myself of
+loving him by marrying you.  There had to be some other cure for that.
+I never knew and never loved my father.  But he was my father, and if
+Mr. Calhoun killed him, I could not marry him.  But at last I came to
+know that your love and affection could not make me forget him--
+no, never.  I realize that now.  He and I can never come together,
+but I owe him so much--I owe him my life, for he saved it; he must ever
+have a place in my heart, be to me more than any one else can be.  I want
+you to do something for him."
+
+"What do you wish?"
+
+"I want you to have removed from him the sentence of the British
+Government.  I want him to be free to come and go anywhere in the world
+--to return to England if he wishes it, to be a free man, and not a
+victim Off Outlawry.  I want that, and you ought to give it to him."
+
+"Why?"
+
+Indignation filled her eyes.  "You ask why.  He has saved your
+administration and the island from defeat and horrible loss.  He has
+prevented most of the slaves from revolting, and he conquered the
+Maroons.  The empire is his debtor.  Will you do this for one who has
+done so much for you?"
+
+Lord Mallow was disconcerted, but he did not show it.  "I can do no more
+than I have done.  I have not confined him to his plantation as the
+Government commanded; I cannot go beyond that."
+
+"You can put his case from the standpoint of a patriot."
+
+For a moment the governor hesitated, then he said: "Because you ask me--"
+
+"I want it done for his sake, not for mine," she returned with decision.
+"You owe it to yourself to see that it is done.  Gratitude is not dead in
+you, is it?"
+
+Lord Mallow flushed.  "You press his case too hard.  You forget what he
+is--a mutineer and a murderer, and no one should remember that as you
+should."
+
+"He has atoned for both, and you know it well.  Besides, he was not a
+murderer.  Even the courts did not say he was.  They only said he was
+guilty of manslaughter.  Oh, your honour, be as gallant as your name and
+place warrant."
+
+He looked at her for a moment with strange feelings in his heart.  Then
+he said: "I will give you an answer in twenty-four hours.  Will that do,
+sweet persuader?"
+
+"It might do," she answered, and, strange to say, she had a sure feeling
+that he would say yes, in spite of her knowledge that, in his heart of
+hearts, he hated Calhoun.
+
+As she left the room, Lord Mallow stood for a moment looking after her.
+
+"She loves the rogue in spite of all!" he said bitterly.  "But she must
+come with me.  They are apart as the poles.  Yet I shall do as she wishes
+if I am to win her."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+
+THE COMING OF NOREEN
+
+The next day came a new element in the situation: a ship arrived from
+England.  On it was one who had come to Jamaica to act as governess to
+two children of the officer commanding the regular troops in the island.
+She had been ill for a week before nearing Kingston, and when the Regent
+reached the harbour she was in a bad way.  The ship's doctor was
+despondent about her; but he was a second-rate man, and felt that perhaps
+an island doctor might give her some hope.  When she was carried ashore
+she was at once removed to the home of the general commanding at Spanish
+Town, and there a local doctor saw her.
+
+"What is her history?" he asked, after he had seen the haggard face of
+the woman.
+
+The ship's doctor did not know; and the general commanding was in the
+interior at the head of his troops.  There was no wife in the general's
+house, as he was a widower; and his daughters, of twelve and fourteen,
+under a faithful old housekeeper, had no knowledge of the woman's life.
+
+When she was taken to the general's house she was in great dejection, and
+her face had a look of ennui and despair.  She was thin and worn, and her
+eyes only told of the struggle going on between life and death.
+
+"What is her name?" asked the resident doctor.  "Noreen Balfe," was the
+reply of the ship's doctor.
+
+"A good old Irish name, though you can see she comes of the lower ranks
+of life."
+
+"Married?"
+
+The ship's doctor pointed to her hand which had a wedding-ring.  "Ah,
+yes, certainly .  .  .  what hope have you of her?"
+
+"I don't know what to say.  The fever is high.  She isn't trying to live;
+she's got some mental trouble, I believe.  But you and I would be of no
+use in that kind of thing."
+
+"I don't take to new-fangled ideas of mental cure," said the ship's
+doctor.  "Cure the body and the mind will cure itself."
+
+A cold smile stole to the lips of the resident doctor.  Those were days
+of little scientific medical skill, and no West Indian doctor had
+knowledge enough to control a discussion of the kind.  "But I'd like to
+see some one with brains take an interest in her," he remarked.
+
+"I leave her in your hands," was the reply.  "I'm a ship's medico, and
+she's now ashore."
+
+"It's a pity," said the resident doctor reflectively, as he watched a
+servant doing necessary work at the bedside.  "She hasn't long to go as
+she is, yet I've seen such cases recover."
+
+As they left the room together they met Sheila and one of the daughters
+of the house.  "I've come to see the sick woman from the ship, if I may,"
+Sheila said.  "I've just heard about her, and I'd like to be of use."
+
+The resident doctor looked at her with admiration.  She was the most
+conspicuous figure in the island, and her beauty was a fine support to
+her wealth and reputation.  It was like her to be kind in this frank way.
+
+"You can be of great use if you will," he said.  "The fever is not
+infectious, I'm glad to say.  So you need have no fear of being with her
+--on account of others."
+
+"I have no fear," responded Sheila with a friendly smile, "and I will go
+to her now--no, if you don't mind, I'd prefer to go alone," she added as
+she saw the doctor was coming with her.
+
+The other bowed and nodded approvingly.  "The fewer the better," he said.
+"I think you ought to go in alone--quite alone," he said with gentle
+firmness, for he saw the girl with Sheila was also going with her.
+
+So it was that Sheila entered alone, and came to the bed and looked at
+the woman in the extreme depression of fever.  "Prepare some lime-juice,
+please," she said to the servant on the other side of the bed.  "Keep it
+always beside the bed--I know what these cases are."
+
+The servant disappeared, and the eyes of the sick woman opened and looked
+at Sheila.  There shot into them a look of horror and relief in one, if
+such a thing might be.  A sudden energy inspired her, and she drew
+herself up in bed, her face gone ghastly.
+
+"You are Sheila Boyne, aren't you?" she asked in a low half-guttural
+note.
+
+"I am Sheila Llyn," was the astonished reply.  "It's the same thing,"
+came the response.  "You are the daughter of Erris Boyne."
+
+Sheila turned pale.  Who was this woman that knew her and her history?
+
+"What is your name?" she asked--"your real name--what is it?"
+
+"My name is Noreen Balfe; it was Noreen Boyne."  For a moment Sheila
+could not get her bearings.  The heavy scent of the flowers coming in at
+the window almost suffocated her.  She seemed to lose a grip of herself.
+Presently she made an effort at composure.  "Noreen Boyne!  You were then
+the second wife of Erris Boyne?"
+
+"I was his second wife.  His first wife was your mother--you are like
+your mother!" Noreen said in agitation.
+
+The meaning was clear.  Sheila laid a sharp hand on herself.  "Don't get
+excited," she urged with kindly feeling.  "He is dead and gone."
+
+"Yes, he is dead and gone."
+
+For a moment Noreen seemed to fight for mastery of her emotion, and
+Sheila said: "Lie still.  It is all over.  He cannot hurt us now."
+
+The other shook her head in protest.  "I came here to forget, and I find
+you--his daughter."
+
+"You find more than his daughter; you find his first wife, and you find
+the one that killed him."
+
+"The one that killed him!" said the woman greatly troubled.  "How did
+you know that?"
+
+"All the world knows it.  He was in prison four years, and since then he
+has been a mutineer, a treasure-hunter, a planter, and a saviour of these
+islands!"
+
+The sick woman fell back in exhaustion.  At that moment the servant
+entered with a pitcher of lime-juice.  Sheila took it from her and
+motioned her out of the room; then she held a glass of the liquid to the
+stark lips.
+
+"Drink," she said in a low, kind voice, and she poured slowly into the
+patient's mouth the cooling draught.  A moment later Noreen raised
+herself up again.
+
+"Mr. Dyck Calhoun is here?" she asked.
+
+"He is here, and none to-day holds so high a place in the minds of all
+who live here.  He has saved the island."
+
+"All are here that matter," said Noreen.  "And I came to forget!"
+
+"What do you remember?" asked Sheila.  "I remember all--how he died!"
+
+Suddenly Sheila had a desire to shriek aloud.  This woman--did this woman
+then see Erris Boyne die?  Was she present when the deed was done?  If
+so, why was she not called to give evidence at the trial.  But yes, she
+was called to give evidence.  She remembered it now, and the evidence had
+been that she was in her own home when the killing took place.
+
+"How did he die?" she asked in a whisper.
+
+"One stroke did it--only one, and he fell like a log."  She made a motion
+as of striking, and shuddered, covering her eyes with trembling hands.
+
+"You tell me you saw Dyck Calhoun do this to an undefended man--you tell
+me this!"
+
+Sheila's anger was justified in her mind.  That Dyck Calhoun should
+
+"I did not see Dyck Calhoun strike him," gasped the woman.  "I did not
+say that.  Dyck Calhoun did not kill Erris Boyne!"
+
+"My God!--oh, my God!" said Sheila with ashen lips, but a great light
+breaking in her eyes.  "Dyck Calhoun did not kill Erris Boyne!  Then who
+killed him?"
+
+There was a moment's pause, then--"I killed him," said the woman in
+agony.  "I killed him."
+
+A terrible repugnance seized Sheila.  After a moment she said in
+agitation: "You killed him--you struck him down!  Yet you let an innocent
+man go to prison, and be kept there for years, and his father go to his
+grave with shame, with estates ruined and home lost--and you were the
+guilty one--you--all the time."
+
+"It was part of my madness.  I was a coward and I thought then there were
+reasons why I should feel no pity for Dyck Calhoun.  His father injured
+mine--oh, badly!  But I was a coward, and I've paid the price."
+
+A kinder feeling now took hold of Sheila.  After all, what this woman had
+done gave happiness into her--Sheila's-hands.  It relieved Dyck Calhoun
+of shame and disgrace.  A jail-bird he was still, but an innocent jail-
+bird.  He had not killed Erris Boyne.  Besides, it wiped out forever the
+barrier between them.  All her blind devotion to the man was now
+justified.  His name and fame were clear.  Her repugnance of the woman
+was as nothing beside her splendid feeling of relief.  It was as though
+the gates of hell had been closed and the curtains of heaven drawn for
+the eyes to see.  Six years of horrible shame wiped out, and a new world
+was before her eyes.
+
+This woman who had killed Erris Boyne must now suffer.  She must bear the
+ignominy which had been heaped upon Dyck Calhoun's head.  Yet all at once
+there came to her mind a softening feeling.  Erris Boyne had been rightly
+killed by a woman he had wronged, for he was a traitor as well as an
+adulterer--one who could use no woman well, who broke faith with all
+civilized tradition, and reverted to the savage.  Surely the woman's
+crime was not a dark one; it was injured innocence smiting depravity,
+tyranny and lust.
+
+Suddenly, as she looked at the woman who had done this thing, she, whose
+hand had rid the world of a traitor and a beast, fell back on the pillow
+in a faint.  With an exclamation Sheila lifted up the head.  If the woman
+was dead, then there was no hope for Dyck Calhoun; any story that she--
+Sheila--might tell would be of no use.  Yet she was no longer agitated in
+her body.  Hands and fingers were steady, and she felt for the heart with
+firm fingers.  Yes, the heart was still beating, and the pulse was
+slightly drumming.  Thank God, the woman was alive!  She rang a bell and
+lifted up the head of the sick woman.
+
+A moment later the servant was in the room.  Sheila gave her orders
+quickly, and snatched up a pencil from the table.  Then, on a piece of
+paper, she wrote the words: "I, not Dyck Calhoun, killed Erris Boyne."
+
+A few moments later, Noreen's eyes opened, and Sheila spoke to her.
+"I have written these words.  Here they are--see them.  Sign them."
+
+She read the words, and put a pencil in the trembling fingers, and, on
+the cover of a book Noreen's fingers traced her name slowly but clearly.
+Then Sheila thrust the paper in her bosom, and an instant later a nurse,
+sent by the resident doctor, entered.
+
+"They cannot hang me or banish me, for my end has come," whispered Noreen
+before Sheila left.
+
+In the street of Spanish Town almost the first person Sheila saw was
+Dyck Calhoun.  With pale, radiant look she went to him.  He gazed at her
+strangely, for there was that in her face he could not understand.  There
+was in it all the faith of years, all the truth of womanhood, all the
+splendour of discovery, all that which a man can see but once in a human
+face and be himself.
+
+"Come with me," she said, and she moved towards King's House.  He obeyed.
+For some moments they walked in silence, then all at once under a
+magnolia tree she stopped.
+
+"I want you to read what a woman wrote who has just arrived in the island
+from England.  She is ill at the house of the general commanding."
+
+Taking from her breast the slip of paper, she handed it to him.  He read
+it with eyes and senses that at first could hardly understand.
+
+"God in heaven--oh, merciful God!" he said in great emotion, yet with a
+strange physical quiet.
+
+"This woman was his wife," Sheila said.
+
+He handed the paper back.  He conquered his agitation.  The years of
+suffering rolled away.  "They'll put her in jail," he said with a strange
+regret.  He had a great heart.
+
+"No, I think not," was the reply.  Yet she was touched by his compassion
+and thoughtfulness.
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Because she is going to die--and there is no time to lose.  Come, we
+will go to Lord Mallow."
+
+"Mallow!"  A look of bitter triumph came into Dyck's face.  "Mallow--at
+last!" he said.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV
+
+WITH THE GOVERNOR
+
+Lord Mallow frowned on his secretary.  "Mr. Calhoun to see me!  What's
+his business?"
+
+"One can guess, your honour.  He's been fighting for the island."
+
+"Why should he see me?  There is the general commanding."
+
+The secretary did not reply, he knew his chief; and, after a moment, Lord
+Mallow said: "Show him in."  When Dyck Calhoun entered the governor gave
+him a wintry smile of welcome, but did not offer to shake hands.  "Will
+you sit down?" he said, with a slow gesture.
+
+Calhoun made a dissenting motion.  "I prefer to stand, your honour."
+
+This was the first time the two men had met alone since Dyck had arrived
+in Jamaica, or since his trial.  Calhoun was dressed in planter's
+costume, and the governor was in an officer's uniform.  They were in
+striking contrast in face and figure--the governor long, lanky, ascetic
+in appearance, very intellectual save for the riotous mouth, and very
+spick and span--as though he had just stepped out of Almack's; while
+Calhoun was tough and virile, and with the air of a thorough outdoor man.
+There was in his face the firm fighting look of one who had done things
+and could tackle big affairs--and something more; there was in it quiet
+exultation.  Here he was now at last alone with the man who had done him
+great harm, and for whom he had done so much; who had sought to wipe him
+off the slate of life and being; who had tried to win the girl from whom
+he himself had been parted.
+
+In spite of it all--of his life in jail, of his stark mutiny, of the
+oppression of the governor, he had not been beaten down, but had
+prospered in spite of all.  He had by his will, wisdom and military
+skill, saved the island in its hour of peril, saved its governor from
+condemnation; and here he was facing the worst enemy of his life with the
+cards of success in his hands.
+
+"You have done the island and England great service, Mr. Calhoun," said
+the governor at last.
+
+"It is the least I could do for the land where I have made my home, where
+I have reaped more than I have sown."
+
+"We know your merit, sir."
+
+A sharp satirical look came into Calhoun's face and his voice rang out
+with vigour.  "And because you knew my merit you advised the crown to
+confine me to my estate, and you would have had me shot if you could.
+I am what I am because there was a juster man than yourself in Jamaica.
+Through him I got away and found treasure, and I bought land and have
+helped to save this island and your place.  What do I owe you, your
+honour?  Nothing that I can see--nothing at all."
+
+"You are a mutineer, and but that you showed your courage would have been
+hung at the yard-arm, as many of your comrades in England were."
+
+A cold smile played at Calhoun's lips.  "My luck was as great as my
+courage, I know.  I have the luck of Enniscorthy!"
+
+At the last words the governor winced, for it was by that touch Calhoun
+had defeated him in the duel long ago.  It galled him that this man whom
+he detested could say such things to him with truth.  Yet in his heart of
+hearts he had for Calhoun a great respect.  Calhoun's invincible will had
+conquered the worst in Mallow's nature, had, in spite of himself, created
+a new feeling in him.  There was in Mallow the glimmer of greatness, and
+only his supreme selfishness had made him what he was.  He laid a hand on
+himself now, though it was not easy to do so.
+
+"It was not the luck of Enniscorthy that sent Erris Boyne to his doom,"
+he said, however, with anger in his mind, for Dyck's calm boldness
+stirred the worst in him.  He thought he saw in him an exultancy which
+could only come from his late experiences in the field.  It was as though
+he had come to triumph over the governor.  Mallow said what he had said
+with malice.  He looked to see rage in the face of Dyck Calhoun, and was
+nonplussed to find that it had only a stern sort of pleasure.  The eyes
+of Calhoun met his with no trace of gloom, but with a valour worthy of a
+high cause--their clear blue facing his own with a constant penetration.
+Their intense sincerity gave him a feeling which did not belong to
+authority.  It was not the look of a criminal, whatever the man might be-
+-mutineer and murderer.  As for mutineer, all that Calhoun had fought for
+had been at last admitted by the British Government, and reforms had been
+made that were due to the mutiny at the Nore.  Only the technical crime
+had been done by Calhoun, and he had won pardon by his bravery in the
+battle at sea.  Yes, he was a man of mark, even though a murderer.
+
+Calhoun spoke slowly.  "Your honour, you have said what you have a right
+to say to a man who killed Erris Boyne.  But this man you accuse did not
+do it."  The governor smiled, for the assumption was ridiculous.  He
+shrugged a shoulder and a sardonic curl came to his lip.
+
+"Who did it then?"
+
+"If you will come to the house of the general commanding you will see."
+
+The governor was in a great quandary.  He gasped.  "The general
+commanding--did he kill Erris Boyne, then?"
+
+"Not he, yet the person that did it is in this house.  Listen, your
+honour.  I have borne the name of killing Erris Boyne, and I ought to
+have killed him, for he was a traitor.  I had proofs of it; but I did not
+kill him, and I did not betray him, for he had alive a wife and daughter,
+and something was due to them.  He was a traitor, and was in league with
+the French.  It does not matter that I tell you now, for his daughter
+knows the truth.  I ought to have told it long ago, and if I had I should
+not have been imprisoned."
+
+"You were a brave man, but a fool--always a fool," said the governor
+sharply.
+
+"Not so great a fool that I can't recover from it," was the calm reply.
+"Perhaps it was the best thing that ever happened to me, for now I can
+look the world in the face.  It's made a man of me.  It was a woman
+killed him," was Calhoun's added comment.  "Will your honour come with me
+and see her?"
+
+The governor was thunderstruck.  "Where is she?"
+
+"As I have told you-in the house of the general commanding."
+
+The governor rose abashed.  "Well, I can go there now.  Come."
+
+"Perhaps you would prefer I should not go with you in the street.  The
+world knows me as a mutineer, thinks of me as a murderer!  Is it fair to
+your honour?"
+
+Something in Calhoun's voice roused the rage of Lord Mallow, but he
+controlled it, and said calmly: "Don't talk nonsense, sir; we shall walk
+together, if you will."
+
+At the entrance to the house of the general, the man to whom this visit
+meant so much stopped and took a piece of paper from his pocket.  "Your
+honour, here is the name of the slayer of Erris Boyne.  I give it to you
+now to see, so you may not be astonished when you see her."
+
+The governor stared at the paper.  "Boyne's wife, eh?" he said in a
+strange mood.  "Boyne's wife--what is she doing here?"
+
+Calhoun told him briefly as he took the paper back, and added: "It was
+accident that brought us all together here, your honour, but the hand of
+God is in it."
+
+"Is she very ill?"
+
+"She will not live, I think."
+
+"To whom did she tell her story?"
+
+"To Miss Sheila Llyn."
+
+The governor was nettled.
+
+"Oh, to Miss Llyn When did you see her?"
+
+"Just before I came to you."
+
+"What did the woman look like--this Noreen Boyne?"
+
+"I do not know; I have not seen her."
+
+"Then how came you by the paper with her signature?"
+
+"Miss Llyn gave it to me."
+
+Anger filled Lord Mallow's mind.  Sheila--why now the way would be open
+to Calhoun to win--to marry her!  It angered him, but he held himself
+steadily.
+
+"Where is Miss Llyn?"
+
+"She is here, I think.  She came back when she left me at your door."
+
+"Oh, she left you at my door, did she?  .  .  .  But let me see the woman
+that's come so far to put the world right."
+
+A few moments later they stood in the bedroom of Noreen Boyne, they two
+and Sheila Llyn, the nurse having been sent out.
+
+Lord Mallow looked down on the haggard, dying woman with no emotion.
+Only a sense of duty moved him.
+
+"What is it you wished to say to me?" he asked the patient.
+
+"Who are you?" came the response in a frayed tone.
+
+"I am the governor of the island--Lord Mallow."
+
+"Then I want to tell you that I killed Erris Boyne--with this hand I
+killed him."  She raised her skinny hand up, and her eyes became glazed.
+"He had used me vilely and I struck him down.  He was a bad man."
+
+"You let an innocent man bear punishment, you struck at one who did you
+no harm, and you spoiled his life for him.  You can see that, can't you?"
+
+The woman's eyes sought the face of Dyck Calhoun, and Calhoun said: "No,
+you did not spoil my life, Noreen Boyne.  You have made it.  Not that I
+should have chosen the way of making it, but there it is, as God's in
+heaven, I forgive you."
+
+Noreen's face lost some of its gloom.  "That makes it easier," she said
+brokenly.  "I can't atone by any word or act, but I'm sorry.  I've kept
+you from being happy, and you were born to be happy.  Your father had
+hurt mine, had turned him out of our house for debt, and I tried to pay
+it all back.  When they suspected you I held my peace.  I was a coward;
+I could not say you were innocent without telling the truth, and that I
+could not do then.  But now I'll tell it--I think I'd have told it
+whether I was dying or not, though.  Yes, if I'd seen you here I'd have
+told it, I'm sure.  I'm not all bad."
+
+Sheila leaned over the bed.  "Never mind about the past.  You can help a
+man back to the good opinion of the world now."
+
+"I hurt you too," said Noreen with hopeless pain.  "You were his friend."
+
+"I believed in him always--even when he did not deny the crime," was the
+quiet reply.
+
+"There's no good going on with that," said the governor sharply.  "We
+must take down her statement in writing, and then--"
+
+"Look, she is sinking!" said Calhoun sharply.  The woman's head had
+dropped forward, her chin was on her breast, and her hands became
+clenched.
+
+"The doctor at once-bring in the nurse," said Calhoun.  "She's dying."
+
+An instant later, the nurse entered with Sheila, and in a short time the
+doctor came.
+
+When later the doctor saw Lord Mallow alone he said: "She can't live more
+than two days."
+
+"That's good for her in a way," answered the governor, and in reply to
+the doctor's question why, he said: "Because she'd be in prison."
+
+"In prison--has she broken the law?"
+
+"She is now under arrest, though she doesn't know it.
+
+"What was her crime, your honour?"
+
+"She killed a man."
+
+"What man?"
+
+"Him for whom Dyck Calhoun was sent to prison--Erris Boyne."
+
+"Mr. Calhoun was not guilty, then?"
+
+"No.  As soon as the woman is dead, I mean to announce the truth."
+
+"Not till then, your honour?"
+
+"Not till then."
+
+"It's hard on Calhoun."
+
+"Is it?  It's years since he was tried and condemned.  Two days cannot
+matter now."
+
+"Perhaps not.  Last night the woman said to me: 'I'm glad I'm going to
+die.'" Then he added: "Calhoun will be more popular than ever now."
+
+The governor winced.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV
+
+THEN WHAT HAPPENED
+
+An hour after Noreen Boyne had been laid in her grave, there was a
+special issue of the principal paper telling all the true facts of the
+death of Erris Boyne.  Thus the people of Jamaica came to know that Dyck
+Calhoun was innocent of the crime of killing Erris Boyne, and he was made
+the object of splashing admiration, and was almost mobbed by admirers in
+the street.  It all vexed Lord Mallow; but he steeled himself to
+urbanity, and he played his part well.  He was clever enough to see it
+would pay him to be outwardly gracious to Calhoun.  So it was he made a
+speech in the capital on the return of the general commanding and the
+troops from subduing the Maroons, in which he said: "No one in all the
+King's dominions had showed greater patriotism and military skill than
+their friend Mr. Dyck Calhoun, who had been harshly treated by a mistaken
+Government."
+
+A few hours later, in the sweet garden of the house where Sheila and her
+mother lodged, Calhoun came upon the girl whose gentle dignity and beauty
+seemed to glow.
+
+At first all she said to him was, "Welcome, old friend," and at last she
+said, "Now you can come to the United States, Dyck, and make a new life
+there."
+
+Presently he said: "I ought to go where you wish me to go, for you came
+to me here when I was rejected of men.  I owe you whatever I am that's
+worth while, if anything I am is worth while.  Your faith kept me alive
+in my darkest days--even when I thought I had wronged you."
+
+"Then you will come to Virginia with me--as my husband, Dyck?"  She
+blushed and laughed.  "You see I have to propose to you, for you've never
+asked me to marry you.  I'm throwing myself at your head, sir, you
+observe!"
+
+He gave an honest smile of adoration.  "I came to-day to ask you to be
+my wife--for that reason only.  I could not do it till the governor had
+declared my innocence.  The earth is sweeter to-day than it has been
+since time began."
+
+He held out his arms, and an instant later the flowers she carried were
+crushed to her breast, with her lips given to his.
+
+A little later she drew from her pocket a letter.  "You must read that,"
+she said.  "It is from the great Alexander Hamilton--yes, he will be
+great, he will play a wondrous part in the life of my new country.
+Read it Dyck."
+
+After he had read it, he said: "He was born a British subject here in
+these islands, and he goes to help Americans live according to British
+principles.  With all my sane fellow-countrymen I am glad the Americans
+succeeded.  Do you go to your Virginia, and I will come as soon as I have
+put my affairs in order."
+
+"I will not go without you--no, I will not go," she persisted.
+
+"Then we shall be married at once," he declared.  And so it was, and all
+the island was en fete, and when Sheila came to Dyck's plantation the
+very earth seemed to rejoice.  The slaves went wild with joy, and ate
+and drank their fill, and from every field there came the song:
+
+                   "Hold up yo hands,
+                    Hold up yo hands,
+                    Bress de Lord for de milk and honey!
+                    De big bees is a singin',
+                    My heart is held up and de bells is a ringin';
+                    Hold up yo hands,
+                    Hold up yo hands!"
+
+And sweetly solitary the two lived their lives, till one day, three
+months later, there came to the plantation the governor and his suite.
+
+When they had dismounted, Lord Mallow said: "I bring you the pay of the
+British Government for something of what you have suffered, sir, and what
+will give your lady pleasure too, I hope.  I come with a baronetcy given
+by the King.  News of it came to me only this morning."
+
+Calhoun smiled.  "Your honour, I can take no title, receive no honour.
+I have ended my life under the British flag.  I go to live under the
+Stars and Stripes."
+
+The governor was astounded.  "Your lady, sir, do you forget your lady?"
+
+But Sheila answered: "The life of the new world has honours which have
+naught to do with titles."
+
+"I sail for Virginia by the first ship that goes," said Calhoun.  "It is
+good here, but I shall go to a place where things are better, and where I
+shall have work to do.  I must decline the baronetcy, your honour.  I go
+to a land where the field of life is larger, where Britain shall remake
+herself."
+
+"It will take some time," said the governor tartly.  "They'll be long
+apart."
+
+"But they will come together at last--for the world's sake."
+
+There was silence for a moment, and through it came the joy-chant from
+the fields:
+
+                   "Hold up yo hands,
+                    Hold up yo hands,
+                    Bress de Lord for de milk and honey."
+
+
+
+
+ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:
+
+Without the money brains seldom win alone
+
+
+
+
+
+
+ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS FOR THE ENTIRE "NO DEFENSE":
+
+Beginning of a lifetime of experience, comedy, and tragedy
+Wit is always at the elbow of want
+Without the money brains seldom win alone
+
+
+
+
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK NO DEFENSE, BY PARKER, ENTIRE ***
+
+********* This file should be named gp12210.txt or gp12210.zip *********
+
+Corrected EDITIONS of our eBooks get a new NUMBER, gp12211.txt
+VERSIONS based on separate sources get new LETTER, gp12210a.txt
+
+This eBook was produced by David Widger <widger@cecomet.net>
+
+Project Gutenberg eBooks are often created from several printed
+editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the US
+unless a copyright notice is included.  Thus, we usually do not
+keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.
+
+We are now trying to release all our eBooks one year in advance
+of the official release dates, leaving time for better editing.
+Please be encouraged to tell us about any error or corrections,
+even years after the official publication date.
+
+Please note neither this listing nor its contents are final til
+midnight of the last day of the month of any such announcement.
+The official release date of all Project Gutenberg eBooks is at
+Midnight, Central Time, of the last day of the stated month.  A
+preliminary version may often be posted for suggestion, comment
+and editing by those who wish to do so.
+
+Most people start at our Web sites at:
+http://gutenberg.net or
+http://promo.net/pg
+
+These Web sites include award-winning information about Project
+Gutenberg, including how to donate, how to help produce our new
+eBooks, and how to subscribe to our email newsletter (free!).
+
+
+Those of you who want to download any eBook before announcement
+can get to them as follows, and just download by date.  This is
+also a good way to get them instantly upon announcement, as the
+indexes our cataloguers produce obviously take a while after an
+announcement goes out in the Project Gutenberg Newsletter.
+
+http://www.ibiblio.org/gutenberg/etext03 or
+ftp://ftp.ibiblio.org/pub/docs/books/gutenberg/etext03
+
+Or /etext02, 01, 00, 99, 98, 97, 96, 95, 94, 93, 92, 92, 91 or 90
+
+Just search by the first five letters of the filename you want,
+as it appears in our Newsletters.
+
+
+Information about Project Gutenberg (one page)
+
+We produce about two million dollars for each hour we work.  The
+time it takes us, a rather conservative estimate, is fifty hours
+to get any eBook selected, entered, proofread, edited, copyright
+searched and analyzed, the copyright letters written, etc.   Our
+projected audience is one hundred million readers.  If the value
+per text is nominally estimated at one dollar then we produce $2
+million dollars per hour in 2002 as we release over 100 new text
+files per month:  1240 more eBooks in 2001 for a total of 4000+
+We are already on our way to trying for 2000 more eBooks in 2002
+If they reach just 1-2% of the world's population then the total
+will reach over half a trillion eBooks given away by year's end.
+
+The Goal of Project Gutenberg is to Give Away 1 Trillion eBooks!
+This is ten thousand titles each to one hundred million readers,
+which is only about 4% of the present number of computer users.
+
+Here is the briefest record of our progress (* means estimated):
+
+eBooks Year Month
+
+    1  1971 July
+   10  1991 January
+  100  1994 January
+ 1000  1997 August
+ 1500  1998 October
+ 2000  1999 December
+ 2500  2000 December
+ 3000  2001 November
+ 4000  2001 October/November
+ 6000  2002 December*
+ 9000  2003 November*
+10000  2004 January*
+
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation has been created
+to secure a future for Project Gutenberg into the next millennium.
+
+We need your donations more than ever!
+
+As of February, 2002, contributions are being solicited from people
+and organizations in: Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Connecticut,
+Delaware, District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Illinois,
+Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Massachusetts,
+Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New
+Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Ohio,
+Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South
+Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, West
+Virginia, Wisconsin, and Wyoming.
+
+We have filed in all 50 states now, but these are the only ones
+that have responded.
+
+As the requirements for other states are met, additions to this list
+will be made and fund raising will begin in the additional states.
+Please feel free to ask to check the status of your state.
+
+In answer to various questions we have received on this:
+
+We are constantly working on finishing the paperwork to legally
+request donations in all 50 states.  If your state is not listed and
+you would like to know if we have added it since the list you have,
+just ask.
+
+While we cannot solicit donations from people in states where we are
+not yet registered, we know of no prohibition against accepting
+donations from donors in these states who approach us with an offer to
+donate.
+
+International donations are accepted, but we don't know ANYTHING about
+how to make them tax-deductible, or even if they CAN be made
+deductible, and don't have the staff to handle it even if there are
+ways.
+
+Donations by check or money order may be sent to:
+
+Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
+PMB 113
+1739 University Ave.
+Oxford, MS 38655-4109
+
+Contact us if you want to arrange for a wire transfer or payment
+method other than by check or money order.
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation has been approved by
+the US Internal Revenue Service as a 501(c)(3) organization with EIN
+[Employee Identification Number] 64-622154.  Donations are
+tax-deductible to the maximum extent permitted by law.  As fund-raising
+requirements for other states are met, additions to this list will be
+made and fund-raising will begin in the additional states.
+
+We need your donations more than ever!
+
+You can get up to date donation information online at:
+
+http://www.gutenberg.net/donation.html
+
+
+***
+
+If you can't reach Project Gutenberg,
+you can always email directly to:
+
+Michael S. Hart <hart@pobox.com>
+
+Prof. Hart will answer or forward your message.
+
+We would prefer to send you information by email.
+
+
+**The Legal Small Print**
+
+
+(Three Pages)
+
+***START**THE SMALL PRINT!**FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN EBOOKS**START***
+Why is this "Small Print!" statement here? You know: lawyers.
+They tell us you might sue us if there is something wrong with
+your copy of this eBook, even if you got it for free from
+someone other than us, and even if what's wrong is not our
+fault. So, among other things, this "Small Print!" statement
+disclaims most of our liability to you. It also tells you how
+you may distribute copies of this eBook if you want to.
+
+*BEFORE!* YOU USE OR READ THIS EBOOK
+By using or reading any part of this PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm
+eBook, you indicate that you understand, agree to and accept
+this "Small Print!" statement. If you do not, you can receive
+a refund of the money (if any) you paid for this eBook by
+sending a request within 30 days of receiving it to the person
+you got it from. If you received this eBook on a physical
+medium (such as a disk), you must return it with your request.
+
+ABOUT PROJECT GUTENBERG-TM EBOOKS
+This PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm eBook, like most PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm eBooks,
+is a "public domain" work distributed by Professor Michael S. Hart
+through the Project Gutenberg Association (the "Project").
+Among other things, this means that no one owns a United States copyright
+on or for this work, so the Project (and you!) can copy and
+distribute it in the United States without permission and
+without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, set forth
+below, apply if you wish to copy and distribute this eBook
+under the "PROJECT GUTENBERG" trademark.
+
+Please do not use the "PROJECT GUTENBERG" trademark to market
+any commercial products without permission.
+
+To create these eBooks, the Project expends considerable
+efforts to identify, transcribe and proofread public domain
+works. Despite these efforts, the Project's eBooks and any
+medium they may be on may contain "Defects". Among other
+things, Defects may take the form of incomplete, inaccurate or
+corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other
+intellectual property infringement, a defective or damaged
+disk or other eBook medium, a computer virus, or computer
+codes that damage or cannot be read by your equipment.
+
+LIMITED WARRANTY; DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES
+But for the "Right of Replacement or Refund" described below,
+[1] Michael Hart and the Foundation (and any other party you may
+receive this eBook from as a PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm eBook) disclaims
+all liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including
+legal fees, and [2] YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE OR
+UNDER STRICT LIABILITY, OR FOR BREACH OF WARRANTY OR CONTRACT,
+INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE
+OR INCIDENTAL DAMAGES, EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE
+POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES.
+
+If you discover a Defect in this eBook within 90 days of
+receiving it, you can receive a refund of the money (if any)
+you paid for it by sending an explanatory note within that
+time to the person you received it from. If you received it
+on a physical medium, you must return it with your note, and
+such person may choose to alternatively give you a replacement
+copy. If you received it electronically, such person may
+choose to alternatively give you a second opportunity to
+receive it electronically.
+
+THIS EBOOK IS OTHERWISE PROVIDED TO YOU "AS-IS". NO OTHER
+WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, ARE MADE TO YOU AS
+TO THE EBOOK OR ANY MEDIUM IT MAY BE ON, INCLUDING BUT NOT
+LIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A
+PARTICULAR PURPOSE.
+
+Some states do not allow disclaimers of implied warranties or
+the exclusion or limitation of consequential damages, so the
+above disclaimers and exclusions may not apply to you, and you
+may have other legal rights.
+
+INDEMNITY
+You will indemnify and hold Michael Hart, the Foundation,
+and its trustees and agents, and any volunteers associated
+with the production and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm
+texts harmless, from all liability, cost and expense, including
+legal fees, that arise directly or indirectly from any of the
+following that you do or cause:  [1] distribution of this eBook,
+[2] alteration, modification, or addition to the eBook,
+or [3] any Defect.
+
+DISTRIBUTION UNDER "PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm"
+You may distribute copies of this eBook electronically, or by
+disk, book or any other medium if you either delete this
+"Small Print!" and all other references to Project Gutenberg,
+or:
+
+[1]  Only give exact copies of it.  Among other things, this
+     requires that you do not remove, alter or modify the
+     eBook or this "small print!" statement.  You may however,
+     if you wish, distribute this eBook in machine readable
+     binary, compressed, mark-up, or proprietary form,
+     including any form resulting from conversion by word
+     processing or hypertext software, but only so long as
+     *EITHER*:
+
+     [*]  The eBook, when displayed, is clearly readable, and
+          does *not* contain characters other than those
+          intended by the author of the work, although tilde
+          (~), asterisk (*) and underline (_) characters may
+          be used to convey punctuation intended by the
+          author, and additional characters may be used to
+          indicate hypertext links; OR
+
+     [*]  The eBook may be readily converted by the reader at
+          no expense into plain ASCII, EBCDIC or equivalent
+          form by the program that displays the eBook (as is
+          the case, for instance, with most word processors);
+          OR
+
+     [*]  You provide, or agree to also provide on request at
+          no additional cost, fee or expense, a copy of the
+          eBook in its original plain ASCII form (or in EBCDIC
+          or other equivalent proprietary form).
+
+[2]  Honor the eBook refund and replacement provisions of this
+     "Small Print!" statement.
+
+[3]  Pay a trademark license fee to the Foundation of 20% of the
+     gross profits you derive calculated using the method you
+     already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  If you
+     don't derive profits, no royalty is due.  Royalties are
+     payable to "Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation"
+     the 60 days following each date you prepare (or were
+     legally required to prepare) your annual (or equivalent
+     periodic) tax return.  Please contact us beforehand to
+     let us know your plans and to work out the details.
+
+WHAT IF YOU *WANT* TO SEND MONEY EVEN IF YOU DON'T HAVE TO?
+Project Gutenberg is dedicated to increasing the number of
+public domain and licensed works that can be freely distributed
+in machine readable form.
+
+The Project gratefully accepts contributions of money, time,
+public domain materials, or royalty free copyright licenses.
+Money should be paid to the:
+"Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."
+
+If you are interested in contributing scanning equipment or
+software or other items, please contact Michael Hart at:
+hart@pobox.com
+
+[Portions of this eBook's header and trailer may be reprinted only
+when distributed free of all fees.  Copyright (C) 2001, 2002 by
+Michael S. Hart.  Project Gutenberg is a TradeMark and may not be
+used in any sales of Project Gutenberg eBooks or other materials be
+they hardware or software or any other related product without
+express permission.]
+
+*END THE SMALL PRINT! FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN EBOOKS*Ver.02/11/02*END*
diff --git a/old/gp12210.zip b/old/gp12210.zip
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..93a6efb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/old/gp12210.zip