RETROSPECTIVE.
As story-tellers of every description have, from time immemorial, been considered free from those niceties by which all attempts in the nobler classes of literature are, or should be restrained, we consider no apology necessary for requesting the reader to leap over with us the space of four months; but still, before we continue our tale from that date, it will be as well that we should give a short outline of the principal events which produced the state in which the circumstances of the Macdermots will then be found, and we are sorry to say that they were not such as could offer much consolation to them.
It will be remembered that Pat Brady was commissioned by his master to take Ussher's body to the police station at Carrick, in Fred Brown's gig. This commission he promptly performed, and also that of restoring the gig to its owner; and after having thus completed his master's behests like a good servant, he paid a visit on his own account to Mr. Keegan.
Although it was late, he still found that active gentleman up, and gave him a tolerably accurate account of what had happened at Ballycloran, adding that "the young masther had gone off to join the boys, at laste that's what he supposed he'd be afther now." As soon as Keegan's surprise was a little abated, he perceived that the affair would probably act as a stepping-stone, on which he might walk into Ballycloran even sooner than he had hitherto thought to do; and when, as one of the jurors at the coroner's inquest, on the next morning, he saw that poor Larry had evidently fallen into absolute idiotcy, and heard that Thady had, in fact, escaped, he instantly determined to take such legal steps on behalf of his father-in-law as would put the property under his management. And this, accordingly, he did. The proper steps for proving the old man to be of unsound mind would have been attended with very great expense; instead of doing this, he got himself made receiver over the property, and determined to arrest Larry, which, in his existing state, he conceived he should have no difficulty in doing. Here, however, he found himself very much mistaken, for nothing could induce the old man to leave his own room, or so much as allow the front door to be unlocked. Mary Brady still continued to attend him every day, returning home to her husband after sunset, and she found him very easy to manage in every other particular, as long as he was allowed to have his own way in this.
He had quite lost the triumphant feeling which led him to boast in the streets of Carrick, after leaving the inquest, that he had escaped from Flannelly's power, and that he would never have to pay him another farthing; for now if he heard a strange step, he fancied it to be a bailiff's, and if there was the slightest noise in the house, he thought that an attempt was being made to drag him off by violence. It was a miserable sight to see the old man, thin, wan, and worn out, sitting during that cold winter, by a few sods of turf, with the door of his own room ajar, watching the front door from morning till night, to see that no one opened it. Before Christmas he had his bed brought down into the same room, in order that he might not be betrayed into the hands of his enemies in the morning before he was up, and from that time no inducement could prevail on him to leave the room for a moment.
During this time his poverty was very great; the tenants had been served with legal notices to pay neither to him nor to Thady any portion of their rents, and consequently provisions were very low and very scarce at Ballycloran; in fact, had it not been for the kindness of Father John, Mr. McKeon, and Counsellor Webb, whose property was adjoining to Ballycloran, Larry would have been starved into a surrender. Mr. Webb went so far as to interfere with Mr. Keegan, and to point out to him that in all humanity he should stay his proceedings till after Thady's trial, but Keegan replied that he was only acting for Mr. Flannelly, who was determined to have the matter settled at once; that all he wanted was his own, and that he had already waited too long.
When Keegan found that Larry Macdermot, in spite of his infirmities, was too wary to be caught, he endeavoured to bribe Mary to open the door to his emissaries, and to betray the old man; but though Mary was very fond of money, she was too honest for this, and she replied to the attorney by telling him, "that for all the money in the bank of Carrick, she wouldn't be the one to trate the ould blood that way." Larry consequently still held out at Ballycloran, living on the chance presents of his friends, who sent him at one time a few stone of potatoes, at another a pound of tea, then a bit of bacon, or a few bottles of whiskey; this last, however, was confided to Mary, with injunctions not to allow him too frequently to have recourse to the only comforter that was left to him.
Though Keegan failed to gain admission into the house, and could not therefore put himself into absolute possession of the estate, still he could do what he pleased with the lands, and he was not long in availing himself of the power. In January he served notices on all the tenants that unless the whole arrears were paid on or before the end of the next month, they would be ejected; and to many of those who held portions of the better part of the land, he sent summary notices to quit on the first of May next following. These notices were all served by Pat, who assured the tenants that he only performed the duties which he had now undertaken that he might look after Mr. Thady's interests, and as, as he said, "there could be no use in life in his refusing to do it, for av he didn't, another would, and the tenants would be no betther, and he a dale the worse."
These things by no means tended to make Keegan's name popular on the estate, particularly at Drumleesh, where the tenants were but ill prepared to pay their rent by small portions at a time, and were utterly confounded at the idea of having to pay up the arrears in a lump; but Pat assured him that although they were surly and sullen, they gave no signs or showed any determination of having recourse to violence, or of openly rebelling against the authority of their new landlord.
Pat, however, knew but little of what was going on amongst them now. Although they found no absolute fault with the arguments which he used for acting on Mr. Keegan's behalf, still he soon discovered that the tenants had withdrawn their confidence from him, and that they looked upon him rather as the servant of their new tyrant, than as the friend to whom they had been accustomed to turn, when they wanted any little favour from their old master. He had moreover discontinued his visits to Mrs. Mulready's, and had for a long time seen nothing of Joe Reynolds and his set, who spent most of their time in Aughacashel, or at any rate away from Drumleesh.