This frightful story—told, too, with all the simple power of truth—thrilled through me with horror long after the impression seemed to have faded away from him who told it; and though he still continued to speak on, I heard nothing; nor did I mark our progress, until I found myself beside the little stream which conducted to the mill.
CHAPTER XLII. THE HIGHROAD
Joe was right; the mill was not at work, for 'Andy' had been summoned to Ennis, where the assizes were then going forward. The mare which had formed part of our calculations was also absent; and we sat down in the little porch to hold a council of war as to our future proceedings. After canvassing the question for some time, Joe left me for a few minutes, and returned with the information that the highroad to Ennis lay only a couple of miles distant, and that a stage-coach would pass there in about two hours, by which I could reach the town that evening. It was therefore decided that he should return with the pony to Murranakilty; while I, having procured a gossoon to carry my baggage, made the best of my way towards the Ennis road.
Joe soon found me an urchin to succeed him as my guide and companion; and with an affectionate leave-taking, and a faithful promise to meet me sometime and somewhere, we parted.
So long as I had journeyed along beside my poor, half-witted follower, the strange and fickle features of his wandering intellect had somehow interrupted the channels of my own feelings, and left me no room for reflection on my changed fortunes. Now, however, my thoughts returned to the past with all the force of some dammed-up current, and my blighted hopes threw a dark and sombre shadow over all my features. What cared I what became of me? Why did I hasten hither and thither? These were my first reflections. If life had lost its charm, so had misfortune lost its terror. There seemed something frivolous and contemptible in the return to those duties which in all the buoyant exhilaration of my former life had ever seemed unfitting and unmanly. No! rather let me seek for some employment on active service. The soldier's career I once longed for, to taste its glorious enthusiasm—that I wished for now, to enjoy its ceaseless movement and exertion.
As I thought over all I had seen and gone through since my arrival in Ireland—its varied scenes of mirth and woe; its reckless pleasures, its wilder despair—I believed that I had acquired a far deeper insight into my own heart in proportion as I looked more into those of others. A not unfrequent error this. The outstretched page of human nature that I had been gazing on had shown me the passions and feelings of other men laid bare before me, while my own heart was dark, enshrined, and unvisited within me. I believed that life had no longer anything to tie me to it—and I was not then twenty! Had I counted double as many years, I had had more reason for the belief, and more difficulty to think so.
Sometimes I endeavoured to console myself by thinking of all the obstacles that under the happiest circumstances must have opposed themselves to my union with Louisa Bellew. My mother's pride alone seemed an insurmountable one. But then I thought of what a noble part had lain before me, to prefer the object of my love—the prize of my own winning—to all the caresses of fortune, all the seductions of the world. Sir Simon Bellew, too—what could he mean? The secret he alluded to, what was it? Alas! what mattered it? My doom was sealed, my fate decided; I had no care how.
Such were my thoughts as I journeyed along the path that conducted towards the highroad; while my little guide—barelegged and barefooted, trotted on merrily before me—who, with none of this world's goods, had no room in his heart for sorrow or repining.
We at last reached the road, which, dusty and deserted, skirted the side of a bleak mountain for miles—not a house to be seen; not a traveller, nor scarce a wheel-track, to mark the course of any one having passed there. I had not followed it for more than half an hour when I heard the tramp of horses and the roll which announced the approach of an equipage. A vast cloud of dust, through which a pair of leaders were alone visible, appeared at a distance. I seated myself at the roadside to await its coming, my little gossoon beside me, evidently not sorry to have reached a resting-place; and once more my thoughts returned to their well-worn channel, and my head sank on my bosom. I forgot where I was, when suddenly the prancing of a pair of horses close to me aroused me from my stupor, and a postillion called out to me in no very subdued accent—