“Yes; but, grandfather, I shall find others, and golden ones too.”
“Tell me more about them times, or I won’t believe you,” cried he, half peevishly.
“I’ll talk to you all the evening about them; I remember them all, dear old grandady.”
“That’s the word I wanted; that’s it, my darlin’! the light of my ould eyes!” And he fell on her neck and sobbed aloud.
In his ecstasy and delight to weave the long past into the present, he forgot to ask her how she came there, and by what fortune she had remembered him. It was the old life in the mountains that filled his whole being. The wild cliffs and solitary lakes, dear to him by the thought of her who never left him, trotting beside him as he went, or cowering at his knee as he sat over the turf fire. So immersed was he in these memories, that though she talked on he heard nothing; he would look at her, and smile, and say, “God bless her,” and then go back again to his own dreamy thoughts.
“I’m thinking we’ll have to cut the oats, green as it is, Kitty,” said he, after a long pause. “It’s late in the year now, and there’ll be no fine days.”
She could not speak, but her lips trembled, and her heart felt as if it would burst.
“There’s a lamb astray these two days,” muttered he. “I hope the eagles hasn’t got it; but I heard one screeching last night. Light the fire, anyway, darlin’, for it’s cowld here.”
With what art and patience and gentle forbearance did she labour to bring those erring faculties back, and fix them on the great reality that portended! It was long, indeed, before she succeeded. The old man loved to revel in the bygone life, wherein, with all its hardships, his fierce nature enjoyed such independence; and every now and then, after she had, as she hoped, centred his thoughts upon the approaching trial, he would break out into some wild triumph over an act of lawless daring, some insolent defiance he had hurled at the minions who were afraid to come and look for him in his mountain home.
At last she did manage to get him to speak of his present condition, and to give a narrative—it was none of the clearest—of his encounter with the sheriff’s people. He made no attempt to screen himself, nor did he even pretend that he had not been the aggressor, but he insisted, and he believed too, that he was perfectly justified in all he had done. His notion was, that he was simply defending what was his own. The scrupulous regard the Law observes towards him who is in possession, is not unfrequently translated by the impetuous intelligence of the Irish peasant into a bona fide and undeniable right. Malone reasoned in this way, and with this addition: “It’s just as good for me to die in a fair fight as be starved and ruined.”