“So I will, Fagan; I'll be as obedient as you wish. Only tell me that you will watch for my safety, assure me of that, and I 'm content.”
As though the very words he had just uttered had brought a soothing influence to his mind, he had scarcely finished speaking when he fell off into a deep sleep, unbroken by even a dream. Fagan stood long enough at the bedside to assure himself that all was quiet, and then left the room, locking the door as he passed out, and taking the key with him.
CHAPTER XV. CIRCUMSTANTIAL EVIDENCE
In these memoirs of my father, I have either derived my information from the verbal accounts of his friends and contemporaries, or taken it from his own letters and papers. Many things have I omitted, as irrelevant to his story, which, in themselves, might not have been devoid of interest; and of some others, the meaning and purport being somewhat obscure, I have abstained from all mention. I make this apology for the incompleteness of my narrative; and the reader will probably accept my excuses the more willingly since he is spared the infliction of my discursiveness on topics only secondary and adventitious.
I now, however, come to a period the most eventful of his story, but, by an unhappy accident, the least illustrated by any record of its acts. MacNaghten, my chief source of information hitherto, is here unable to guide or direct me. He knew nothing of my father's movements, nor did he hold any direct intercourse with him. Whatever letters may have been written by my father himself, I am unable to tell, none of them having ever reached me. My difficulty is therefore considerable, having little to guide me beyond chance paragraphs in some of Fagan's letters to his daughter, and some two or three formal communications on business matters to my mother.
There is yet enough even in these scattered notices to show that Fagan's hopes of realizing the great ambition of his life had been suddenly and unexpectedly renewed. Not alone was he inclined to believe that my father might become the political leader of his own peculiar party, and take upon him the unclaimed position of an Irish champion, but, further still, he persuaded himself that my father was not really married, and that the present conjuncture offered a favorable prospect of making him his son-in-law.
The reader has already seen from what a slight foundation this edifice sprung,—a random word spoken by my father at a moment of great excitement; a half-muttered regret, wrung from him in a paroxysm of wounded self-love.
He was not the first, nor will he be the last, who shall raise up a structure for which the will alone supplies material; mayhap, too, in his case, the fire of hope had never been totally extinguished in his heart, and from its smouldering embers now burst out this new and brilliant flame.
It was about an hour after midnight that a chaise, with four horses, drew up at Fagan's door; and, after a brief delay, a sick man was assisted carefully down the stairs and deposited within the carriage. Raper took his place beside him, and, with a speed that denoted urgency, the equipage drove away, and, passing through many a narrow lane and alley, emerged from the city at last, and took the great western road.