CHAPTER XX. THE FLIGHT
“Are ye getting weak?” said Darby, as I staggered heavily against him, and gasped twice or thrice for breath. “Are ye bleeding still?” was his next question, while he passed his hand gently within the sash, and felt my wound. I endeavored to mutter something in reply, to which he paid no attention; but stooping down, he threw me across his shoulder, and darting off at a more rapid pace than before, he left the more frequented thoroughfare, and entered a narrow and gloomy alley, unlighted by a single lamp. As he hurried onward, he stopped more than once, as if in quest of some particular spot, but which in the darkness he was unable to detect.
“Oh, Holy Mother!” he muttered, “the blood is soaking through me! Master Tom, dear! Master Tom, my darlin' speak to me,—speak to me, acushla!” But though I heard each word distinctly, I could not utter one; a dreamy stupor was over me, and I only wished to be left quiet. “This must be it; ay, here it is,” said Darby, as he laid me gently down on the stone sill of the door, and knocked loudly with his knuckles.
The summons, though repeated three or four times, was unheeded; and although he knocked loudly enough to have alarmed the neighborhood, and called out at the top of his voice, no one came; and the only sounds we could hear were the distant cadences of a drinking song, mingled with wild shouts of laughter, and still wilder cries of agony and woe.
“Here they are, at last!” said Darby, as he almost staved in the door with a heavy stone.
“Who's there?” cried a harsh and feeble voice from within.
“'Tis me, Molly; 'tis Darby M'Keown, Open quick, for the love of Heaven! here 's a young gentleman bleedin' to death on the steps.”
“Ugh! there 's as good as ever he was, and going as fast, too, here within,” said the crone. “Ye must take him away; he would n't mind him now for a king's ransom.”
“I 'll break open the door this minit,” said Darby, with a horrible oath, “av ye don't open it.”
“Ha, ha, ha!” laughed the hag. “If ye wor Darby M'Keown, ye 'd know well how easy that is. Try it,—try it, acushla! oak timber and nails is able to bear all you'll do!”