His narrative not only confirmed all that Darby asserted, but also disclosed the atrocious scheme by which he had been first induced to join the ranks of the disaffected party. This was the work of Crofts, who knew and felt that Fortescue was the great barrier between himself and a large fortune. For this purpose Mulcahy was hired; to this end the whole long train of perfidy laid, which eventuated in his ruin: for so artfully had the plot been devised, each day's occurrence rendered retreat more difficult, until at last it became impossible.
The reader is already aware of the catastrophe which concluded his career in the rebel army. It only remains now to be told that he escaped to America, where he entered as a sailor on board a merchantman; and although his superior acquirements and conduct might have easily bettered his fortune in his new walk in life, the dread of detection never left his mind, and he preferred the hardships before the mast to the vacillation of hope and fear a more conspicuous position would have exposed him to.
The vessel in which he served was wrecked off the coast of New Holland, and he and a few others of the crew were taken up by an English ship on her voyage outward. In a party sent on shore for water, Fortescue came up with Darby, who had made his escape from the convict settlement, and was wandering about the woods, almost dead of starvation, and scarcely covered with clothing. His pitiful condition, but perhaps more still, his native drollery, which even then was unextinguished, induced the sailors to yield to Fortescue's proposal, and they smuggled him on board in a water cask; and thus concealed, he made the entire voyage to England, where he landed about a fortnight before the trial. Fearful of being apprehended before the day, and determined at all hazards to give his evidence, he lay hid till the time we have already seen, when he suddenly came forward to my rescue.
Mulcahy, who worked in the same gang with Darby, or, to use the piper's grandiloquent expression,—for he burst out in this occasionally,—was “in concatenated proximity to him,” told the whole story of his own baseness, and loudly inveighed against Crofts for deserting him in his misfortunes. The pocket-book taken from Crofts by Darby amply corroborated this statement. It contained, besides various memoranda in the owner's handwriting, several letters from Mulcahy, detailing the progress of the conspiracy: some were in acknowledgment of considerable sums of money; others asking for supplies; but all confirmatory of the black scheme by which Fortescue's destruction was compassed.
Whatever might have been the sentiments of the crowded court regarding the former life and opinions of Fortescue and the piper, it was clear that now only one impression prevailed,—a general feeling of horror at the complicated villany of Crofts, whose whole existence had been one tissue of the basest treachery.
The testimony was heard with attention throughout; no cross-examination was entered on; and the judge, briefly adverting to the case which was before the jury, and from whose immediate consideration subsequent events had in a great measure withdrawn their minds, directed them to deliver a verdict of “Not guilty.”
The words were re-echoed by the jury, who, man for man, exclaimed these words aloud, amid the most deafening cheers from every side.
As I walked from the dock, fatigued, worn out, and exhausted, a dozen hands were stretched out to seize mine; but one powerful grasp caught my arm, and a well-known voice called in my ear,—
“An' ye wor with Boney, Master Tom? Tare and 'ounds, didn't I know you'd be a great man yet.”
At the same instant Fortescue came through the crowd towards me, with his hands outstretched.