CHAPTER III
COMING TO THE CAVE—MANNER OF LIFE—ARRIVAL OF THE OLD MAN
After they had contemplated this scene for some time, O’Donell exclaimed: ‘Alexander, let us abide here. What need have we to travel farther? Let us make this our place of rest.’
‘We will,’ replied Delancy. ‘And this shall be our abode,’ added he, pointing to a cave at the foot of the mountains.
‘It shall,’ returned O’Donell, as they entered it.
In this country they remained for many long years, and passed their time in a manner which made them completely happy. Sometimes they would sit upon a high rock, and listen to the hoarse thunder rolling through the sky and making the mountains to echo and the desert to ring with its awful voice. Sometimes they would watch the lightning darting across black clouds and shivering huge fragments of rock in its terrible passage. Sometimes they would witness the great, glorious orb of gold sink behind the far distant mountains which girded the horizon, and then watch the advance of grey twilight, and the little stars coming forth in beauty, and the silver moon rising in her splendour, till the cold dews of night began to fall; and then they would retire to their beds in the cave with hearts full of joy and thankfulness.
One evening they were seated in this cave by a large blazing fire of turf which cast its lurid light to the high arched roof and illuminated the tall and stately pillars, cut by the hand of nature out of the stony rock, with a cheerful red glare that appeared strange in this desolate land, which no fires had ever before visited, except those fierce flames of death which flash from the heavens when robed in the dreadful majesty of thunder. They were seated in this cave then, listening to the howling night-wind as it swept in mournful cadences through the trees of the forest which encircled the foot of the mountain and bordered the stream which flowed round it. They were quite silent, and their thoughts were occupied by those that were afar off, and whom it was their fate most likely never more to behold.
O’Donell was thinking of his noble master and his young princes; of the thousands of miles which intervened between him and them; and the sad, silent tear gushed forth as he ruminated on the happiness of those times, when his master frowned not, when the gloom of care gave place to the smile of friendship, when he would talk to him and laugh with him, and be to him, not as a brother,—no, no, but as a mighty warrior, who, relaxing from his haughtiness, would now and then converse with his high officers in a strain of vivacity and playful humour not to be equalled. Next he viewed him in his mind’s eye at the head of his army. He heard, in the ears of his imagination, the buzz of expectation, of hope, and supposition which hummed round him as his penetrating eye, with a still keenness of expression, was fixed on the distant ranks of the enemy. Then he heard his authoritative voice exclaim: ‘Onward, brave sons of freedom! Onward to the battle!’ And, lastly, his parting words to him: ‘In prosperity or in misery, in sorrow or in joy, in populous cities or in desolate wildernesses, my prayer shall go with you!’ darted across his mind with such painful distinctness, that he at length gave way to his uncontrollable grief at the thought that he should never behold his beloved and mighty commander more; and burst into a flood of tears.
‘What is the matter, Henry?’ exclaimed Delancy.
‘Oh, nothing, nothing,’ was the reply; and they were resuming their tacit thinking, when a voice was heard outside the cavern, which broke strangely upon the desolate silence and that land which for thousands of years had heard no sound save the howling of the wind through the forest, the echoing of the thunder among mountains, or the solitary murmuring of the river; if we except the presence of O’Donell and Delancy.
‘Listen!’ cried Alexander; ‘listen! What is that?’