I hardly waited to hear what he said, but ran for the bog gate as I have never run before or since. The air was full of the crying; the pantings of my breath made it beat in waves in my ears, as I came along under the trees. The gate was wide open, and I could see no one in the gloom ahead of me as I blindly followed the sound along the rough cart track. I strained my eyes in the direction it came from, running all the time, and I soon saw, or thought I saw, against the pale light of the sky, a figure down in the bog to my right. I made for it, stumbling and tripping among the tussocks of heather and grass-grown lumps of peat, once, in my reckless haste, falling over a great piece of bogwood that stood out of the soft ground. The figure was that of a woman, who was kneeling, keening and wringing her hands, on the farther side of the black Poul-na-coppal, by which I had once seen Moll Hourihane, and, hurrying with what speed I could round its broken, shelving edge, I found that the surging thought which had grown during my run into an unreasoning conviction had been right—the woman was Moll herself.
That she, who was supposed to be unable to utter a sound, should be making this outcry did not then strike me as strange.
“Where is the master?” I said breathlessly. “What are you crying for?”
For all answer, she flung her arms high over her head, and extended them both with a frantic gesture downwards, towards the water, and then fell again to clapping her hands and beating her breast. At the same moment the irregular fall of footsteps sounded in the road, and I called out with all the strength left to me. At my voice, Moll’s crying, which had ceased as I first spoke to her, broke out anew; but I paid no heed to her, and taking a step forward, peered with a sick terror down at the inky gleam of water in the bog hole. It was quite still, but water was dripping from a plant of bog myrtle that hung out over the edge, and, putting my hand on it, I found it was all wet, as if it had been splashed.
The voices of the men were close to me; I staggered back to meet them, and sank down on the ground as Tom came up to me.
“Did you find him, miss? Is he here?”
“He’s there,” I said wildly; “ask Moll! He has killed himself!”
My face was turned toward the road, and as I spoke I saw near me on the dark ground a glimmer of something white that did not look like a stone. I dragged myself towards it. It was a book lying open, a book with pictures, and, dark as it was, I recognized the outlines of one of them, “The Regulator on Hertford Bridge flat.”
It was the book which I had seen my uncle put into his pocket. I did not want any more proof of what had happened, and letting the book fall, I covered my face with my hands and lay prone in the heather. Moll’s keening had stopped altogether; footsteps hurried past, and I heard excited voices in every direction round me.
“Get ropes and a laddher!”