“From himself.”
“The monk?”
“Yes. He was riding by where I lived on a lonely, bare spot, that you may chance to have heard of, Knockcreggan. The night was bad, dark, and wild; the road couldn’t be worse. It was like the bed of a torrent, huge stones and boulders everywhere. Just opposite the door of my cabin the horse stumbled and fell. I heard a cry, and went out and found the prostrate monk bleeding badly from a wound over his temple. I brought him in, put him down on a truss of straw, and bandaged him as well as I could.
“After a while, for he was at first unconscious, he spoke faintly, and asked for ‘more light.’ I made a blazing fire of turf, and lit a couple of candles—all I had.
“‘I know I am dying,’ he said, ‘are you a Catholic?’ I told him I was.
“‘I am a monk,’ he said ‘a Spanish Capuchin monk. I want you to swear on this cross that you will do what I ask you; it being only an act of charity,’ and he held up the cross which had been hidden in the breast of his riding coat.
“It blazed, my God! as I saw it blaze in the cell the night of the storm,” and Ryan shuddered, although we were then in the full light of the evening, and the bustling camp below us. “I took the oath on the cross,” Ryan went on to say, “to carry to the captain’s widow—your mother—two parcels, one of papers, which the monk told me, while of the greatest importance to your family were of no use to strangers; and another containing some gold and valuable jewels.
“‘You will be well paid for your trouble, I know,’ the monk said to me; ‘but promise me again on the cross that you will deliver both these parcels safe and sound, and will not touch coin or jewel. If you do, I warn you, you will be struck dead when you least expect it, and by an invisible and supernatural hand. But tell no one of your mission.’
“The monk died that night. I sent for the neighbours, and we waked him and buried him, and I thought of setting out for your mother’s house, but the weather grew worse and worse, and the roads were impassable. ’Twas unlucky for me. I meant well, and intended to do what I promised, but the temptation came to me to look at the purse, and when I saw the gold and the jewels shining, the temptation came to me to keep ’em—who would be the wiser, and I was poor? I was living alone there on the side of the Knock, and here was a fortune in my hands. Well, the temptation grew stronger, and I yielded. I kept the money, and went to Dublin and spent it, and I sold the jewels, and when the money got for them was nearly all gone, the troubles broke out and the Viscount raised the regiment for the young colonel, and I joined it. And ’tis many and many’s the time I’ve looked death in the face since, and he passed me by. And when I saw you I thought I’d try and make up for my crime some little bit, and that I’d guard and give my life for you.”
I was so amazed at the story that I did not speak for a moment or two after he had concluded.