Menzies, who was of course deeply interested, extracted every particle of information he could out of the man, but nothing would make the latter admit a word as to what had become of Diblanc.
“If I go to hell,” he said, “she is certain to go there, too; for bad as I am, I believe her to be infinitely worse; worse, a hundred times worse than any Apache man I have ever met. And yet, depraved and evil as she is, I love her, and shall never know a second’s happiness till she joins me.”
The man died; and Menzies, as he made a sketch of his swinging body, felt thoroughly satisfied at last that the ghost he had seen outside the fortifications of Monsouris was the good and beautiful Banshee, the Banshee that only manifested itself when some unusually dreadful fate was about to overtake an O’Hara.
CHAPTER VII
A SIMILAR CASE FROM SPAIN
Another case of dual Banshee haunting that occurs to me, took place in Spain, where so many of the oldest Irish families have settled, and was related to me by a distant connection of mine—an O’Donnell. He well remembered, he said, many years ago, when he was a boy, his father, who was an officer in the Carlist Army, telling him of an adventure that happened to him during the first outbreak of the Civil War. His father and another young man, Dick O’Flanagan, were subalterns in a cavalry regiment that took a prominent part in a desperate engagement with the Queen’s Army. The Carlists were being driven back, when, as a last desperate resource, their bare handful of cavalry charged and immediately turned the fortunes of the day. In the heat of the affray, however, Ralph O’Donnell and Dick O’Flanagan, carried away by their enthusiasm, got separated from the rest of the corps, and were, consequently, overpowered by sheer numbers and taken prisoners.
In those days much brutality was shown on either side, and our two heroes, beaten, and bruised, and starving, were dragged along in a half-fainting condition, amid the taunts and gibings of their captors, till they were finally lodged in the filthy dungeon of an old mountain castle, where they were informed they would be kept till the hour appointed for their execution. The moment they were alone, they made the most strenuous efforts to unloosen the thongs of tough cowhide with which their hands and feet were so cruelly bound together, and, after many frantic endeavours, they at last succeeded. O’Flanagan was the first to get free, and as soon as his numbed limbs allowed him to do so, he crawled to the side of his friend and liberated him, too. They then examined the room as best they could in the dark, and decided their only hope of escape lay in the chimney, which, luckily for them, was one of those old-fashioned structures, wide enough to admit the passage of a full-grown person. Ralph began the ascent first, and, after several fruitless efforts, during which he bumped and bruised himself and made such a noise that O’Flanagan feared he would be heard by the guard outside, he eventually managed to obtain a foothold and make sufficient progress for O’Flanagan to follow in his wake.
In everything they did that night luck favoured them. On emerging from the chimney on to the roof of the castle, they were rejoiced to find a tree growing so near to one of the walls that they had little difficulty in gripping hold of one of its branches and so descending in safety to the ground. The guards apparently were asleep, at least none were to be seen anywhere, and so, feeling their way cautiously in and out a thick growth of trees and bushes, they soon got altogether clear of the premises, and found themselves once again free, but in a part of the country with which they were totally unacquainted. Two hours tramping along a tortuous, hilly high road, or to give it a more appropriate name, track, for it was nothing more, at last brought them to a wayside inn where, in spite of the advanced hour—for it was between one and two o’clock in the morning—they determined to risk inquiry for a night’s shelter. I say “risk” because there was a strong spirit of partisanship abroad, and it was quite as likely as not that the inn people were adherents of the Queen.