They were not kind to her; they grudged her the cost of her maintenance; and when young Michael O’Melaghlin came courting her, they encouraged his suit that they might get rid of their burden; and they let him marry her, although they knew they were delivering her to poverty and privation, if to nothing worse.
Michael then married Moira with the full consent of her kindred, and took her home to his dilapidated, rat-infested, raven-haunted, storm-beaten old donjon keep, which was all that was left of the castle of Arghalee.
But soon the young pair began to suffer the bitterest pangs of poverty. We cannot go into detail here. Let it be sufficient to say that often they had not enough to eat, even of the plainest food. But, although “poverty had come in at the door, love did not fly out of the window,” for they loved each other more faithfully, because more pitifully, for all their privations and sufferings. And here comes in the insanity of pride. Both Michael and Moira were strong, healthy, able-bodied young people, and could each have obtained work in the neighborhood; Michael as a farm laborer, if nothing more—and he could have done little more, for he had but very little education, and Moira might have become a laundress—a trade easily acquired. But for an O’Melaghlin—a descendant of the ancient monarchs of Meath—to work! No! In the narrow, one-idea mind of the impoverished chieftain it was more noble to starve and to see his young wife starve, or to accept alms, and deem the bestower to be highly honored in being permitted to minister to the needs of The O’Melaghlin.
But hunger is a mighty factor in the affairs of life. It is said to have civilized the world. At least it exercised a very powerful influence upon these two healthy young people, who were almost always hungry, seldom having enough of oatmeal or potatoes on any day to satisfy their robust appetites. And when they had suffered this hunger for several months, and saw nothing but hunger in all the future, The O’Melaghlin suddenly resolved to sell all the remainder of his land, except one acre upon which his ruined tower stood—the oldest, as it was also the only part of the great castle now in existence—and with the money he might get for them go with his young wife to the gold fields of California. There, in the far-off foreign land, where he would not be known, he would seek for the gold that should restore the fortunes of his family. Upon whomsoever the gold fever fastens it fills with a furore.
Gold was The O’Melaghlin’s thought by day and his dream by night. Gold seeking, he persuaded himself, was not work—or at least it was not work for hire; and, besides, he would be a stranger in a strange land; and no one at home here in Antrim should ever be able to say that The O’Melaghlin had ever soiled his hands or blotted his ‘scutcheon with labor!
He sold four acres of his land for little more than enough money to take himself and his wife, by way of Glasgow, to San Francisco. He was offered nearly twice as much money if he would sell the remaining acre with the ancient tower upon it.
But at the proposal The O’Melaghlin grew furious and insolent.
What! Sell the very donjon keep, the last stronghold of The O’Melaghlins of Arghalee? Many a time had the Saxons besieged the castle, and sometimes they had taken the outworks, but never the donjon keep. And now he would see their island scuttled in the midst and sunk between its four seas, like the rotten old craft that it was, before he would sell his tower and the last acre of ground on which it stood.
Though why this jeremiad should have been uttered against “the Saxon,” when it was an Irishman and a near relative who wanted to buy his old owl roost, no one but The O’Melaghlin himself could have explained.
His dream was to realize a fabulous fortune from the gold fields and come back and restore the tower, rebuild the castle and repurchase all the land sold by his forefathers for generations past. To do all this would require a vast fortune; but would he not make that fortune?