Led by the instinct of self-preservation, he fled, like Cain, into the nearest wood. How long he wandered there he could not recollect. Fear, love, repentance, despair, and at last madness, pursued him like frightful companions, and at length robbed him of consciousness,—for a time annihilating the terrors of the past in forgetfulness; for kind nature puts an end to intolerable sufferings of mind, as of body, by insensibility or death.
Meanwhile the murder was soon known in the city; and the fearful end of the gentle youth, who had confided himself, a foreigner, to their hospitality, was learned by all with sorrow and indignation. A dagger, steeped in blood, had been found lying by the velvet cap of the Spaniard, and not far from it a hat, ornamented with plumes and a clasp of gems, showed the recent traces of a man who seemed to have sought safety in the direction of the wood. The hat was immediately recognized as Edward’s; and as he was nowhere to be found, fears were soon entertained that he had been murdered with his friend. The terrified father mounted his horse, and, accompanied by a crowd of people calling for vengeance, swore solemnly that nothing should save the murderer, were he even compelled to execute him with his own hands.
We may imagine the shouts of joy, and the feelings of the father, when at break of day Edward Lynch was found sunk under a tree, living, and although covered with blood, yet apparently without any dangerous wound. We may imagine the shudder that ran through the crowd,—but the feelings of the father we cannot imagine,—when, restored to sense, he embraced his father’s knees, declared himself the murderer of Gonsalvo, and earnestly implored instant punishment.
He was brought home bound, tried before a full assembly of the magistrates, and condemned to death by his own father. But the people would not lose their darling. Like the waves of the tempest-troubled sea, they filled the market-place and the streets, and forgetting the crime of the son in the relentless justice of the father, demanded with threatening cries the opening of the prison and the pardon of the criminal. During the night, though the guards were doubled, it was with great difficulty that the incensed mob were withheld from breaking in. Towards morning, it was announced to the mayor that all resistance would soon be vain, for that a part of the soldiers had gone over to the people;—only the foreign guard held out, and all demanded with furious cries the instant liberation of the criminal.
At this, the inflexible magistrate took a resolution, which many will call inhuman, but whose awful self-conquest certainly belongs to the rarest examples of stoical firmness.—Accompanied by a priest, he proceeded through a secret passage to the dungeon of his son; and when, with newly-awakened desire of life, excited by the sympathy of his fellow-citizens, Edward sunk at his feet, and asked eagerly if he brought him mercy and pardon? The old man replied with unfaultering voice, “No, my son, in this world there is no mercy for you: your life is irrevocably forfeited to the law, and at sunrise you must die. One-and-twenty years have I prayed for your earthly happiness,—but that is past,—turn your thoughts now to eternity; and if there be yet hope there, let us now kneel down together and implore the Almighty to grant you mercy hereafter;—but then I hope my son, though he could not live worthy of his father, will at least know how to die worthy of him.” With these words he rekindled the noble pride of the once dauntless youth, and after a short prayer, he surrendered himself with heroic resignation to his father’s pitiless will.
As the people, and the greater part of the armed men mingled in their ranks, now prepared, amidst more wild and furious menaces, to storm the prison, James Lynch appeared at a lofty window; his son stood at his side with the halter round his neck. “I have sworn,” exclaimed the inflexible magistrate, “that Gonsalvo’s murderer should die, even though I must perform the office of the executioner myself. Providence has taken me at my word; and you, madmen, learn from the most wretched of fathers that nothing must stop the course of justice, and that even the ties of nature must break before it.”
While he spoke these words he had made fast the rope to an iron beam projecting from the wall, and now suddenly pushing his son out of the window, he completed his dreadful work. Nor did he leave the spot till the last convulsive struggles gave certainty of the death of his unhappy victim.
As if struck by a thunder-clap, the tumultuous mob had beheld the horrible spectacle in death-like silence, and every man glided as if stunned to his own house. From that moment the mayor of Galway resigned all his occupations and dignities, and was never beheld by any eye but those of his own family. He never left his house till he was carried from it to his grave. Anna Blake died in a convent. Both families in course of time disappeared from the earth; but the skull and cross-bones still mark the scene of this fearful tragedy.
Limerick, Sept. 21st.
At ten o’clock my carriage arrived, and I immediately quitted Galway. As long as the country remained monotonous, I beguiled the time by reading. At Gort it becomes more interesting. Not far from it flows a river, which, like that at Cong, looses itself several times in the earth. One of the deepest basins which it forms is called “The Punch-bowl.” To fill such a bowl would require a larger tun than that at Heidelberg.