They walked together to the house. Then Neal turned and went home. The future, so far as he could see into it, was dark enough. His love seemed utterly hopeless, yet his heart was full of unspeakable joy. He knew, beyond all possibility of doubt, that Una loved him and would love him whatever happened. Her strangely simple faith seemed to make all things plain before him. Una loved him and God was good. It was enough.
CHAPTER V
When Neal arrived at the Manse he found that the sentries who had stood on guard at the door were gone. The yeomen had disappeared from before the meeting-house. The broken door, the fragments of the wrecked pulpit, and the figure of the dead trooper swinging from the branch on which he had been hanged were left as witnesses of the Government’s methods of keeping the peace in Ireland.
Inside the house Micah Ward paced restlessly up and down the floor of his study. Donald, his pipe in his mouth, sat on a chair tilted back till its front legs were six inches off the floor, and watched his brother. His attitude was precarious, but he seemed comfortable. Micah paused in his rapid walking as Neal entered the room.
“What have you been doing, Neal?” he said. “Your face is cut, your clothes are torn; you look strangely excited.”
“I have been fighting,” said Neal. He did not think it necessary to add that he had also been love-making, though it was the interview with Una, far more than the struggle with the yeoman, which was accountable for the gleaming eyes and exalted expression which his father noticed.
“I trust you were victorious,” said his father, “that your foot has been dipped in the blood of your enemies, that you have broken their bonds asunder, and cast away their cords from you.”
“I was beaten,” said Neal, smiling. It did not just then seem to matter in the least whether he got the better or the worse in any fight.
“You take it easily,” said Donald. “That’s right. You’re blooded now, my boy. You’ll fight all the better in the future for tasting your own blood to-night. I’m glad you are back with us. Your father has been giving out the most terrific curses against Lord Dunseveric for having brought the yeomen down on us and taken away his little cannons. I tell him he ought to be thankful they went into the meeting-house instead of coming here. They’d have made a fine haul if they’d walked in and taken the papers he and I had before us when you came here. They’d have had the name of every United Irishman in the district, and could have picked them out and hanged them one by one just as they wanted them.”